There's a universe in your phone & a universe in a tree
Which is more important? Plus cool shops, the joys of outfit repeating, and other modern pleasures discussed with Aminé the vibey rap prince
Welcome to Blackbird Spyplane.
Mach 3+ city intel for traveling the entire planet is here.
Check out our comprehensive new Home Goods Index.
The B.L.I.S.S. List, a rundown of Beautiful Life-Improving Spyplane Staples from sweatpants to socks to incense, is here.
Our interviews with Adam Sandler, Father John Misty, André 3000, King Krule, Nathan Fielder, 100 gecs, Danielle Haim, Jerry Seinfeld, Ezra Koenig, Mac DeMarco, Matty Matheson, Michael Stipe, Phoebe Bridgers, Seth Rogen, Emily Bode, Sandy Liang, Maya Hawke, Steven Yeun, John C. Reilly, Rachel Kushner, Conner O’Malley, Clairo, Tyler, The Creator, and more are here.
Aminé — he’s a cool rapper from Portland who loves clothes, nature walks, and psychedelic drugs. I, like several hundred million other people, first caught wind of him in 2017 when he dropped the self-directed viral-smash video for his breakthrough single, “Caroline,” where he drives around Portland wearing a repro Pulp Fiction tee and hanging out the sunroof of his buddy’s Honda Accord, which is full of bananas.
You can hear and see DNA traces of that song & video in everything Aminé’s done since: His music leans fun, his videos lean trippy, staying true to the core mission even as he’s racked up 5 billion+ streams and established himself as a star. Aminé lives in L.A. these days, but he launched his own hometown music festival in Portland earlier this year, and his newest New Balance collab — which comes out this Friday — pays homage to his public Portland high school.
Even more impressive than any of that: Aminé f**ks heavy with Blackbird Spyplane. So I was pumped to get on an Encrypted SpyVideo Link with him the other day to talk about such unbeatable topics as whether doing mushrooms and staring at trees is a better use of time than being “economically productive”; swerving on a chick in a nice Camry and an argyle sweater vest; how a good public school stocked with musical equipment can alter the course of a kid’s life; how it’s tight to wear new pants for days in a row because you are stoked on them, and because people who pooh-pooh outfit repeating are Sauce Cops to be ignored; and more!
Blackbird Spyplane: We’ve followed each other for a minute on IG, but it’s nice to finally talk.
Aminé: “Yeah man, same, I’ve been wanting to do this for a minute.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Something I picked up on about you, reading through old interviews the other day, is that you seem good about logging off. You’ve talked about how you’ll turn off your phone on album release days and just lock in with your friends, instead of looking at what people are saying about it online and checking your email. You’ve talked about how much you love hitting Forest Park when you’re in Portland, too, which is one of my favorite places in the country. And along similar lines you’ve talked about the deep pleasures of riding a bike around town, eating magic mushrooms and staring at trees. I’m with you 300% brother. When’s the last time you rode a bike around, ate mushrooms, and stared at a tree?
Aminé: “Man, I don’t do it as much anymore — I’ve gotten so much busier.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Really??
Aminé: “I hear the concern in your voice! Yeah, you know, riding a bike, when I’m back in Portland, I can’t do it as much as I want to, because I get stopped a lot. And here in L.A. you just can’t really ride a bike around like that. Paris and New York are the best cities for bike riding, for me, because they don’t really give a f**k who you are, so I’ll ride around all day with my headphones in, cutting through traffic, exploring. Even the s**ttiest corners of Paris look so beautiful, man.
“As far as eating mushrooms and looking at trees, it’s been a while — a good 6, 7 months. I’ll dabble in shrooms, and acid, too, when I don’t have too much on my plate, but that last part is key, because it’s not good to do psychedelics when the stress level is on 20. I learned that the hard way, thinking the psychedelics would help with the stress, and instead I get crazy depression for a week. Maybe I’m wired weird.”
Blackbird Spyplane: I don’t think that’s weird at all. That’s classic ‘set & setting’ psychonaut logic. If I’m gonna open up my borders to an experience like that, I definitely can’t have any demons in the mix. I need to be demon free.
Aminé: “I mean, I have my fun, don’t get me wrong — maybe a month ago I took some Molly and had a great time. But I was depressed afterward. As I get older, you know, I just turned 30 and I’m starting to realize that dabbling in drugs is fun, but you have work to do. I don’t come from money, so I have this constant thought in my head that goes, ‘If you don’t keep working, you’re gonna lose it all.’ It motivates you, when you didn’t grow up with much, to say, I never wanna see an overdraft fee in my account again. So I’m not trying to waste an hour, minute, or single second.”
Blackbird Spyplane: I think it’s about balance, because staring at a tree — whether sober or on drugs — that’s not a waste of time in my book. It doesn’t pay the bills, but there’s an entire universe in a tree and it’s good for the soul to spend time absorbed in that universe. Whereas yes, there’s an entire universe in my phone, too — which I stare at much more than trees these days and tell myself I’m being ‘productive’ — but it’s not a universe I feel great about spending as much time in as I do, even if it’s time working, and I know I’m not alone on that score.
Aminé: “Yeah, it’s a tough balance to find.”
Blackbird Spyplane: So this newsletter is about mushrooms and trees, and it’s also about wearing cool clothes. Let me ask you about your relationship to getting dressed these days. Looking at outfits you’ve been posting, something I see, and you tell me if this resonates, is a lot of experimentation. You’re wearing Supreme North Face in one shot; Our Legacy Klove sneakers with some below-the-knee gingham shorts in the next; tie-dye wide-leg fleece sweatpants with some leather slippers and a studded leather bomber... It’s like you’re throwing a bunch of different s**t together, searching for these unlikely collisions and happy accidents you could never plan for in any rational way…
Aminé: “I just wake up and put on the things that make me happy that day. When I buy something new, I don’t put it away: I leave it on my dining-room table for a week, because I’m so excited to wear, you know, these pants I spent all this time searching for online, so I’m going to wear them 3 times that week.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Three days minimum! When I’m stoked on a piece I’ll wear it for a week or two. Maybe longer. F**k any anxiety about garment repeating, much less outfit repeating — repetition is advanced big-brain s**t.
Aminé: “I’m basically trying to care less and have a lot of fun. With those furry Kapital sweatpants you mentioned, I bought those when I was in Japan, wore them a bunch, and one day I said, ‘Let me wear them with the bomber.’ If I put on something because I think, ‘People will like this,’ I don’t feel good about myself that day. But if I look in the mirror and I’m happy? I’m set.”
Blackbird Spyplane: That’s my friend Vivi’s approach. She’s 4-and-a-1/2-years old, my friends’ daughter, and she insists on dressing herself, like, ‘No, I need to wear these silver shoes with these brown-and-red striped tights.’ If you can preserve that childlike spirit — and, let’s be honest, if you’ve got a gift for juxtapositions, as opposed to looking like the closet just barfed on you — that’s a beautiful thing.
Aminé: “I wanna be a kid until I’m 85. I don’t wanna lose that childlike thought process — that’s what you should have whenever you’re being creative, whether it’s putting together an outfit or whatever else.”
Blackbird Spyplane: By the way, who made the slippers in that fit pic?
Aminé: “They’re from a Japanese brand I’m blanking on — I got them at Mohawk here in L.A. The bomber is from this Japanese streetwear brand called AFB who also make the coolest part of that outfit with the Kapital sweats and the slippers: the big hoodie-scarf.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Mohawk’s really good, where else do you like to look at clothes?
Aminé: “There’s a store I went to recently in New York called C’H’C’M’…”
Blackbird Spyplane: Best men’s store in New York. One of the very best clothing shops in the world. Shout out Sweetu.”
Aminé: “I just heard about it. I got a couple things there, including this fleece beanie I’m wearing right now. For a guy with a lot of hair, it’s hard to find a beanie that fits. It’s by this brand um… <checks tag> Lady White.”
Blackbird Spyplane: That’s a great independent line out of L.A. They’ve got a really nice shop on Hyperion.
Aminé: “Oh s**t, I’m gonna go.”
Blackbird Spyplane: I asked you to talk about a rare cherished possession, and you chose this photo of your mother. It’s a great picture, what’s the story?
Aminé: “Like four years ago I was moving into my first actual home in L.A., and I wanted to start putting up artwork that meant a lot to me, so I was back home, looking through family photo albums, and I found this old, really small I.D. photo of my mom looking so beautiful. So I took a picture with my phone and had it blown up and framed.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Where was she in her life when she sat for this?
Aminé: “You know, I asked her that and her memory is so foggy — and she doesn’t even do drugs. But she took it at a photo studio in Ethiopia, I think for a passport. Looking at this brings back my childhood. It’s nice to see that youth on her face.”
Blackbird Spyplane: She’s Ethiopian, and your dad is Ethiopian / Eritrean — is there a big Habesha community in Portland or was your family one of just a few growing up?
Aminé: “It felt like a huge community in my eyes. I grew up going to Sunday School and stuff like that, getting into fights in the basement with bad Ethiopian kids. And when I go home I’m in the kitchen helping my mom make the Injera.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Where I’m at in Oakland there’s a big, longstanding Habesha community. One of my favorite things is to sit with a buddy at the bar of this one spot called Café Eritrea d’Afrique, drink a couple Asmaras, and watch the Ethiopian-Eritrean pop videos they play on the flatscreen. I have a bunch of records of ‘60s- and ‘70s-era music from artists like Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou and Mulatu Astatke, and I love the Ethiopiques collections, but the more contemporary Habesha pop is very cool, too — they’ll weave in Autotune and synthesized instruments and drum machines, but in a very lo-fi, un-slick way, mixed with real flutes and horns.
And the videos are a trip because the singers tend to be swagged-out in very modest ways — like, swerving on a chick in a nice Camry and an argyle sweater vest. Some of the artists I’ve clocked are Temsghen Yared, Tesfealem Arefaine, and Amanuel Goitom — I think they’re pretty big stars. Do you f**k with contemporary Ethiopian-Eritrean pop at all?
Aminé: “Yeah, it’s funny that you call it pop — I guess it’s like jazz, infused with the heritage of Habesha music in general, fused with pop. I grew up with my mom playing nothing but that, and now I find myself going back to these musicians my parents brought me up listening to. I’ve been listening to this one artist, Neway Debebe, nonstop, and my mom was, like, ‘I played him every day, you never paid attention!’ I was like, ‘Yeah, well, I was a kid and ignorant and I just wanted to listen to Kanye back then!’”
Blackbird Spyplane: All right finally, you’ve done a couple New Balance collabs, and you’ve got a new one coming out on Friday. I like the ad where the dude gets splattered with mud and the sneakers stay totally pristine — so dumb, haha. You made these in homage to your high school, Benson Tech, using the school colors. I gotta say, I had a fine time in high school but I’m never gonna pay homage to my high school with a shoe. You must have had a great time there.
Aminé: “I mean, a lot of ball players do a shoe based on their high school, so that was part of the idea, but the big thing is, the only reason I have a sneaker is because of this school. It’s the first place I recorded a song, on accident, just for fun, as a joke, because it’s the first place that had music equipment I had access to. If I didn’t go there, I never would have made music. I didn’t believe in myself at all.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Salute a good public school with facilities where kids can cook!
Aminé: “Totally. I can’t thank Benson enough — when I look at my life, there was a neighborhood school near where I grew up, like right down the block, and I know if I went there I wouldn’t be sitting here doing this interview. Regardless of whether I got bullied or had a good time, it made me who I am.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Kids need good public schools, they need good public parks, they need well-funded community centers, and they need your sneakers.
Aminé: “Hahaha, definitely.”
Aminé is on IG here. His site is here. He just put out a 2-song micro-EP last week, which you can listen to on Apple here, Spotify here and Soundcloud here.
Enjoy our list of the world’s 35 slappiest shops, where Spyfriends have added a ton of favorites in the comments.
The B.L.I.S.S. List — a rundown of Beautiful Life-Improving Spyplane Staples, from incense to jeans — is here.
Hender Scheme slippers. I got the black pair from spyfriends Canoe Club a couple years ago. Great interview!
Shout out to Nick from Holiday Brand for being dude that gets splattered with mud