[PLAY THE PLAYLIST] Nothin But Fuckin Love Songs Vol. 2

People get so fuckin weird about Valentine’s Day.

It is such a wild thing to observe.

Personally….I love Valentine’s Day. I’ve always liked that there’s a day where we go out of our way to share our love with each other and allegedly it’s not weird to be as extra as you wanna be.

I say allegedly because like… well what the fuck is this Galentines/Palentines day bullshit? Are we serious? You’re really that worried someone is gonna misinterpret your intentions? Or is this a solidarity thing for people who aren’t yet legally bound to someone? What is that?

Either way, you’re fuckin with the vibe when you throw around this unnecessary bullshit. Grow the fuck up. It’s Valentine’s Day and there is more than enough love to go around today, okay?

Also, I’ve been partner-less for most of them, too, so don’t start coming at me with some bullshit like, “Well over here it’s been Single’s Awareness Day basically forever, Kibbe”.

And trust me fam, I get it. It’s so easy to forget that we were taught out of loving each other freely and fearlessly. Remember when your age was still in single digits? That night before your school observed Valentines Day you got that box of corny ass mass produced ✨meaningful messages✨ and you went one by one through all of them assigning little love notes to everyone in class. Friends got the fun ones, crushes got the ones that seemed a bit more direct, and anyone else got whatever was left. Next day in class everyone distributed their Valentines and there would be this fun chatter about the messages or which cartoon franchise you went with for your Valentines. We never thought fuckin twice about giving everyone a Valentine back then. At least that’s how I remember that shit, along with handing out Care Bear ones at some point.

ANYWAY

We know I’m a song hoarder and that I like being able to identify a song for every occasion if possible, especially because a lot of times songs articulate a feeling or thought I’ve been sitting with better than I had been able to land on. With love songs though, it’s so interesting. Like I said, not a ton of relationships over my way, yet when prompted I can always send at least 20 in your direction at all times. I wouldn’t necessarily say love songs feel as carelessly mass produced as my Care Bear Valentines from 1st grade, but there are definitely more love songs than there are people at this point.

Either way I can tell that I’ve grown a lot as person since the last time that I compiled love songs for Valentine’s Day because as I was putting together this round of songs that I thought about how silly it is that I am able do this so easily. I started asking myself questions like: Am I really just cataloging vibes so I can provide more thoughtful recommendations than The Algorithm™ ever could? Am I trying to study love so I ✨do it right✨ if it ever shows up? Even scarier, am I studying these to see if I’ve been doing something wrong? Do I want someone to send these songs to me? Do I think all of these songs encompass just one person?

I think that last question is really fascinating given how weird people are about Valentine’s Day. We often think that one single person is going to arrive in our lives and that will mean that everything is better or easier because we have found someone we enjoy being with so much that we’d draw up some paperwork so we can collectively own assets or make important medical decisions for each other. But in the real world that’s not how it works. Most people don’t get married and evaporate from their former lives, never speaking to their friends or family ever again. If anything the result is two communities, not just two people, become one. And when shit hits the fan, I mean yeah you have someone RIGHT THERE at your side immediately to look out for you, but the way that person shows up for you is the result of the way their community shaped them, for better or for worse (see what I did there?).

To be clear, finding ✨your person✨ is WONDERFUL. I’m not tryna discount that at all. But it’s not some cure all that a lot of people seem to think it is. I don’t think you’re “fixed” or something because you find your person, mostly because I don’t think anyone is “broken” to begin with. If anything this person is just someone you agree to get really fucking vulnerable with, which ideally you’re already practicing varying levels of vulnerability with select members of your community prior to identifying this person. A person who is so special that you throw a very fancy party to celebrate. Even that, weddings would be fuckin trash without your friends and family there, so why do we choose to spend this particular day treating love like it’s something incredibly exclusive? I will spare you a wall of text about the capitalism bit here and just say IT’S SO LAME THAT THIS EXISTS AND I HATE IT VERY MUCH.

This all to say…. Happy Valentine’s Day.

Not Single’s Awareness Day. Not Palentine’s Day. Not Galentine’s Day.

Fuckin Valentine’s Day.

I love you. 💖

[SONG OF THE DAY] CHILI PALMER - "S.I.T"

Something that I have been deeply missing since everything got turned upside down is singing along to music while I walk around the neighborhood if no one else is around. It’s something that I got in the habit of doing after I transitioned to city living and stopped owning a car aka the best place to sing your brains out to shit. In addition to everything feeling really heavy outside, singing with a mask on feels kinda weird.

Enter: CHILI PALMER: a new project from one of my favorite casually brilliant minds, David Gledhill (of SOULS notoriety), in collaboration with a man I’m still not convinced isn’t a literal angel sent to earth, Albert Gold. On Friday the London lads dropped, “S.I.T.”, the debut offering from their forthcoming debut self-titled EP which is slated for a November 13th release courtesy of Fierce Panda Records.

I had bumped it a few times since Friday, but something about strutting through Brooklyn yesterday and this hitting my ears though. I had this on repeat basically the whole walk home.

I will say this: belting the chorus through my mask evaporated basically every molecule of stress out of my body. I’m not exaggerating (or maybe I kind of am) when I say Albert’s voice might make your heart float out of your chest so BE CAREFUL. It’s the kind of vocal performance where I’m so convinced this dude was smiling the whole time he was singing this that I’d eat my headphones if you told me otherwise. David absolutely set him up to shine, too. This beat is just naaaassssstttyyyy in all of the right places. That bassline! Holy actual fuck.

It is impossible not to be feelin’ yourself to this, trust me. I desperately needed this, so I assume you do, too.

I want to make like a billion metaphors about how fucking well these two played off each other on this collaboration and THIS IS ONLY THE FIRST TASTE OF THE EP! Best believe your girl is about to do an electric slide into the DMs to hear the rest of this.

In the meantime, you can have a glance at the tracklisting below and smash that pre-order button because IT’S A PANDEMIC AND NO ONE IS TOURING AND THESE DUDES DESERVE ALL OF YOUR DOLLARS IF THEY MAKE YOU FEEL AS GOOD AS I DO RIGHT NOW TELLING YOU ABOUT THIS.

CHILI PALMER

Release Date: November 13, 2020

1.Intro
2. S.I.T.
3. L.U.C.
4. J.S.N.T.L.
5. A.O.M.L.
6. Unrequited

Pre-Order