We're living in a strange, frightening, beautiful (thank you, art) and unexplainable moment in which "PEACE JAZZ NOW," "NEW SHAPES" and "POWER DANCE" are perfectly reasonable items for your list of demands, in which this FOUR TET tweet may be the most cogent and useful response to whatever you're feeling right now (h/t @RASPBERRYJONES for all Four Tet-related content), and in which FRANK OCEAN's claim that "Onstage one in-ear is my mic feed and the other one is a TIM FERRISS podcast" is plausible to the point that there's no reason to question it. WILLIAM PATRICK CORGAN saw someone transform into non-human form? Sure. OK. Does anyone really need to ask why droves of people are suddenly listening to SUN RA? A new CHRISTIAN SCOTT ATUNDE ADJUAH album, his third of 2017, quietly slipped out last week ("quietly" = I missed it) and all of this is my way of saying you might want to listen to that. Right now. I know you want "protest music," some of you. I know you want "rock." I know you want the '90s to happen again. But 2017, musically speaking, is better than all of that, a golden year in a golden age of art and I can hardly remember a time when art has felt more necessary and this is an astonishing album by way of trumpets, trap music and NEW ORLEANS and, I don't know, just listen to it because peace jazz now. (P.S. It's totally protest music, too)… I'm pretty sure that competing injustices don't "cancel each other out" and I'm also pretty sure that's not what VULTURE's FRANK GUAN is literally suggesting when he uses that phrase in his nuanced look at CAROLINE's controversial (read: kind of gross) signing of XXXTENTACION, in which he acknowledges X's talent and lays out pretty much the only case that can be made for him at this point: that he's "very good at making it very clear who he is, and in that sense — in the sense that we’re forced to talk about him in some way or another — he’s already ahead of the game"… 2017-relevant playlist: women singing the blues… RIP AL HURRICANE… Best wishes to REGGIE "COMBAT JACK" OSSÉ.