Episode 77: Otoboke Beaver's "Super Champon"

As the 2010s cleaved culture into fractals and alienated humans from their being, Tahliah Barnett beamed down from the cosmos, a biblically accurate angel contorting into shapes embodying pure emotion. Her singular, decade-defining debut offers prescient wisdom for our AI age: the path to the world begins back in our bodies. When (FKA) Twigs moves, you move.Follow us on Instagram (@tunedig) for daily listening recommendations, and check out more episodes at tunedig.com.

Time's funny, innit? As today's youth excavate the nineteen hundred and nineties for the ecstasy of seemingly simpler times, here lies a fossil record containing so much of the DNA of how it was done — layers upon limestone layers of cultural source code. Keep digging and you might just find a place to get off your biscuits. The Big Beat goes on.Follow us on Instagram (@tunedig) for daily listening recommendations, and check out more episodes at tunedig.com.

For our money, this is what running through the halls of your high school and screaming at the top of your lungs actually feels like. And why shouldn’t the unreal world be a 250-BPM confetti cannon of primal-screaming sweetness? Take 21 mere minutes to blast-beat your brain and body into a fireworks show and then let’s shopping after.Follow us on Instagram (@tunedig) for daily listening recommendations, and check out more episodes at tunedig.com.

This episode’s meaning is neither deep nor hidden: the Nile is a river. To good times, that is. If the savoir faire, stellar musicianship, and seismic influence of Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards’ organization don't suit you, then to cite a very wise t-shirt: “disco doesn't suck; you just can't dance.”Follow us on Instagram (@tunedig) for daily listening recommendations, and check out more episodes at tunedig.com.

Illmatic’s impact on hip-hop is a foregone conclusion — one listen and it ain’t hard to tell why. But as we unpacked the lyrical density, the layered samples, and the hyperlocal lens of Nas taking us to the Bridge, we found they represent, represent something deeper in the American mythos and our cultural consciousness. In the land of the free and home of the brave, life may be a bitch, but the world is yours.Follow us on Instagram (@tunedig) for daily listening recommendations, and check out more episodes at tunedig.com.

It may be true that No One Ever Really Dies, but at the turn of the millennium, a young, wild, and free new wave in culture most certainly came alive. Whether or not you were around and aware in the moment of the Neptunes’ cultural dominance—and the decidedly counter-cultural bomb N.E.R.D planted underground—it's worth the star trek to the 21st century sound and style’s Big Bang.Follow us on Instagram (@tunedig) for daily listening recommendations, and check out more episodes at tunedig.com.

Odetta — a must-know titan of American music and culture — once noted that young people “learn about American history through battles.” But her dream of liberation was shaped much differently: “I learned about the United States through this music, through the songs that I sing.”As we live through the kind of historical moment that makes most folks want to lie down and die, we can — like many heroes before us, from MLK to Maya Angelou — look to the legacy of 1964 and Odetta for strength to insist upon our lives.Follow us on Instagram (@tunedig) for daily listening recommendations, and check out more episodes at tunedig.com.

Once upon a time in Bollywood, one magical man made enough music to fill a million moments—and made space for hundreds of other artists along the way. Of the 331 scores “Pancham” composed in his lifetime, 1978's “Shalimar” is a uniquely compelling introduction to his technical prowess, transcendent alchemy of cultures, and tremendously joyful love of a life full of song.Follow us on Instagram (@tunedig) for daily listening recommendations, and check out more episodes at tunedig.com.

“That’s the thing about pretty faces… We don’t expect them to belong to the fighters— the junkies and monks and cockroaches who’ll survive every atomic bomb and suicide attempt and outlive us all.” - Lindsay ZoladzBroken English is searing, singular snapshot of surviving to spite the devils (who’ve gotten far too much sympathy in the story so far). You’ll love it forever with its good and bad weather.We may have lost Marianne Faithfull this year, but not before she outran the darkness. As we close out a dark year and look ahead for light, there’s a lesson to be learned from her life.Follow us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, or Mastodon (@tunedig) for daily listening recommendations, and check out more episodes at tunedig.com.

Any denier that all art is political need look no further than the smoothed-out soul slipstream of Sade, a group defined by its economics. Rare output, minimal arrangements, reserved volume, and, of course, the premium implied by “Love Deluxe”—a title derived from the idea that true love is among a precious few luxuries that can’t be bought. Our world’s clearly longing for more longing, and we discovered a truly transcendent delicacy as we unboxed Sade’s brand of desire.Follow us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, or Mastodon (@tunedig) for daily listening recommendations, and check out more episodes at tunedig.com.