New Music Friday: 2/28/25

Okay, so that whole "back to a regular schedule" thing I said on Saturday turned out to be a lot of wishful thinking. This clearly turned out to be another week that was bad for posting, but I promise, everything's okay here at Jefitoblog HQ — just a sudden whirlwind of numerous major changes that have upturned my carefully established routine. There will be more to come, and there are almost certainly going to be weeks in the near future that will force me back into radio silence, but I'm reasonably certain that next week will be better for posting. And I'm raring to go, too — I've got new editions of Blindspotting, Major Letdowns, the One After the One-Hit Wonder, and the SPIN retrospective lined up.

One last thing before I get going for real: I've started up a Discord server as a brand new benefit for paying subscribers. If you're already part of that elite crowd, you should have gotten your invitation several days ago; if not, let me know and I'll get you settled. If you haven't taken the leap into paid status yet, maybe this will be the nudge it takes to convince you. I hope so, and not just because it's good for my bank account — I think we've built a nice community here, and I feel like the Discord is a good way to expand and build on it.

Now that all that's out of the way...

Here are the rules: I listen to all 100 tracks of Spotify's New Music Friday playlist, except for anything that rhymes the n-word with itself more than three times, any screamo or screamo-adjacent stuff, any CCM that reveals its true intentions in time for me to hit the skip button, and any egregiously corny modern country music, typically performed by a dude with two first names. Having sifted through this week's playlist, here's what I actively enjoyed:

"Flood," Little Simz featuring Obongjayar and Moonchild Sanelly
Little Simz is new to me, but that's just ignorance on my part: She released her debut LP, A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons, ten years ago, and has been racking up awards ever since. "Flood" is the leadoff single from her upcoming Lotus LP, and it's an intoxicating blend of tribal drums and pleasantly surprising sonic touches, topped off with Simz' husky vocals. Most excellent.