Offbeat #1: Mic Drop
Some thoughts (finally!), what I'm looking forward to this year, and what I’m consuming.
Hi, hello, Happy New Year!
This feels so long overdue, but we’re here, 13 months after I launched this newsletter in 2022. The only excuse is poor time management, but we’re working on that this year.
For those of you who are new to me, I’m NT or Nic, a writer, journalist, speaker, and critic. You can read more of my work here, and follow my journey on Twitter (X lol) or Instagram.
Last year felt like a lot of reflective thought, stepping back from the rat race to experience life and I loved every minute of taking that time. This newsletter serves to better expand on inconspicuous thoughts I have about culture, music, politics, and everything in between. We’re aiming for bi-weekly, but we’re also not performing for the sake of a post, so on occasion, I’ll simply share recommendations across the world of culture.
I wanted to create Offbeat, because often, across social media platforms, there’s little room for nuance, clarification, expansion of thoughts, or sound listening. It’s usually a cesspool of binaries and that’s become redundant. As a long-term culture journalist, it can sometimes feel as though the spaces to share your thoughts without boundaries are few and far between. Here, at least briefly, I’ll have the room to expand on perceptions, insights, the fleeting thought, or the ‘take’. Here, you’ll get to see a bigger part of the picture, without interruption.
Right, enough of the intros for now.
This year started on a Monday, and I’ve been leaning into the fact that there’s an authority in that — as well as just us as humans finding a lens that suits us to frame things within (lol). Musically, however, Tyla ended her last year with an announcement of her debut tour — and subsequently went live with tickets — and her pre-save/order for her debut album.
There’s audacity in that, especially in a musical climate that doesn’t guarantee pedigree long-term or success. Pinkpantheress is an example of an act still establishing an audience for stronger project sales, despite having a bonafide breakthrough at the end of 2022 and into 2023 with ‘Boys A Liar’. I believe, in Tyla’s case, the alignment of running quickly off of the success of “Water” is smart, but even if sales aren’t healthy, Q1 and Q2 allow for her to extend her welcome to the world and offer them a chance to see her in action across Europe and North America. All roads lead to this paying off. The momentum and frequency of her exposure at the moment culminate in a demand for more, she’s offering exactly that.
Here’s to quality on her part come March 1st!
Everyone knows by now that hyper locality is back in full force across culture and music with people appreciating the familiarity of their home regions globally. But I’m intrigued to see how the Black diaspora continues to collaborate from region to region. We’ve already seen modern manifestations of this with the UK’s variant of drill, spanning across the continent to Ghana a few years back. The euphoria felt with amapiano and soca feel very similar, the production often prompts the body to move, to feel. Like how a tango has become known, or often associated with romance, the aforementioned genres sometimes align with “letting go” or “freedom” in how we express ourselves to them.
On a technicality level, the BMPs sit in and around similar territories, with groovy soca firmly between 110 to 135 and amapiano between a tighter 111 - 113. If we take wider, but interrelated genres like Afro-house (145-160) and jab jab soca (140-160), and we see more similarities. But loads of genres have adjacent BPMs, it’s the emotional and bodily familiarities when listening to both, that leads me to believe that the genres will cross-pollinate more not just in 2024, but as the 20s progress broadly. Experiencing my first Caribbean carnival last year in the form of a press trip to Grenada’s Spicemas, then weeks later reviewing Dankie Sounds’ inaugural trip to Ibiza allowed me to feel the genres and surrounding communities in action; similarities are abundant there that ought to be explored more.
What I’m On is simply my shares of the fortnight. What I’m reading, listening to, watching — whether I’m late to the party, just arrived, or right on time, these are my shares to you (hyperlinked where possible) — enjoy!
Reads
Russell Simmons’s Exoneration in His Eyes Only by Shamira Ibrahim — a transparent, raw look at the landscape across hip-hop and music for survivors and a challenge to us all as consumers to the attention economy that we give abusers.
The World Has Finally Caught Up to Colman Domingo by Kyle Buchanan — a concise, but brief profile documenting an emotional, real response to failure, perseverance, and the long game in the world of the creative arts.
Music
Soul,PRESENT by Q - A highlight of 2023 by far. A beautiful display of funk, jazz, soul, and R&B with personality and evocative lyricism to match. More than expected, however, as the singer is the son of the infamous Steven Marsden
If you got here, thank you! I’ll see you back here with some more thoughts, feelings, and recommended pieces of cultural production soon!
So happy to see this post, finally! Soul,PRESENT was one of my favourite albums of 2023.