Five recommendations to get the most out of reading — I spent a lot of college reading, or more often, catching up on reading. I was an English major, and for four years, averaged a few books a week, often speccing out a pace of 100 pages/hour and setting aside a few hours of heads-down time. That experience of my…

a quick intro, then the liner notes for a 16-track album, ‘folklore circles’, that pairs taylor swift’s folklore with mac miller’s circles and swimming albums posted below the art. available 1.29.21 as a free download / pay-what-you-want, with proceeds to the mac miller fund. (this is just) the prologue hi. hey. hello. …

The top 12 albums and 50 songs of a very strange year — Here’s the playlist of my top 50 songs of 2020 (list below, along with top 12 albums) Every December, when I sit down to take stock of the last 12 months, my first inclination is always to describe the year that’s passed as unprecedented. From the macro— the world news…

My 2019 began with waking up in LA and will end falling asleep in Tokyo. In between, so much happened that it doesn’t feel like it’s only been a year. ck's fav songs of 2019, a playlist by Charlie Kubal on Spotify 50 songs for 2019 | open.spotify.com I took weekend trips to Houston, Memphis, Nashville, Boulder, West Virginia, Miami, and Mexico City to celebrate and catch up…

…and five things I was proud to put out into the world in 2018 😎 — One of the most personally significant axioms I’ve taken to heart over the last few years is the value in creating things outside of a work context. …

prefaced by a brief self-indulgent self-reflection on the year 🎶😜 — Any time I start thinking through the year that passed, I look back at previous favorites —I’ve made favorite album lists since 2006 and posted a list of top songs the last couple years (2015, 2016, 2017), and each is a time capsule reminder to me of all these little…

The secret to understanding a city’s energy and essence lies in exploring it via sneakers on the ground If you want to know a city’s essence, there’s no better way to do it than on foot: run (or walk) through a city as soon as you get there to note…

17 albums for ‘17 — 2017 was a pretty interesting year for music — after long waits, we got new albums from Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, and Eminem, with mixed critical receptions: no major publication listed any of those records at the top of year-end lists, though each album was pretty good. It was the first…

And a smattering of thoughts on the current state of hip hop and how we got here — I was reviewing my list of favorite 25 songs from last year, and in my notes had a bit about how “2016 was a really rough year for a lot of things, but great for music.” 2016 looks pretty good, comparatively, a year removed. …