What Spring Does to Me

During a recent trip to Texas, I realized that I play the same two songs every time I’m on an airplane that’s taking off and landing: Childish Gambino’s “I.Crawl” for our ascent into the sky and Kanye West’s “Blood on The Leaves” as the wheels touch back down. No visit to the Lone Star State is complete for me without an extensive run of BeatKing and DJ Screw songs, and my phone is filled with playlists chronicling moments and memories from time spent in Chicago (Westside Gunn’s “Gunnlib” will always remind me of the record store and cocktail lounge Dorian’s), Virginia (Mutant Academy, 454, and Amerie ftw!) and California (Snoop Dogg’s Blue Carpet Treatment and lots of 03 Greedo). The sounds that imprint on me are almost as important as the new sights and smells I’m taking in. 

I haven’t been traveling out of the tri-state area much these days, but with spring warming things up on the east coast, I’ve had plenty of time to be outside. Walks in the park are crucial around this time of year—they’re a way for me to reconnect with my community, get some much needed Vitamin D (doctor’s orders!), and to watch mallards fight to the death over pond scum from the rocks. Last week, that third act was soundtracked by Dua Lipa’s “Illusion” (I blame RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 17 for introducing this fire song into my life) and select cuts from the latest Niontay (“Old Kent road freestyle,” “Triangle offense”) and Billy Woods (“Star87,” “A Doll Fulla Pins”) albums. Music sounds better to me when I’m in motion or outside, whether that’s walking, exercising, or idling on a train platform, and as much as I love the frigid stomp of my winter-centric favorites, nothing hits quite like the ebullient bliss of running music in the spring or summertime. 

One such album for me has been Grimm Doza’s Tokyo Transit. A subgenre-agnostic producer in the vein of Harry Fraud or Laron, the Paterson, New Jersey-based beatmaker has worked with everyone from Chicago sadboi Lucki to Atlanta livewire Tony Shhnow to meditative indie acts like Mavi and Pink Siifu. Tokyo Transit is his first pure beat tape in a while, and one that sports a loose overarching theme—it’s inspired by the sounds and feels he experienced while traveling on bullet trains during a recent stay in Japan. A few days after the album dropped, I indulged in a fun writerly stereotype: I posted up at a cafe table in direct sunlight with my laptop, a protein bar, and a bottled smoothie, pressed play, and worked. 

And when I say direct sunlight, I mean it. No parasols or shade to cover me, just some sunscreen and a dream. That dream was amplified by the spacey vibes of Tokyo Transit. It felt right luxuriating in “Shmoney,” whose synths and pitter-pattering drums bloom and vanish like flower bulbs scared off by a sudden cold streak, and floating down the R&B-tinged lazy river of “Sakura.” The only motion at that table was my fingertips zig-zagging across keys, but Transit matched the temperature of the day with a warmth that skewed both organic and digital. It conjured images of mountains and cherry blossoms (“Aura,” “Ume Dragon”) as easily as the in-station chimes, tunes, and sound effects typical of Tokyo train stations.

Falling under the spell of a well-curated atmosphere is easy when the environment calls for it, but what happens when the weather’s on the other end of the spectrum? When I woke up on Wednesday morning, I was greeted with rain, overcast skies, and bursts of cold that made me question if it was May. The weather didn’t have me in a bad mood—there’s few feelings better than being in bed when it’s raining outside—but it felt decidedly less like spring than it had in a while. “How am I gonna get my sunshine on now?,” I wondered as I threw my headphones on and pressed play on the new PinkPantheress album Fancy That. The UK-based singer and producer’s style is predisposed to sunny vibes, which is interesting since much of the music she traffics in—drum & bass, garage, bedroom pop—isn’t known for being the brightest or most inviting. 

But what makes Pantheress special is her bubble-gum pop cutesy energy, somewhere between Goldie’s Timeless and “The Hamster Dance,” as well as her songs’ notoriously short runtimes, which she’s discussed at length. I’ve hesitated to use the word “confection” when describing songs in the past, but for Pantheress, it feels entirely accurate, especially when I first fell into the peppy digital swing of Fancy That’s “Girl Like Me” and “Stars.” In my mind, the clouds parted, making way for that special bit of amber light that comes just before dusk, even as it continued to drizzle outside. Even though the song is about snapping someone back to reality after a bad breakup, its hook, “Things are getting darker in the city/Please find your way out of the city,” felt apt as I shimmied my way through the rain. I may not have been listening in some exotic new locale, but between this and Doza’s tape, I have two musical journeys to keep in my back pocket as temperatures rise.