Ah, yes. The much awaited 5th volume of the most well received, award winning online musical library. We're half way to double digits and I am incredibly excited about that.

Announcement: we WILL be giving away a 1961 Buick Flamingo in entry 10 so do be on the lookout for that. Every click is an entry so like it up and keep on reading. In the meantime, let's get into the soundtrack of my life.

H' & Them - Sunday (Take Me Home)

Music that evokes emotion is the best kind of music. Music that moves. Music you can feel.

H' & Them (short for Hermit and Them) is a South African artist who blends spoken word with acoustic notes to create something entirely new. This song upon the first listen immediately gripped me.

The backing vocals and African chanting throughout the song add an almost angelic feel, one that brings a wave of comfort unto me that I feel only when hugged or touched by someone close to me. It feels as if he took the Earth and the landscape around him and compressed it into an audio file and sang over it. I feel peace whenever this song comes on, something that I don't feel all that often given my chaotic upbringing, but when I hear this, even if just for a brief moment, I feel grounded. And that's a dope feeling if you've never felt it before. If you love Noname or Xavier Omar, check this out.

Westside Gunn ft. Stove God Cooks - DON'T BE BRUEL

Westside Gunn has been moving like a man possessed for most of 2025. It honestly feels like he's dropped something every month for the last 6 and I'm not even mad about it. Bro has yet to drop something I haven't enjoyed and this song is no different. I honestly feel like I'm having deja vu at this very moment. I've basically said this exact sentence a thousand times on this blog, but its a tried and true formula at this point.

Enlisting his most frequent collaborator, Stove God, it's the usual spiel. Guns, drugs, robbery, but it features some very fun and even hilarious storytelling over a melancholic jazz sample. It's everything that's made him successful up until this point and if it hasn't changed yet this far into his career, I don't see it ever changing, and I hope not because this? THIS is heat.

De La Soul ft. Jay Pharoah, Gareth Donkin - Just How It Is Sometimes

De La Soul's 9th studio album was released on November 21st. The feeling was bitter sweet, though. This was the first album released since the untimely passing of Trugoy the Dove in 2023.

"Cabin in the Sky" feels like one big tribute from start to finish. It's beautiful the way De La's surviving members were able to show love to it's third founding member, and though not my favorite work of theirs, it's not lacking in hits or replay value.

I'll be honest: the moment I saw Gareth Donkin, I ran to this track. Anyone who reads this blog knows I am a huge fan of his and his work on the hook is the cherry on top of what is essentially an upbeat break up song. It's easy to lose the plot in the beat, but this track features elements of self empowerment, lost love, and wrath. Never has the phrase "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" rang more true, but you already knew this. What more can I really say, though?

Its a bop, unfortunately.

Dean - Love (feat. Syd) [ROMderful Edit]

ROMderful is an artist I hold SO near and dear. He's one of the first artists I did a true DEEP DIVE on and went thru his entire discography just trying to find as much as I could BY him or FEATURING him because that's how much I enjoyed his work. But even after extensive research, there was still a lot left to be discovered and this is one of those ones that snuck right under my nose.

This track is at LEAST 8 years old which is about how long I've been listening to his music. What should've probably been one of the first songs I found by him is now being held in the same regard as most of his new music for me. ROM never fails to amaze me with his production and ability to blend elements of his own into other's music. Dean and Syd's vocals are great on this track and should be recognized as such, but ROM's production is the real star of this track.

Whether in my car or at a party, this song is perfect for any occasion, but so is the rest of his music. I can't stress enough how badly you need this in your life. And PLEASE go listen to his last collaborative effort with KayFaraway. You HAVE to check it out. If you like EDM or Dance, I promise you won't be disappointed. Not one bit.

Steely Dan - Third World Man

Oftentimes, I feel I was born in the wrong era. Too young for the old folks, too old for the young ones. I've been misunderstood for most of my life, normally opting for vintage over the "new-new". I say all that to say this: "Guacho" turned 45 this year and although I wasn't alive to experience it with the rest of the world, I'm glad I was born in the timeline where it exists at all.

Steely Dan has become something of a safety net. I was exposed to their music at a time when I really feel I had no one outside of a select few. If it wasn't them and it wasn't music, my effort more than likely wasn't going towards whatever it was. "Guacho" is not my favorite album of theirs. That honor is bestowed unto "Aja". But there's some neat finds in here for sure, "Third World Man" being one of the tracks I enjoyed the most. Don't sleep on "Glamour Profession" either though.

Even though this album was released pretty much a decade into Steely Dan's successful run, their sound hadn't evolved much over that time.

It still has the same jazzy, yacht rock feel that made them popular and I'm glad, because most of everyone's idea of a successful song at that time was heavy synth and lots of keyboard. That's cool and fine if you enjoy that kind of stuff, but Steely Dan doesn't need evolving. They ARE the standard. They are the epitome of the 70s and all the sounds that came with that era and I will love them forever for just having existed even if the band has undergone more changes than a poorly run restaurant.

I ain't mad at ya, unc.

Millkzy - Truth Be Told

Millkzy makes music for niggas who cry in the shower. He makes the kind of music you look out the window and watch the rain roll down it to. The type of music you hear when you bump into a woman in the library and help her pick up her books. This is real deal YN coffee shop tunes. Millkzy has created his own subgenre of rap that can only be referred to as "YN Jazz".

What I love most about him and his music is his ability to address feelings of grief or hopelessness so poignantly and dignified, but also show humility. He's no player and he's never portrayed himself as such.

He's always come off as a forlorn lover crooning over a woman who either doesn't love him back or doesn't love him in the way he loves her which is something at some point every man has felt or ultimately will feel. It's not flashy or Earth shattering lyricism. It's softspoken poetry over instrumentals. It's relatable and that's something that's hard to find nowadays, but its become his modus operandi at this point.

TL;DR: it's dope. But so is everything else he's dropped. Go listen to him.

Mac Miller - Friendly Hallucinations

Mac was such a soft soul, one I feel was just too good for this world. The more I go back and listen to his music, the more apparent this becomes.

A lot of people claim to love music or hip hop, but Mac was someone who embodied the culture. He never used the culture to grow or gain notoriety. All he ever wanted was to be apart of it. To be loved and admired by his peers. He loved the world and it loved him back. He really was something special.

I've been relistening to "Balloonerism" and more specifically, "Friendly Hallucinations", a ton recently and I love how experimental and bouncy this entire album feels, but it's also funny and kind of cool to listen to Mac talk about love and women like a teenage boy or young man would.

We've all had a crush or gotten that feeling when meeting someone special for the first time and for a moment, everything just clicks. Staying up late on the phone and waking up bright and early the next day to do it all over again. If you can relate, you know this feeling is nothing short of paradise and that's exactly what Mac feels when he's with her.

The song takes a dark turn though as Mac and this woman both fight with substance abuse and mental health issues as the song progresses.

It's a sad reminder of Mac's constant uphill battle with his own demons, but also shows how human he is. Although wealthier than most, Mac went through shit just like the rest of us and I'll always respect and admire him for showing those parts of himself. He was a true everyman. I hope you feel the same comfort and enjoyment I did rediscovering this project, but if its your first listen, get comfortable. It's a trip.

And with that, we conclude another entry into my musical diary. I hope you gained some newfound knowledge or got a chance to take a stroll down memory lane. Whatever the reason for you staying this long, I thank you for doing so and I hope you'll read some more as theirs plenty to check out in this space, but until then keep digging in the crates.

It's been a pleasure.