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Youth Lagoon LIVE at Warsaw Brooklyn 4/24/25

I went to see Youth Lagoon on the Rarely Do I Dream Tour when they played at Warsaw Brooklyn—a Polish community center that hosts independent music shows—on Thursday night. A Canadian DJ by the name of Memory Pearl opened up to a modest crowd. Inspired by what paintings sounded like to him, his sound palette was definitely innovative, and sophisticated, if not immediately appealing to my ears. But, then again, sometimes the best music needs time to grow on some people while others “get it “ effortlessly. I guess I need more time to wrap my head around what he’s doing. What I did connect with was his ability to be humble and his self-deprecating sense of humor.

By the middle of this opening set, I began to see the modest crowd turning into a sea of people. No doubt  anticipating the main act: Trevor Powers; the Idaho alien with the unmistakable quiver in his voice. Although I love many tracks on Rarely Do I Dream, “Gumshoe” especially,  I’m partial to the material from the previous effort “Heaven is a Junkyard.”  “Prizefighter” may be my favorite Youth Lagoon song. “Rabbit” the second song in the set, comes in at a close second. There’s something unique about the way that particular album blends the whimsical wonder of childhood with the growing pains of adolescence. It feels like a magic elixir that many later gen-xers like myself can drink down in copious amounts.

I must say that the live show was every bit as enrapturing as Trevor’s recorded material—with a little extra theatricality thrown in for good measure. At one point in the set he was holding an aluminum bat. I wonder if he uses it as some sort of talisman. Maybe after painting the roses red with Alice he needed a bit of protection from the queen of hearts?

M.M. Carrion

Status Quotes: The Column

Hip-hop is more than what we play — it’s what plays through us. It’s memory and motion, joy and disruption, coded survival stories stitched into beats and bars. In this space, we pause the scroll and press play on reflection. “Status Quotes” isn’t about catching up with the culture — it’s about sitting with it. Listening between the snares, beneath the surface, and around the edges. This isn’t a review column. It’s a rhythm check. A pulse reading. A guided drift through what the culture is saying, even when the mic cuts out.

“The Art of the Pivot: When the Beat Drops but the Culture Holds You”

Hip-hop has always been a pivot. From the park jams to the protest chants, from gold chains to quiet pain, the genre was built on transformation. It was born from the inability to be heard, and so it learned to move differently — to spin, scratch, remix, and reimagine. If jazz is America’s classical music, then hip-hop is its survival manual.

But right now, the beat feels... unstable. Not dead, not wrong, just shifting. We’re watching artists pivot more visibly than ever before. Kendrick retreats to his own spiritual island. Drake slides between Playboy and poet. Doja Cat explodes the pop formula and rebuilds it with teeth. J. Cole flips features into therapy. Meanwhile, underground giants like MIKE, Navy Blue, and Mach-Hommy are writing new blueprints with old-school soul. And somewhere in between, the industry pushes toward algorithmic predictability, while the artists we love pull back into something more reflective, even weird, even raw.

And that tension? That’s the moment that matters.

“Hip-hop isn’t just what we hear —it’s how we heal.”

Pivots in hip-hop aren’t just career moves — they’re cultural reflections. They ask who gets to evolve, and who gets left behind. They whisper questions about ownership, integrity, and survival. They remind us that sometimes the glow-up isn’t on a stage, it’s in a breakdown, a retreat, a redefinition.

You saw it with Tupac — the revolutionary-turned-poet who prophesied his exit. With Lauryn Hill, whose silence echoed louder than some entire catalogs. With OutKast, who bent the Southern rules and left us suspended in the speaker box. Jay-Z pivoted from Marcy to mogul while retaining a reflection of Black fatherhood and corporate resistance. Missy Elliott made innovation feel like intuition. DMX prayed out loud. And in the 2000s, Kanye’s early vulnerability in “Roses” and “Spaceship” reshaped emotional honesty long before the throne.

But we’ve also lost too many. To violence. To silence. To systems. To the unspeakable pressure of becoming a brand instead of a being.

“You don’t survive the block, the boardroom, or the booth without learning to pivot.”

Let’s name them, honor them.

To Guru, whose monotone voice taught depth. To Phife, the Five-Foot Assassin, who never wasted a line. To Prodigy, who showed that pain has texture. To Nipsey, who embodied ownership. To DMX again, who taught us faith could bark and bleed. To the visionary execs — Chris Lighty, Combat Jack, and Andre Harrell — who helped build the industry with both ears and hearts tuned to the culture.

And yet — hip-hop still pivots. Because it has to. Because we do.

Albums today don’t just sound different — they feel fragmented, personal, self-aware. The flex is still there, but it’s filtered through trauma, therapy, gender reimagination, and ancestral grief. The hook might still bang, but listen close: it’s often coming from a place that hurts more honestly now.

And maybe that’s why this column exists.

Because sometimes, the beat drops, the numbers dip, the labels shift focus, the fans move on. But the culture? It keeps you. It lets you pivot. It invites you to fall back and still be part of the rhythm.

So, here’s to the pivots. To the rappers rewriting their relationships with masculinity. To the producers going analog. To the listeners growing up and into new forms of freedom. To the “artists we don’t understand yet.

Because in hip-hop — as in life — the pivot isn’t failure. It’s faith. It’s movement. It’s legacy.

Companion Playlist: “The Art of the Pivot”

Curated to reflect the spirit of transformation, legacy, and self-reinvention in hip-hop.

Classic + Foundational Tracks:

1. 2Pac – Keep Ya Head Up
2. OutKast – Elevators (Me & You)
3. Missy Elliott – She's a B****
4. Jay-Z – Moment of Clarity
5. Lauryn Hill – To Zion
6. A Tribe Called Quest – Find a Way
7. Prodigy – You Can Never Feel My Pain
8. DMX – Slippin’
9. Kanye West – Spaceship (feat. GLC & Consequence)
10. Slum Village – Fall in Love

Mid-2000s–2010s: 11. Nipsey Hussle – Victory Lap
12. Drake – The Resistance
13. J. Cole – Let Go My Hand
14. Kendrick Lamar – The Heart Part 5
15. Mac Miller – 2009

Contemporary Voices: 16. MIKE – Weight of the World
17. Mach-Hommy – Self Luh
18. Little Simz – Introvert
19. Doja Cat – Attention
20. Noname-Rainforest 

-Christopher Rogers