A late night host of the in-between

2025 Mix 25: Lil Wayne's endearing taste chaos; coming back around to MARINA; lots of chill electro in French, Spanish, and Italian; and a serendipitous country block with no Trap Daniels whatsoever

Another dimension?

Two albums really surprised me almost immediately after posting my year to date update a few weeks ago. The first was MARINA’s Princess of Power. More on that one below, since a song from it opens the mix.

I did not find a place this week for something from the album that has rocketed to the top of my list, much to my own astonishment. That would be Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter VI, an album that has sent much of the online pop commentariat howling—a 2.9 in Pitchfork and a flurry of exasperated fans groping desperately for silver linings and tasteful remixes.

But I hear the strongest album Wayne has put out in many years. This is a deceptively minor distinction—Wayne has never put out very good albums as a rule, while his features and stray verses and mixtapes have never really wavered in quality beyond the untouchability of his c. 2005-2007 imperial phase. He’s had a lot of low points and a lot of high points, and I doubt he’d distinguish much between the two. I think this is because he has exceptionally chaotic taste.

The phenomenon of taste chaos isn’t uncommon among popular and sometimes brilliant artists. Miley Cyrus and Kid Cudi both have glaring cases of taste chaos; Paul McCartney might have some version of it.¹ Wayne’s mostly stems from his craft, though—he’s just monomaniacally, maybe spiritually good at rapping, good in a way that very few people have ever been good. I don’t mean to say this makes him better or the best, per se. The comparison I usually make is to Erroll Garner, who is an all-time great pianist who nonetheless doesn’t really command a top tier in the jazz canon. Garner would turn any old thing, or nothing, into an Erroll Garner original in the spur of the moment, sometimes leaving his own band in the dust as he improvised. This is how I wrote about Wayne/Garner a few years ago:

Lil Wayne is like Erroll Garner, preternaturally gifted, effortless, and perhaps, as Garner’s bassist called him, a “monstrous man,” so focused on the one thing that mattered to him, that he truly understood, that the rest of his life fell away (which reminds me of the Carter documentary from 2009). …Wayne/Garner is generative energy, drawing from some unknown source of divine inspiration. You want access to that same pool, the creative equivalent of the fountain of youth.

Because Wayne raps with this same sort of genius on tap, it usually means that when people are complaining about his technical choices, they’re really just complaining about his taste. Lil Wayne has never recorded a “mistake”; he’s only recorded utter shit that he intended to sound like that.

There’s a fascinating conflation of the two in that Pitchfork review, when Paul A. Thompson chides Wayne for falling behind the beat on “Flex Up.” But Wayne isn’t trailing the beat; he’s doing modal rap performance art, taking the drone of a rapper like Lil Baby and cramming an infinity of words into it, all spat out across unbroken, virtuosic 30-second increments. (As far as I can tell, he takes his first inhale in the clip below on “stunt” at 0:41 after a breathless run that starts at 0:15.) It sounds resolutely unflashy; It’s awkward and muddled and weird. It’s also great.

Tha Carter VI is similar to Playboi Carti’s Music, in that it feels like a dive into someone’s mind and/or hard drive that requires a different review format for each song. But unlike Carti (whom I was comparing to Thelonious Monk in that quote about Wayne and Erroll Garner above), Carter VI sounds like it came from the unified taste chaos of its personality in the center, whereas Music sounds like just that—lots of music, selected at random because it happened to have been recorded. Carti’s Music feels chaotic, but the album as a project doesn’t emerge from an organizing or distinctive chaos. It’s just an indiscriminate load of shit with a few flecks of gold in it.

You might think Tha Carter VI is a load of shit, too—that’s your prerogative—but it’s not indiscriminate. It cares about what sort of load of shit it is. Some of it is at some level bad—how could I say that an album that has Lil Wayne singing along, quite poorly, to “Island in the Sun” by Weezer is not, in some sense, bad? And yet I like that song, so “bad” isn’t the right word. Awful might be better, said with a smile: oh, that’s awful! I also like the obvious play for commercial viability on the Bono-featuring “The Days,” and by commercial I mean it literally: it was featured in promos for the NBA Finals that played when my kids were watching the Percy Jackson series on Disney, and it sounded like it was custom built for that purpose. (The only irredeemable track is the one that features Kodak Black and mgk.)

One of my favorites is “Peanuts 2 N Elephant,” where Wayne bounces around a carnivalesque beat like he’s avoiding giant foam obstacles in Wipeout. Someone on Reddit “fixed” the song with a respectable soul-record-chirp beat and completely ruined it, a big wet blanket of a remix, immediately knocking Wayne off the platform into the water.

Better taste can’t “solve” taste chaos because taste chaos includes better taste, too, it just also includes inexplicably awful taste, and the two tastes are sitting next to each other and could not give less of a fuck. All of the songs on Tha Carter VI love each other, and you can tell that Wayne loves them, too.

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Previous 2025 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube

1. MARINA: Cupid’s Girl
UK

Here’s the other surprise from my album catch-up these last couple of weeks. I’d more or less jumped ship on Marina after years of diminishing returns from an album I still consider one of my favorites of the last decade—Family Jewels—and have been ambivalent about her going big and bold and earnest, only really clicking with it in small or indirect doses, like on my favorite song of 2017, Clean Bandit’s “Disconnect.” But Princess of Power is a lot of fun, from the robot cheerleader stomp of “Rollercoaster” to the cod-reggae of “Digital Fantasy” to the neo-disco of “I <3 You.” It was “Cupid’s Girl,” with its synth cardio, rockabilly twang, and stoopid cupid/stupid rhyme scheme, that opened the whole project up.

2. Sw@da, Niczos: Čyrvone Nebo
Poland

My Eurovision installment has proven the least popular of my A-pop series so far, but this song is convincing me that I might be on to something here:

In these examples [including Sw@da and Niczos, Poland’s second-place finisher in their pre-Eurovision qualifier], the competition becomes something like an incubator for emerging styles with mass appeal. This is different, and more interesting to me personally, from the most common perceptions of Eurovision that I tend to come across, which cast the event as a funhouse of timeless novelties or a kitschy wax museum of styles past their prime. But it would make sense for the competition to adapt productively in an environment where there is no presumed central power to mimic, and there is no expectation that a pale imitation of past versions of global pop success will get you anywhere. You’re better off being an oddball original.

When I refer to Eurovision and American pop switching places, what I’m getting at is that the compromises and plays at mass appeal in Eurovision contestants could be a genuine synthesis of emerging styles. Sometimes that synthesis leads to something new—bigger than its subculture, bolder or at least more sui generis than its immediate predecessors. That’s where it sounds like Sw@da and Niczos might be headed.

3. Emma Nolde: Indipendente
Italy

And speaking of Europe, Italian pop continues to grab my attention—here, flamenco-esque snaps, short-circuited anthemic indie hey-ho, and sing-rap all combine into something that sounds equally indebted to Imagine Dragons and Angélica Garcia.

4. chicarica: Antes del día
Chile

Lots of dreamy Spanish-language pop this week, starting with a Chilean group who have increased their BPM without increasing a cold reptilian heart rate, like the band has undergone an ectothermic reaction to their own synths.

5. Matthew Herbert, Momoko Gill: Someone Like You
UK

Whenever Herbert’s not on a mix, all the other characters should be asking, “where’s Herbert?”

6. El Michels Affair, Clairo: Anticipate
US

Clairo is one of those uncanny valley A-pop stars who seems out of reach of my alogrithm’s attempt to populate microgenres (she’s too big for windowpane but too small to be a lead character) and I think what’s saving her is an ingredient from millennial adult contemporary that’s gone out of style among the yearncore massive: good old-fashioned jazz-inflected soft rock. El Michels Affair practically turn her into Norah Jones, who of course turned herself into an impressively indie superstar during the industry downfall crunch.

7. Aitana: 6 de Febrero
Spain

This Spanish snyth-pop is much bigger than I was expecting—I forget where I found it (maybe a Viral Spain chart?), but it’s racked up about six million views in a month.

8. Valentina: Bad Timing
Dominican Republic

Meanwhile, Dominican singer Valentina on Universal Music Mexico has about 700 views at press time for a song that I like better, not least for its light Afrobeats production and log drum accents, making it (very technically) ama-pop.

9. Vanessa Paradis: Bouquet final
France

Was not expecting Vanessa Paradis to show up after calling her a hypo-pop progenitor with “Be My Baby,” but this gave me a good excuse to catch up with her fairly prolific and consistent French pop career. I did not realize (or remember?) that she is Lily Rose Depp’s mother, which means she is only one degree of separation from the 070 Shakeverse, not that this straightforward string-laced pop, which could have been released any time in the last 30 years, would suggest the connection. That said, they should collab pronto.

10. Arya: Non fa per me
Italy

More Italian pop that I didn’t initially recognize as such (I really need to work on differentiating Italian from Spanish) from an [checks notes] Italian-Venezuelan singer. OK, partial credit.

11. Elena Rose, Sistek, Mazzarri: Sintigo
Venezuela/Chile/Colombia

Elena Rose was born in Miami and raised between Puerto Rico and Venezuela, but this sounds like nowhere in particular—it’s reminiscent of “Passionfruit” by Drake.

12. Javed Ali, digV, Ravator: Koyal
India

Indian pop remains an enormous blind spot that I’m in no big rush to remedy. I would never be able to tell you whether the stuff I end up finding on spotty Indian and Hindi playlists is getting 14 views or 14 million (this one’s the latter); usually I’m just looking for a hook, in this case the somewhat cheesy guitar rock treatment, and especially the solo at the end.

13. Eblis Alvarez, Meridian Brothers: U Grande Nubarrón Se Alza En El Cielo
Colombia

A cracked cumbia (ish?) from Eblis Alvarez and Meridian Brothers, profiled in the New Yorker in 2024, from the new DJ-Kicks installment from British DJ Quantic.

14. Maïa: Tout ira bien
France

Slight but sweet bonbon from Maïa, who appeared on French reality singing competition Star Academy in 2024.

15. Mylène Farmer: Confession
France

Always enjoy Mylène Farmer when I have reason to check her out again. In this case it was a tribute to David Lynch at Cannes, captured here in a memorial fancam.

16. Hailey Whitters: White Limousine
US

17. Sunny Sweeney: Diamonds and Divorce Decrees
US

18. Molly Tuttle: That’s Gonna Leave a Mark
US

Country block! Just happened to hear all three of these in the same haul. Of the three I might like the Molly Tuttle best, apparently seen as something of a sell-out move, but to my ears a nice integration of 90s jagged lilt. I like the fullness of Hailey Whitters’ sound more than the “wish it were the ‘70s” borrowed nostalgia, and like “Diamonds and Divorce Decrees” as a replacement-level Sydney Sweeney song, which is admittedly a pretty high bar.

19. Jillian Jacqueline: Year of the Dragon
US

20. Marissa Nadler: New Radiations
US

Two sumptuous indie songs—the first is categorized under country but sounds closer to alt-Americana, another example after that Cyndi Thomson windowpane song of a Nashville singer adopting indie yearncore to stand out rather than blend in. I know I’ve heard Marissa Nadler in the past but can’t place her—a quick scan to see if she was ever Xgau catnip (seemed unlikely) revealed a sole dud for a 2007 album, and Pitchfork has a series of respectful 7’s and low 8’s. Mostly reminds me of Angel Olsen, but maybe it’s the other way around? I enjoyed the late-night talk show host line, though, in a competitive week for potential newsletter titles.

21. Gwenifer Raymond: Jack Parsons Blues
UK

A lovely instrumental recommended by Ann Powers from guitarist Gwenifer Raymond. Have to hit the mix brakes before…

22. Ethel Cain: Nettles
US

…the only drone from Ethel Cain that has reached me so far this year, a windowpane opus audaciously stretched out to a very long eight minutes that I still can’t tell if it has even remotely earned after several listens. But that is approx. 24-36 minutes further than I ever got into Perverts, so she must be on to something.

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That’s it! Until next time, let your taste chaos reign.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from Marissa Nadler: New Radiations.

1. Paul McCartney’s taste chaos was important for the Beatles, all of what John Lennon called the “granny shit” tin pan alley mixed in with blues and country and showtunes and girl groups, the combinations all crystalizing into an omnivore’s delight that he only occasionally recaptures in his solo work.