internet earworms🪱🎧

crack cocaine crafters

this is the 490th time you will hear the scientific fact that our generation is lost to immediacy, virality, and all those cheat codes for getting instant dopamine hits.

we know this, and not because of the incessant criticism of the older folks, but because we feel it within our bones: the compulsive itch to reach our phones to see the last Nick Cheo reel (te amo Nick), the tens of Substack articles about escaping online spaces yet staying inside to get a sense of belonging.

questioning our collective digital dependency won't be the subject of this post.

instead, i’ll shoutout some artists who belong to us, and have therefore used it to their advantage to perfectly cater to our fractured attention spans, who've cracked the code on making songs that hook directly into our reward pathways that feel like they were engineered in some Meta digital lab to keep us on a leash🐕‍🦺 and not even be mad about it.

Jim Legxacy

BLACK BRITISH MUSIC. what a sick producer tag.

this guy is allergic to making a bad track.

i am not super keen or knowledgeable on the UK underground scene, but Jim seems to be a standout of the movement. homeless when he started to make beats back in 2019, and since then, he has managed to cook the yummiest mix between drill, afro-beats, rap, and electronic choppy samples without any misses. any.

i love how, on top of the genre bend, he gets vulnerable with socially consciousness linked to personal anecdotes without losing any drip or playfulness.

his 2010s reminiscing visual identity, featuring lots of Blackberries and rollerballs (the best affordance on planet earth btw) adds on to the common theme of nostalgia of simpler times.

if you think you haven’t heard him, be surprised to know he’s behind Fred again..’s ten, although imo every song within his solo work outshadows this track by a mile. this NTS radio set below that just gives you a sense of how vibeeeeeey it must be to work alongside him:

when asked about his influences in his first “formal” interview, he mentioned Bon Iver💖, Peggy, Paramore, Daniel Bedingfield, and Kanye—acknowledging he’s cuckoo now, but that in his prime, he was “the only artist to make better music than MJ”. quite the take. i recommend you to watch the whole interview tho; he seems like such a genuine and humble dude.

fav tracks - agressive, stick

Bb Trickz

la más mala de España!!!

i like to think of her as a blend of PinkPantheress and Ice Spice, with a bratty attitude… no wonder she got a spot in Charli’s Club Classic remix.

her songs do not last more than 90 seconds, a transparent hint to the type of crowd she appeals to. she is the one artist that is absolutely non-palatable to anyone above the 25 y/o range. i tested my theory and sent it to my dad, and this is what i got:

this one is controversial even within my friends. like how am i suppose to justify this…

i guess the only excuse that comes to mind is her beats slap, and my appreciation to her full commitment to the persona she has created for herself. meticulous of her every move (although she does not convey that impression), non apologetic, and empowering to my rule-obeying ass to let myself loose for a bit🫦

fav tracks - Lo siento mamá (absolute guilty pleasure), Super

Addison Rae

this one is not necessarily for the most chronically online people. if you are in the internet, her existence is almost evident, and if you’re not, she is an absolute nobody.

Addison (or rather her team) took all the right steps into leveraging her TikTok fame to turn her into a pop darling. the first one was to pair her up with Charli — seemingly the easiest route to success — in the Von Dutch remix. the high-pitched scream she let out in the last seconds was the clearest indicative of the direction she set herself for.

from there one, she has gone on a four single run that most It Girls would DIE for. i myself would die for it.

after she released Headphones On last week, i felt the urge to seek who were the genuises behind the excellence of the run: Luka Kloser and Elvira Anderfjärd are the only two co-writers and producers to blame. Having no clue of their existence, i went to find they were 20 something, girls’ girls, ultimate proof of the smashing record Swedish folks have at crafting pop perfection.

one of my three genie wishes would be getting a spot at that studio to presence their chemistry together and the kind of sorcery they carry out together🧪

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of course, the iceberg extends as far down as the darkest corners of the internet itself. i chose to highlight these three because they are the most prominent acts on my rotation, but if we are talking Internet People, it can go as mainstream as Joji, as corny as Porter Robinson, as insufferable as Carti or 2hollis, or as deep as your secret Soundcloud fixation.

musicians for the chronically online, according to my vast internet knowledge

if i am speaking Chinese to you right now, here is a little playlist of the more digestible tracks to get you acquainted

and if this is your playground, here you go a gift…