Man, I was just saying the other day that hip hop had dominated the entire planet. I knew that Asia wasn’t excluded but this mix… It’s everything, and it’s the perfect sound/mood. It’s fucking diabolical! You can hear a lot of slavish imitation when it comes to American music and art forms reenacted abroad, but this is the real shit.

Tracklist:

• (00:00) Bonbero & Tade Dust – Gotta
• (03:16) DJ BULLSET – GRIME (ft. Young Yujiro)
• (04:54) XakiMichele – goddam
• (07:04) Bonbero & Tade Dust – Leader Bang!
• (09:10) week dudes – King Shoes
• (11:16) BSTA – COCO CHANNEL (prod. $X¥)
• (14:10) KAICHI SUZUKI – BUG (ft. YASUKORE)
• (16:38) YammieZimmer – Pems (ft. LEON獅子 & Bank.Somsaart)
• (18:50) DJ CHARI – Best Way 2 Die (ft. Jin Dogg, LEX & YOUNGBONG)
• (22:21) YDIZZY – not (dead) (prod. Chaki Zulu)
• (24:54) Minchanbaby – luzzy (ft. vio moon)
• (26:34) kiLLa – Murasaki (prod. No Flower)
• (29:49) Kvi Baba – Stoic (ft. Minchanbaby, KLOOZ & BACHLOGIC)
• (32:35) YammieZimmer – Coin (ft. LEON獅子, J. October & SANTAWORLDVIEW)
• (34:35) Awich – Bloodshot (ft. JP THE WAVY) (prod. JIGG)
• (37:34) Bonbero – Billy Mandy (ft. noma)
• (39:59) LEX – SPEED STAR (
• 41:39) Bank.Somsaart – She Gon Pass That (ft. Okami)

So we’re trekking into another long COVID-19 weekend. Things are opening up slowly and in many cases like here in New York City, somewhat reluctantly. Some cities in Europe have opened and are shutting again already, as predicted. A report from earlier this week had test rates in some zip codes as high as 30%. My own zip is cruising around 3% or about triple the state average. Bottom line is I’m in no rush to go out and pretend it’s over. There is nothing really that I miss except the ability to pack a bag and leave altogether. There’s no place to go yet.

Trump announced that he and his old lady tested positive and would be self-quarantining beginning immediately. What does that mean except that we are in for uglier tweet storms leading up to the election. That’s if it’s even true. Just the other night in his freakout debate performance he was making fun of Joe Biden for his precautions, and now… My guess is that he’ll use it to try to back out of his next debate, or at least have a ready excuse for another abortion of a public display. This is nothing else if not The Year of the Very Ugly American.

That’s the whole deal, really! Even were it possible to go somewhere it would have to be abroad to escape even a fraction of this other madness. A foreign language, one I don’t understand… that way it becomes ambient sound and not a sonic invasion. Bits and bytes of pure ugly and fear. Nah… it would have to be remote travel to be escape. That’s what I need, an escape. It’s not a desperate feeling. It’s just plain tedium. Who was it that wrote of the banality of evil?

Aah, HANNAH ARENDT...

Appropriate for these times, the news media can do their best to sensationalize everything going on in America. We can do all the virtue signaling we want and feign outrage, but the outrage is not only false, it’s more about our own disbelief that we allowed the most dull among us to run the show. These are not exceptional men. It’s not evil on the Biblical scale. It’s just brutish and dull and unsightly. It’s not even new. These people and these policies have always been at the forefront of who we are as a people. I don’t believe that anyone is truly shocked. Amongst us liberals and progressives the shock is only that we let it get this far while we sat on our asses and pretended it would all take care of itself. And I maintain that it’s going to get worse before it can get better. Not before it will get better, but so there is a chance it can.

That’s the whole problem though. It’s hard to wrap one’s head around how such a group of boring, unimaginative dullards came to run the show. It’s all so pointless and horrible. It’s like all the bullied and dumb teamed up to become the bullies and act out on their own inferiority complexes. The most primitive and unevolved among us are in charge.

Anyway… the upside of social distancing is that I’ve been spared the endless conversation about it. I’ve been spared the continuous flow of mock outrage. It sloshes in over the transom but it’s manageable. The boss was talking yesterday about reopening the office by the end of the month but the longer it can be put off the better. The next wave of COVID-19 is most likely about to happen so we should probably try to maintain for a bit.

In the meantime, I’m going to take advantage of the weather and slink around a bit today. My heels are still itchy. And I’ll throw in another Japanese trap mix

Shit will keep me going today!