Sideshow's constant chaos

2026's first great album.

Every week, GOOD STUFF blesses you with one new album, five new songs, and a throwback track you need to hear.

JUST UPDATED: Listen to the official GOOD STUFF playlist on Apple Music, Spotify and Audiomack.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK

Sideshow — TIGRAY FUNK

“A bad encounter or a simplе exchange would be enough to leave your whole life changed”

“$4,000 trousers just to stuff my pole in 'em”

In Sideshow’s world, it’s eat or be eaten. Throughout his sprawling new album, a story is told in pieces about how the animal kingdom separated itself into predators and prey. Good and evil, beauty and ugliness exist in equal force. Life’s as violent as you make it.

Born in Ethiopia, raised in DC and Maryland, and based in LA for most of his music career, Sideshow balances war in his native Tigray with life as a Black American. Addiction is a constant. Happiness is found either at the bottom of a cup, or shopping in Paris or Tokyo. His lyrics are often bleak (“Where I'm from, a lot of drugs, I sold my auntie that/ Regret that shit every day, I want my auntie back”) and brutally honest (“I don’t trust white people”).

TIGRAY FUNK is a 32-track beast. Some have pointed out it’s possibly historic nature as the first 4-disc rap album. But at 63 minutes it only barely fails the U-God Test (anything longer than Golden Arms Redemption is too long). It plays as half that, thanks to a wide spectrum of eccentric beats from names like Alexander Spit, Tony Seltzer, and Popstar Benny that keep you guessing and never overstay their welcome.

After years as one of rap’s best-kept secrets, Sideshow gives his blunt stories the scale they deserve.

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5 NEW SONGS YOU NEED RIGHT NOW

Effie — “Red Horse”

For the first time in 60 years, we have entered Year of the Fire Horse. An intense, transformative and possibly cursed era. Effie and producer kimj’s collaborative work can read as South Korea’s answer to 2Hollis and a rejection of K-Pop’s sterile commercialism, and they harness this energy for “Red Horse,” which shapeshifts through hyperpop and electro styles as monkey shrieks ring out.

Nori & Kori — “i_aint_fly (G6)”

“Like a G6” has become a shorthand for the pre-Instagram early ‘10s, a pop culture that seemed extremely dumb at the time but now feels like the last helicopter out of Saigon for reckless fun before we melded our identities with our feeds. The thing about those synths and lyrics about getting “slizzered” is that they activate a part of the brain we don’t indulge enough now, the one that wants to rip Bombay shots and feel the collective warmth of a room full of drunk idiots. Those synths are behind UK rapper Nori’s rise as the “Grime Scene Saviour,” but he’s also got a British “Gummo” too.

Ms Ray & Nourished By Time — “Miss You”

Fresh off 2025’s sixth-best album, Nourished By Time joins London singer Ms Ray for a good old fashioned nostalgic duet.

Boofinese — “Crowd/Posse”

New day, new ØWAY.

Sade Olutola — “2099”

For some reason, this song was blowing up on Tumblr in 2026, but it’s finally out officially. Sade Olutola slots into the UK’s underground-adjacent alternative pop scene alongside artists like dexter in the newsagent, Unflirt, and Natanya.

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THROWBACK TRACK

The biggest problem with new music is the lack of lore.

I’ve been running through Joni Mitchell’s discography over the last few weeks. I always liked her more in theory than practice, but I’m now a convert and a big reason why is her 1976 folk-jazz opus Hejira. Particularly closer “Refuge of the Roads,” a stunning masterpiece that feels like it makes the world make a little more sense. Then, during an obligatory post-listen Wikipedia hit, I read this:

"Refuge of the Roads" was written about a three-day visit that Mitchell had made to the controversial Buddhist meditation master Chögyam Trungpa in Colorado on her way back to Los Angeles. According to Mitchell, it was during this visit in early 1976 that Trungpa cured her of her cocaine addiction. She described herself as subsequently falling into an "awakened" state for three days, characterized by "no sense of self, no self-consciousness; my mind was back in Eden, the mind before the Fall. It was simple-minded, blessedly simple-minded."

This was amidst three cross-country road trips where she wore a red wig, told people her name was "Charlene Latimer" or "Joan Black,” and drove without a drivers license. You just don’t get lore like this anymore.

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Goodbye: