Everything Temporarily Manageable

"Marijuana" by Kitty is exactly the kind of song that arrives in July and makes everything feel like it can wait. Slow, hazy, conversational—rap that sounds like someone talking to you from the far end of a very comfortable couch. It landed in the summer of 2014 and I played it on repeat for longer than I’d tell anyone.

Kitty had this thing where she made slacker sound like a genuine aesthetic position rather than an excuse. The production was all soft edges and drift, and her delivery matched it—not exactly effortless, but easy in a way that felt considered. There’s a specific mood that belongs entirely to midsummer afternoons when you have nowhere to be and no real desire to find somewhere. This song was the sound of that mood.

It still holds up. Very unpretentious things sometimes do—they weren’t trying to be more than they were, so they don’t age into anything embarrassing. Some summers just get their song, and that one did.