/ 22 July 2016

On our lists this week: Schoolboy Q, fashion blogger Dina Tokio and Ja.magazine

Dina Tokio is on our lists for her light and witty videos which deal with fashion
Dina Tokio is on our lists for her light and witty videos which deal with fashion

The playlist
Schoolboy Q: Blank Face LP is a return to a corner that this Top Dawg Entertainment’s outlaw never quite left. With that said, this is a world removed from hip-hop’s glossy sheen. (KS)

On Being: I stumbled across this brilliant podcast while looking for Alain de Botton interviews. I haven’t stopped listening to the inimitable Krista Tippett’s mindful interviews of people such as Tich Naht Hanh, Elizabeth Gilbert, Desmond Tutu and Mahzarin Banaji. (MB)

Mura Masa: I recently heard about this British electronic music producer from a friend and have been making my way through his SoundCloud uploads as the background music to my work week for the last little while. (SK)

The reading and viewing list
Miles Davis: Ian Carr’s biography titled Miles Davis covers the period from Davis’s birth to the end of his hiatus in the early 1980s. It has been disparagingly called a turntable companion by some reviewers. Carr is a jazz trumpeter himself, so his first loyalty is to the music of Davis and the accoutrements second. (KS)

Dina Tokio: It’s one of those weeks when the world is seeming a little too much and I need to switch from it all and dive straight into something fun and mindless. So I’ve been watching vlogs by YouTuber Dina Tokio. She’s a 27-year-old fashion blogger from Wales and also a hijabi as well as a new mother. Her videos are a slice of her life — what it’s like to be a young, modern Muslim embracing both her religion and the Snapchat generation. (SK)

Ja.magazine: A quirky online magazine I discovered by clicking on the email signature of writer Dave Mann. Full of youth, myriad perspectives from self-aware contributors and delightfully confident in itself. (MB)