Hello hello.

Hopefully you’re off to a relaxing sunday morning.

Here are a few things that caught my eye this week:

I admittedly don’t listen to as much music as I used to since the pandemic.

I used to travel alot more, and I was always on my headphones in transit or using shazam as much as my passport.

My friend JJ and I create shared playlists that we add to up until 100 songs - then we create a new one. We used to bang out a playlist in a month and a half - now it’s closer to three. Even at home, remote-work means less time in the car to jam out.

That’s ok. Seasons change, but my love for music hasn’t - which is why I have such a love/hate relationship with Spotify.

They recently rolled out “prompted” playlists - a feature I was actually eager to explore.

I’ve argued here before that I wish they would promote human-made playlists more, rather than generic vibe-based stuff. I’m sure the data internally tells them that the latter is working, which is why they continue to do it.

But now since everyone and their mom is on chatgpt, they’ve introduced “prompted playlists” - which is a fun idea, but honestly it feels almost identical to their pre-generated algo-playlists, except this time you have to watch it tell you it’s “searching your habits” and “removing repeats” for 45 sec while it creates a 15 song playlist.

Your musical habits/listening history is - I would argue - one of your most personal data sets. There are actually so many exciting ways you can tap into AI to re-surface old tracks you forgot, create custom playlists for a specific vibe you want at your dinner party (no “Real Love Baby” by Father John Misty), and more.

For now - it’s clunky and probably constrained by AI token usage (why spend compute pre-generating a playlist nobody will listen to), but I actually like this direction and am curious to watch it evolve.

Most sports ads are quick cuts of athletes in a studio or on a green screen. Not much substance or creativity, let alone story-telling.

Nike used to crush this, but their recent commercial and creative struggles are well documented.

Enter Adidas: who dropped this 5 min banger with Lisan al gaib himself and two of the worlds brightest stars.

They told a story, didn’t cut corners, used real people, and made an instant classic.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Tavel wines in France. Today, I’m talking about Frappato.

Sicilian wines don’t get the international buzz that Tuscan’s or Barolo’s do.

While the island is home to many unique grapes and diverse soil + microclimates, they’ve often amounted to nothing more than interesting table wines.

Arianna Occhipinti is changed that narrative, and I’m here to tell you to get on board.

I recently picked up an order of her latest imports from my fav local shop: Woodland Hills Wine Company and treated myself to a glass (or two) of her $40 Frappato.

This is your sign to buy on sight.

Low alcohol, lifted aromatics, light on the palate with a distinctly Sicilian zip…this bottle is an absolute banger.

Pizza wine, rooftop wine, vinyl night wine. You name it.

Your welcome.

I shouldn’t have enjoyed this as much as I did.

RP WEEKLY!!!!!