There are a couple reasons that I can't believe that YoungBoy Never Broke Again (formerly NBA Youngboy) is 17. First, he burst onto the national scene last year with a near fully-formed sense of melody and songcraft, the vanguard of a Baton Rouge youth movement with seemingly limitless potential. The other is that his life has aged him far beyond his years.

Hi everyone - I'd like to introduce an idea that's been bouncing around my head for a long time. As much as I enjoy vomiting my opinions onto the page unadulterated, the real galaxy-brain vision for this thing has always been about yielding the soapbox as often as I'm taking it. Going back to my love for ancient forums, I've always been fascinated with the idea of a publication for which no distinction is drawn between author and audience.

If vaporwave had ever realized its destiny as a freshman-level college course, this would be an effective textbook. Not only does Nmesh lay down some 25 disjointed high-concept low-brow bangers, the thing's fleshed out with a further 15 remixes from the Orange Milk Records roster, as unpredictable a crew as exists in electronic music today (including a dude named foodman, whose Ez Minzoku is the only art since 2013 that I've truly felt pressure to appreciate without the vaguest notion of why). Like most albums that tack on a bunch of remixes, it feels scattered as hell; unlike most such albums, it's to great effect.

My interview with Colleen was something of a heat check. I'd just come off three straight interview experiences very close to my platonic ideal (all of which have since been published: Matana Roberts, Stephin Merritt, and the Laetitia Sadier interview from the 6/8 issue). In all the excitement, I'd more-or-less forgotten to prepare anything for Colleen, lesser-known as Cécile Schott (besides a lot of listening to her wonderful 2015 album Captain of None).

Randy Newman will always be the Toy Story guy to me. That's not a dig at all - in my mind, it's impossible to refer to Toy Story in anything but a superlative context. It's for exactly that reason that I almost turned back once looking at Dark Matter's tracklist; it's not a great time for music from old dudes in general, and especially not for old dudes writing songs titled Putin.

I can't decide if it's because I'm having trouble keeping up or because there is less than one interesting album coming out per week, but either way I'm gonna start being a little more flexible with the recency of the stuff I write about up here. For one thing, I average at least a couple months of intending to play a given Soundcloud mix before I actually sit down and get the 40 minute thing done. After that, though, it can easily become a fixture.

Suzanne Ciani could be my grandmother, and maybe yours too. No other interview of mine has been preceded by so much genuine interest in my career plans, how I'd liked school, whether I had a girlfriend - an inversion of the usual interview dynamic that would've been uncomfortable in almost any other scenario. Then again, Suzanne Ciani doesn't exactly go by the book.