A mix for Robbie Robertson and Rodriguez, and some medicine for your mind from Khingz, Noname, and from me too.

Earlier this week, we got the news of two legends who passed away on the same day. Sixto Rodriguez and Robbie Robertson. Both highly influential Indigenous musicians, who passed away at the ages of 80 and 81. I’ve been back on KEXP these last few weeks (my last show is September 12th, I’m up Earrrly with you just about every weekday until then), so on Wednesday night I put together a set of music for Robbie Robertson and Rodriguez. It included their music along with people they collaborated with like Jennifer Kreisberg and Pura Fe of Ulali, music for Leonard Peltier (who Robbie Robertson made a song with) and other political prisoners, and people they inspired like Charles Bradley, Black Pumas, and 2Mex.

I never did get to share that mix on the air the next morning, so I wanted to share it with you all here, now. With love to all of Robbie Robertson and Sixto Rodriguez’s families, friends, fans… all of us.

That mix never aired, because I missed the radio show on Thursday morning. I spent most of Wednesday night awake, trying to calm myself down from a panic attack.

The first time I ever had a panic attack was after Ijeoma and me went back to our house that burned down in 2020. If you haven’t seen the pictures, you’ll see images of what our house looked like after the fire in the cover art to my next LP. What you might not get from the pictures, is that the soot had completely blackened what was left of the windows that weren’t boarded up, so it was completely dark in the middle of the day. The smell was awful and it was something that got in your clothes just from being in the place for a few minutes, and there was still the sound of a fire alarm lightly going off, months after the actual fire was over. The ceiling was buckling like it was about to cave in, and it was the first time we really saw the destruction that ate our home.

I stood in the ruins of my old studio to see if there was anything worth salvaging, and after a few minutes I couldn’t take it anymore. My heart was beating so fast and I started to panic, as if the fire was happening again, and I just needed to go outside and breathe.

As we drove away, I told Ijeoma that it felt like my heart was beating so fast, I was scared I was having a heart attack. She calmly explained what a panic attack felt like, and that day was the beginning of my struggle with high anxiety.

I’ve been in therapy for the last several months to address this issue, and it’s been wonderful. To anyone else struggling with anxiety and panic attacks, you are not alone, and if you can, I highly suggest finding a therapist to talk to about these issues. It’s obviously still a struggle for me, but I have more skills to cope and calm myself down than I did six months ago, and I’m gaining more of an understanding of what’s even happening when I have these moments.

I know that it’s my body trying to protect itself, and that when we are triggered, our minds don’t have a concept of time when it comes to trauma. Our bodies also don’t know the difference between emotional and physical danger, for the body, it’s all physical danger, so even an emotional trauma response has a physical reaction. Shoutout to my therapist.

Some of the strategies I’ve been using to tell my mind and body that it’s ok when I know I’m just being triggered, is drinking an ice cold glass of water or opening a window in a car (cooling the body down is key), practicing mantra work, deep breathing and meditation, and visualization (mentally putting yourself in the situation you want to be in.) I’m still learning new strategies and as this week has shown me, I’ve still got a way to go.

A lot of my trauma, and my triggers, are just from these last 3 years. The fire is an obvious one, but also it’s the pandemic, it’s the loss of so many loved ones, and it’s my health. When something feels slightly off, I sometimes spiral in my own mind and catastrophize around whatever it might be.

This is a long way to say, that the loss of two beloved musicians on one day this week, gave me a panic attack, and I didn’t even know I was being triggered while putting a mix together.

(…do y’all see a little more about why I’m leaving KEXP?)

Coincidentally… this all ties in to some new music I wanted to share with you from my brother Khingz.

As I mentioned last week, my new album From the Ashes of Our Homes was made in conversation with Khingz, as he was working on his new album, A Safe Place For Us.

We sent each other everything we made, every Sunday, until both of our albums were done. Now we plan to share the music with you, with a new single every week leading up to the joint release in September.

The first single from Khingz’ LP is “The Yotty Button”, and in his words, this song is:

“A mantra to relax when your mind is eating you alive.”

Couldn’t have been more timely.

In other news, Noname released a new album today. It’s called Sundial, and as is the case with Noname’s last two albums, I might play the whole thing on repeat everyday for the next several weeks.

When we say medicine in the music, this is what we mean.