Good morning, please enjoy some other letters thrown in with your NFTs. Sam Dew’s “NTWFL” stands for “now that we found love,” a cover of the classic you’ve heard from The O’Jays, Third World and Heavy D. Dew, you see, is pulling from R&B canon to rework the genre for a beat-heavy future. After releasing a very good (and perfectly named) EP in 2015, he’s been writing songs for Rihanna, Mary J. Blige, Wale, Taylor Swift, Zayn, etc. Now he’s putting that vision to work in his own debut album, MOONLIT FOOLS. (Speaking of spicy beats, make sure to dip into the other single, “RAP SH*T“.) Sam Dew is a gift and so is this album. Unwrap slowly.
While we treat ourselves to good music, a fresh wave of Silicon Valley millionaires is thinking about how to reward themselves for their hard-earned IPOs. In the last month, 35 Bay Area companies have gone public for a combined total of $446 billion, and normally windfalls like this spur some serious spending: trips around the world, drug binges, yachts… But in this pandemic year, the spending is more cautious. Instead of airplanes, the bros are buying Teslas. In place of condos, trophy homes in Nob Hill. Where the private jet once stood there’s a tricked out sprinter van, which is a real choice after the company ships out the post-IPO Pelotons. Let’s hear it for modesty.
Actually, it turns out Tesla itself is not doing so hot after investors realized that other people can make electric cars, too. The company just lost about a third of their market value after Ford dropped the new Mustang Mach E. Important to note, though, that “Despite the recent drop, Tesla’s stock price is still up over 300 percent over the past 12 months. And its market value is more than the combined market capitalization of Toyota Motor, Volkswagen, Daimler, G.M. and Ford — companies that sell many more cars than Tesla.” Even if the Elon gang is still living it up, you’ve got to love that the mustang is here for the unicorn.
Value is volatile but a picture lasts forever, so you’d better rush on over to the hot new photo app, Dispo. Counter to all the insta filters and AR effects, this app digitizes all the functions of a disposable camera: there’s a tiny, useless viewfinder; plentiful red-eye; and a development period that drops all your photos on you next-day. I will say it’s very fun to just snap and not worry about editing or sharing. But the main appeal is the Polaroid aesthetic, which, if I’m not mistaken, is essentially just an instagram filter. If that’s not worth your $20 million, I don’t know what is.
