Tiffany asked me what I wanted for my 51st year, and my quick answer was “to get to the money.”
To sit courtside at Los Angeles Sparks games and say hi to Dee, our favorite bartender in the Delta Sky lounge.
To travel for basketball reasons on a whim. To join our wealthier friends in donating to the arts.
To become fluent in opera.
To be a patron of the spaces that generate the vibes I want to see in the world.
We stood in line at the home opener for ACFC, surrounded by people who want to live in the same inclusive, collaborative, and supportive society that I want, and that’s what I desire.
More of this.
More reminders that the chaos on our screens isn’t always reflective of the realities of our neighborhoods.
I want to love my neighbor like atoms sharing a cell.
I want to love my body like a turtle loves its shell.
I want to be where joy is.
I want to be joy.
I want joy.
Joy.
What do I want in my 51st year?
To rain down joy on my loved ones and enemies alike.
Last weekend, I was roaming through a collection of warehouses and open spaces somewhere in Downtown Los Angeles. House of Kong is an immersive experience created by Gorillaz, the virtual alt-hip-hop group that grew from the minds of Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett over the past 30 years. The exhibition is both a celebration of that history and, seemingly, the way they are rolling out the latest album from this band that doesn’t really exist. I was agog at how they constructed a maze of interconnected rooms that revealed both the band’s actual development in our world and the parallel universe where Murdoc, Russell, 2-D, and Noodle exist. A guided tour with each visitor provided headphones that delivered a synced audio experience, moving us from one room to the next. From the very beginning, we were active participants in the adventure, though we didn’t know that yet. Anna spent 45 seconds as a roadie for the band, getting a flight case to its appropriate location. Another member of our group was given a task that seemed normal and mundane but was actually critical to our experience.
My senses were turned all the way on for the entire afternoon. There were sights, sounds, and even smells that could only have been envisioned by a group of highly creative humans working and playing together. I was inspired by all of this but mostly by the idea of a musician and a comic book artist sitting in their flat, riffing off of each other, and with pen, paper, some musical instruments, some talented friends, and some luck they turned a ridiculous concept into a successful GRAMMY award-winning band that continues to be a thing nearly three decades later.
For the rest of the day, I romanticized this analog creation myth as a counterpoint to the AI slop encroaching upon seemingly everything right now.
And then the next morning, instead of happily or frustratingly toiling away at some hobby rooted in the physical world, I spent hours on my laptop screwing around with Claude.
Am I a hypocrite?
At work, lately, my 1:1s with a colleague have mostly been animated conversations about AI tools and experiments. Recently, the discussion centered around how he had spent his weekend playing around with AI coding agents, yet kept running up against token limits. It got to a point where he set an alarm so he could get up in the middle of the night when one of his cooldowns was scheduled to end during the wee hours.
He wasn’t doing this for work. He was utilizing the software in the service of one of his hobbies. He’d made iOS apps in the past, not to get rich but to solve a problem specific to him. With the current advancements in AI, he was now able to take those ideas even further and try new ones. His only customer? Himself.
I’m doing the same.
The first weekend of each month, I analyze my music listening from the previous month. I nerd out on this blog about it relatively regularly. It’s a tedious process. I spend several hours extracting, transforming, processing, and categorizing the data so that, in the end, I can tell myself the story of my music habits. I blog about it, but this is just for me. It’s a labor of love. Really, though, it’s mostly just labor. The part I most want to do, categorize music based on my taste and context, is maybe 25% of this effort. This weekend, though, I changed it up.
After three or four hours of doing my normal process, I opened up Claude and said,
“I want to automate the labor and leave the part I love to me. Here are the tools I use. Here’s my existing workflow. Suggest a plan.”
And it did. I reviewed it, made adjustments, and put it to work. Claude Cowork turned a tedious data analysis job I didn’t want to do (and likely would have done poorly) into something that will make my little music hobby project infinitely more enjoyable. Now I can spend those hours categorizing songs and artists if I want. Or doing something completely different. As I watched Claude manipulate my web browser and work in the terminal on my laptop to output what I requested, it felt like magic.
These little moments of magic powered by AI are becoming ever more frequent. There are work cases, sure, but that’s not what has got me excited. It’s about trying shit, learning new ways to do things, and surprising myself with the results. I’m not trying to use AI to come up with million-dollar ideas or 10x my work output or whatever else some self-appointed industry guru or tech CEO-cum-snake oil salesman is claiming that this technology can do.
I’m chasing the “wow, isn’t this fun” feeling. It’s a hobbyist’s enthusiasm rooted in figuring out how to do something that maybe only you will think is cool, but, damnit, that’s all that matters.
But is collaborating with my computer in any way close to what might be when humans come together to make things?
I find AI as a “creative partner” distasteful at best and gross, at worst. I don’t want to read things in “AI voice.” I don’t want to be assaulted with your AI-created images, videos, or audio. Especially if the output is for artistic pursuits. Whatever for your slide decks or infographics, but if you’re trying to make me feel something? Get that slop out of here. Prompting is not creating.
I’m not being holier than thou. I’ve tried it myself. There is writing I’ve done where I’ve used AI as a writing assistant, and I can clearly identify when I let the computer replace my words, style, and voice with its own flattened idea of what constitutes good writing. There are a couple of things I’ve published over the last year that are absolutely cringeworthy to read.
Over the last few weeks, though, I’ve been floored by the power of accessible agentic AI software. Charlie Warzel, in conversation with Anil Dash, said the “aha” part of this moment in AI’s development is that we’ve moved on a bit from trying to get AIs to mimic Human conversation and, instead, found real material benefit in talking “Computer” to AI so that it will then do computer things beyond our capabilities. That’s been the thing for me as well.
I’ve gone from being highly skeptical of the rise of AI to enthusiastically discussing what I’d like to try next.
Digital tinkering has a cold-start problem that is often very difficult for non-techies to overcome. You don’t know how to talk computer. Having a tool that can understand you, figure out the computer shit necessary to get it done, and actually execute on those things is incredible.
I don’t want art made by software cosplaying as a person. Damon Albarn hasn’t replaced Jamie Hewlett with a drawing program that can simulate his style. Hewlett isn’t asking an AI song maker to create soundalike hits from their discography. There’s no humanity in that. It would have no value. Artistically, they’ve only opened the aperture for more people to contribute to their creative spectacle.
And yet, I’m having fun playing in this digital sandbox with AI agents solving the silly little computer-centric problems that only matter to me.
And yet, those excursions didn’t feel especially intentional. Too much of my time was still swallowed by doomscrolling or playing a dumb mobile game. Worse, when I was out, I often felt a pull back toward the screen. I’d sit in the car after arriving somewhere that wasn’t time-sensitive, staring at my phone instead of going about my day. I could easily convince myself to skip or cancel activities, return to a comfortable seat, and indulge in the dopamine rush of the algorithms.
The problem was that the high wasn’t even that satisfying. It hasn’t been for a long time.
I don’t know if we, as a culture, have reached a tipping point with algorithmically curated experiences and hyper-niche virtual connectivity. I do know that I have. When every app leaves you feeling vaguely worse, rarely shows you people you actually know, and demands more effort to determine whether something is real, manipulated, or AI-generated than to enjoy it, it’s time to step away.
I no longer want social media giving me simulated or secondhand experiences that I know are more entertaining, more fulfilling, and more trustworthy in person.
Over the holiday break, I was animatedly telling Tiffany about my intention to trade digital experiences for IRL ones whenever possible.
“Isn’t it funny,” she said, “that we make this resolution every year?”
She wasn’t wrong. Since 2021, I’ve resolved to get back outside each year.
Just a year ago, around this time, I saved another Threads post to my journal:
So what’s different this time? Will I retreat to the endless scroll after another round of declarations?
I don’t think so.
Jenna Wortham has described the current impulse as being “performatively offline.” I don’t take that as a pejorative, but it doesn’t quite fit for me. As Zadi put it, the algorithmic artificiality of our digital spaces is pushing many of us toward the natural world. When you spend too much time trying to determine what’s real, the simplest response is to stop looking at the deception and walk out your door.
The hellscape you see in your feeds may exist in your neighborhood. For some of us, it absolutely does. But more likely, what you’ll find instead are friendly neighbors, pets, babies, and communities in need of your presence and patronage.
Here in Los Angeles, that means embracing friction, inconvenience, and uncertainty. Of course, you sit in traffic. Of course, there are odd smells and curious characters on public transportation. But, in exchange, you get opera in the park, free art in galleries and bars, and protest graffiti on the streets. You eat ten-dollar street tacos instead of thirty-dollar ones delivered by DoorDash. You stumble into hidden treasures, make new friends, and deepen bonds with nearly lifelong ones.
In return for putting your phone down and looking up, you see the world—your world—for what it actually is. That clarity can inspire small acts of care. It can also make visible how wonder and injustice coexist, as they always have. That is both infuriating and comforting. That’s the human condition.
Living this way doesn’t feel performative to me. It feels like a recognition that no matter what tech billionaires try to sell us next, no matter how sophisticated the algorithms become, they still can’t beat the desert of the real.
It’s not all bad online. I enjoy reaction videos to popular media. I look forward to conversations with others about the things I’m passionate about, especially when I’m confident they won’t descend into the caustic debate tactics common on the worst parts of the internet. There are still those serendipitous moments of genuine connection that I appreciate.
But joy is offline. So is epistemic clarity. If I leave my house and keep that supercomputer in my pocket, I don’t have to question my senses. Seeing is still believing when my life isn’t primarily experienced through funhouse mirrors.
Surprisingly, this has made me better at social media. My Threads posts have been on fire lately. When I’m feeding my soul with the physical world, I show up more honestly in digital spaces.
A year before we married in the city, we spent a Memorial Day weekend in New Orleans. We stayed at Hotel LeCirque. It stands on what is now Harmony Circle, once called Place du Tivoli. In 2010, it was still known by the name it had carried for more than 130 years: Lee Circle. As in Robert E. Lee, the defeated Confederate general.
Our room faced the circle, where the enormous statue of Lee, mounted on his horse, was perched, looking down upon us and all those who came to enjoy what is, otherwise, a wonderful part of my second-favorite city in the country. Every morning when I opened the curtains of our room and was greeted by the long-standing monument to a man who led armies that killed tens of thousands for the express purpose of keeping people who look like me enslaved, I cursed his name and flipped him off.
That twelve-foot bronze monstrosity celebrating “the Lost Cause of white supremacy” no longer stands atop that perch. It was removed in 2017 during the great reckoning around Confederate memorials that followed the 2015 Charleston church massacre. That moment of overdue accountability, in turn, provoked a surge of white supremacist counter-rallies opposing the removal of these monuments, culminating in the “Unite the Right” rally in August of that same year — an event that ended, predictably, in violence.
It should come as no surprise, then, that despite the threat of rain, we recently trekked to Little Tokyo for First Fridays at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA to view MONUMENTS. The exhibition examines a decade of contestation over Confederate monuments in public spaces across the United States, pairing decommissioned statues with works by nineteen artists reflecting on the monuments themselves — and on what both their presence and their removal might mean. Robin D. G. Kelley has called it the most important exhibition currently on display in any museum in the nation, perhaps even the world.
Given the authoritarian tendencies of our current administration and the increasing comfort with which some Americans express supremacist ideology, I suspect he may be right.
While there are many monuments on display—several destroyed, dismembered, or defiled—the data reveals a more unsettling truth: four out of five Confederate statues in this country still stand. Though I delighted in being able to once again whisper “punk bitch” to statues of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, and their ilk, the reality is that these losers are still honored as heroes in government-owned spaces—the people’s places—across this nation, and not merely in the South.
Inside The Geffen Contemporary, the people are represented by a wall of photographs taken by the nineteenth-century pop-up photographer Hugh Mangum. Despite working during the Jim Crow era, Mangum did not segregate his subjects. Everyday Black and white men and women gaze out from fragile glass plates, serving as witnesses to the era when many of these false idols were elevated in their name, supposedly for their benefit. The counterweight between these perspectives—common folk rendered vulnerable by time and decay, and monumental figures cast in bronze and stone—is striking. As in my memory of New Orleans, the gaze still moves upward, toward icons of oppression looming above the public.
Hamza Walker and Bennett Simpson, the curators of MONUMENTS, consistently juxtapose competing ideas. Nowhere is this more devastating than in the placement of white grievance in direct proximity to Black grief. It was impossible not to break down while watching Julie Dash’s short film HOMEGOING, in which Davóne Tines sings the souls of those murdered in the Charleston church shooting home. It was even harder to suppress the rage stirred by the glossy images of Ku Klux Klan members displayed in the very next room.
I was too overwhelmed by my visceral reaction to The Birth of a Nation to appreciate Stan Douglas’s reinterpretation fully. Still, encountering Descendant by Karon Davis—my favorite piece in the show—proved cathartic. The statue depicts a young Black boy, Davis’s son, with locs standing tall, holding a miniature monument of a Confederate General on horseback by its tail, as if it were vermin. The juxtaposition filled me with joy. When faced with the grave threat posed by the darkest hearts of our fellow Americans, Black folks have long mastered one enduring response: trolling.
After this whirlwind of emotion, Tiffany and I exited the museum ready to join the dance party promised as part of First Fridays. There was none to be found. BlackMuseumist was spinning, but the makeshift dance floor remained empty. Blame it on the rain. Or perhaps people don’t dance in public the way they once did, surveilled as we are from every angle.
We, however, would not be denied. After two-stepping to some rare grooves, we threw up a peace sign to the DJ. He answered with Fela Kuti’s “Water No Get Enemy.” Those afrobeat horns and drums got us sweating, shaking loose whatever heaviness had glommed onto us through the gallery.
MONUMENTS makes plain the weight of what this country refuses to reckon with. Our most violent truths occupy the public square. The hatred is sanctioned. The cruelty is celebrated.
We drove the backroads from Burbank to Hollywood, reminiscing about a time when our nights out felt more random: talking with strangers at the bar, late-night vittles, bad ideas powered by bartenders with heavy pours and better stories. Back in my day, we didn’t trade friction for convenience. Back in my day, we were outside.
What a bunch of middle-aged bullshit.
As I surveyed the near-capacity crowd at the Hollywood Palladium on a Tuesday night, I realized the city hasn’t stopped moving. I might just be comforting myself with old stories instead of paying attention. Folks still pack into venues, still dance and sweat and sing along. They’re still out on the sidewalk buying bacon-wrapped hot dogs. Randos still ask odd questions.
And I still have feet and hips that work.
Despite our comfortable balcony seats, I got up and danced for most of Little Simz’s final stop on her North American tour. Midway through her nearly two-hour set, Simz brought out her DJ kit and cranked the energy up another level. Even the usher paused her aisle-policing to break it down for a minute. I took that as my cue to see if I still had a little step-ball-change in me.
I do.
After the dance party, Simz shifted gears to talk about the creative process behind Lotus, her latest album. She called it “muddy waters.” She wasn’t feeling inspired. She didn’t trust her ear. There was self-doubt. But she kept showing up. She kept working. Eventually, she found her way through and made one of her most personal and mature records—raw, intentional, and honest.
On “Free,” she raps, “Love is every time I put pen to the page.” Hearing that live hit me harder than I expected.
I’ve been wading through my own swamp—circling ideas, hesitating, telling myself I’m waiting for inspiration while ignoring the truth: creatives create. A writer writes.
Before getting back to rocking the mic, Simz dropped one more gem: “It’s easy to get started. It’s much harder to finish.”
Whew.
It was a fantastic show.
When I complain things have changed, maybe I’m the one choosing comfort over friction. Am I becoming the curmudgeon wistful for the way things used to be? Or am I still the person willing to adapt, stay open, and lean in when things get difficult?
Because surprise, delight, and joy still show up for the people who put in the work.
And on a night when I said yes and stepped out with a friend for an adventure in Hollywood, the city rewarded me.
As we got closer to Halloween, social media was filled with creators, influencers, and regular folks dressed to surprise, scare, or delight. The holiday has become a showcase for imagination, titillation, and referential humor, with little connection to the pagan or Christian rituals at its roots.
I sometimes lament not feeling as compelled to dress up as I once was. That won’t change, though. As I get older, I’m less interested in wearing a costume to amuse colleagues and friends. There’s nothing wrong with that. I love a good Halloween meme. Someone came to the office party dressed as a Labubu, and it was terrific.
But these days, I’m drawn to something else: remembrance. Why ignore, mock, or ward off the spirit world when the evils of our time don’t come from beyond? They are right here in human form, adorned in the clothing of authorities.
This Halloween, Tiffany and I took the Metro downtown for a night at the Mark Taper Forum to see Jaja’s African Hair Braiding. The show was her idea—a last-minute addition to our social calendar—but it turned out to be precisely what I needed. We arrived early and wandered through Grand Park, where the annual Día de los Muertos installation had transformed the plaza into a celebration of color, reverence, and resistance.
After my dad’s passing last year, I began reading about Día de los Muertosand the significance of the ofrenda, the altars families build to honor and invite departed loved ones back into their lives.
One of the exhibits invited visitors to write a message to someone who had passed. On a small index card, I wrote:
Dad (KT),
Dominique is getting married soon. Your presence is requested!
You are missed and loved.
—JT
It was the first time I’d written directly to him rather than about him. Usually, when I write or speak for the dead, it’s for myself or others. A way for us to process loss. But this felt like a conversation, a hope he might hear, and that with open invitation, he might make his presence known, especially at such a momentous occasion. This spirituality is so unlike me, but I meant every word. I hope he joins us.
The Grand Park installation also honored the living, especially those in Los Angeles whose lives are made precarious by our country’s immigration enforcement policies. With City Hall glowing behind it, the exhibit called out the trauma caused by ICE raids and border policies that tear families apart. Surrounded by marigolds and the righteous indignation of our Chicano brethren and sistren, I was reminded why I love this city. Los Angeles isn’t perfect, but it shows up. We fight for one another. We build community from loss and struggle.
And that spirit carried into the theater.
Los Angeles is the final stop for Jaja’s African Hair Braiding’s initial touring company and likely the last time so many members of the original ensemble will perform together. To do so here feels right. As playwright Jocelyn Bioh said, “to culminate in such a special city that understands the power of community and coming together, that doesn’t feel like an accident.”
Set in a Harlem salon where a group of West African women—many working under tenuous visa conditions—build a makeshift family, the show is sharp, funny, and profoundly human. It captures what it means to chase the American Dream while being told you don’t belong.
By the time the curtain fell, I felt grateful. For the play, for this city, for the way art challenges me to stay open and engaged in my community: to remember, to listen, to love.
2025 told us early on that this year would be a battle for Los Angeles. The Palisades and Altadena fires burned while Top Dawg Entertainment disciples and homegrown hip-hop heroes dominated my headphones with full-throated representations of our spirit. Kendrick Lamar’s “Dodger Blue” is a tour of the city, focusing on its black and brown parts, in particular. He and SZA would sell out stadiums throughout North America later in the year, bringing LA sensibilities to the rest of the country and beyond.
Self-expression, self-confidence, introspection, and, ultimately, togetherness across color lines is the “California Dream” of Ab-Soul’s Soul Burger and Tyler, the Creator’s Chromakopia. We love our home and the people in it. We’ve got our problems, but they are ours to fix, and they aren’t solved by militarized theater and separating families.
In February, a friend died. Through shock and tears, I yearned for the kinetic spirit of Sharon Jones and Hepcat’s Right on Time, specifically “Together Someday.” In my grief, the flirtatious refrain transformed into a spiritual declaration: “I know that we’ll be together someday…” Shannon, Dad, and all those I’ve loved who have passed. I don’t worry myself with the unknowable, like the afterlife or what happens when we die, but the certainty of that “I know” brings me comfort.
Perhaps it’s my Hayward friend’s influence that’s nudged me north musically as this year has gone on. E-40, Souls of Mischief, and, more recently, Ruby Ibarra have inspired and ignited. After the tears, we dance.
By March, Poptimism arrived in the form of Blackpink solo albums from Lisa’s Alter Ego to Jennie’s Ruby. With so much heaviness, I craved escapism. Forgive me if I’m dreaming about the resort life at The White Lotus or the ideal Coachella Weekend. I watch from the comfort of my couch now, but memories of those desert festival days still reside in my bones. Let me have a renaissance with Beyoncé’s Renaissance. I’ll be over here consuming Sabrina Carpenter’s Short ‘n Sweet (Deluxe) like the confection it is. GloRilla’s GLORIOUS takes me on imaginary flights to Memphis. I’m revisiting Amy Winehouse’s discography and imagining smoky clubs and late nights in London. I love LA, but I’m longing to be anywhere but here.
Scenes like those in MacArthur Park or outside Glendale Hospital—where local officials are trying to stand up for us against the dim-witted cruelty of this administration—pull me back to reality. I’ve got the blues. The kind of blues that runs through the film and music of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners. The score and soundtrack are easily my albums of the year thus far. Alice Smith’s rendition of “Last Time (I Seen The Sun)” is my song of the year. My heart and head have been living in the same liminal space between hope and despair that defines the composition and the genre.
I don’t like feeling this way, but I’m grateful for the opportunity it gave me to explore a style I’d previously ignored. Ludwig Göransson has long been a composer particularly adept at crafting the right musical textures for films that explore the Black experience. He and his contemporary, Nicholas Britell, have soundtracked the movies and shows that have had the most impact on me over the last decade.
The city seems quieter, but I’m unsure if this is a seasonal pattern or a survival strategy. Bounty hunters and emboldened immigration agents roam our communities in masks with weapons and zip ties, while our beaches still fill with sunbathers, our local teams try to win games, and movie premieres go on. You’re never truly able to get a pulse on this city. LA is too big, too diverse, too vibrant to be any one thing. But you can pick up the vibes. There’s something about the energy when we remember to fight for each other.
Magic happens here. I’m not thinking about our soundstages—many of which are unused while Hollywood transforms. I mean the magic that hides in the open if you’re only willing to get out of your car and explore. That’s where the happy accidents happen, like discovering Brandee Younger inside an Alice Coltrane exhibit at The Hammer Museum. Magic is in a sorcerer like Terrace Martin, the prolific LA native, who releases music constantly while producing and appearing on many of the best records this city has made over the past twenty years.
Even in the chaos, magic is what we do.
Ice Cube said, “Mix them and cook them in a pot like gumbo,” on N.W.A.’s “Straight Outta Compton” some 35 years ago. LA is like that seafood stew, blending cultures into something surprising, delightful, and uniquely ours. LA is Korean BBQ tacos and elote pizza. LA is donuts in pink boxes served with horchata, boba, or Thai iced tea. That spirit will survive this battle for Los Angeles. It is our greatest strength.
The music I’ve spun so frequently this year isn’t for a nation’s wayward heart. Instead, it’s the soundtrack of resilience and rebellion. I’m spinning records for people who believe, who beat the odds, and who stand up for one another.
The best music of the year represents the spirit of this city I call home, even if the songs and artists didn’t originate here or now.
Albums
Sinners (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) – Sinners Movie
Sinners (Original Motion Picture Score) – Ludwig Göransson
I’m at The Regent Theater in Downtown LA to see Ruby Ibarra, the 2025 Tiny Desk Contest winner from the Bay Area, perform. Local public media stations, including LAist and KVCR, are in the building, handing out fans and making the case for public media. The Regent is packed with a classically multicultural Los Angeles crowd—this time, with a strong showing from the Filipino community. People came out to see the diminutive Pinay rapper with a big voice and even bigger presence.
Ruby doesn’t mention the delay until her final song, but when she does, she doesn’t mince words. She’s a first-generation immigrant, and her music centers the Filipino immigrant experience. Before launching into “7,000 Miles,” she reminds us: “No one is illegal on stolen land!”
Everything is political.
Earlier that day, I’d been listening to We Insist 2025!—the new album from Terri Lyne Carrington and Christie Dashiell, a reimagining of Max Roach’s We Insist! One song in particular, “Joyful Noise,” features a spoken word piece that stayed with me:
And when we struggle, when times are tough, we draw strength from our ancestors. We put away our differences and we come together. When folks try to take away our freedoms, we don’t just let them. We fight back! We don’t become despondent or complacent, and we don’t drown ourselves in escapism or give up on what we know is right. No! Instead, we say, “I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”
Emmett G. Price III
That’s the spirit that got me out of the house on a Tuesday. That’s what I felt in the room.
Shoulder to shoulder with my neighbors—many of them immigrants or their American-born children—we smiled, sang, and bobbed our heads as one. During Ruby’s homage to Bay Area hip-hop, we even got a little hyphy.
When opener Tish Hyman performed her song “Lucky,” that’s exactly how I felt, too.
There’s not a lot going right in my life—or in the headlines—but after a night of making joyful noise, I can at least envision a better tomorrow.
Freedom is smiling in the face of adversity because you know in the depth of your soul, just like your grandma told you, everything is going to be alright.
I feel like, as an artist, the whole point of the platform, other than making music, is to inform. However we do that, right? The music that I create, the art that I create, is mirroring what’s happening in my head and then in my bedroom, in my house, on my kitchen counter, on my street, in my city, in my country. So, it’s really important to me that I’m going to be up there talking about ‘I got a new haircut’; I also have to talk about what I’m seeing. And right now, there are a lot of little people suffering.
What I see on my street is beautiful, as Los Angeles often is. Birds chirp. The sun shines. The jacarandas are in bloom, littering the sidewalks with purple petals. Neighbors walk their dogs and babies. I could be deceived into believing that life is normal.
But my city is in crisis.
A senator was handcuffed for asking a question yesterday. The National Guard has been deployed, despite objections from our elected officials. At a basketball game earlier this week, a child in the stands proudly held a sign that read, “Melt ICE!” Friends are in at-risk neighborhoods trying to protect their communities. Others are marching downtown, expressing outrage at the latest policy decisions and public actions.
And I’m sitting here, unsure whether I want to scream, cry, or fight.
At least for now, I’ll take inspiration from Ms. Hathaway—and write.
VANTABLACK, Hathaway’s 2024 full-length, has been on repeat in my headphones. Since watching Nubya Garcia’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert in early April, I’ve been falling down YouTube rabbit holes—first jazz, then soul, then Lalah. Go deep enough, and you land on Hathaway’s own Tiny Desk performance from six years ago. Twelve minutes long. Not nearly enough.
I’d enjoyed VANTABLACK when it first came out, but hadn’t gone deep. Now, with my ears primed for purpose, the album has a firm grip on my attention, and I’m desperate for a deeper connection with the work.
In a different era, these connections—the musicians, collaborators, and producers—would have been revealed through liner notes. You’d read them front to back while listening to the album, then again after the fiftieth spin when a note or riff hit different. Now, those same discoveries happen across platforms: a podcast like One Song, a Wikipedia entry, an Instagram reel, a Discogs post.
For this album, I’m scrolling Instagram, listening to podcasts, and returning to YouTube. Hathaway’s posts—especially her conversations with collaborator Phil Beaudreau—offer insight into how the music came together. But it was her appearance on Robert Glasper’s Black Radio Backstage podcast that truly struck me. That’s where I first heard the quote that opens this piece, and where she reminded me that creating art and bearing witness should be inseparable.
If an artist of Hathaway’s caliber is willing to bare her soul to make music that stirs mine, the least I can do is return the favor in my way.
I can learn the names of the musicians, producers, and engineers who helped bring her vision to life.
I can listen with intention.
I can appreciate the art and the people behind it.
I can write what’s going on in my head and heart.
I can give voice to the very real human, communal, and societal battles happening all around me.
The floor of The Echoplex pulses as bass pumps through the speakers. CeSee, in her black tank top and tutu, is center stage, freestyling her flowing dance moves in perfect harmony with every scratch, jab, and trick that each DJ delivers. Stacy Epps, Wildchild, and Sway Calloway hype the crowd, urging us to make noise for the performers, Los Angeles, and hip-hop.
The last time I was at The Echoplex might have been more than a decade ago—in 2014, for a show called Ultimate Breaks and Beats. I don’t want to believe that much time has passed, but so much of these past ten years has been a blur. Even these months since the fires in January have been lost in a haze of the near-daily disasters that have defined 2025. Here I am, though, among heads of all generations, seeking fellowship through breaks and beats.
From 7 p.m. until the wee hours, a roster of beloved DJs, beatmakers, and Rhymesayers rotate through 20-30 minute sets, crafting soundscapes from Madlib’s vast catalog, including unreleased joints, deep cuts, and rare grooves. Linafornia and DJ Benji B deftly open the show. Then comes House Shoes, whose presence yanks me back to the 2000s when I was chasing turntablists across every venue in town, trying to sustain the high achieved through deft blends and scratch mastery. Shoes mixes Madlib with Dilla in an “LA to Detroit” set that awakens something long dormant in me. The Gaslamp Killer follows with his signature chaos, spinning a hard-hitting electric fusion ending with an inspired blend of Kendrick Lamar’s “Squabble Up” and its sample, Debbie Deb’s “When I Hear Music” that is our return flight to the City of Angels.
Rhythms of the Village takes the stage at the show’s midway point. The cultural hub and store are among the event’s beneficiaries. Their performance is the night’s only non-hip-hop set. Before the djembe drums and singing begin, Onochie Chukwurah—a Nigerian elder and co-founder of the Altadena center for African heritage—addresses the crowd. “Even though the fires took our business, they didn’t take our lives,” he says. The din of the crowd quiets as he commands our attention—his words and the soulful performance root us. What could have been a bathroom break becomes a balm for the soul.
It’s 10:30, and unexpected guests are flooding the stage. Taboo and will.i.am are dapping up Miles Brown and others as Monalisa navigates her set, her laptop threatened by flying elbows and sloshing drinks. The man of the hour, though, was nowhere to be found. Wildchild tells us it’s no surprise: Madlib rarely wants the spotlight. The Beat Konducta doesn’t even own a cell phone. The show is being live-streamed on DJ Spinna’s Twitch, and we’re told he’s watching.
He’s not physically here, but his presence fills the building.
After all, he’s always performed partly in silhouette, rhyming through his animated alter ego Quasimoto. And as we move through his sonic legacy—beat by beat, sample by sample—you sense how impactful his unique point of view has been. It’s a retrospective 25 years deep. You don’t need to see him. You hear him. You feel him.
I look around and notice the gray in performers’ beards, the wrinkles on their foreheads, the stories about kids turning eighteen, and events from the previous century. I should feel my age, but that’s not the dominant emotion. Instead, I think of one of Madlib’s most transcendent projects: Shades of Blue, the 2003 album where he was granted access to the Blue Note archives and created something timeless. New recordings built from classics, made fresh for young ears.
That’s the magic Madlib and his peers have gifted us. It is timeless, communal, and everlasting.
I’m not, though. So we left The Echoplex before last call. That livestream Madlib was watching? I joined him there—from the comfort of my couch—as Nu-Mark, The Alchemist, J Rocc and others continued to guide us through sound.
As Mr. Chukwurah reminded us, coming together like this makes us better. In these layered frequencies, these echoes of jazz, hip-hop, and fellowship, we find ourselves and each other.
These are the shades of Madlib: fractured, funky, reverent, rebellious.
And Lord Quas willing, I’ll be back in the crowd again soon.
