Editor’s Note
This week was another busy one for me. I’m trying to stop and catch my breath, but admittedly am not doing a very good job. To adapt, I’m going to try and start to slowly incubate these Editor’s Notes a little further in advance so that I can provide deeper explorations of what I’m thinking about at the moment without running out of time. This week though, I ran out of time.
So we’ve got another shorter issue here. Below I recommend one of my favorite books The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop which I recently began re-reading. In honor of the release of Brandee Younger’s Somewhere Different today, I also share a recommendation for one of my favorite albums of the pandemic, the duet she did over lockdown with her partner Dezron Douglas. I share some Web3 inspired articles that are Worth Your Time including Packy McCormick’s brilliant use of Eugene Wei’s essay Status as a Service as a framework for exploring NFTs and @GnosisGuild fascinating history of DAOs and Cooperatives. Finally, I share the artwork of Tom Jean Webb, an artist I found on Instagram this past week.
Speaking of the Packy McCormick piece, this is the second time I’ve seen him use another piece of writing as a framework for exploring a topic and I think it is absolutely brilliant. I’m going to try and do more of that here.
In the meantime, I hope to be back with a longer essay next week. Until then, please reach out. I love hearing from you all!
What I’m Reading
This week I began revisiting one of my favorite books of the past decade. I first read it back in 2014, so I realized it was due for a revisit when it came up in conversation. What makes The Big Payback so compelling is that it traces the history of the business of hip hop from the first $15 made by a “rapping DJ” in 1970s New York to the mid-aughts when clothing companies such as Phat Pharm, Roc-a-wear, and Sean John were sold for hundreds of millions. Of course, since that time, the business of hip hop has only grown, but with its pages stuffed with insights from over 300 interviews, author Dan Charnas leaves you feeling like you were along for the ride, from Rick Rubin’s dorm room to the board room where Roc-a-Wear was eventually sold for $700 million dollars.
Tracking more than 30 years of history, in addition to the stories of Rick Rubin and Jay-Z, Charnas dives deep into the stories of Russell Simmons, the Wu-Tang Clan, P. Diddy, Dr. Dre, and gives you a real glimpse into how the business changed over the years and was pushed forward by these pioneers.
If you grew up during the rise of Hip Hop, you’ll find yourself completely enraptured by each of these stories. It all has a real “I remember that I can’t believe that is how it went down” vibe.
“A classic of music business dirt-digging as well as a kind of pulp epic”, you can find The Big Payback here.
What I’m Listening To
This week Brandee Younger released her brilliant new album Somewhere Different, an incredible fusion of jazz, soul and R&B that soundtracks our summer perfectly, but before I write up that album, I’d be remiss if I didn’t share with you one of my favorite records from the pandemic.
Force Majeure was born from a set of live-streamed performances put on each Friday by the bassist Dezron Douglas and harpist Brandee Younger. Holed up in their East Harlem apartment during the early days of COVID-19 lockdown and without a foreseeable source of income for months to come, the sets were marked by the couple’s ability to move between cracking jokes, commenting on the seriousness of the moment, and beautifully re-imaging songs from John Coltrane to Kate Bush,
Younger and Douglas collected the greatest hits of that series into Force Majeure, one of the most beautiful and intimate albums I’ve ever heard. On it, the limitations imposed by the lockdown became strengths. Recorded on a single microphone, and reliant mostly on an acoustic double bass and Younger’s transcendent harp, the album is simultaneously calming and full of a sense of place. When you put the vinyl on in the morning and look out the window, even here in California where you are commonly met with sunny blue skies and rays of sunshine, you can almost see the condensation built up, the cold in the air and the gray clouds of New York winter hovering up high,
“Unadorned with tech or post-production, the bass, harp, and spoken voice offer us the experience of jazz-as-process” and remind us that some of the most beautiful things can arise out of the constraints of simplicity.
On our next Saturday morning without errands as the coffee is still warm in the mug, do yourself a favor and listen to Force Majeure. You can find it here.
Worth Your Time
Status Monkeys (Not Boring) - Status as a Service by Eugene Wei is, in my opinion, one of the most illuminating essays about consumer psychology I have ever read. In Status Monkeys, Packy McCormick brilliantly uses it as a framework for analyzing NFTs as social networks.
The Prehistory of DAOs (Gnosis Guild) - A fascinating exploration of the past and future of DAOs, cooperatives, gaming guilds, and the networks to come.
Culture All the Way Down (Golden Hour) - In today’s oversaturated world, we need curators to help us separate signal from noise. Gladwell told us about coolhunters in ’97, and they’ve now emerged as a solution in digital space. Culture is officially trickle-up; to tell us where to go, the author Gaby Goldberg shares why she believes it’ll be curators all the way down.
The Ultimate Guide to Social Commerce (The Sociology of Business) - In what feels like a summary of a Black Mirror episode, Ana Andjelic discusses how social commerce will turn us all into shoppable product demos, and our lives into a catalog of stylized products. It will also introduce new revenue streams, business models, marketing strategies, and regulatory hurdles, turning the common belief that “the Internet lets you buy, but it doesn’t let you shop” on its head. TL’DR Social currency is the fuel of the modern retail economy. Community is its killer app.
An Undersung Master of Jazz Gets His Day (New Yorker) - The Brooklyn-bred composer-keyboardist Brian Jackson met the singer-poet Gil Scott-Heron in the late sixties, when both men were undergrads at Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania. By the time their partnership ended, more than a decade later, Jackson had outfitted Scott-Heron’s topical lyrics with the slinky, instantly recognizable jazz-funk that turned “The Bottle,” “Home Is Where the Hatred Is,” “Winter in America,” and “We Almost Lost Detroit” into agit-pop classics. This past week Brian Jackson released his first album as a leader in 20 years and it shows it means to collaborate.
Tom Jean Webb
From his website
Through visual language Tom Jean Webb express' the intangible oneness, balance in dichotomy, and the eternal mystery through an idiosyncratic gesture of symbology.
Exploring the depth of our human condition and relationship to one another and the natural world through quiet contemplation, solitude and ceremony. A visual poem as told by journeymen, wandering on through space and time in search of meaningful connection, peace and wisdom. The result is an otherworldly experience that feels at once ancient and nostalgic, yet perfectly in tune with the now.
Tom grew up around the United Kingdom and had a strong bond with his grandfather who was uniquely in tune to Americana. Through this relationship Tom found a love for the US and a relationship with the South West. Many of his works evoke his love for the region through his colors and subjects. Using this inspiration he creates contemporary portrayals of ancient areas and themes.
Check out more of his art on his Instagram here