BUYFI SELECTS_001 (8/11/25)

Good morning, and a happy mondaze to you and yours.

Let me begin by saying thanks, for real. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but there's a lot going on on the internet–approximately nine thousand entities are presently engaged in a brutal and unyielding campaign to monopolize and commodify your attention. As one of those entities, I mean it when I say this–thank you.

A continuation of this line of thinking inspired BUYFI SELECTS, and has subsequently brought me to your inbox on this Monday morning in August. By way of weekly recommendation roundups, my goal is to arm you against the algos with music, books, and general items of intrigue–more specifically, cool stuff that might not be in your algorithm.

BUYFI SELECTS hits every Monday for premium subscribers.

Free subscribers- consider giving BUYFI SELECTS a whirl and enjoy 7 days free, or hang tight for your monthly rec roundup.

Quick BUYFI update: I started livestreaming last week. I worked on music, chatted, and connected with folks in California, North London, and a remote town at the base of the German alps, live. It was 10,000X cooler than making vertical slop for the slot machines and it immediately proved to be a more effective way to grow the project. I'm extremely pumped about this, so I'm going to do a lot more of it.

BUYFI BROADCAST IS A SONGWRITING, PRODUCTION, STUDIO HANG LIVESTREAM THAT HAPPENS EVERY WEDNESDAY.

Subscribe on Youtube, turn on notifications, come hang.

8/13/25, AT 6PM CST.

Thanks for stepping outside your algo, thanks for being here. Anyway,

BUYFI SELECTS_001

AUGUST 11 2025 SELECTIONS

1.

Did you ever own a Wu-Tang Clan t-shirt from Hot Topic? I never did–for whatever reason, I came to Wu-Tang late. A Tribe Called Quest too. It was 2021, I was spending my days either locked in a windowless garage on the crest of a large sand dune, working on the skillset that would ultimately become this project, or, I was at Cutino Skatepark in Seaside, CA.

This is one of those skateparks that is evidence of California doing a very good job at making skateparks. It’s tiny but it’s perfect, and I spent a lot of covid skating its cement mini ramp. I did the best skating of my life at that park by a substantial margin, and I’ll always feel a bit like, I don’t know, it was a friend through a strange and confusing life season. I learned a lot of tricks I could never figure out when I was younger because I had yet to do Yoga with Adriene and didn’t really understand balance. All this rolling to and fro was soundtracked–I went deep into the AirPods to try to understand some important records I’d missed. I began my journey toward understanding what this Wu-Tang Clan was really all about.

Now, I like Wu-Tang a lot.

I also like A$AP Ferg. I always enjoyed mixing Shabba into dj sets 12 years ago.

I also like watching globalism devour American popular music–few things get me going more than a chart topper that isn’t in English.

All this to say, RZA has been producing tracks, with Ferg and Awich providing vocals. Although RZA is the only technical Wu-Tang tether, A$AP Ferg, by way of Harlem alongside ASAP Mob, a similar collective, and Awich, repping Okinawa with Yentown (see: "globalism devours"), I guess, to me, this feels like a Wu-Tang offering in spirit. Is this sacrilege? I don’t care, it feels special that these folks are working together.

We’re often, understandably, focused on the many negative aspects of our capitalist-globalist-cluster-fuck-cultural-melange. So focused on the loneliness of it all that we miss those moments of creative connectivity that would not be possible in relatively recent iterations of our technological infrastructure. This music, to me, sounds like the world. Despite the fact that the world is jam-packed with nimrods screaming about bullshit, there will always be car horns, and yeah, right now we’re in a car crash, but the music on the stereo sounds like the future, and maybe if we listen and think, the airbag will work? Am I losing it? Are you?

Awich feat. FERG - Butcher Shop (Prod. RZA)

SPOTIFY / APPLE / MUSIC VIDEO

2.

“If there is to be no ceiling on the amount of money a man can take out of our economy, then concomitantly there can be no firm foundation below which a human being cannot sink.”

Written by Kurt Vonnegut in a letter to friend Don Matchan on April 27, 1947.

I recently grabbed a collection of Vonnegut’s letters, aptly titled “Letters,” and hardbound in a cover displaying the infinite and enduring drip of what I might coin “intellectual duster steeze." I’m enjoying this trip through the personal, penned by my favorite author, and in the first few letters I’m reminded of why his voice booms so loud in my brain. Big "this rings true today" energy.

I will write about Vonnegut here frequently, possibly at length, but for now I’ll leave you with this- I’ve never encountered creative work of any kind more capable of distilling the beautiful and horrible absurdity of life as a human.

Vonnegut has served as my only holy scribe while attempting to process global drift from pandemic pandemonium to the more personally apocalyptic rattling of my family tree. If you have, somehow, never encountered Vonnegut’s writing, or worse, if you are thinking “Really? Shouldn’t I be reading non-fiction-self-help-adjacent-science-adjacent-podcast-adjacent books? Science fiction at a time like this?”, then I can’t stress this enough–start today.

I purchased my copy of “Letters” from Perpetual Books in Wicker Park, Chicago, USA. There’s a fair chance you’ve already got at least one Vonnegut on your shelves- start there. If you don’t, grab one from an indie bookseller near you, or grab one by way of the BUYFI BOOKLIST (buy a book, I get a small cut, a cool bookstore somewhere keeps the lights on).

3.

I have great news for fans of "music," any kind, really. Blake Mills and Pino Palladino have an album coming out this month. If those names don't resonate with you, boyyyy are you in for a treat.

Their last full length collaboration, 2021's immaculate Notes With Attachments, is near and dear to my heart–not only is it a great album, it's one of 5-7 great albums that helped me, George, Sean, Carlos, and Andrew (aka "the Caracara boyz") survive the most harrowing drive of our shared tour lives. I'll write more about this particular mad highway dash, but for now I'll keep it in recommendation terms:

If you insist on driving from Boise to Minneapolis by way of Montana and North Dakota in whiteout conditions, Blake Mills and Pino Palladino will help you live to write about it in a newsletter.

They've shared two tracks so far, and, since I'm the king of the castle here, I'm sharing both.

Pino Palladino and Blake Mills - "Taka" and "Contour"

SPOTIFY / APPLE / WATCH THIS VIDEO I'M SERIOUS

4.

As soon as the sample hits, you'll get it, I promise. I'm just so glad this exists. Shoutout to anyone who saw my old band open for this man in 2011.