cool stuff i found #37
important of cultivating taste, pixel art, and BBL DRIZZY
37 editions of CSIF. we’re locking in. this month i wasn’t able to do 2 bi-monthly releases on schedule, so i’m just going to release 2 back to back. i’m going to try to keep it dead simple (i mean that’s all i can do). today, i’m going to talk about a backdrop behind Drake and Kendrick beef. i’m going to do 2 things: 1) convince you that you should care even if you’re not a hip hop fan, 2) start from a place that is before this beef popped off.
are we not seeing the collapse of empire
a few months ago, a man formerly known as Mos Def, now Yasiin Bey went on a podcast to produce a clip that got shat on by a large part of the internet.
“what’s this old head talking about?”
“why everything gotta be so deep?”
“drake is on an unprecedented run as an artist. never before seen! 37 and still at it?! comeon, why hate?”
Yasiin Bey walked on eggshells to put words to his disdain. Firstly, he said Drake's music is compatible with shopping. that, if one were to imagine shopping at a Target (in Houston specifically), it'd fit in perfectly. which is all to say he, in other words, thinks of Drake's music as mundane and colorless as elevator music.
music and taste are subjective, but i don't think that's what Bey is going after. his question, "are we not witnessing the collapse of empire" is in reference to a particular phenomena. that is, in a world of formulaic overproduction of music we gotta think of space. where's the space for the artist to ponder then produce? where's the space for the audience to digest? if the demands of artists are to produce season after season, year after year, what does that say of creators and consumers? are we not, as fans and creators, on some sort of meta-hamster wheel?
this should be a concern of all who consume content and all who produce art. as the barriers of entry of production are lowered, we can expect that amount of noise that to inversely increase. that's sort of what's going on inside anyone's for your feed, be it twitter, tiktok, or ig. which gets me to think more seriously about how do we reckon with all this noise?
i'm a big fan of a question my friend consistently asks of me and himself. whenever we're shooting the shit on any topic, one of the first things he'll ask is, "why does this matter?"
it's a question that makes you jump back. you sober up really quickly and realize a lot of what we come across is just noise. but baked in that question is an excellent tool of cultivating taste. and cultivating taste will become an essential skill in the oversaturated content-filled landscape we live in.
why does this thing that's in front of me matter? why does this picture -- static or moving-- matter? why do these colors matter? why does this music matter? why do these words matter? why does this matter to me?
this question, "why does this matter?" is less about the objective reality of what something means to the world, culture, or whatever bigger picture. it's about treating your senses as gates, and this question being a sort litmus test before letting noise enter into your soul.
introducing "the fourth place" & why "third places" have fallen short on their promise by patricia mou
Patricia is one of the founders of The Commons which i can best describe as secular response to a lack of masajid. Nonetheless, I take great inspiration from placemakers like Patricia, but also Kasra and many others! we’re all in this together. i’ve had a concept that i’ve dwelled on thats quite similar, “the fourth space,” but this is more about peoples’ identities split between the physical and the digital. i share this article because i agree with pretty much all the learnings found in their efforts as well.
pixel art
i find myself more and more enamored with pixel art. we’re really in that 2000s redux, ain’t we?
this song is overplayed at this point, but i thought BBL Drizzy was amazing. this is the first time i’ve seen someone sample an AI generated song. it’s not hard to suspect we’ll be hearing more of this for a couple reasons. firstly, if you can’t get a certain sample cleared as an independent artist… well now you have another option altogether!
Thanks for reading this edition. Share this with your friends, your grandma, or your neighbor. And if you made it to the end of this essay and you didn’t just scroll, dm me the words “bananas” on either twitter or instagram. or leave a comment! As always,
Sincerely,
Haroon
P.S. Check out my previous newsletter if you’re curious: Cool Stuff I Found #36