Love is in the air
February is one of my favorite months of the year.
I love Valentine's Day because I'm cheesy and love, love.
The month is also Dilla Month.
RIP Dilla. He's one of my favorite producers ever - and responsible for much of my favorite music. I love that there's a whole month for music lovers to celebrate him and his legacy.
That being said, what's your favorite Dilla song ? I've added my top five here:
- "Lightworks"
- Slum Village "Look of Love Pt. 1"
- Common "Come Close Remix"
- Eric Roberson "Pretty Girl"
- "Crushin' (Yeeeeaah!)"
I also find it quite ironically that I'm releasing this newsletter on the anniversary of Whitney Houston's death (also Brandy and Kelly Rowland's Birthday). If you know me, and know my mom in particular, you know that Whitney Houston was her favorite singer thus an icon/legend in my life. I grew up listening to Whitney music around the house - one of the first albums I learned all the lyrics to was I'm Your Baby Tonight, which includes a few of my favorite Whitney songs ever: "I'm Your Baby Tonight," and "My Name is Not Susan." Just wanted to shout her out - miss her, love her and yeah.
Nonetheless, here are some things I'm loving this week:
I finished reading Kiley Reid's new book, Such a Fun Age, and believe the hype, I loved it. It's pretty interesting and a straight forward read, I did like the character development however.
I wave my Bay Area flag vibrantly and whenever I can. That being said, Bay Area bred Kamaiyah just released a new single from her album, "Set It Up," featuring Trina and I'm obsessed. I first heard this song driving to the hair shop and listened to it easily seven times in a row. It's a bop, and makes me anxious for her new album Got It Made, coming out February 21st.
This is the first time I've ever, really, really liked a Brent Faiyaz album. Typically, I find his music to be a little moody and think that his voice is annoying (he can't really sing) but Fuck The World is a great project.
Can't wait for The Photograph movie to come out, and I'm loving this soundtrack.
Two songs came out last week that I'm still obsessed with: Phony Ppl's "Fckn Around," featuring Meg Thee Stallion, and Amber Mark's "Generous." I'm happy that Amber Mark is releasing new music - for the year of 2018 "Love Me Right," was my song of the year on Spotify, and still made it's home on my 2019 playlist. Also love to see Phony Ppl out here flourishing - "I Wish I Was a Chair" is still my favorite.
Entrepreneur Nicole Gibbons was one of the first people I followed on Instagram (shameless plug, holla at me there) and I loved hearing more about her career trajectory, and her latest venture Claire on the Second Life podcast.
Power ended on Sunday. I had mixed emotions on the ending, and agree with many people on Twitter that the writing on this season was a little stale. I found it quite annoying to keep seeing Ghost die and fall very dramatically onto the ground once he was shot--like why the slow motion, this isn't a Juvenile music video (corny joke but i'm on a roll). I'm still sad all these year's later that fine ass Julio had to die, even though he went out like a G. That being said, I did find this perspective from showrunner Courtney A. Kemp about how the show fought and won a racist battle.
I've been told that when I type it sounds like horses or some animal. I do think it's rude, but I just type really fast because I'm very smart. This article proves just that - thanks haters.
I watched one episode of the Goop Netflix series. It was the one about your vag. It was interesting. That was it. That's the sentence - it was interesting. People hate Goop, I find it to be interesting, not really Goop itself but the hating of Goop. This article in particular was also interesting to me.
I have two uncles who never married, or had kids that I have now come to learn means they are "kinless." I adopted them both (one passed over the summer) as my two other grandparents, sadly however, many people aren't as lucky. This alone had me shook:
"2.2 percent of Black women and 1.7 percent of Black men were “kinless” (also called “elder orphans”) in 2015, compared to just over 1 percent of White women and less than 1 percent of White men. These figures are projected to hit over 7 percent for Black women and nearly 6 percent for Black men by 2060. That means 1.6 million Black women — the size of Philadelphia‘s population — will be living without kin by then."
Read the article here, and let me know your thoughts. Also Karen who was profiled in the article seems pretty cool.
Did you read this 11 post story on Humans of New York about Bobby Love and his wife?
How to have a hobby, and not just a side hustle.
Okay, that's all for now. Love you!
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