Let's have a Baby
Dijon's second masterpiece.
Every weekend, GOOD STUFF blesses you with one new album, five new songs, and a throwback track you need to hear. Listen to the official GOOD STUFF playlist on Apple Music, Spotify and Audiomack.
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Dijon — Baby
“I was talking to Lou Reed the other day, and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years,” Brian Eno told the LA Times in 1982. “Yet that was an enormously important record for so many people. I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!”
We’re just now beginning to see the true impact of Dijon’s 2021 debut Absolutely, which landed him on The Tonight Show and Obama’s playlist but mostly spread by word of mouth in a way that doesn’t really happen anymore. His collaborative kindred spirit Mk.gee has become an alt-pop critical darling of his own, and he was a driving influence on two of the year’s most talked-about (and GOOD STUFF-approved) albums (Bon Iver, Justin Bieber). Baby, Dijon’s second album, arrives as he’s transcending the “best-kept secret” status he’s held since the days of Abhi//Dijon in the early ‘10s.
Dijon and I both had our first kid around the same time. Baby, “made in a fever storm,” represents the beautiful chaos of having one. It’s overwhelming, a blurry collage of love, anxiety, ecstasy, confusion. Moments that seem abrasive and maddening on their own are necessary parts of the greater joy. There’s no logical narrative, only vivid bursts of emotion. Big questions with answers you can’t really put into words.
Parenthood has a way of turning even the freest spirits toward the conventional route. By diving deeper into his world, slamming together discordant parts until you reach harmony, Dijon is shifting the music landscape to something weirder and more fascinating. As he told NME in 2021:
If you introduce something a little different that can still be received on a global scale, just imagine what music other people will make.
5 MORE:
Dijon — “The Stranger” (ft. Sachi, Dan Reeder, Tobias Jesso Jr, John C. Reilly, Becky and the Birds)
5 NEW SONGS YOU NEED RIGHT NOW
Steve Lacy — “Nice Shoes”
“If I had a dollar for the friends I would fuck, I could buy a pair of really nice shoes.” “Let’s go before the party ends / I ain’t tryna hear another, ‘How ya been?’” Steve Lacy said his new album “feels like fully designing a new language for myself,” but his new single continues his singular talent for deadpan, memorable phrases that keep you thinking.
Babyface Ray & LUCKI — “Standing on Business”
Music to put on brand new clothes and cook up money-making schemes in the back of air-conditioned Uber Blacks to.
Elijah Aike — “SUNDAY (FREESTYLE)”
Truly immaculate sample I can’t place, just glistening underneath off-the-top bars about diner milkshakes and pilates. For some reason the video is all stretched out and there are helicopters. The UK is on fire right now.
Protect — “Redeye”
A melancholy standout from Protect’s 500 Days of Summer mixtape where he talks about missing his bruddas and being scared to perform, but also that he’s playing dead off the drank, “mmm, yeah, opossum.”
diamond* — “Gucci Søcks”
A new entrant in the Young Thug clone micro-economy with promise.
THROWBACK TRACK
I recently listened to Diamonds and Pearls, Prince’s ‘91 album that kicked off his New Power Generation era and one of his last jaunts atop the peak of pop culture. It led me to this VMAs performance that you need to see to believe, and then read Jeff Weiss’ thoughts about it from his 2016 review of the album.
Goodbye:
