I saw a fly going to Miami
2026 Mix 05: A quick one while he's away—sneak preview of my '10s ballot, Latin American alt-pop, Caribbean hits, and my occasional reminder that Baby Queen is good
I have not gone to Miami, but I am away, so it’s a quick one while etc. Lucky for me, the haul this week was more than enough for a mix, with about ten to spare.
Last week I shared a playlist with the uncategorizable songs from the ‘10s, so this week I will share some more categorizable ones from my decade list. Won’t spoil the whole list, but here are five as a sneak preview in no particular order.
Angelica Garcia: Karma the Knife (2019)
This is a song I’ve been trying to figure out how to nominate for a poll or otherwise get more people to hear it for years. I always thought it was a 2020 single (the album is from 2020), but it was first released in August of 2019. So into the ‘10s it goes.
DJ Zinc & Ms. Dynamite: Wile Out (2010)
Hoping that folks haven’t forgotten about this one. It was a big hit at the then-recently-rebooted Singles Jukebox back in 2010 and frequented many mixes I made in that period.
Kiiara: Gold (2015)
I really don’t understand why this song works as well as it does. There are few songs I associate more with the mid-2010s than this—the only song I can think of that employs bort-pop technique and still sounds incredible. (This is probably because the syllable chopping isn’t defacing some older hook, but creating a brand new one.)
Vershon: Mercy A God (2016)
This was a serendipitous find—was driving at night and tuned in to a college radio station that happened to be playing is. The DJ never ID’d the song but I was able to find it later, no idea how (I probably remembered a few lyrics).
The Knocks f. Sneaky Sound System: The One (2014)
The first song I remember hearing after my first kid was born. For any brand new or future parents among you, this trick only works once, so make it a good one! (Just kidding, I don’t think you really get to choose if a song does this, or which one.)
I wrote about it as my “song of the decade” back in 2019:
My decade was all about family—making one, maintaining one—and so I only have three options for the song that defined my decade. One is inextricable from its surroundings—“On My Own” from Farrah Abraham’s My Teenage Dream Ended, an album about death and motherhood that is as poignant and sad and weird as anything I’ve ever heard. Another is from the second-best mom album of the decade, Flesh Tone by Kelis, “Song for the Baby.”
But my song of the decade is the first song I heard after my first son was born, “The One,” by the Knocks featuring Sneaky Sound System. The thing about having kids is that it really wrecks you—I didn’t realize that my entire life, its daily rhythms and boundaries, was being broken down and remade in those first few weeks. I was consumed with a pointless mania, so while he and his mom slept I spent most of my time hacking wooden chunks out of his bedroom door with a boxcutter in a doomed effort to “level it” and putting together an enormous playlist of every song ever featured on the first 50 NOW! compilations—something that I have almost no memory of doing, but which nonetheless currently has 38,000 followers and counting.
This is all to say that maybe I wasn’t my most stable or least sleep-deprived self when I first heard “The One,” but whatever it was, I remember thinking, when the chorus hit, that this crass thing, this stupid thing, is right—everything is going fast, and he is everything to me, it is true, he is the one, my number one, and I cried, a good, long, cleansing cry. And then a few weeks later, when I was settling into the new me and sleeping a little more and monkeying with that NOW! playlist for the minor omissions from my fugue state and nursing the wounds on my fingers from the boxcutters, I listened to “The One” again, and you can probably guess by now that I cried again, the very same cry, with snot and everything. And then three years later I had another son, so I listened to it again, just to see what would happen, and I thought, surely this time it won’t—but it did! And I cried again, because he was my number one now, too, the song was still right, because with your kids they’re all number one, you just find more heart to hold it all.
Why did this particular song have this effect on me, a song that to my knowledge no one has heard the way I hear it, possibly including the people who made it? Right time, right place, right me? A random twist of neurochemical fate? Maybe it doesn’t really matter—we all get our own private sessions with epiphany, but we don’t control the schedule, something like that. Songs speak to us when we listen and sometimes even when we don’t, and sometimes, if we’re lucky, we can really hear them whether or not we were ready for them—there, I heard it, this was the one, and I didn’t get to choose my vessel any more than I got to choose my kids, but there it is and I love it all the same. Now it’s been five years and it still goes fast, and there is so much to lose, more to lose than you could have possibly imagined. But it’s lovely while it lasts.
1. EMJAY: Brainchem
Mexico
EMJAY’s 2025 album Me estoy volviendo loca is filthy and wild, but to me the music all congealed into an undifferentiated mass as an album, though I liked “Boss,” especially in its remix version. “Brainchem” seems to be pandering to me directly with avant cheerleader bounce and a nicked chord progression from “Toxic.” It might be my favorite song she’s done so far.
2. DJ Kanji f. 7, eyden: Money Up
Japan
Noisy and annoying 808-driven J-rap that doesn’t let up for a second, while the MCs make like they’re not touching you they’re not touching you they’re not touching you.
3. Whodamanny: Loca Loca
Italy
A whole album of throwback Italo disco sunshine. Sometimes trying to sound too much like a past sound comes across as too studied, and there’s a hint of that here, but I think the singers manage to put it over.
4. Pigeon: Miami
Guinea/UK
A perennial People’s Pop favorite that I’ve featured at least once before and try to check out when they cross my radar screen. This is sillier than I remember them being—8-bit keyboard hooks, absurdist lyrics. But I’m very cold at the moment and would like to drop everything for some sun in Miami, so good timing.
5. FLVCKKA, Yeri Mua f. Angely2k: Notype
Mexico
FLVCKKA’s “Tsunami” was a favorite of mine last year that didn’t really take hold of the pop commentariat that I try to evangelize some of these things to, and in this case I think I need to trust the commentariat. But I’m glad the women in alt/reggaeton/pop seem to be building a critical mass anyway.
6. SadBoi: Twisted
Canada
Can never tell how big SadBoi is despite sharing her songs for a few years now. I think her voice is pretty memorable, but her beats are all over the map—she tries out a bouyon-ish beat here, after sounding just as comfortable alongside “Shake It to the Max” breaktrhough MOLIY in a song I shared last year, and with Atlanta rapper Vayda the year before that.
7. Eliangel, Saga: 日本 Borracha de Poder
Venezuela-Mexico/Mexico
More Mexican alt-pop, this one with the exciting distinction of having zero views on its YouTube page.
8. 1T1, MiiMii KDS: In Di Corner
Guadeloupe
I’ve been trying to follow some of the music coming out for Carnival a bit more closely this year, and MiiMii has been capitalizing on her breakout bouyon hit “Sé MiiMii.” Funny to have shared 1T1 for the first time last week only to immediately hear their duet here. It sounds good but their delivery isn’t quite massaging the impact of the words enough not to notice a few clunkers: “I smell you from down there” is one you might want to retire from your pickup line repertoire.
9. Jahlys: Bizness
Martinique
Shatta star Jahlys gets a second lifetime mix appearance and I would not be surprised if she gets a third.
10. Spice: Soft Girl Era
Jamaica
Meanwhile I’ve wanted to feature Spice for a long time now—most recently she was on the remix to Zuchu’s “Amanda.” I suppose making yet another great song with the title “Soft Girl Era” is as good an excuse as any.
11. Zé Filipe, Bellagi: Pretin
Brazil
An odd one, seems to split the difference between brega funk and Europop, like they borrowed a soundboard from Toy-Box. Is there a genre called “bubblegum brega”?
12. Saalva13: #générationkartel
Martinique
Another discovery from my shatta playlists, a bit harder and less crowd-pleasing than his hit from last year, “La Sérénade.”
13. Scoophy Snacks, CDQ, King Soundboi: Hola
Nigeria
Thought about subbing in something from my South African holdover list here rather than this Nigerian producer’s somewhat scrappy take on amapiano, but in the end I decided I had to feature an artist named Scoophy Snacks on one of my mixes.
14. Bongo Maffin, Oskido: Mari Ye Phepha (Fka Mash Afro-Glitch remix)
South Africa
An Afrohouse remake of kwaito group Bongo Maffin’s “Mari Ye Phepa” from 1999. Kwaito is a big blind spot for me—this song was huge and I’m glad to finally be acquainted with it.
15. Dj Yk Mule, Mastertune: Sax Dance Guitar
Nigeria
Cruise producer Dj Yk Mule mostly creates a backdrop for guitar from what I’m assuming is Mastertune. Couldn’t find a lot of info on this one on short notice.
16. By Özdemir, Liza, Raif: Mevzu Sen Olunca
Turkey
Sort of a Turkish take on the kind of pleasant but anonymous pop I found a lot on Spotify in the late ‘10s. I have no way of judging how fake any participants are here like I could back when some Z-list EDM producer brought in a fake Carly Rae Jepsen. But the vibe is similar (not entirely derogatory!).
17. noffkoffska: Szept (Czy czujesz to samo co ja?)
Poland
18. Nagham Saleh, Abraxsophia: Cabaret
Egypt
19. Kuaskio: Ю Раниш [Yu Ranish]
Ukraine
Three circa 2-minute songs from Poland, Egypt, and Ukraine before a very long song to follow, all of them mostly getting by on the performance more than anything special happening in the production.
20. Toffo Houssou Gilles, Orchestre Les Volcans Du Benin: Yemakpego Dragons [1984]
Benin
Yes, I have 15 minutes to spare this week and plan to use them. Benin group’s Afrobeat jam is modeled on a salsa jam, and if it maybe doesn’t earn every minute, I’d say it earns most of them. A rerelease from the Albarika Store distributed by Acid Jazz Records, available on Bandcamp.
21. Lia Pappas-Kemps: Towers
Canada
22. Baby Queen: I Hope You Don’t Remember Me
South Africa-UK
Ending with some indie-pop—I like how Lia Pappas-Kemps inches toward baggy (🪇), and I also like that she’s got Canadian government funding to do it. Baby Queen is one that I perennially underrate until I hear something that reminds me to go back and revisit. I guess “Dancing Alone” is basically a golden oldie now but when gloomy sequencer confessional works, it works.
That’s it! Until next time, I hope you are able to travel to warmer areas of the world than the one I am currently in.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Pigeon: Miami