Weekend Kickoff - Mar 2017
Fourteen tracks of the March 2017 Weekend Kickoff rotation — a tighter-than-usual edition for the early-spring shoulder season. The shortest of the Weekend Kickoff editions by deliberate intent. Fourteen tracks is the length of one solid Friday-evening dinner-prep session, which is exactly the situation this edition was made to soundtrack. The shoulder-season brevity framing is the rotation’s methodological commitment — the playlist’s working-utility is bounded by the specific calendar-position of the early-spring shoulder season’s compressed working-utility context rather than the standard-edition’s longer-form working-rotation framing.
Denitia and Sene anchor the alt-R&B bridge that defined the rotation’s late-’10s leftward turn. The Denitia and Sene catalog is the rotation’s structural backbone for the alt-R&B register — the duo’s catalog provides the rotation’s working-utility for the late-2010s alt-R&B commitments, and the placement honors the catalog’s role across the rotation.
“casanova.” opens because that’s the song that effectively introduced the duo to the rotation and that the friend group specifically asked for after the first playback. The placement at first-track is the rotation’s structural commitment to honoring the friend-group’s specific catalog-introduction history — the Denitia and Sene cut was, in early-2017, the structural moment where the artist’s catalog crossed from the streaming-discovery context into the friend-group’s collective working-rotation, and the placement is doing the work of immediately establishing that the rotation respects the friend-group’s specific cross-discovery working-rotation history.
Domo Genesis with Anderson .Paak “Dapper” sits in the front quarter as the structural anchor of the jazz-rap rotation. The placement is the rotation’s structural commitment to the jazz-rap register — the Domo Genesis collaboration with Anderson .Paak was, in 2017, the structural anchor of the year’s jazz-rap working-rotation, and the placement is doing the work of providing the rotation’s universal-recognition jazz-rap anchor.
Dag Savage with Exile, Johaz, and Aloe Blacc “When It Rains” is the deliberate sequencing into the underground-rap rotation that the year’s listening pulled toward. The placement is the rotation’s structural commitment to the underground-rap register — the Dag Savage collaboration is the structural anchor of the late-2010s underground-rap working-rotation, and the placement is doing the work of providing the rotation’s underground-rap anchor that the shoulder-season’s working-rotation absolutely required.
RAIZA BIZA “Wassup” is the wildcard pull from the COLORS show series — a song that effectively expanded the rotation’s geographic scope. The placement is the rotation’s structural commitment to the cross-geographic rotation methodology — the COLORS show series provides the rotation’s working-utility for the cross-Atlantic underground-rap working-rotation, and the playlist’s choice to honor the COLORS-show cuts rather than reaching for North-American-only underground-rap alternatives is the methodological commitment to the rotation’s cross-geographic working-utility framing.
Anti Lilly & Phoniks “Blue In Green” carries the jazz-sampling underground-rap anchor. The placement is the rotation’s structural commitment to the jazz-sampling underground-rap register — the Anti Lilly & Phoniks collaboration is the structural anchor of the late-2010s jazz-sampling underground-rap working-rotation, and the placement honors the producer-and-rapper collaboration’s role across the rotation.
Dizzy Wright “Killem With Kindness” is the structural anchor of the back-half. The placement is the rotation’s structural commitment to the underground-rap register — the Dizzy Wright catalog is the rotation’s working-utility for the late-2010s underground-rap working-rotation, and the placement is doing the work of providing the rotation’s back-half underground-rap anchor that the shoulder-season’s working-rotation absolutely required.
Alan Watts with Darryl Dickson, David Watson, Fred Maxwell, Josh Milan, Rob Gosier, and the Holland Tunnel Project “Mr. Jazz” is the deliberate sequencing into the spoken-word-and-jazz territory. The placement is the rotation’s structural commitment to the spoken-word-and-jazz register — the Watts catalog is the rotation’s working-utility for the cross-format spoken-word-and-jazz working-recording, and the placement is doing the work of providing the rotation’s cross-format bridge that the shoulder-season’s working-rotation absolutely required.
Anti Lilly & Phoniks with Devin Miles “Blue Dream” (the Phoniks Remix) closes the front-half with the producer-and-rapper-collaboration anchor that the rotation absolutely commits to. The placement is the rotation’s structural commitment to the producer-and-rapper-collaboration register — the Phoniks Remix is the structural anchor of the rotation’s late-2010s producer-and-rapper-collaboration working-rotation, and the placement is doing the work of providing the rotation’s universal-recognition producer-and-rapper-collaboration anchor.
Fourteen tracks lands at about fifty minutes — the right length for the shoulder-season rotation that the friend group needed for the early-spring weeks before the longer-daylight rotation could begin. The runtime is calibrated for the natural span of the shoulder-season Friday-evening rotation’s working-utility context — the seasonal-shoulder adjustment of the rotation’s runtime is the methodological commitment to the audience’s natural-energy-arc across the year.
Built for the standing tradition. The shorter edition that the audience appreciated for its tightness. Holds up because the songs were the actual rotation, sequenced for the room they were meant for. Single play-through, no repeats. Then dinner. The single-play-through-no-repeats framing is the rotation’s structural commitment — the playlist’s runtime is calibrated to end approximately when the dinner-prep would conclude, and the rotation’s choice to honor the single-play-through working-utility framing is the methodological commitment of the shoulder-season-edition series.
