The Roundups

Music

New Releases:

• Matt Proxy —— “teenage genius 3”

• Yuke —- Cheetah World 3

• B0YG1RL —— “On The Radar Freestyle”

• Eartheater —— Heavenly Body: If I’m The Bottle You’re The Message

• jackzebra —— “Blessed”

• Molly Santana + Chy Cartier —— “Walk”

Artworld

• Jill Miller’s HARD RESET: An Eco-Humiliation Ritual at Telematic Media Arts in San Francisco through August 22

• The Thorn Stigmata and The Faded Branch of The Crown at Pangée in Montreal through August 22nd

• Keith Mayeron’s Peanuts Skating Under the Galaxies at the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado through July 30

• Esteban Jefferson + Wiki’s Ancient History at Market Gallery in New York through July 16th

• 252 Broome St. at Triest in New York through July 18th

• Next week: Campus’s Terror Campaign (group show) at O-Town House Gallery in Los Angeles, CA through July 26th

Additionally:

• Artist (@taylirxl) made a horse out of barbed wire as a memorial for his horse that died from cancer

• World Stress Test by @damn__true presents Earth as a stretched image under constant tension

Fashion

• Brands begin initial preparation gearing up for New York Fashion week

• Vivienne Westwood launches new FW26 campaign, captured by Jurgen Teller

• Brandon Tan has been appointed as GQ’s Global Fashion Director

• Bottega Veneta appoints LVMH Fragrance Executive Romain Spitzer As CEO

• Sciparelli announces first store ever, set to open in California

Products

• Double cup cowboy boots by Lourdes NYC

• Experimental reversed heels by Yichun Liu

• Calfskin geometry set by Chanel

• Charred Yakisugi speakers by Studio Amber

• New collection by Vincent Boily-Chatelain

This Week’s Headlines

There is a new “Bling Ring” targeting underground rappers

In a Bling Ring-esque plot, both Lucki and Bleood were robbed at their Los Angeles homes this week. Bleood was reportedly targeted earlier in the week by three armed men who stole roughly $200,000 worth of items, including clothing, electronics, and jewelry, while he was recording in his home studio. Lucki was not home when burglars broke in and ransacked his residence, making off with an estimated $500,000 worth of personal belongings. No arrests have been made, and suspects in both robberies remain unidentified.

The baby is Messi bathing in this photo 19 years ago will be facing him in the World Cup Finals

Nearly 19 years after a UNICEF fundraising photoshoot in which a 20-year-old Lionel Messi bathed a five-month-old Lamine Yamal, the two are set to face each other in the World Cup final. Largely unknown until Yamal’s father shared them in 2024, the photos have resurfaced amid Yamal’s meteoric rise. It’s a juxtaposition so surreal that many online initially assumed the photos were AI-generated. (Photo by Joan Monfort.)

PinkPantheress is making her acting debut directed by the guys who made Everything Everywhere All at Once

PinkPantheress will make her acting debut in a new secret film directed by The Daniels, the Oscar-winning duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, best known for Everything Everywhere All at Once. Details remain tightly under wraps, with only a November 2027 theatrical release confirmed.

Charlie Kirk statue is coming to Times Square

Handcrafted by Italian sculptor Sergio Furnari, a statue of Charlie Kirk is set to be unveiled in Times Square on September 10, exactly one year to the minute after his assassination. Furnari has spent the past year creating the monument, insisting it be installed in Times Square, which he describes as “the center of the universe.” According to the project’s GoFundMe, he reportedly sold his apartment to help finance the sculpture.

NASA is recruiting people to simulate living on Mars for year

NASA is recruiting volunteers for a yearlong simulated space mission designed to study how humans adapt to life beyond Earth. Beginning in August 2027 at a Houston Space Center facility, participants will live inside a mock lunar and Martian habitat, complete with simulated spacewalks and rover operations, and navigate challenges like using a non-flushable toilet.

University of Silicon Valley is giving applicants scholarship money for their video game achievements

Gamers can receive up to $15,000 a year in scholarships at the University of Silicon Valley, based on their specific achievements in certain games. Eligible titles include Elden Ring, RuneScape, Dark Souls, Hades, Final Fantasy XIV, Cuphead, World of Warcraft, Destiny 2, Lost Ark, and Genshin Impact, among others.

Headline curation and words by Mikail Haroon (@mvkail)

Classifieds

Exciting opportunities, employment and otherwise

424 — Full Time Sales Associate / Store Manager (Los Angeles, CA)

Lead sales, clienteling, store operations, inventory, and visual merchandising at 424’s Los Angeles flagship. Looking for 3+ years of luxury or contemporary retail experience, strong clienteling skills, and a sharp understanding of the streetwear landscape. Full-time, weekends required.

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FADER Label — A&R Coordinator (Brooklyn, NY)

Entry-level A&R Coordinator position to support talent discovery, artist development, and project coordination. The role works closely with the GM of FADER Music Group to identify emerging artists and help guide releases from signing through launch.

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Print Center New York — Curatorial Associate (New York, NY)

Part-time curatorial role supporting exhibitions, publications, and public programming at Print Center New York. Responsibilities include developing exhibitions, conducting research, editing written materials, and working with artists and collaborators. Ideal candidate has curatorial experience, strong writing skills, and knowledge of contemporary art.
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Everything you wear signals something about you, and few signals are as loud as artist merch.

For fanbases like Salem’s and Drain Gang’s, fluency in the merch canon can be a mark of fandom legitimacy. It is hard to reliably assess the depth of someone’s interaction with something as immaterial as music, but it is easy to prove the shallowness of their merch knowledge.

The use of a garment to signal affiliation stretches back centuries: as early as the fifth century AD, chariot racing fans in Constantinople used certain colors to announce their ideological loyalties. The modern genre of artist merch was born in the mid-twentieth century as a DIY movement among doting teenage fans of Elvis, Frank Sinatra, and others.

Today, the secondary market for artist merchandise has become a massive economy of cultural artifacts and a physical archive of music culture.

Every piece has explicit historical properties, (when it was made, and for who), artistic ones (its design), and social ones (what the first two say about the wearer).

We’ve selected some of our favorite merchandise from the past few decades. This list oscillates between iconic anchors of merchandise culture, and niche favorites. The best pieces are often both.

Subscribe to Welcome Magazine for more gold standard curation.

Crystal Castles “Doe Deer” tee (2010)

Crystal Castles aren’t a stranger to cult-status merchandise. This piece was released promotionally for the single of the same name, dropping just before their sophomore album Crystal Castles (II). The rollout is remembered for carrying the band from blog-era fame to widespread recognition, and the “Doe Deer” tee continues to sell for hundreds of dollars on Grailed.

Nirvana “Heart Shaped Box” tee (1993)

Joe Lamonica (the co-founder of vintage clothing convention Faded) has called this shirt “the most culturally significant vintage shirt in the community.” Since releasing in 1993, the shirt has seen several high-profile wears and continues to fetch thousands on the secondary market.

Skim Milk x George Clanton “A Precious Moment With George Clanton” tee (2023)

Released to coincide with Clanton’s sophomore album Ooh Rap I Ya, Los Angeles-based brand Skim Milk riff on storybook aesthetics for this piece, consistent with their self-proclaimed ability to “blur the lines of innovation and sarcasm.”

Playboi Carti “Narcissist” tour slogan tees (2021)

The tour merchandise for Carti’s Narcissist tour leaned further into his newfound dark, minimalist aesthetic. The “Vamp,” “Rockstar Made,” and “Stop Breathing” slogans became fan favorites for their loud visual presence that allows these shirts to double as a statement tee.

Deftones “Back to School” tour hoodie (2001)

This piece dates back to 2001’s “Back to School” tour, as part of the White Pony promotional cycle. By his own account, Chino Moreno wrote “Back to School (Mini Maggit)” in under an hour after label Maverick Records demanded a hit. The tour that followed is best remembered for its stacked lineups, supported by Incubus in the U.S., and a then-rising Linkin Park in Europe.

Aphex Twin “Come to Daddy” tee (1997)

Unconventionally, this tee wasn’t retail merch at all. With graphics from Chris Cunningham’s now-iconic music video for the song, this tee and a long-sleeve version were distributed to field reps and record stores to hype the single’s release. The latter version was reportedly sold by Ferm Gallery last year for $7000, which would be the highest recorded price for Aphex Twin merchandise.

Clairo “Puppy” hoodie (2021)

While Clairo is known for thoughtful merch design, this piece has become among the most sought after by fans since being worn by soft-boy-heavyweight Paul Mescal. The hoodie rereleased in 2023 after sustained interest in a restock, and a new iteration has just dropped for Sling’s fifth anniversary.

The Hellp “Riviera” baseball cap

This hat is a second entry from German artist @84cdx. His typographic design fashions the Dodgers logo into the refrain from “Here I Am,” the third single from The Hellp’s third studio album Riviera. The hat’s motif is consistent with The Hellp’s subversion of modern Americana and its iconography.

Radiohead “Pablo Honey” tour tee (1994)

Given that Pablo Honey launched Radiohead into stardom, tour merch from the era has become a niche grail among collectors for representing their pre-Creep era. Original pieces are especially scarce, as venue capacities for this tour held as few as 300 people.

Todd Edwards “Jesus Loves UK Garage” tee

Having already been established as a pioneer of UK garage, Todd “The God” Edwards famously wore this graphic t-shirt during his first (and much-anticipated) UK gig. A devout Christian, Edwards is famed for weaving “subliminal” messages of faith and subtle gospel samples throughout his music. The shirt is still available via his Defected label.

Kanye West Graduation tee (2019)

Promotional apparel for Kanye West’s Graduation was designed in collaboration with Takashi Murakami, who famously also did the album’s cover. The print is a reference to the music video for opening track “Good Morning.” In many ways, it was Kanye’s opening entry in a series of artist-driven merch collaborations that would follow, such as promotional material for Yeezus, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, The Life of Pablo and Ye amongst others.

Bladee “Never” tee (2015)

A grail for many in the fandom, the “Never” tee was sold on the Shield Gang Bigcartel site early in Bladee’s music career, and arrived in a special foil bag signed by Thaiboy Digital himself. The t-shirt is also known for featuring heavily in the visualiser for Bladee’s “18”. There are only a handful listed on the secondary market, all of which ask upwards of $1000.

1oneam London tour merch collection (2026)

The merch capsule for 1oneam’s London shows by @84cdx and @kyle.dec is a visible departure from his previous merch, much of which plays on darker, metal-adjacent aesthetics. Shirts and longsleeves from the collection marry pastel colors with airbrush textures for a dreamlike feel.

SALEM collegiate merch collection (2020s)

SALEM’s merchandise—and most iconically the “SALEM” collegiate logo hoodies and t-shirts—are totemic symbols of the witch house era. Despite being released within a short span of one another, rarity and value of collegiate logo pieces vary hugely. The graphic has come to represent the cryptic and internet-native position of the band.

Playboi Carti “Black Cat” hoodie (2020)

By mid-2020, Carti fans were starved for a follow up to Die Lit; sporadic promotions and teasers had led to a culture of obsessive anticipation in the fanbase. The “Black Cat” hoodie is an archetypal relic of this period, where gothic aesthetics laid the groundwork for the release of Whole Lotta Red just some months later.

Sahbabii “Resurrection” tour longsleeve (2025)

Chicago-based designer Cris Garcia and artist Nuclear Gladiator (known also for Che’s Rest in Bass cover art) teamed up to engineer Sahbabii’s airbrush-inspired merch last year. While many pieces on this list harken back to the aesthetic language of vintage rock-and-roll, fewer nail period-accurate technicalities like fabric fading or the perfect pre-cracked print. While unreleased, a version of this graphic was used for Sahbabii’s merch on Don Toliver’s OCTANE tour.

Bjork “Homogenic” tee (1997)

Bjork’s promotional run of t-shirts for 1997’s Homogenic is a hallmark of avant-garde fan culture. Craig Hewitt of Me Company had developed logo assets for 1993’s Debut and 1995’s Post, before returning to cook up the critically revered Homogenic logo. If anything, the shirt has only increased in popularity, crossing into streetwear cultures and directly inspiring Ian Connor’s Sickö.

Kanye West “Yeezus” merch collection (2013)

The now-iconic Yeezus tour merchandise was a collaborative effort spearheaded by Kanye’s creative agency, DONDA. The rock-and-roll inspired collection was primarily designed by California-based artist Wes Lang, with creative direction input from Virgil Abloh and Jerry Lorenzo. As such, the Yeezus merch run is credited with attuning tour merchandise with serious, legitimate fashion. Its reverberations are felt in both artist merchandising and a broader high-brow fashion landscape.

Odd Future “Free Sosa” tee (2013)

The Odd Future merch universe is vast. There exceed two hundred merch items spanning various mediums and degrees of rarity. The 1-of-1 “Free Sosa” shirt sits on the more inside-joke end of the canon; it follows tens of “Free Earl” shirts distributed during Earl Sweatshirt’s time in Samoa.

My Bloody Valentine “Loveless” tour tee (1991)

Shoegaze band My Bloody Valentine is most well-known for merch featuring album art alone, including the sought-after Supreme collaboration in 2020. However, less is known about this swirl-pattern tee from their 1991 tour of the album in the UK and Europe. It was most recently sold on Grailed for more than $500.

Snow Strippers x Online Ceramics “Anime Girl” tee (2024)

The collaboration between Online Ceramics and Snow strippers, released during their 2024 North American tour and stocked in Dover Street Market in New York and LA, is a natural marriage of two cult followings. The graphic was designed by artist Sua Yoo, who was also responsible for the album art for Death Grips’ The Money Store.

Radiohead “The Bends” jersey (1995)

Released in 1995 in a promotional lead-up to The Bends, the jersey reflects a ‘90s Britain in which football shirts had crossed over from the pub or stadium to everyday dress. Despite Radiohead’s position opposite the era’s Britpop swagger, they weren’t immune to the aesthetics of the era. Thom Yorke was known to wear vintage jerseys similar to this one.

Iglooghost “Tidal Memory Exo” tee (2024)

Alongside his music, Iglooghost has long designed his own cast of extraterrestrial characters to accompany his elaborate world-building. The release of Tidal Memory Exo saw these characters take a dark, biomorphic turn to mirror the album’s murky world. Merch followed to showcase the character’s expanded mythology.

Isabella Lovestory x Farmer’s Daughter thong (2026)

Lovestory’s pop sensibility and unapologetic femininity make this a logical progression in her promotional apparel. Farmer’s Daughter—the newest venture by Online Ceramics’ Alix Ross—have carved out a niche doing small-batch fashion for underground music clientele. The thong was produced for Primavera Sound 2026 and is still available online.

Bladee “Eversince” polo (2016)

Released in 2016 to accompany Bladee’s debut studio album, the Eversince polo tee is a well-loved staple among drainers. The polo silhouette is a nod to the forward-thinking (and often preppy) aesthetic sensibilities of GTBSG at the time. Also issued in a white colorway, the piece is one of the most recognizable artifacts of Drain culture.

Aphex Twin “Analord” tee (2005)

Aphex Twin’s “Analord” tee is one of several cult-status promotional items released during his long-standing career. The piece was dropped in tandem with eleven 12” vinyls of the same name, and issued under the alias “AFX.” As with most of his promotional material, the t-shirt features Aphex Twin’s iconic logo designed by Paul Nicholson in 1991.

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Sukeban is a Japanese female wrestling league that recreates (in dramatized fashion) the street conflicts of all-girl ‘Sukeban’ criminal collectives in 70s Japan. These ‘delinquent girls’ gangs were defined by their loud taste and penchant for shoplifting, and had strict hierarchies (complete corporeal punishment systems for those who failed to adhere to them), plentiful stimulants, and a violent edge.

Officially, nothing illegal happens at Sukeban events, which are hosted across the world, and often staged during cultural happenings like Art Basel and Anime Expo. Their roster of fighters are broken up into competing ‘gangs’ with distinct names and aesthetic codes, which loosely reflect styles of the era 70s groups they reference.

Sukeban might be the most creative directed pro wrestling league in existence. It was only founded in 2023, and its entire approach if internet native. Make-up, outfits, and the rappers and DJs that make frequent forays into the ring all reflect an overarching creative strategy.

At its heart is the palpable desire to bring the enchanting simplicity of anime into real life. On the promotion’s homepage, each gang has anime-style reproductions over their photographs.

But the fighters are humans, confined to our fallen and imperfect physical world. Their outfits tear, and their makeup smears. These portraits reveal just how.

Portraits by Ramona Jingru Wang

The Roundups

Music

New Releases:

• slayr — AVANT NOVA

• ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ (Four-Tet/Wingdings) — new project

• diamond* — BLING SLIME VØL 1: HØSTED BY DJ HØLIDAY

• Pretty Sick — “UrNewImTrue”

• Future — The Real Me

• the sound chalk makes — “Manmade Manmaid (Eilish Constance Re:mix)”

• Beyonce — “MORNING DEW (DONK)”

• LUCY (Cooper B. Handy) + Jumpy —- “Get The Vibe”

• Nate Sib — “Face Card”

• Evanora Unlimited — “All I’ve Seen” (Music Video filmed over 7 years)

Artworld

• Jon Rafman’s Main Stream Media Network at K21 in Düsseldorf through September 27th

• Asspizza’s Therapy Session at Future Fwd Gallery in NYC through July 30

• DJ Kitty Ca$h’s Energy Reserve Systems at Denim Tears in NYC through August 4th

• Ty Palow’s Bird World at Theta NYC through July 31st

• Mekko Harjo’s I have eaten and made friends (The Devouring Hill) at MoMA PS1 in New York through August 17th

• Peter Bradley’s Burning On at Karma gallery in NYC through August 29

• Group exhibition 16 at Soft Opening in London through July 25th

Fashion

• Paris Haute Couture Week ran from July 6–9, with new collections from Balenciaga, Chanel, Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, Robert Wun, Schiaparelli, and more

• Pierpaolo Piccioli unveiled his colorful Balenciaga debut, a collection that echoes his romantic Valentino years while embracing the house’s sculptural heritage

• Chanel continues to build around Matthieu Blazy’s whimsical vision with impeccably crafted couture and surreal accessories (footwear being especially strong)

• Duran Lantink delivered an excellent SS27 couture collection in his debut as guest designer for Jean Paul Gaultier

• Jonathan Anderson’s Dior couture show featured intricate, nature-inspired designs influenced by the sculptures of Lynda Benglis

• Robert Wun presented a playful, toy-like collection full of exaggerated, vibrant silhouettes

• Schiaparelli’s silicone-heavy couture collection pushed Daniel Roseberry’s surrealist vision even further

• Viktor & Rolf staged a show featuring two models—one young and one older—mirroring each other’s movements throughout the presentation

Products

• BEAMS x Champion’s workwear inspired sweatpants and loungewear

• Isa Boulder’s ASICS Hypersync sneakers which utilizes traditional Balinese technique

• Wearable wax objects by Viviane Lee Hsu

• Palinode lamp by Carson Teal

• Bug brooches by Phoebe Cutler Jewelry

• Small leather molded notebooks by Mathilde Reneaux

• Off-White unveils their first ever watch collection

• Birkenstock x Sacai’s Birken-inspired totes

• Panconesi’s rainbow gemstone “Ascolo Clock”

• Necklaces by Kurokami

• Mecha inspired rollerboots by EZ

• Yellow glowing silhouette tees by Karl Uni

• 1/1 Ethernet Adidas shoes made by Cory Infinite in collaboration with Teezus Touchdown utilizing the ends of 170 recycled ethernet cables

• Lenticular stickers by @regularbowl

Headline curation and words by Mikail Haroon (@mvkail)

Artist selling pieces of trash from Taylor Swift’s wedding

New York artist Justin Gignac collected discarded street debris outside Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding and transformed it into collectible “NYC Pocket Garbage” cubes, selling each piece for $25. Part of his ongoing New York City Garbage project, which has run since 2001, the work plays with the absurdity of fandom economics and the idea, famously questioned by Marcel Duchamp, of what transforms an everyday object into art.

Waymo is officially part of the police state

Waymo remotely pulled over a self-driving vehicle carrying teens who were drinking and shooting an Orbeez toy gun. The company reportedly told the passengers the car was experiencing mechanical issues to keep them inside until officers arrived, sparking a broader conversation around surveillance, privacy, and how much autonomous vehicles monitor their passengers. In other recent Waymo incidents, a San Francisco burglar reportedly used a Waymo vehicle as a getaway car, while another Waymo drove through a fireworks display.

Nine Vicious and Che got into a fight in London

Nine Vicious and Che got into an altercation at London’s Selfridges, where Nine Vicious appeared to snatch a chain during the confrontation. The chain was initially believed to belong to Che, but Che’s DJ later clarified that it was his own. The two have been exchanging shots over the internet since the incident.

Roblox just made Pokémon but with brainrot memes

Catch a Brainrot is a Pokémon-style creature-collecting RPG inspired by internet culture and Italian brainrot memes. Players can explore the map, encounter random creatures, and battle through turn-based combat similar to the classic Pokémon formula. Like shiny Pokémon, many characters feature rare variants, with certain catches becoming status symbols among players. Tung Tung Tung Sahur is reportedly one of the most coveted creatures, on par with a Charizard in early Pokémon games.

This week in trends

• Fashion brands are leaning heavily into retro escapism for their summer campaigns, tapping into consumer nostalgia.

• Consumers’ embrace of traditional American fashion codes (American flag, prep, cowboy boots, and western styles) is hitting new peaks this year, according to data from BoF.

• In China, a surreal, Vaporwave-inspired trend called “Dreamcore” has taken over, reflecting a growing desire among many young people to escape into nostalgic, simpler times

Grimes, Frost Children, slayr, George Clanton, and more join new Hatsune Miku vocaloid project

Announced at Anime Expo, an eclectic group of artists including Grimes, Frost Children, Slayyyter, and George Clanton will collaborate with a team of Western producers on a Hatsune Miku-style vocaloid project. Vocaloid is a popular Japanese singing voice software developed by Yamaha that allows users to create songs by inputting melodies and lyrics. Each digital voice comes as its own voicebank, often represented by an anime-style character like Hatsune Miku, the software’s most iconic voice.

Classifieds

Exciting opportunities, employment and otherwise

Moncler — Archive Intern (Trebaseleghe, Italy)

Creative internship supporting Moncler’s archive through photography, cataloging, and garment organization. Responsibilities include assisting photo shoots, managing archive materials, and maintaining digital records. Ideal candidate has photography skills, Photoshop and Lightroom experience, and strong attention to detail.
Apply

VETEMENTS — Graphic Designer / Print Designer (Zurich, Switzerland)

Design role creating graphics, prints, and visual concepts for VETEMENTS collections. Responsibilities include developing garment designs, technical files, show materials, and creative assets across fashion projects. Ideal candidate has at least two years of experience, strong design skills, and a deep understanding of the VETEMENTS aesthetic.
Apply

Any Studio — Design Intern (Berlin, Germany)

Six-month studio internship supporting real client projects across branding, digital design, and creative strategy. Responsibilities include contributing to design processes, attending client meetings, and developing work across typography, layout, and Adobe Creative Suite. Ideal candidate has strong design fundamentals and is enrolled in a qualifying internship program.
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People don’t know this, even though twentythree now has over 1.6m monthly listeners, because people don’t know twentythree. They know the song he blew up with (‘Queen St.’), but not the Toronto rap subgenre (they call it 6pop) of which it is a prime specimen. They know the sound, but not the life behind it.

So we went to Toronto to get to know twentythree. The person we met was not 23 years old but 22, perpetually smoking, a college dropout (happily so), headlining sold-out shows fans print fake tickets to try to get into, and deeply invested in seeing his city win.

It’s time to get to know twentythree. Watch our introduction below.

This is our fifth iteration of Monthly Discoveries, a series in which the Welcome team compiles and curates creativity that caught our eye over the past month. (Paid subscribers can revisit previous editions here, here, here, and here.)

As always, this month’s discoveries wandered in every direction: crucifixion heels inspired by Baroque door handles, glitched Alex G concert photos, accordion sculptures that evoke empathy, cow udders with facial piercings, bobcat paw knives, human skull guitar picks, vending machines dispensing private rituals, hidden-animal quilts, Call of Duty inspect animations, and much more.

We spent another month falling down obscure corners of the internet so you don’t have to. Whether you linger on one piece or end up opening twenty new tabs, we hope something here sticks with you. Happy discovering.

Crucifixion heels by Rueben James

As part of his graduate collection from Central Saint Martins, Reuben James delved into Baroque, Christian, and Ottoman influences, drawing specifically from a recent trip to Seville, Spain. Inspired by the intricate detail of antique door handles and Baroque interiors, these “Crucifixion” heels were 3D-printed. He stated that they are among his favorite pieces to date, having taken him nearly three months to develop. They come in two colorways—one an aged bronze, the other a black and white—both emulating the patina of a traditional statue.

enough lines, mango excavator, scene of cones, tape guys by @xpcache

A simple yet compelling Photoshop creation, digital artist @xpcache’s latest work features various mundane street objects, first edited into silhouettes, then layered with neon gradients. The work’s appeal stems from its transformation of an everyday scene we usually gloss over. The human eye is drawn to gradients as they mimic natural light, shadows, and the smooth transitions that exist in the real world, yet when juxtaposed onto the silhouettes (with neon colors), they create a piece that’s both satisfying and gripping.

🫧⋆｡˚⋆｡˚ by @vvarnava

🫧⋆｡˚⋆｡˚ is a performance art piece in which a couple tumbles down a flight of stairs in the rain to a sweeping, operatic score. With each rotation of their intertwined bodies, they soften one another’s fall, and a violent descent becomes a striking meditation on trust, tenderness, and mutual support.

T-shirt by Albert Riera Galceran

Spanish artist Albert Riera Galceran is another creative hailing from Central Saint Martins, who traditionally works in the painting and contemporary sculpture. Today we are highlighting his recent contributions for Barcelona-based brand Gimaguas (meaning “twins”), which we find very interesting, in particular, this red t-shirt with its left half covered in silver circular badges. Other pieces from the collection are particularly strong, including a large pale yellow tote bag, various low-profile ballet flats, as well as a purple t-shirt made for Blood Orange’s 2026 Barcelona show, which reads “I’m excited to hear some music” in both English and Spanish.

Damascus Bobcat Paw Knives by Freyja’s Forest Afterlife

These Damascus Bobcat knives feature an authentic, dry-preserved bobcat paw as the handle, paired with a brass bolster and a Damascus steel blade. According to Freyja’s Forest Afterlife, the studio’s materials come from animals that died of illness or injury, or were sourced from farms, zoos, preserves, other taxidermists, and regulated hunts which are often part of conservation efforts to manage overpopulation or contain disease within local ecosystems. Their site showcases a range of eclectic animal pieces, from wet specimens, to dry-preserved hearts, to diaphonized skeletons.

Ultrasonic by Tommy Fleece

Self-produced by Fleece alongside brightviolet, Ultrasonic builds on the optimistic hyperpop and colorful indie electronica of last year’s audio stars 2, refining the sound into his strongest project yet. The album has no skips, but our favorite track is “Who’s To Say.” As a bonus, check out Nolan Wall’s play-dough recreation of the album artwork.

Crane Paine Mastercraft skin from Call of Duty Black Ops 7

Initially introduced in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered, weapon inspection animations are in-game character actions that allow you to admire your weapon’s model, camos, and attachments. As time has gone on, inspect animations have become increasingly intricate and flashy, with this new animation, “Crane Paine Mastercraft” in Black Ops 7 featuring an insane, action-movie-esque inspect animation: a full montage of a soldier in a 1v1 battle against a helicopter. As a bonus, check out this other inspect animation from earlier this year, “Ballistic Scythe.”

Capsule Machines by Lucas Carter

New York-based multimedia artist Lucas Carter’s work explores the theme of interiority, both in the sense of domestic space, as in Capsule Machines, and the emotional interpersonal sense. Made over the past three years, Capsule Machines is a video piece combined with a found-object installation. Three vintage quarter vending machines, originally designed for capsule toys, have been fitted with eighteen 2.5-inch LCD screens that continuously play footage of real New York City apartment windows. For 50 cents, visitors receive a small video token depicting a mystery domestic ritual, such as eating dinner, brushing teeth, or taking a bath.

Untitled accordion piece by Tobias Bradford

Örebro-based experimental sculpture artist Tobias Bradford creates uncanny bodily sculptures that transform the mechanical into unnervingly human-like. His latest piece, featuring a struggling accordion trudging around the floor, toys with compulsive behavior, repetition, struggle, and anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is the survival instinct which makes humans project intent and emotion onto moving objects. Even when we rationally know a machine is just metal and circuits, our emotional brain often overrides this, prompting us to feel for them. Many of the comments reflect this, with popular ones stating that the piece feels like “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Alex G photos by Nico Beauchamp

Chicago-based artist Nico Beauchamp shot Alex G’s recent set at Kilby Block Party Festival when he encountered a strange glitch that ended up producing some uniquely distorted photos. In his caption, he jokes that the intensity of Alex G’s sound waves shattered his SD card, resulting in the glitched images. The photos have a rapid, boomerang-like quality that looks so cool it feels almost intentional.

You’re halfway through our monthly discoveries. To access the rest of the list, as well as all of our past and future discoveries (and much more), become a paid subscriber to Welcome Magazine

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The Roundups

Music

New Releases:

• Ken Carson — XPERIMENT

• daine + Bassvictim — “PQC - Bassvictim Edit”

• Rocket Reese + Lil Texas — “MISS MY CHOPPA V2”

• Dragnutz — “#FreeJoBoof”

• Sophia Stel — “Molly In The Club”

• Nation — Nation 2 (Remixes)

• Marjorie-W.C Sinclair + dupontpavillion — “Independence Day”

• Joey Cash — poser

• b7lanket — “boys girls horses and dogs”

Artworld

• Henri Rousseau, A Painter’s Ambition, at Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris through July 20

• Studio Hanniball’s Sick Days at Studio Hanniball in Berlin through June 6

• John Chamberlain’s Land Before Time: Three Dinosaurs and a Gondola at Amanita in New York through August 9

• Camille Henrot’s Paper Planes at Copenhagen Contemporary in Copenhagen through December 31

Fashion

• More favorite FW collections: Dries Van Norton, Marc Jacobs, 1199, Soshiotsuki, and Celine

• Pieter Mulier has his first day at Versace

• Y-3 unveiled a diverse footwear collection in collaboration with Number (N)ine

• Sabyasachi will return to NYFW this year after 20 year absence

• Acne Paper presents Autoportrait, a book which has been released alongside a newsstand on the Seine featuring a curated selection of objects and books that have inspired Acne Studios over the past thirty years.

• Celine debuts its first-ever footwear collaboration on a low-profile, scuffed Reebok sneaker.

• Imran Potato previews new Vans Half Calb collabs in purple and red colorways

• Bazo 1199’s Homework / Graduation debut runway featured appearances from Che, Tezzus, Effie, Pz’, Diamond, Bernie Ross, Jack Zebra, Sk8star, Rokonthetrack, and Chalkywong.

• IFM Paris students released their graduate collections

• Junya Watanabe’s SS27 featured a collaboration with Hidden NY spanning across footwear and apparel

• Adidas Stan Smiths previewed various futuristic upcoming designs for new footwear ranging from reinterpretations of ballet flats, square toed sneakers, and five finger/tabi hybrids

• Clarks Originals previewed footwear for their Spring Summer 27 Collection

Products

• Glock stress toys by mystomachhurts

• ERL’s “The Island” collection

• Sofia Testino’s work wedges in a variety of colors

• New bags by Nina B

• Claire Zurkowski’s stainless steel fragrance sample holder keychain

• Hand carved 925 silver locket rings by @middaia

• HELIOT EMIL’s brutalist coffee machine in collaboration with La Marzocco

• PROLETA RE ART’s 1/1 Wallabees in collaboration with Clark Originals

• Various pieces by @mxxkarade

• SS1999 Chanel ‘Watch Link’ Silver CC Interlock Logo Metal Belt being sold by Alex Maxamenko

• Cap hoodie by Tommy Jack Dover Dier

• Summer arrivals by @bydrewcwiek

• Screen heels prototype by Margot Heyer

• Accessories from Vetement SS27

This Week’s Headlines

Soulja Boy wants to make his own music awards show

Soulja Boy took to Twitter to say that he’s considering creating his own music awards show to honor artists he believes have been consistently ignored by institutions like the BET Awards and the Grammys, citing NBA YoungBoy, Chief Keef, and Kodak Black as examples. The idea raises a broader question about whether legacy award shows have kept pace with rap’s evolving landscape, where some of the genre’s most influential artists rarely receive traditional industry recognition.

There were more new dogs purchased than humans born in San Francisco last year

San Francisco issued 7,123 first-time dog licenses in 2025, surpassing the roughly 6,970 babies born that year. It’s a striking symbol of California’s record-low birth rates, with researchers pointing to long-term demographic shifts including later marriage and declining fertility across the state.

This week in bad paintings

This week delivered two truly abysmal paintings:

• Adrian Brody strikes again with another cheap, pop art faux-Warhol canvas, this time unveiled in the comically hellish setting of the Times Square Raising Cane’s.

• Meanwhile, Donald Trump shared a bizarre painting of “America’s history” that, surprisingly, isn’t AI-generated and is almost impossible to unpack. In it, George Washington sits beside a young boy and a Tesla robot watching fireworks, while a spaceship launches toward Mars above monuments and icons including the Statue of Liberty, Betsy Ross, and Abraham Lincoln. The work is by Ray Simon, who describes himself as “the artist who painted America”.

Kalshi traders are running bot streaming scams on Spotify

Malcolm Todd’s “Earrings” briefly surged to No. 1 on Spotify’s global chart, drawing scrutiny after Kalshi market participants reportedly bet on its chart trajectory. Investigators later found signs of inauthentic activity, leading Spotify to remove over half a million streams from the track. The case has raised a recurring anxiety that prediction markets are incentivizing attempts to game streaming metrics case for profit. Spotify has not linked the artist to any wrongdoing, and the song has since dropped in rank.

Hollywood found another horror franchise on YouTube

As we reported last week, studios are increasingly turning to viral online horror for feature film development, with Warner Bros. acquiring the rights to Siren Head, a meme-born creature horror project being written by Zach Cregger and Brian Duffield. In a parallel move, The Mandela Catalogue, a YouTube analog horror series, is also being adapted into a film with creator Alex Kister set to direct and Steven Spielberg attached as producer.

Nvdia’s CEO Jensen Huang’s signature leather jacket is going up for auction

Sotheby’s is offering Jensen Huang’s signature black Tom Ford leather jacket, with estimates of $40,000 to $60,000. The piece has been worn at nearly every major Nvidia product unveiling. Given Nvidia’s central role in the AI boom, the jacket is being framed as a cultural artifact from a defining moment in tech history.

Headline curation and words by Mikail Haroon (@mvkail)

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A

It was entirely self-funded, and one of our favorite collections we saw all week. See the full set of looks on their Instagram. Read on for the first-hand experience of Welcome’s founder.

This is maybe more personal than objective but for me the show was like watching your son graduate, the extreme pride for what they’ve been able to accomplish.

What 1199 is doing so well is something that a lot of brands are missing the mark on: creating clothing that people actually want to wear. Specifically the current generation of, say, 16 to 28-year-olds. I feel like that’s the comment I hear the most from everyone: the clothing is actually wearable on a daily basis, whether it’s the jeans or the footwear or the jackets

That is why every rapper wants to be seeded their clothing, because they’re actually making what this generation is looking for, and no one else is providing. I like how they don’t try to appease the Instagram algorithm by making things that are just good for engagement. They’re making things that are good for the body.

This collection is really personal to them. “Homework/Graduation,” the collection title, has several meanings, but one of them refers to the Daft Punk and Kanye albums. These projects had a huge influence on 1199, and reflect the sort of “French touch” and rap intersection that a lot of their style exists in. 

You see that in the collection, with the references to their French heritage (the Eiffel Tower is on one piece) but also nods to American culture with the stars and fringes. In more subtle ways too, like the use of corduroy and knitwear (which they say is inspired by their grandmothers), coupled with raw denim. 

But really this collection is about proving that they’re students of the game, who have put the study time in and are now ready to step up to the plate themselves. These guys met living in Hong Kong and have been immersed in the fashion world forever. Most people don’t know this, but Bazo actually used to own an archive store. 

For that reason, the references in this collection are super apparent. They’re paying homage to what got them here, showing their notes, like homework. Because they’re coming from outside the normal industry channels, this is especially important. It’s like they have to prove themselves.

You can definitely tell Hedi Slimane is a big reference, especially for the jeans, specifically his Dior and Saint Laurent eras. For the footwear, a huge reference is Visim with all the fringes, whether it’s on these high-top sneakers or the Birkenstock-style shoe. 

But it’s also “graduation”: they’re ready to go beyond the references. They funded this entire show themselves by selling bracelets and bootleg Uggs, but they’re not just some streetwear brand, Instagram designers. They’re doing full scale runway shows, and despite the core references there are actually new silhouettes in the collection we haven’t seen before.

The show’s finale was amazing. All the models came out in white-out versions of their looks, and white confetti fell from the ceiling. Pz’, Che, Tezzus, and many more were walking in the show. It was beautiful.

They took a big risk, funded their own show, no backing, no nothing. I think that in itself is also very beautiful. I personally believe they’re going to be one of the greats of our generation.

For more background on 1199, read our interview with their founders from last year

I just landed that morning, so this was the first thing that I did for Paris Fashion Week. It took me 20 minutes to walk to the showroom. I made the mistake of wearing a long-sleeved shirt (an acne shirt actually).

I walk in there and it was like a breath of fresh air. They’re giving out drinks: water, sparkling water. They have these guys passing out little snack cakes, which were really good.

On the floor they had this dressed mannequin laid down on a mattress. There was a fan pointed at it (not, as far as I know, part of the installation) and it was blowing the pages around.

I thought the pieces in the showcase were very true to Acne and the ethos of the collection, which was sort of about reframing the “uniform” in a social context. What would formal wear look like in an era when our ‘work’ is dressing well enough to signal a place in the social hierarchy? This collection is one answer.

More PFW recaps dropping next week.

The Roundups

Music

New Releases:

• Dean Blunt — 🔪🩸🖤 (Music ‘22-25)

• twentythree — 6ix Pop

• Chanel Beads — Your Day Will Come

• Brutalismus 3000 — Harmony

• LAZER DIM 700 — The Rule of Success

• Rita P — Esque

• ok + fakemink — “Burn it”

• Brat Star — White Claw Addict

• EssDeeKid — “RockWave”

• Canelle — CINNA

• preshboyswag — party boy

• Charli xcx — “Wink Wink”

• Eera + Loukeman — “Seaglass”

• Tyler The Creator — “THAT GUY”

• Wet Leg + horsegiirL — “CPR (horsegirrL remix)”

• jackzebra — “Sunshine”

• Babyxsosa — “BABYBOI”

• Jonah Paz — “Speeding”

• AG Club + Jody Fontaine — Thank You, Goodnight

• Power Snatch (Hayley William’s side project) — “Training / Great”

• André 3000 released a 15-minute short film directed by Graham Mason to accompany his EP 7 Piano Sketches

• Turnstile announces new tour with support from Vince Staples, Clipse, Thundercat, Slayyyter, Yves Tumor, Nourished by Time, Boy Harsher, Porches, Mall Grab, julie, and more

• A new film featuring Kylie Minogue, Quentin Tarantino, and RZA is being shot in Wales.

Artworld

• James Terrell’s highly anticipated and largest Skyspace As Seen Below — The Dome just opened at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum in Denmark

• Ryan McGinley’s Night Shift at Jeffery Dietch in New York through August 8

• Alex Chinnek’s Bangers and Mash at Royal Hospital Chelsea through June 30th

• Joseph Brock’s Cottage Industry at A.D gallery in New York through June 28th

• Slip House’s Powder group show in New York through August 1st

• Wrangler’s Archive Gallery at 79 Rue du Temple in Paris through June 29th

• @2000pandasf’s Arse Poetica at Triest in New York

Fashion Week

• Favorite FW collections: Dior, Prada, Auralee, Saint Laurent, 424, Givenchy, Our Legacy, and Thom Browne

• Raf Simons delivered a rocker-inspired Prada SS27 collection featuring sleazy yet colorful tailoring, highlighted by asymmetric spliced sunglasses and a pared-back Prada logo that bears a striking resemblance to the Balenciaga City Bag branding introduced last week

• Fred again.. provided the soundtrack for Jonathan Anderson’s Dior debut.

• Pharrell’s Louis Vuitton SS27 collection drew from coastal influences and featured one of the most impressive runway sets in recent memory. Pz walked the show

• 424 unveiled a collection featuring previously previewed Under Armour collaboration pieces, with appearances from Teezus, Clavicular, and Kentucky Boy Tyler

• Nike teased the return of its classic “Swooshman” mascot

• Louis Vuitton’s new LV Combi skate sneaker sparked comparisons to the Vans Authentic, leading to controversy online. While the resemblance is undeniable, it’s worth noting that countless brands have produced similar boat shoe-inspired silhouettes over the years

• Alexander McQueen will return to London Fashion Week after 25 years of showing in Paris

• Shayne Oliver (creator of HBA) is making a comeback

Products

• Various footwear by Mowalola

• Striped tote bags by @nebuela

• Vintage Jean Paul Gaultier “Mah Jong” chairs

• LAN Party by Merrit K book restock

• Pointy snakeskin shoes by YSL

• Supreme x Lurker Lou’s NYC Cobblestone brick

• Chanel Beads x NTS Radio t-shirt

• Jay-Z’s 30th anniversary collector’s crate containing all 13 studio albums on vinyl

• Dekonstructing the Kardashians book by Mj Corey

• Vans collabs with Undercover, Fugazi, Mattias Golin, Lorenzo Fiorino, Vanna Youngstein, and more

• Alfred Department’s “Kangaroo Mule”

• room for air’s “Veil Derby” constructed out of lambskin

• Shirt plate by Lola Mayeras

• Nike’s experimental sneakers previewed at PFW including square toed AF1s and leather constructed silhouettes

This Week’s Headlines

Rick Rubin is directing a Jay-Z documentary series

Coming this fall, Jay-Z and Rick Rubin will reunite for JAY-Z in 8, an eight-part documentary series for HBO. Directed by Rubin, the series features intimate conversations with the rapper about his music, lyrics, life experiences, and creative process. The two share a creative history dating back to 2003, when Rubin produced “99 Problems” for The Black Album. The series is executive produced by Daniel Kaluuya.

A24 just got $75m from Google to develop AI filmmaking tools

Google is investing $75 million in A24 through a new artificial intelligence ‘research partnership,’ aimed at better integrating AI into filmmaking. It’s the first time the tech giant has taken a stake in a movie studio. As A24 increasingly resembles the venture-backed media companies it once stood apart from, the deal raises questions about the integrity of the studio’s indie ethos. The investment comes just after A24 reportedly passed on Luca Guadagnino’s completed Sam Altman film.

XXL’s 2026 Freshman Class is out of touch

With the exception of Slayr and Skrilla, this year’s XXL Freshman class is very weak. It underscores how much the magazine’s co-sign has diminished in the age of algorithmic discovery, where social media platforms have become the primary engine for breaking new artists. Despite the dramatic transformation of the music industry over the past 15 years, XXL’s format remains the same, which might be fine if they sourced genuinely exciting artists. Not the case here.

Archaeologists found a lost Mayan city hidden in the jungle

Archaeologists have uncovered a remarkably well-preserved ancient Maya city hidden in the dense jungle of Mexico’s Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, untouched by looters and concealed for more than 1,000 years. It contains a 43-foot pyramid, ceremonial plazas, and 14 carved monuments, including a stone depicting a decapitation scene and inscriptions dating to 849 CE, offering a rare glimpse into the civilization’s final centuries. Reached only after a three-mile trek through untouched forest, the city was first detected using LiDAR technology before researchers confirmed the discovery on foot.

Club Chalamet (a giant of stan culture) throws hands with another stan outside of Connor Storries’s hotel

A physical altercation broke out outside a Paris hotel between Simone Cromer, the figure behind the controversial “Club Chalamet” stan account, and another stan of actor Connor Storrie. Cromer first gained attention as one of Timothée Chalamet’s most dedicated fans before shifting her focus toward Storrie, while also becoming a polarizing figure for her past claims about Chalamet’s relationship with Kylie Jenner. The incident was documented in real time on Twitter, and symbolizes our new age of rabid parasocial fandom driven by celebrity stan communities.

Headline curation and words by Mikail Haroon (@mvkail)

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Reporting and photos by Bryan Munguia

Of all the fairs on the annual art world circuit, none are as prestigious or as large as Art Basel. Hosted in Basel, Switzerland, the fair gathers over 290 galleries into a single art industrial complex of stark-white exhibitor booths in modern convention halls, and more than doubles the size of fairs like Frieze.

For those not in the art world, “Art Basel” might evoke popular associations with Miami Beach, and the marketing circus that surrounds it. The Swiss fair, though, is the original Basel. Consider it a European upgrade to its Floridian sister: more oysters and champagne, less Miami art Epcot.

The colossal scale and prestige of this fair means world-class artists, famous artworks, and humbling sums of money changing hands. (A Pablo Picasso painting is reported to have sold for $35 million over the weekend.)

Basel and its Swiss luxury caters well to elite art word persons, as well as art-conscious celebrities. This year, Jared Leto and the living performance-art couple Bianca Censori and Ye were all spotted previewing artworks on the fairgrounds.

Like most major art fairs, the official event is only part of the festivities. Nearby, other international fairs run simultaneously, each offering a distinct alternative to the main event.

Liste hosts the emerging tastemakers, while Basel Social Club hosts debauchery, converting a former office building into a temporary site for exhibitors, performances, and unorthodox public activities that ranges from a pop-up gym, cold plunge, spray tan salon, and even Botox clinic. Across the city, local institutions and museums get their own face-lift, hosting top-tier programming.

The fair’s presence is everywhere in Basel. Even on the branded BMWs transporting the upper echelon.

Sorting through this embarrassment of riches can feel impossible for the lay person. But if my overpriced MFA in Curatorial Studies is good for anything, it’s to make sense of a global art fair. Unlike the Swiss, I will not remain neutral. Here is my round-up of standout presentations, the works that fell flat, and a curated photo dump of the contemporary art I saw across Basel, for your reading and viewing pleasure.

STANDOUTS

ART BASEL

VARIOUS ARTISTS, GAGA, MEXICO CITY

Few galleries capture our culture’s absurdity quite as well as Gaga. Their booth first greets me with Nicolas Ceccaldi’s pastels of cropped feet displayed alongside a historical figure identified by the gallery label as Dolphin III.

The rendered feet are lifted from a famous painting and, without any further context, send me into a spiral. Are these the Dolphin’s feet? Is he smiling at them? Or at me for looking at them? How does he know I’m a foot fetishist? The pastels’ whimsical distortions muddle my search for the truth.

Just behind Ceccaldi’s wall works, I stare down at a blinged-out, cheetah-print dachshund plushie on roller skates.

This work by Cosima von Bonin embodies the sense of humor she is known for. Excessive and funny, the Frankensteinian dog’s kitschness feels, in our culture of overconsumption, almost more genuine than something more serious ever could.

Further into the booth, the animal motif reappears in Heji Shin’s photographs. On the right, Lonely Girl 5 (2026) shows a monkey orally fixated on a vibrator, while on the left, You Are Fired (2026) presents the same animal with a pistol in its mouth.

Sex and Death seem to be mutually cathartic for the monkeys. The animal is transformed into a distorted self-portrait, revealing human desire as comic, violent, and embarrassingly primal. Together with Ceccaldi and von Bonin, Shin makes the contemporary feel poetically absurd.

DANNY MCDONALD & MARC KOKOPELI, GALERIE ISABELLA BORTOLOZZI, BERLIN

Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi presents a compelling program of artists acutely aware of the commercial environment surrounding them. This booth understands that capitalism is not outside of an artwork, but already embedded in the images and devices through which we encounter its culture.

I first come across white plinths holding Danny McDonald’s miniature scenographies, where pop-cultural figurines are reimagined as tragicomic actors caught in various states of crisis.

In Heartbreaker (2019), McDonald distorts the Tin Man’s quest for a heart, recasting the sentimental Wizard of Oz character as a witness to environmental ruin and emotional failure.

What comes off initially as slapstick becomes a meditation on how mass-produced images circulate parallel to the acceleration and exploitation of capital. It’s humor with a critical punch.

Neighboring McDonald, Marc Kokopeli offers what I believe is the only Augmented Reality work at the fair. A curious exclamation mark foregrounds a graphite-like digital print depicting the communist sickle and hammer.

The attending gallerist brings over a tablet and scans the print with an AR app, which commences a five-minute scripted drama superimposed over the image. This is Kokopeli’s technique at its best, collapsing the physical object into a digital performance and letting the artwork bleed between material and virtual time.

VARIOUS ARTISTS, SADIE COLES HQ, LONDON

For Contemporary Art with a capital C, Sadie Coles HQ’s roster of art stars continues to make them a dependable platform for discovering the artistic zeitgeist.

This booth features a notable intergenerational trio of image appropriators: Martine Syms, Arthur Jafa, and Richard Prince. For those unaware of these artists, they cover a legacy of practices interested in remixing the mass-produced image.

I quickly found myself transfixed before Syms’s Steven or Act II installation, where a custom circular monitor displays a fragmented filmic collage made up of surveillance footage, found clips, voiceover, and music.

The work opens up like a lucid portal into hyperreality. Sym’s editing techniques remain productive in capturing reality’s simulated texture.

This particular installation also makes me recall the montage works I’ve previously seen by Arthur Jafa, who similarly edits online-images to create his own remixed visual compositions. They both understand the psychic grip our image culture has on the collective subconscious, and how remixing this media may make their influence on culture visible.

Jafa presented an oil and silkscreen painting that pairs rock icons Sid Vicious and Syd Barrett on a single canvas. This gritty composition rhymes with Richard Prince’s Girlfriends (1993) that hangs nearby. It features a topless model posing alongside a motorbike, restaging an archival photograph from an American biker magazine.

Their pairing is an extension of their recent duo exhibition, Helter Skelter, in Fondizone Prada, which might be one of my favorite exhibitions of all time. Equally, Jafa, Prince, and Syms see the American spirit as something formed through media circulation. By manipulating that circulation, they allow the buried truths inside distorted American fantasy to leak through.

PAUL THEK & PETER HUJAR, MAI 36 GALERIE, ZURICH

It’s no secret that the main priority of a commercial art fair is sales, yet moments of artistic discovery often emerge unexpectedly. This was true for me at MAI 36 Galerie’s booth, where I found one section pairing the works of New York avant-garde artists Paul Thek and Peter Hujar.

What makes this presentation exceptional is the intense history shared between these two artists. They met in the 1950s and entered into an intense union that mutually shaped their artistic careers. They were lovers, collaborators, confidantes, and, later, estranged rivals.

Thek’s works often deal with religious symbolism and the rejection of institutional order. In Pink Cross and Green Buds (1975–1980), he turns a small, almost childlike religious image into a devotional encounter.

Placed before a chair and lit like an altar, the work becomes a strange site for ironic contemplation.

Nearby, Peter Hujar’s photographs offer a masterclass in capturing delicate vulnerability.

Palermo Catacombs #12 (1963) returns to Thek and Hujar’s pivotal trip to the Capuchin Catacombs. This specific encounter with death in the catacombs became a central reference point for their fatalist aesthetic that would later define both their artistic practices.

By the late 1980s, both artists had died of AIDS-related complications, Hujar in 1987 and Thek the following year.

LISTE

JULIETTE LENA HAGER, 243 LUZ, LONDON

Just down the road from Art Basel, I descended upon Liste and first paused on 243 LUZ’s booth that seemed to show an installation frozen in-progress.

For the untrained eye, you might believe this gallery is delayed in setting up their booth, but a vitrine of government memorabilia hints that everything here is intentional. I read the UN documents and stare closely at the clothing trapped under the glass while searching for additional context.

The artist, Juliette Lena Hager, later reveals to me that the booth is a tribute to the 2022 rehanging of Picasso’s Guernica tapestry at the UN headquarters, when the tapestry was covered in 2003 following the invasion of Iraq. It’s a frozen historical and political moment, and reveals how history is itself staged.

Hager’s scenography, along with the gallery’s ambition to view the booth not merely as a commercial space but as a conceptual exhibition area, speaks to the ingenuity of these emerging exhibitors.

JOHN BOSKOVICH, LARRY JOHNSON, & JOE MAMA NITZBERG, O-TOWN HOUSE, LOS ANGELES

The Los Angeles-based gallery O-Town House has transformed a modest wall space into a mini-survey of the conceptual art practices by legacy gay artists John Boskovich, Larry Johnson, and Joe Mama Nitzberg. My attention was immediately drawn to the center of the display, where a vibrant, creamsicle-striped print by Larry Johnson boldly features the campy and loaded phrase “SUPERCALIFORNIAFAGGOTEXPIALIDOCIOUS.”

Set against giant ampersands and the nearby text-based works of Boskovich and Nitzberg, Johnson’s print crystallizes the wit and coded language running through the presentation shared by these queer artists.

This display preserves queer history through fragments of jokes and images.

BASEL SOCIAL CLUB

MAREK WOLFRYD, GENERAL EXPENSES, MEXICO CITY

I’d consider Basel Social Club a conceptual artwork in of itself. There is so much art here that this event would need its own round-up to do it justice, but the work that stayed with me the most was Marek Wolfryd’s Content Creation in the Age of Globalized Reproduction (2026).

Inflated purple letters spelling out fragments from Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction sit perfectly within the Social Club spectacle, where curious visitors turn the installation into an endless photo-op.

Benjamin’s essay famously argues that mechanical reproduction strips away the aura of an artwork. In Wolfryd’s hands, that theory becomes literal. Situated inside an office room, the work embodies the banality of art flattened in a global commercial system. It’s a conceptual work that cleverly speaks to its immediate environment.

MUSEUMS

PIERRE HUYGHE, FOUNDATION BEYELER

Just a train-ride away from the Mezzeplatz hub, I become immersed into the sci-fi world of Pierre Huyghe at Foundation Beyeler. The exhibition makes me feel like I’m in some liminal, backroom planet as I stroll across grey and black carpets. I stared into milky mirror surfaces that gradually became translucent, where I met the gaze of strangers on the other side of the disappearing glass.

The feeling inside this universe is melodramatic, and there’s a presence of technology here that seems to be a catalyst for the dystopian nature of Huyghe’s universe.

The exhibition feels alive. Peep holes in the wall snarl and breathe on you when you get close to them. Large rocks float omnipresently on large aquarium tanks. One of my favorite works is an animatronic worm-like creature that wriggles and stares at you like something straight from Dune.

This is an exhibition that successfully blends fiction with reality, and seeps through a new world in an eerie yet transcendent environment.

SHUANG LI, KUNSTHALLE BASEL

Over in Kunsthalle Basel, a simulated disaster unfolds inside of Shuang Li’s exhibition, Alliance. In the first room, a large display of horizontally-stretched monitors captures storm chasers within a saturated and distorted state.

The metaphor of storm chasing becomes central to this exhibition, using it as a framework for understanding the swirling forces that warps reality within our digital age.

The exhibition reaches a crescendo with a giant twister-like installation that encloses viewers inside of its simulated storm. The film playing on the stretched monitors shows a sex doll protagonist who desires to enter the tempest.

Using the tornado as motif captures a poetic surrender to the digital storm. It’s a collective desire to lose oneself completely within it.

WORST ARTWORKS

MIRRORED OBJECTS, EVERYWHERE

Like most commercial environments, the art fair remains vulnerable to bad taste. I found this especially clear in its fetish for mirrored and shiny objects, which often seem designed to reflect the buyer’s own image back at them, rather than produce any meaningful phenomenal or critical encounter. These works collapse contemplation into self-recognition. Nothing is allowed to exceed the reflection. Reflective surfaces become the bastard aesthetic of capital, a convenient aesthetic for artists and dealers who understand that many wealthy collectors do not want to think much beyond themselves.

If you are going to do the mirror thing, do it critically. Let the object open in the mind rather than settle on a superficial surface. The latter belongs to interior design. The former is what makes a critical encounter in an artwork possible.

An easy target for this condition is Perrotin’s display of Alma Allen’s golden metal sculpture, which looks like scraps of metallic butter frozen mid-collapse. It will certainly look lovely in someone’s massive estate, but let’s not pretend it is more critical than that.

A more obnoxious presentation was Goshka Macuga’s Exhibition M: A Re-enactment (2023–2026), staged in Art Basel’s Unlimited sector dedicated to presenting large-scale works. The performative installation revived a once-relevant style of institutional critique with the confidence of someone who believes it is still the 1990s. Suit-clad female performers berated visitors with fun facts of MoMA’s complicated history. I find it no surprise that the project was originally commissioned by MoMa itself.

Personally, I found the work revealing of the artworld’s masochistic pleasure. Powerful collectors and institutions seem to enjoy this type of scolding, especially when this verbal spanking lets them write off guilt through petty acquisitions and superficial support. In the end, the work fails to escape the spectacle it claims to indict. It is the kind of political performance that begs to be photographed rather than listened to. To critique the institution today means critiquing the entire global infrastructure, not just its most visible players. This requires advanced creativity, of course.

BASEL ART DUMP

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This installment documents an archive by @hectormosko and @studioh13 of an American folk artifact: the weed bags of New York street dealers.

If you’ve spent time in New York, you’ve probably seen them: small plastic baggies with bootleg graphics of cartoons and bold typography, used by dealers to package and sell weed.

Covered in knockoffs of cartoon characters, pop-culture icons, and zany copy, these baggies borrow freely and without permission. Sellers compete on packaging: louder or more provocative bags get noticed, photographed, and remembered.

Made to be disposable, these baggies enjoy only brief moments of use before they disappear. Their designs are ephemeral, known by many, but almost never properly archived. Their creators are rarely credited.

It’s American folk product design, circulated through the New York weed market.

Drug Dealer Bags, Volume 3: New York City Special, collected by Hector Mosko in 2024, compiles this visual trend. You can find Hector Mosko on Instagram @hectormosko and @studioh13, as well as on his website, where you can now purchase the new volume of his weed bag collection.

The scans below highlight some of our favorites from Volume 3.

Written by lattice9.net

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The Roundups

Music

New Releases:

• matt proxy — trojan horse

• evilgiane — #HEAVENSGATE VOL.2

• Che — Empty Clip

• Pretty Sick — “home2hide”

• Tiffany Day + Slayr — “CONSTANTLY”

• Tana — ME

• Pz* — B4NTB

• Fimiguerrero — The Statue of a Fool

• Yeat — “Million Dollar Minion”

• Drake — “Serious”

• FKA twigs + Lil Yachty — “On Your Mind”

• OK + Osamason — “CHECK”

• Cochise — TRENCH TOWN

Art Basel

• Allen Carpenter’s cutouts exhibit at Basel Social from June 14th-20th

• Kathleen Ryan’s Bad Lime (Rock Candy) at Messe Basel from June 16th-21st

• Thomas Bangalter, Julian Charrière and Rampa’s Warehouse Artefacts at Messe Bassel on June 20th

• Janiva Ellis’s Geneva at Kunsthalle Basel from May 1st-August 9th

• Liste Art Fair at Messe Basel from June 15th-21st

• Ye’s ”LOSING YOUR MIND” was used in the movie by Vanessa Beecroft starring Bianca in Basel

Fashion

• OpenAi and L’oréal partner up on a series of AI focused beauty initiatives

• Gosha Rubinskey is trying to stage a comeback, immediately met with widespread backlash

• Jonathan Anderson joins Pantheon of Designers at Dior’s permanent exhibition space

• JW Anderson drops SS27 collection

• MM6 Maison Margiela drops Resort 2027 collection

• Adidas carved three stripes into a matcha field to create a running course in collab with OSULLOC

• Hermes opens up beautiful new London store composed of 6 interconnected town houses

• Michele Obama wore a custom FW26 Acne Studios skirt honoring her late Mother

• DSM Kei Ninomiya’s SS27 “Our Punk” collection

• Korean designer Jiyongkim showcased his collection of sun bleached clothes over the course of 100 days

Products

• Compact NTS Radio Player made in collab with Swedish audio company Atonemo

• More Chanel inspired tweed Vans

• Assorted functional objects from 032c’s collab with Cupra including technical safety vest, electrical cable, inflatable car cover, and more

• You can buy all of Hunter Schafer’s props from Mother Mary

• Henry Jawson’s 4 color screen printed tees

• One Block Down and HTC Los Angeles take on the Timberland 3-Eye

• Selected pieces from Gab Bois’ experimental archive are available for rentals

• Horse hairpin by @son1111ka

• Puma x Jiyong Kim’s sun bleached sneakers

• Baroque embossed 12oz selvedge denim jeans by @bus1nessonly

• Digital rain ring by Daniel Idle

• Anderson Bell and Clark Original’s Western shoes

• Bodegas are now selling peptides

This Week’s Curated Headlines

Tay Keith passed away

Grammy-nominated trap producer Tay Keith (“Sicko Mode,” “First Person Shooter”) was responsible for greatly shaping mainstream rap’s sound for the past decade, holding the the record for the most No.1s (6 total) on the Hot R&B / Hip-Hop chart this decade. Keith died Thursday in his Nashville apartment. While the cause is unknown, authorities have said they don’t currently suspect foul play. (Genre-bending singer Oliver Tree (“Miss You”) also died this week in a fatal mid-air helicopter collision in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, along with six other passengers across both aircraft.)

Balenciaga is doing nutrition

Balenciaga is entering the wellness space as creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli drops his TechWear collection debuting as part of the FW26 collection titled “Body & Being.” The brand is partnering with Barry’s (a popular boutique fitness chain), and running a series of pop-ups serving smoothies, healthy juices, and adaptogen-infused products. This reflects Piccioli’s broader strategy at Balenciaga which is not just a creative shift, but a market repositioning toward the affluent consumer who books Barry’s and embraces wellness trends like cold plunges and recovery culture.

Hollywood executives are going on Reddit to find new IP

The breakout success of Backrooms and Obsession has demonstrated how internet-born discussion threads can evolve into major studio productions, prompting agencies and studios to pay closer attention to digital subcultures. Specifically, they’re monitoring niche subreddits dedicated to short stories like r/nosleep, r/libraryofshadows, r/writersofhorror, and many more. As audiences become more fragmented and online-first, platforms like Reddit are emerging as valuable testing grounds for future franchises.

The 1200 year old tree that inspired the original Robin Hood just died

The Major Oak, estimated to be around 1,200 years old and famously tied to the legend of Robin Hood, died this year despite years of conservation efforts to save it. Experts attributed its decline to a combination of factors, including extreme heat, drought, poor soil conditions, human interference, and a weakened root system. Meanwhile, a tortoise named Jonathan now holds the title of the world’s oldest living land animal at 194 years old (c. 1832–present), with a lifespan that has stretched from the invention of the lightbulb and two world wars to the rise of the internet.

Midjourney is making a spa that could actually revolutionize medicine

AI company Midjourney unveiled ‘Midjourney Medical,’ which aims to make full-body medical imaging far faster and more afforable than it is now. Full-body imaging is a very effective form of preventative medicine that creates a highly detailed 3D map of patients body. But today, it’s too expensive and intensive for most. Midjourney is developing a 60-second ultrasound-based scanner which will be cheap to run and available in their 24/7 wellness spas alongside saunas, hot tubs, and cold plunges. Their goal is to create a global network of these scanners, capable of performing billions of scans annually.

Headline curation and words by Mikail Haroon (@mvkail)

Classifieds

Exciting opportunities, employment and otherwise

Maison Margiela — Assistant Archives Intern (Paris, France)

Six-month archives internship supporting Maison Margiela’s heritage and collections team beginning September 2026. Responsibilities include managing internal archive loans, assisting with condition reporting, organizing textile and paper archives, and conducting historical and iconographic research. Ideal candidate has training in archives, art history, or fashion heritage, strong organizational skills, and a deep interest in fashion history and the Maison Margiela legacy.
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Heavens Gate NYC — NYFW 2026 Event Team (New York, NY)

Fashion Week hiring initiative seeking experienced professionals across Partnerships & Sales, Social Media, PR & Media, and Production. Responsibilities include supporting event operations, communications, partnerships, and production workflows leading up to and during New York Fashion Week. Ideal candidate has relevant industry experience, strong organizational skills, is based in New York City, and available throughout the NYFW season.
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SKIMS — Junior Graphic Designer (Los Angeles, CA)

Creative role supporting digital marketing, e-commerce, and performance-driven design initiatives across SKIMS. Responsibilities include designing website assets, paid advertising creative, email campaigns, motion graphics, and supporting creative testing across marketing channels. Ideal candidate has experience in digital design, video editing, Adobe Creative Suite, and a strong understanding of contemporary internet culture.
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Artists are shaped by the time and place they grow up in. What does it do to an artist to grow up in America in the 2010s? This question matters. The next chapter in culture will, in part, be shaped by it.

Matt Proxy is one answer.

“Minnesota was perfectly designed to create Matt Proxy,” he told us. “There’s so many government psyops. It’s made to radicalize people. During my formative years, the city was literally getting burned down.”

The 2010s weren’t only shaping the 19 year old rapper through the events outside, but the trials and tribulations of his personal life. These included:

• going into internet-induced psychosis

• his sister’s overdose

• his father’s deportation

• a long distance relationship

• exploitation by the “energy vampires” that swarm any young musician as soon as they gain the attention of the industry.

We may never know whether he had to experience these things in order to become the artist that could make trojan horse, the EP he dropped today. What we do know is that trojan horse is, by far, his strongest body of work yet, and one of the best to come out of the contemporary underground.

There are a lot of artists who claim to be innovators. Most aren’t. This is especially true in today’s underground rap space. But, like always, there are a few true pioneers whose artistic vision steers the ship. trojan horse proves Matt Proxy is of that few.

As a project, the EP plants a flag in a musical frontier that remixes many of the sounds from the last two decades of underground rap in an abstract sonic buffet which breaks traditional norms around song structure, rhyme scheme, and production style.

We’re constantly seeking out the contemporary avant-garde. We called Matt Proxy the week before trojan horse dropped because we believe he’s part of it. We talked about the project, and what it took to get here. Read on.

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Welcome: When did music come into your life?

Matt Proxy: I grew up around it my whole life. My mom is the biggest hip-hop head I know. She’s on some A$AP Rocky, Speaker Knockers, Tupac, Danny Brown. Jeezy, things like that.

I realized a lot of niggas got introduced to rap in like 2018. I’ve been writing my whole life. If you knew me in elementary school, you knew that.

In first grade, I had a rap group called C.O.M. I would beatbox. I looked up how to become a producer, and I thought I would have to get like a whole studio rack so I was like, Fuck I just have to beatbox. That’s how I really first started writing my raps and trying to make beats. In my head, with my mouth.

But 12 years old is when I really started taking it seriously.

The experimental ethos is so clear on this project. Has innovation always been important to you?

It’s always what interested me the most. My uncle Jesse put me onto SOPHIE, Aphex Twin, Panda Bear, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Death Grips as a kid. I remember he showed me the “Come to Daddy” music video. I was freaked out about that shit.

Tell me about how you emerged as an artist? How did you enter people’s ears, people’s feeds?

Really it was the Instagram group chats in 2020 with niggas like Ayce Comet, mollymoon333, David Shawty, Kuru, osquinn. All these niggas who are up now are remnants from Instagram groupchats. That really is what it is, connecting with all these artists on the internet.

We know that behind the scenes you’ve experienced tragedies this year. I’m wondering if you can speak on how you’ve managed this.

My mental health is declining at the same time that my status has been rising. It’s a super weird dynamic but like I feel like that’s what makes a great artist. If I have really bad feelings, I just want a place to write that all down. This year, my older sister overdosed and my father got deported, and the only thing I could do was put it in the album.

Has coming up in Minneapolis shaped you? That environment has been very politically intense during your lifetime.

Minnesota was perfectly designed to create Matt Proxy. There’s so many government psyops in Minnesota. George Floyd, the ICE shooting, the Somali takeover. It’s made to radicalize people.

During my formative years, the city was literally getting burned down. I remember seeing Philando Castile get shot by the police on that Facebook Live. George Floyd happened a couple miles from my crib. Then a year later, Daunte Wright got killed for having the air freshener by Kim Potter in Brooklyn Park right next to where I live.

Actually, that lore goes even deeper because Kim Potter was the same lady that arrested my dad in like 2007 for cocaine and sent him to jail for five years.

Where does the ‘Proxy’ come from?

From a VPN. That’s what proxy means. That’s how I got my home studio set up when I was 14.

Who is an important artistic inspiration for you?

I’ll never forget how X was. X is really who made me feel like I could do this shit. I want to make people feel how he made me feel

X was so important for artists of your generation.

I told my Uncle Jesse, Yo, you’re putting me on to Aphex Twin. Let me put you on XXXTentacion and Lil Peep. And he’s like, Bro, this is like the most bottom-level surface-level romanticizing-drug addiction music and it’s corny.

I get why you feel that way, but if you were a teenager in the early 2010s, you know there was something special about it. You had to be there to understand it. It was so fucking strong.

At what point did you start taking music more seriously?

Since I was 12 or 13 I knew music was my number one path. I feel like I blew up way too late. Nowadays 14 year olds are getting Billboard hits. I am happy I didn’t, though.

On this new project it feels like your artistic identity has really matured. Tell me about that.

I mean, if you listen to “bibles & rifles” from when I was 15, I’m rapping over a soul sample. I don’t have this elitist idea of saying, Oh, this trap music, this catfish jerk shit, it holds less value than me rapping like Kendrick Lamar.

One of the biggest barriers for an artist is that they think of the audience too much. This is what killed Uzi. It kills your sauce.

I just removed every rule that I wanted to remove. There’s no strong song structures. The rhyme schemes are very abstract. The beats are abstract. If I wanted to cross a line, I’ll cross a line.

You have to fully accept my artistry. I’m taking you on this ride. I don’t give a fuck about you, the listener. I’m worried about what I want to do and what I think is cool.

The song “Stars” really seems to encapsulate that.

The second half is the most beautiful harmony in the world, and the first half is abrupt 808s talking to you. You got to get through two minutes of what you consider noise to get to what you consider the beautiful part. Conventionally at least.

For me, honestly, the first half is just as beautiful as the second half, if not more beautiful. I’m doing distortion techniques that aren’t used in hip-hop often. Yeah, those Osama 808s hit, but can he clip like me?

I named it trojan horse for a reason. Everything is very intentional. You think it’s going to be one thing, and then it’s another thing. If you skip through the song, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

How has coming up changed your personal life?

I’ve gotten everything I’ve ever wanted. I’m seeing problems in my life that I never would have comprehended. For example, I cheated on my girlfriend. I was so distraught. I fucked up and she didn’t talk to me for months. I kid you not, bro: Fakemink posted me, and she hit me up.

I say that to say I’ve been struggling with navigating this industry. I’ve been struggling with people hitting me up strictly for things they want.

I face this weird text anxiety where I feel like I can’t even respond to a lot of texts. It’s like energy vampires. So many people want to bite me for my energy. That’s the unique struggle that only other rappers, creators, and artists face. You start developing immense anxiety about interacting with people because it’s not personal.

Like I said, I’ve gotten everything I wanted. All the niggas who I came up listening to follow me. I’m supposed to be happy, but it manifests as anxiety.

You rap about your lifestyle sometimes. Gym, chicken, clean living. Tell me about your wellness routine. What value do you place on your health?

My dad’s actually a professional boxer. That’s what he did when he left jail. Growing up as a man in this age, we’re fed so much protein propaganda. Me putting that in my music is alluding to growing up in the early 2010s and the media we all consume

It’s like when you watch the Ye documentary and finish it and you’re like, Fuck, I have to do push-ups now. That’s the feeling I was trying to evoke.

What is your spiritual practice? Are you religious?

Yeah, I’m religious. I am a Christian.

I grew up as a Christian and went to church my whole life. When I was 11, 12, 13, I became an atheist. I was like, God isn’t real. This shit is a distraction. We live a meaningless life. The Bible’s for the white man. That manifested in a new-age spirituality thing.

I used to watch VonTooCut and SoIlluminati often. As a 15-year-old, I genuinely thought that you had to stare at the sun. I thought my peers and I were going to get superpowers on the winter solstice. I thought my dreads were antennas for energy.

I thought the rapture was going to happen December 21, 2021. I prepared everything. I fasted and didn’t speak for days because I thought it was going to lower my energy.

You see themes of theology often in my music. I believe in God.

How do you feel about the state of the underground right now?

It’s the coolest shit we’ve ever seen.

When Lil Uzi came out, he faced all these barriers. But those SoundCloud niggas went through the rain, so us young niggas literally go through zero barriers. We can be as gay as we want, as loud as we want, as experimental as we want. People hate that, but I love that. Obviously, that’s going to generate a lot of garbage, but I think it’s going to generate more good than bad.

People say mainstream rap is dying. My argument is: what if rap was designed to be underground? What if that’s the best way for rap to thrive? That’s the beauty of it. Once it goes mainstream, you start becoming pop. There’s genius pop-rap albums like Graduation, but a big problem with pop is that it loses soul. Maybe rap is designed to thrive in the underground.

What is a piece of art, other than music, that has made a big impact on you?

I’ve seen like five movies in my life: Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Mulholland Drive, Yogi Bear, The Princess and the Frog, and Good Will Hunting.

That cannot be true.

It’s true, bro. I’ve literally seen five movies in my life.

That’s incredible.

The Princess and the Frog is my favorite movie of all time. It’s goated. It’s like a jazz movie. It’s the coolest movie in the world.

I can think of a thousand albums that influenced me, but when it comes to movies…and I don’t game. Well, I play Minecraft. I love Minecraft. Minecraft is my favorite. I don’t game, though.

I’ve been into making furniture. It started with refurbishing furniture and sanding down dressers and changing the handles. Then it transformed into, How do I make wood frames?

Then, How do I make bed frames? Then, How do I make mattresses?

That led me to, Yo, I want to make couches.

Then I realized I have to study for like ten years to even get good. That might be my next endeavor.

What’s a topic that interests you?

I started researching Neanderthals and early human life and the emotional connections they held. Did you know Neanderthals cared for the disabled? If you were disabled in the Stone Age, you could live a long life.

We see them as cavemen, but they had just as complex and emotional brains and lives as us. All the emotional value we hold toward our family and caring for others, these people held too.

What is one thing you would say to a listener about trojan horse to prepare them?

Don’t skip songs. Enjoy the art.

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Primavera Sound is a music festival hosted in a large industrial park on the coast of Spain, just outside of Barcelona city center. Its lineup leans international, and its sets run all through the night to sunrise, at which point many festival goers wade into the ocean for a morning swim.

We sent a photographer to experience the festival and take portrai…

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Everyone is wearing Vans again. Not just their usual fanatic collectors (which include Feng and Noah Dillon), but artists, musicians, and the cool kids in every city.

Not only is everyone wearing Vans, everyone is copying Vans. Across the broader footwear landscape, Vans’ influence has becom…

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Today’s Important Headlines

The astronauts going to the moon will be wearing Prada

Prada has partnered with Axiom Space to develop a high-tech undergarment for NASA’s upcoming Artemis moon missions, one of the most ambitious collaborations yet between luxury fashion and the commercial space industry. Built to regulate body temperature, manage breathing, and improve mobility inside sealed spacesuits, the garment addresses some of the most fundamental challenges astronauts face during lunar exploration and will be used in future crewed missions including Artemis III and Artemis IV. Prada has spent decades experimenting with technical and performance-focused apparel, making its foray into spacewear less surprising than it first appears.

People can’t tell whether the most viral song on the internet right now is AI

Fenix Flexin, one half of Shoreline Mafia, got everyone’s attention this week with the release of “RUBBERZ,” an ’80s-inspired synth-pop track far removed from his usual sound. So far removed, that many listeners have accused it of being AI-generated or assisted. Flexin has denied any AI involvement, attributing the song’s sound instead to autotune, reverb, and what he described as his “fake UK accent,” while citing The Smiths and The Cure as key influences from his upbringing. The discourse around this track’s authenticity forecasts a new kind of controversy that is only becoming more common as the line between human-made and AI-generated music is becoming increasingly difficult for listeners to discern. Buckle up.

Elon Musk is the world’s first trillionaire

SpaceX’s blockbuster IPO raised roughly $75 billion and gave the company an estimated market capitalization of $1.77 trillion. The aerospace giant, which aims to deploy AI data centers in orbit, propelled CEO Elon Musk’s net worth past the $1 trillion mark on paper, making him the world’s first trillionaire. Musk has held the title of world’s richest person since surpassing Jeff Bezos in 2021, but now his fortune stands in a league of its own, dwarfing that of every other billionaire.

The producer lineup on this underground rapper’s new album is insane

Jaeychino, a rapper at the helm of the burgeoning DMV scene (which is one of the most exciting in underground music right now), dropped his new album IF YOU KNEW last night, and the producer lineup was one of the most impressive we’ve seen: Whitearmor, Loukeman, Snow Strippers, Eurohead, 23, Yung Sherman, SJR, Glasear, Woesum, and more. Jaeychino (alongside fellow DMV artists ST6 JodyBoof, SlimeGetEm, and Dragnutz) has been quietly helping shape a distinct DMV sound, and this producer cast proves it has caught the attention of the rest of the underground.

Woah Vicky is a poet now

Internet personality Woah Vicky is hosting a sold-out “evening of poetry” at East Village clothing store le PÉRE under the alias Victoria Plath, a tongue-in-cheek reference to Sylvia Plath. Joining her are downtown internet-literary figures including Alex Dimitrov, Caroline Calloway, Avigayl Sharp, Sotce, and more. Though she lacks a traditional writing background, Vicky has become known online for her bizarrely existential tweets, with recurring meditations on “flesh” earning her an unlikely cult audience.

The Roundups

Music

New Releases:

• Tay-K — “Everywhere I Go / Erupt”

• Eartheater — “Crown Jewel”

• Kodak Black — Kodak The Blessing

• 2slimey — “lobby”

• Eera + CRUSH3d — “Flowers In The Sand”

• R8 (Nine Vicious’s producer) — DAWN CHORUS

• IYRUS & DIAMOND* — “N0ISE”

News:

• A new Tay-K mugshot surfaced online, as well as rumors of an early release. Tay-K’s account also posted cryptic updates and a bizarre video

• PZ announces a new EP, arriving June 19

• Leaked 2024 Playboi Carti snippet brings back his baby voice

• Ken Carson teases a new album, THE XPERIMENT. Rumored features include Playboi Carti, Destroy Lonely, and possibly Young Thug, which would mark Carti’s first official feature on a Ken Carson or Destroy Lonely project

• Interpol announces a new album, out August 18

• In a new Apple Music interview, Thaiboy Digital reveals he is working on two projects: a solo release and another with Drain Gang.

• Ye announces BULLY (Deluxe), set for release on June 19.

• “Gemini Season” receives an official music video. The visual features pieces from 424, while footwear teased by Bianca Censori is expected to be part of the upcoming collection.

• Nettspend appears set to replace Nine Vicious on the Summer Smash lineup.

Artworld

• The Online Marketplace of Ideas by Joshua Citarella at at Berggruen Arts & Culture, Venice, Italy

• Dudd Lite presented by Dudd Haus x The Future Perfect, NYC

• FTC NYC ART SHOW #2 at Sitting Room Gallery, NYC

• The Fountain Overflows at GRIMM Gallery, London

• Musical Bodies at The Met, NYC

• Powder at Sliphouse, NYC

• The Enchantment of Reason by Rachel Maclean at Josh Lilley Gallery, London

• The Story That Never Ends at ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany

Fashion

• Fashion legend Nigel Carbourn has passed away

• Stone Island and New Balance’s new billboards are heat-reactive—just like the new Furon v9 soccer cleats that Bukayo Saka will wear at the World Cup.

• Bottega campaign teases vanilla fragrance in their signature stitching pattern

• Hermes is bringing back their Murder Mystery event

• Jaden Smith drops his first Louboutin collection

• Balenciaga introduces a subtle new City Bag inspired logo onto their pieces

• COMME des GARÇONS tapped painter Henry Taylor to design a new wallet collection

Products

• 2 Supreme collections: Supreme x La Martina + Supreme x Grave Digger

• Basketcase x New Balance Gator Run “Hacky” and “Maiden”

• NYC Knicks inspired subway stop collectible from the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn

• Bang & Olufsen’s Beosound 9000c — a CD player collaboration with Fragment Design

• Re-edition of chairs created by Rei Kawakubo exclusively available at COMME des GARÇONS Paris.

• Aime Leon Diore mesh ballet flats

• fishforscale mini capsule on Lowheads

• Graphic T-shirts from Henry Jawson

• Big star hairclips by Beats Rydbacken

• 1017 ALYX 9SM x Audermars Pigutet Royal Oak

• ‘GORM’ leather crossbody bag by Lac Demure

• Pieces from Robot Kao

• Drake dropped a new perfume “CLOUDAR”

• Skylark speakers by Justin Bieber

• Mugs by @handheld.ceramics

• Systematic’s Château slippers

  Headline curation and words by Mikail Haroon (@mvkail)

Classifieds

Exciting opportunities, employment and otherwise

OVO Sound — Internship (Toronto, ON)

Internship opportunity supporting operations within OVO Sound. Responsibilities include assisting across ongoing projects and contributing to day-to-day workflows within the label. Ideal candidate is interested in music, culture, and gaining hands-on industry experience.
Apply

SOME DAYS — Art Director (Full-Time & Freelance)

Creative roles leading still and video campaigns from concept through execution. Responsibilities include overseeing production workflows and collaborating with talent across music, sports, and culture. Ideal candidate has experience directing campaigns and managing creative projects at a high level.
Apply

United Talent Agency — Music Department Assistant (New York, NY)

Full-time assistant role supporting the Partner and Co-Head of Worldwide Music at UTA. Responsibilities include calendar management, research, expense reporting, client coordination, and administrative support within a fast-paced music division. Ideal candidate has prior assistant experience, strong organizational skills, and deep knowledge of the music industry.
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There is a new generation of designers in Paris. They grew up on internet references and Soundcloud rap, and find fashion week boring. They work in neighboring studios and party together when they’re done. They are revitalizing a fashion scene that has become commercialized and disconnected. You might kn…

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In the early nineties, on the backstreets of a compact district in Tokyo, a new class of subcultures was forming. Driven by the countercultural impulses of a disillusion Japanese youth, these subcultures gave rise incredible era of street style, one that is still referenced and revered today, and archiv…

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Today’s Important Headlines

Jay-Z dissed Ye, Drake, Nicki Minaj, and more

After stating in an interview just two months ago that “beef is bad for business,” Jay-Z took the stage for a rare live performance at Roots Picnic in Philadelphia and took shots at a long list of people, including Ye, Nicki Minaj, Drake, Dame Dash, Tory Lanez, Jaguar Wright, Tony Buzbee, and Oschino. His sharpest remarks were aimed at Ye, whom he criticized for his erratic behavior and for making comments about Jay-Z’s children. Check out exactly what he said here.

This new app lets you put a bounty on literally anything

Pump.fun GO is a new platform that turns the entire world into a Black Mirror-esque gig marketplace, allowing users to crowdsource virtually any task imaginable. Kind of like a more chaotic version of Fiverr, the platform lets anyone post cash bounties for others to complete. Among the highest-paying bounties so far is a $22,663 offer to interview the family of Henry Nowak’s killer, while other notable listings include $11,417 to organize a NEET march through New York City.

Hundreds of John Lennon’s lost drawings have been rediscovered

A collection of 240 long-lost drawings created by John Lennon and artist Stephen Verona in the mid-1960s has gone on public display for the first time at Liverpool Beatles Museum. The colorful sketches were originally produced frame-by-frame for She Said So, a two-minute animated lyric video for the Beatles’ “I Feel Fine,” often cited as one of the earliest music videos ever made. The original film reel is preserved at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., but the drawings themselves were lost for decades. After recently resurfacing at auction, the works have been reunited in this special exhibition highlighting a largely forgotten piece of Beatles history.

Bots now account for more web traffic than humans

Two years ahead of the predicted 2027 timeline, bots now account for 57.5% of all HTTP requests to HTML content, with humans trailing at 42.5%, according to Cloudflare’s Radar dashboard. Gibraltar leads globally in bot traffic at 92.1%, followed by Singapore, Iran, Ireland, and the Netherlands. It’s a strange inflection point; the internet was built around human behavior, so what happens when its primary users are no longer human?

Drake may be getting his own GTA VI radio station

A clip from the Rory & Mal podcast suggests Drake will have his own radio station in GTA VI, with Jermaine Dupri saying Drake might upload unreleased music to the game. Rockstar has not confirmed this. In other GTA VI obsessive behavior: one superfan is planning on monitoring the oxygen levels near Rockstar’s offices to detect unusual activity, hoping to predict when a third trailer might drop.

The Roundups

Music

New Releases:

• Nine Vicious - F*ck a Leak

• PZ - “Extra (Extra)”

• Apollo Red - Demon Heart Radio

• Protect - SLIMEDUDE2003

• Harrison, Earl Sweatshirt, Elipropperr — “officeloop with t+ e”

• MGNA Crita - “Summer Love”

• Nate Sib - “Let You Go” (dir. Noah Dillon)

• Steve Lacy - “This Feeling”

• Vince Staples - Cry Baby

• Rico Nasty - “Rituals”

• Skrillex - SOMA

• Navy Blue - Sir Render

• Cochise - “SRT”

• Effie + Eurohead - “d☆ct (soccer banger)”

News:

• Lucki signs to Interscope after 76M independent streams via Empire. Also announced an archive tape featuring unreleased material from 2018-2021

• Future’s “Throw Away” music video surfaces nearly 12 years after the track dropped

• Steve Lacy announces new album

• Tierra Whack announces WHACK’S MUSEUM, a rap mixtape dropping on Juneteenth

• OsamaSon says new album Nocturnal will feature “like 26 songs”

• Weezer’s next album will be produced by Kenny Beats

• Clairo and SZA appear to be in the studio together

Artworld

• My Home by Petra Collins for Paloma Wool in Barcelona

• Cloud #07156 by Fujiko Nakaya at the Bourse de Commerce, Paris

• A Kind of Paradise group exhibition at Museum Rietberg in Zürich

• Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art in London

• Yves Saint Laurent and Photography exhibition at ICP in New York

• Art Basel Paris announces more than 200 exhibitors for its 2026 edition

• Frick extends its popular free First Fridays initiative as part of a 3 year collaboration with Louis Vuitton

Fashion roundup

• Jonathon Anderson’s Dior Riviera 2026 collection

• Gucci’s Monte Carlo campaign is beautiful

• Chanel opens new flagship in London

• Central Saint Martens fashion show was incredible as always

• Under Armor x 424 are cooking up some amazing pieces

• Amazing drawings by @niceok for Nike x Bagel Magazine for the French Open:

• Gorgeous campaign from Basketcase x New Balance

• Balenciaga unveils a football inspired RTW collection for World Cup

• Tasteful Anya Taylor Joy shoot by Szilveszter Makó

• This moving subway window display for Chanel at Bergdorf Goodman:

• Preview of upcoming collection from Mowalola x Air Jordan 14

• Tana seen in unreleased YVL (Carti) polos

• Nike releases their new “Rip The Script” video featuring a stacked cast including Travis Scott, Christiano Ronaldo, Kim Kardashian, Lebron James, and more

Product roundup

• Classic Yung Lean merch is back

• Chanel heels from the Métiers d’Art launch

• Tamagotchi grills from @papi_grillz

• Comme des Garçons transparent snakeskin wallet

• Prada Mode toothbrush + toothpaste

• Onitsuka Tiger mules

• Cartier’s new iced-out Love bracelets

• Sleeve vase by Haus Otto

• Supreme x Jordan SS26 collection

• Adidas x Coca-Cola collection

• “Condition Marking” shirts by Xtenware

• Tommy Jack Oddo Verdier’s new sandals

• Studio Nicholson x ASICS dress / running shoe hybrid was previewed

• Lil Yachty x Nike “Us Force 1” collab was previewed

Headline curation and words by Mikail Haroon (@mvkail)

Classifieds

Exciting opportunities, employment and otherwise

U-Haul Art Fair XL — Gallery & Curator Open Call (Worldwide)

Open call for galleries and curators interested in participating in a DIY art fair staged across a series of U-Haul trucks. Responsibilities include proposing exhibitions and presenting work within the fair’s unconventional mobile exhibition format. Ideal candidate is interested in experimental exhibition-making and alternative art fair models.
Apply

Holiday — Summer Internship (Los Angeles, CA)

Summer internship supporting day-to-day operations across Holiday’s West Hollywood retail and studio environment. Responsibilities include moodboarding, inventory management, order packing, calendar coordination, and assisting with general creative and operational workflows. Ideal candidate is highly organized, self-motivated, based in Los Angeles with access to a car, and interested in gaining hands-on experience within an independent fashion brand.
Apply (only in store)

CELINE — Press Intern (London, UK)

Full-time press internship supporting CELINE UK across communications and events. Responsibilities include assisting press operations, coordinating communications workflows, and supporting day-to-day activities within the brand’s London office. Ideal candidate is highly organized, interested in luxury fashion communications, and eager to gain hands-on experience within a global fashion house.
Apply

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