Today’s song rec: “Last Minute” x Kitty
I didn’t have much of a fun anecdote for this one when I first wrote it about a week ago, but now I feel like I have a little more to add. First, here are some music discovery tips for Spotify users:
My favorite method: Type in random words into the search bar and filter by playlist. You’ll see how random people interpret those terms via music curation. A basic one is something like “fading sunsets,” but you could get pretty niche with terms like, “hospitalcore” or “mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.”
On desktop, find an artist you like (this works better with smaller or more niche artists) and scroll all the way down just before you hit the artist bio.
There’s a section called “Discovered on” where you can see other users’ playlists that feature the artist’s songs, and you can rummage through those to find new music. Spotify very often boosts its own native playlists before user playlists, but just keep an eye out for the chaotically named ones made by randos. Those are fun.
This is all to say that I found “Last Minute” by Kitty a few weeks ago on a playlist called “serving cunt💦😷💞.” For the life of me, I can’t find what rabbit hole actually led me there, but I know definitively that it was through method #2.
In any case, this song changed my life. I have no idea if Kitty is actually a big name, but apparently, she has 3-4 different active musical projects, each sounding completely distinct from the other. I think this ultimately means she is an actual musical genius.
Back in 2012, Jon Caramanica wrote an extremely 2012 NYT Critic’s Notebook mentioning Kitty (at the time, Kitty Pryde) as among the best within a cohort of chronically online scene queen female rappers. Now, as a solo musician, she’s much more a hyperpop princess.
“Last Minute” is one of the most present, magnetic, potent and addicting songs I’ve heard in a long time. It’s actual synthpop crack, or maybe a potion that makes your whole brain evaporate into celestial lust.
“She doesn’t rap because it’s funny or novel, but rather because it’s simply the best and most comfortable tool available to her,” Caramanica wrote 11 years ago. “The results so far, while almost no one has been watching, have the intimacy and comfort of private recordings. They transfix.”
She sounds infinitely more refined today, but has held on tight to a level of authenticity despite her solo work being largely glossy and synthetic. It still carries the intimacy of being let into someone’s private, chaotic, cyclonic thoughts. That’s all I can hope for from my own craft too — which is not so much writing as it is oversharing to nobody and everybody all at once, all the time.
It’s funny, when I started writing this blurb I didn’t have much to say about the lyrical contents of this song. It just sounded perfect without being discernably relatable to me. A mere week later, I am a different person! I recognize the passing sugary psychosis of manic infatuation.
This song accompanied me in a floaty state of no thoughts, just crushin’ for the last month, and, I don’t know about you, but for me and Kitty, our states of falling (or whatever) are absolute natural disasters with simply no poise and pure chaos. I was super positive and he was stupid dope, Kitty. Like her, I said a lot — and I'm probably not terrible for it — but boy howdy, did I say a lot.
For today, at least, I’ll keep the rest of this story for my non-existent diary. But I hope that you are in a sugary psychosis of manic infatuation, reader, because it’s fun and because it makes this song 100 times better. I love you all, xoxo.
Photo by Bryan McKay for that NYT Critic’s Notebook. Don’t come for me NYT.