Photograph: Misha Vladimirskiy/FilterlessAs one of the most unbridled voices in rap today, Danny Brown can come off as something of an attention-starved maniac to the uninitiated. But get past the gritty hood politics, blacked-out benders, and turbulent fuckfests, and Browns music reveals itself to be largely about the pained, confused loss of one’s innocence. His lyrics are as dotted with old-school street poetics as they are ridiculously turnt up hedonism, and Brown confronts the addictive, drug-fueled culture of his native Detroit upbringing with an attitude that is both relentlessly eager and utterly horrified at itself. For all his delirious energy, hes an incredibly sentimental artist, a rapper whose braggadocio-filled nights tend to end with a sad, self-loathing walk home. A genuine wildcard with a taste for heavy atmospherics (the man is a self-professed Radiohead fanboy), Brown draws inspiration from the party animals and outcasts who bear a solemn knowledge of the brutal side of life in the city, and who refuse to let that darkness interfere with their good time. -- Sam Goldner

Once you get past all the decadent, gaudy squalor of Hollywood, perhaps the most defining characteristic of Los Angeles is the myriad of gentle, swaying palm trees lining the streets, standing tall and surreal against the smog-stricken sky. L.A. is an urban tropicalia muddied by human ambition and confusion, and this sensibility has seeped into some of the most prominent and experimental artists working in the city today. Whether it’s in the chime-ridden new age of Leaving Records, the sandy jam sessions of Not Not Fun, or any of the sundry attitudes that coalesce under the local community radio standard-bearer Dublab, you can hear the palm trees coming through in the forward-thinking sounds of the L.A. underground, becoming churned from an object of paradise into something caught between imagination and reality. This mix gathers some of the most exciting voices making music in Los Angeles today, and attempts to find some common ground in their scattered, psychedelic visions.

It’s hard to describe exactly what it is that composer Daniel Lopatin pulls off under the ever-shifting guise of Oneohtrix Point Never. From his early days of programming minimal, evocative vistas of synthesizer dystopia to his newer interests in the gnarly, Kornier sides of our culture, Lopatin has managed to reinterpret his own vision time and time again without losing the essential, prickly feeling one gets from listening to his music. At the heart of all the uncanny manipulation of sound is a concept of the individual — disenchanted yet wide-eyed, obsessed with the psychedelic while hopelessly plugged into the minutiae of the day-to-day, the kind of mind that is restless even when surrounded by the dewiest, most calming of new-age tones. It’s ambient music made for headbanging, both frustrated and perverted and drenched in a nostalgia that always manages to keep its gaze toward the future. For all of the formalist structure that Lopatin imposes over his own chopped-up aesthetic, what he taps into in his work reaches beyond the realm of critique; it is a spiritual music of the self, relentlessly undergoing transformation, and attempting to discern exactly what it is.

As one of the stalwart holdovers from the early ‘90s indie boom, Drag City has released consistently lovable and knotty music for over two decades. While other labels of their kind built their names on too-cool-for-school slackerdom, Drag City have always been overachievers, putting out music that consistently redefines whatever genre or idiom they are working within. It’s country music that rejects tradition, punk music with a sense of dignity, and avant-experimentalism that feels more like hanging out with your buds than begrudgingly doing your homework. Above all, Drag City are the torchbearers for the concept that challenging, willfully elusive art should always remember to keep it fun, and this playlist is our token of gratitude for all the great sounds they’ve shared with us over the years.Note: The Drag City catalog is not available on streaming services, but can and should be purchased on iTunes, Amazon, or, better yet, your favorite record store.

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Visible Cloaks’ Reassemblage is the latest in a string of recent electronic music to investigate the ties between Eastern and Western forms of music, connecting commercial and spiritual art forms to create a mélange of plastic textures and heavenly auras. You can hear a similar—albeit more disturbing—collision in the Internet diaspora of vaporwave, or the constantly shifting configurations of Oneohtrix Point Never. But this meeting of schizophrenic digital assemblage and tranquil meditation stretches back into the ’80s as well, through the extraterrestrial world music of Jon Hassell.In widening the sonic palette of what constitutes easy listening, these artists lead the charge in finding new ways to zone out as we step further into the future, creating a liminal space where film scores, computer start-up sounds, and video game music can all mingle together in the otherworldly deep end. This playlist seeks to piece together the fractured influences of Reassemblage, and to illustrate the lush history of music that pushes the limits of what ambient means.

Although they’re often disregarded as a legitimate art form, video games have reached an astounding level of sophistication over the past few decades. We’ve come a long way since the days of simple arcade shooting simulators and digital table tennis. Video games have become one of the defining mediums of our time, offering deep interactive experiences and aesthetic invention not found in other formats.Music has always played a central role in video games, serving as both the sonic architecture upon which worlds are built and the emotional anchor players can connect to, as they explore new environments full of pixelated, inhuman shapes. Video game music is a unique art, beholden to the practical requirement of creating an endlessly looping soundtrack, while also tasked with building themes that slip into the mind subconsciously, returning and restating themselves with all the cohesiveness of a Sondheim musical. It’s background music created for a world completely unlike our own, and that’s why much of it sounds so out of place when heard outside of the game.Some truly remarkable music has emerged from the pantheon of video game producers, peculiar and moving pieces from the likes of Nobuo Uematsu, David Wise, Koji Kondo, Yasunori Mitsuda, Grant Kirkhope, Gustavo Santaolalla, and Disasterpeace to name but a few. This playlist highlights some of the finest moments in the genre, where the composer reaches past the lens of nostalgia and into territory that connects emotionally—even if you’ve never picked up a controller.

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!The effects the Internet has had on human civilization can’t be understated. You can see it in our industries, our social behavior, and our very psychological health. The Internet is an invasive presence in our society, pushing us toward the future whether we’re ready for it or not. It’s thanks to the Internet that I have a job, yet it’s also thanks to the Internet that I become intensely anxious about what dumb status I’m going to post on Facebook. Our entire culture has shifted to accommodate the presence of this connecting force that nonetheless seems to isolate us, and now it’s impossible to imagine a reality where we turn back from this road we’re on.Music has reflected these changes in splendid detail, giving us ample reason to be excited about living in such strange times. The possibility of directly reaching listeners all around the planet has paved the way for bizarre and exciting new formats to emerge, such as the hyper-saccharine pop madness of the PC Music collective, or the Chicago street phenomenon footwork, which has already sprouted fans and disciples as far away as Japan. If anything, it’s overwhelming how much incredible music we now have access to thanks to the Internet, the old guards of the industry cast away to make room for new ideas and artists capable of broadcasting to the masses from the comfort of their bedrooms.The music of the Internet era has defined itself through diversity, and there are common, shared ideas that emerge from the ethos of digital art. Much of our recent experimental music finds inspiration in the uncomfortable merging of opposing forms—artists like Oneohtrix Point Never and QT spin fantastic new shapes through the juxtaposition of uncanny sound manipulations and inescapably alluring Top 40 mechanics. A DIY mentality also pulses through a lot of music today, as with the gloriously simple and infectious Internet rap of Lil Yachty, or the barebones, anything-goes mania of DJ Paypal. But to paint the Internet as an entirely positive force would be closing your eyes to its strangely imprisoning nature, a dynamic deeply explored in the schizophrenic rap of Death Grips and the pained electronic distortion of Holly Herndon and Arca.All of the artists on this playlist share a common inspiration: picking apart the nature of society’s new favorite medium and the effects it has on our perceptions, memories, and experiences we subject ourselves to, given endless customization options. The old notion of genres has given way to an endless sea of individuality, where the mainstream has become underground and the underground has gone mainstream. The future is here, and it’s even more horrifying and beautiful than we ever could have imagined. Hit play to take a tour of the sounds emitted from our hyperreal, constantly connected world.

This post is part of our program, The Story of Kendrick, an in-depth, 10-part look at the life and music of Kendrick Lamar. Sound cool and want to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out and share on Facebook, Twitter, or with this link. Your friends will thank you.Shakespeare once famously declared that brevity is the soul of wit, but simplicity has been the last thing on Kendrick Lamar’s mind for the majority of his career. His two previous albums, 2012’s ghetto uprising saga good kid, M.A.A.D. city and 2015’s political prog-rap opus To Pimp a Butterfly were sprawling, intricately detailed patchworks, suffused with symbolism and strung together with the kind of recurring characters and monologuing one would expect from the Bard himself. But DAMN. is a different story. Having already claimed the throne as one of (if not the) most talented rappers in the history of the game, DAMN. is the sound of a young artist at the peak of his abilities delivering his music straight, no chaser. Not to say that DAMN. isn’t as multilayered and critical as anything else K.Dot’s put his name on, but now more than ever it feels like Lamar’s focus is entirely on the songs rather than the cohesive effect of the project. Each song on DAMN. feels as if it is coming from a different universe, be it the ‘90s slow ride of “HUMBLE.” or the futurist R&B of “LOVE.” or the absolutely bipolar “XXX.,” which travels between Metro Boomin minimalism, Public Enemy fury, and smooth boom-bap consciousness in the span of four minutes. Though Lamar’s influences are vast and easily traceable (the bassy Afrofuturism of Flying Lotus, the beat-poetry prophecies of the Last Poets, the self-aware party-rap of OutKast), on DAMN. he synthesizes them effortlessly, letting his own musical voice shine through more clearly than ever before.All of which makes DAMN. an incredibly fun, engaging listen, and adds another notch to Lamar’s already impressive catalog. With small-time songwriters emerging from the woodworks on major tracks (Zacari?) and mind-boggling appearances from big-name rock stars (U2!?), DAMN. is packed to capacity with ideas and influences and collaborators—so take a listen to this playlist and start unpacking the latest from one of our generation’s greatest.