Do You Dance?
All I want to do is be more like me and be less like you.
I now have, like, double the amount of friends and/or people I follow on other social media (i.e. Twitter) who are now on Substack because everyone is afraid of Twitter keeling over and dying any day now. (It won’t actually happen tomorrow, but it’ll probably happen eventually.) So, to those who are new here, welcome. To those who have been here, I mean, welcome to you too.
I’ve been drafting something for the past two weeks and I guess my brain has just decided to stop in said two weeks. That piece will come out soon, hopefully — it’s nothing crazy, it’s just one of those pieces where I’d like the words to feel right — so in the meantime, I’m just gonna do one of those columns where I just pour words out of my brain. I’ve been listening to a good bit of music and watching too much football recently so this feels like a good time to just play around with words.
Also, I’m retiring the ICED OAT MATCHA name/shtick for now. It’s beginning to feel kind of tacky. It’s also part of the whole dopamine feedback loop thing where I feel like I was shoehorning myself into that format. Maybe I’ll bring it back if Kevin and I can wrangle somebody to make a cool banner for it. Seriously, I’ll name all of these ICED OAT MATCHA for the rest of time if we get a cool mascot. I don’t know, we’ll see.
BONES has been releasing music prolifically for… well, he never stopped, I guess, but I personally hadn’t kept tabs on him ever since I stopped listening to SESHOLLOWATERBOYZ in late high school/early college. His newest drop 2MillionBlunts has gotten a lot of attention from friends and a Rio Da Yung OG feature is enough to make me listen to anything but the album is actually fuckin’ fantastic!
I can’t speak to anything he’s done in the past few years so I’m unsure if this is something he’s been doing or something new he’s stumbled upon but BONES spends a lot of the album doing old rap homage like g-funk on “SittinOnChrome” or a Bone Thugs cosplay on “GloveBox.” Easily some of my favorite rap music of the year: super fun, super easy, a collage of rap history that’s both well-executed and fresh without feeling like boring imitation.
Over the past year, I’ve been thinking a lot about the divide between Spotify and Apple Music. I downloaded music onto my phone (what a thought!) all throughout high school, a necessity given the amount of dance remixes and rap mixtapes I had amassed on iTunes back when that thing still worked. I finally gave in and started using Spotify in college out of convenience and thanks to my sister’s family plan. I forgot why at this point but I switched over to Apple Music and honestly, I don’t get why people like Spotify so much more.
I’m not intentionally trying to sound judgy when I say this, because I do enjoy the features I’m about to make fun of, but Spotify clearly has a hold on social media users specifically for shit like On Repeat, Recepitify, and the end of the year stuff. Those things are cool, I’m not gonna deny it, but it’s one of those things that’s just like… posting. You’re just posting. The music almost feels irrelevant. Apple Music is superior for one reason and one reason only: friends.
Over the past year specifically, I found half of my music through the social features on Apple Music. On the app’s homepage of sorts, there’s a row titled “friends are listening to” that shows you albums that several of your friends are listening to. (I mean, I guess this isn’t helpful if all of your friends are listening to the Drake-21 Savage album and nothing else. Rather helpfully, mine listen to other stuff too.) While listening to random albums, you can also be greeted by a profile picture under the header “friends who listened” so while listening to Doolittle for the millionth time, you can go “wow, my good friend Kyle is also listening to Doolittle for the millionth time.” (This was actually real. Shout out to Kyle.)
I recently had the apartment to myself for a few days while my girlfriend was out of town. Naturally, I tried planning a few days to myself and also made a list of movies I wanted to watch. (We don’t have the same taste in movies and I don’t like to force her to want to watch the same shit.) Instead of watching any of the movies on that list, I watched HEAT and Miami Vice a million times.
The opening scene of Mann’s Miami Vice is at worst, the second best open to a movie of all-time, behind or tied with BELLY. Paul Thompson — shout out to Paul — once described it, rather fittingly, as “Belly’s plus the Patriot Act.” I love when movies throw you into the thick of things and leave you to figure them out. That, and also, starting a movie with “Numb/Encore” then following it up with the Felix Da Housecat “Sinnerman” remix is legitimately insane.
“Numb/Encore” is a good song. Colin Farrell was hot as fuck in this movie. Jamie Foxx is always hot but worth noting so it doesn’t seem like I’m omitting. John Ortiz’s portrayal of Colombian druglord Jose Yero is lowkey one of the best villains in 2000s film. Miami Vice slaps.
“Do you dance?”
“I dance.”
Caleb and I were talking and I just have to say: Blank Face doesn’t get enough credit for being one of the best rap albums of the 2010s! I was gonna say specifically “West Coast rap” but man, it’s so good. It contains some of the best rapping of ScHoolboy Q’s career on stuff like “Groovy Tony” or “Tookie Knows II.” The Vince Staples feature on “Ride Out” also happens to be some of the best rapping of Vince’s career. Caleb likes to half-joke when he says shit like, “Imagine if Vince Staples cared about being the best rapper.” (He’s being serious.) It’s a fair thought.
In relistening to it, I thought some of it would age poorly but it feels like an incredibly accomplished work of art. “THat Part” is probably the best hit of ScHoolboy’s career and he gets a pretty funny verse from late career Kanye (“Beggars can’t be choosers, bitch this ain’t Chipotle”). The features on this really help complete the album. E-40’s verse on “Dope Dealer” is both some of the best and also funniest rapping of his career and all of the singing placements balance out the seriousness of the rapping — my standout here is SZA on “Neva CHange.”
“JoHn Muir” is one of the best West Coast rap songs of all-time. ScHoolboy is foul and funny as hell for following that beautiful, tragic ass song up with “Big Body.” That song also rules, for the record.
Last week, my coworker got me a pineapple Fanta during a 7-11 run. I hadn’t had a Fanta flavor other than orange for awhile and it reminded me that pineapple is the best flavor. Here’s my definitive ranking of the four Fanta flavors I have tried, from worst to first:
Strawberry: I think strawberry soda is hard to pull off and I don’t think Fanta’s is very good. I love sweet strawberry drinks like lemonade or milk tea situations but it just doesn’t work here as a soda for some reason.
Grape: Full disclosure, I am not a grape soda person here so it automatically loses points here for that reason alone but I like it way more than the strawberry. I imagine this one is pretty good if you get fucked up on something.
Orange: The legend itself, Fanta orange. I remember growing up moreso with Sunkist but Fanta has a flavor punch that Sunkist doesn’t have that makes it superior in my opinion. Incredibly nostalgic, incredibly sweet, probably the closest thing we have carbon-wise to the lethality of a McDonald’s Sprite.
Pineapple: The it girl, the king, the complete package. Sweet, acidic, punchy, bubbly, wonderful goodness. If they gave Michelin stars to soda, they would give three to pineapple Fanta.
If you’re still reading, thanks. We appreciate all the patronage and the support we’ve gotten from you guys which has been way more than expected. For those still reading, we’ll make a more visible announcement on this sooner rather than later but Kevin and I will (probably) start doing mailbags so, if you’d like to participate, you can send us stuff you would like us to look at.
Questions! Advice, general inquiries on life and personal relationships. You’re liable to be roasted.
Media! Your favorite movies, music, books that you want us to look at and share our thoughts on.
Fashion! Ever wanted to know what two guys on the internet think about $400 shoes? Now’s your chance.
Memes! Literally, you can send us memes. We’ll share them and our dumb responses to them.
You can send stuff to me on Twitter or Instagram. I’m not sure what Kevin prefers but he has both of those too.
Have a good rest of your week.
“I’m not in the tide, I be under it — Jaws!”
Okay but is this GLASS BOTTLE Fanta we talking??? That matters my dude.
Next time, instead of a 7-11 run, save your cash and fly to southeast Asia so you can pay a street vendor 50 cents to fill up a sandwich bag with crushed ice and pour a glass bottle of that sweet sugary Fanta into it.
It's not exactly how you described for Apple Music, but there is a social aspect on Spotify as well where you can see what people are listening to and whatnot.