Solid

April 22, 2019

Listen: Poor Fake by Kelsey Lu

Kelsey Lu is a classically trained musician who has, against all odds, found a commercial home for her mashup of soul, hip-hop, classical and electro. She’s worked with Sampha, Solange and Florence Welch, and now Jamie xx and Skrillex both helped produce her new album, Blood, which dropped Friday. One standout from the record is “Poor Fake,” a song about artistic forgery that, on its own, feels like it could score an entire James Bond movie. Perhaps that’s a business decision– she just moved to LA.

Soylent goes solid

Soylent is making bars now, perhaps because people actually do like eating after all? Last week they debuted 100-calorie “mini-meals” called “Soylent squared,” and, spoiler, they are not meals, though they are square. In bars flavored like Chocolate Brownie, Citrus Berry and Salted Caramel, they’re giving the tech bro community a gateway back to chewing, which seems overall hazardous to their brand– why have a food replacement when you could have actual food? But maybe the goal has always been to disrupt the granola bar market. If so, what a splashy way in.

So… vitamins?

Everyone knows vitamins are a sham, and yet there are approximately one million hip vitamin companies targeting us all on instagram. In the latest installment of “Vox Explains Things To Me,” (otherwise known as, simply, “Vox,”) we learn that supplements are having a resurgence for the same reason that every other consumer industry is: because someone made them pretty. Of course they’re getting a boost from the wellness moment, but beware the blurry line between wellness and medicine; you are probably just as well without your daily vite.

 

A slippery slope

Soylent and vitamin companies, watch out– there’s one company coming after you both. Vite Ramen makes “nutritionally complete” instant noodles, which probably aren’t as good for you as, say, vegetables, but at least seem to be actual food. Not as beautiful as a direct-to-consumer vitamin package, unfortunately, but there’s always room for a re-brand.

Yum.

Margot