Playlist: 2026.9 | One Step Closer to Heaven

This is W Department, translated into sound.

Music has always been one of the ways I make sense of the world. Long before W Department, before fashion, galleries, real estate, there was DJing and production. There’s still the thrill of finding not only the right song, but the right song for the moment, for the vibe.

For years, playlists were little more than digital mixtapes. A good collection of songs arranged in an order that felt right. They’re still that, but they’ve become something else. Spotify’s newer mixing tools are still in their infancy, but they’re beginning to hint at a different way of listening. Transitions, loops, effects, the ability to shape movement from one record to the next have, for me, made these monthly playlists feel less like static collections and more like evolving ideas.

It opens strong, no intro or transition, and the second track only elevates that. Then some good, old, independent hip-hop. My happy place… not these songs specifically, but jazzy, low-key loops with fun and clever lyrics riding on top.

Then the set does something that should not work. Dijon’s The Dress runs straight into Come Undone, which Duran Duran polished to a mirror. Nearly thirty years and every possible difference of intention separate the two. They are also both songs about coming apart, and one hands off to the other without a bump. Proximity makes an argument that neither record was making alone.

The middle goes soft and wide for a while, before I turn back to hip-hop. Sampa the Great, then O.C. with Time’s Up, then The Roots with The Next Movement. Read those last two titles in the order they fall. Time runs out, and then you move.

It ends in Italian, with Ernia and Superclassico. Most people reading this will not follow the words, and it does not matter, because by the twentieth song you are listening to cadence rather than content. Ending somewhere other than home feels right for today.

One Step Closer to Heaven isn’t about arrival. It’s about movement. The title holds both progress toward the lives we imagine and the inevitability of time passing. I don’t find that sad. I find it clarifying.

September in Santa Fe is chamisa coming in yellow along the roadsides, the scent of green chile roasting two blocks before you see the drum turning, and midnight monsoons – thank God they finally came!

September always feels like that, a threshold. There’s gratitude for what already happened and anticipation for what hasn’t yet arrived. This playlist is a progression, an evolution, an aging, but always moving toward a fantasy. “Anybody up for living in a fantasy, you can be my family.”

—Christopher Webster

Track List

  • Can’t Fight
    Lianne La Havas
  • Black Moon Rising
    Black Pumas
  • The Words
    Emanon, Aloe Blacc, Exile
  • The Rain
    Awon, Phoniks, Tiff the Gift
  • The Dress
    Dijon
  • Come Undone
    Duran Duran
  • Feel It All Around
    Washed Out
  • Never the Same
    Supreme Beings of Leisure
  • Morals
    Africa Express, Mr Jukes, Muzi, Mahotella Queens, Moonchild Sanelly
  • World on Fire
    Homeboy Sandman, Jack Splash, CeeLo Green
  • Gray Skies
    The Love Theme
  • If I Got It (Your Love Brought It)
    Aaron Frazer
  • Coastin’
    Victoria Monét
  • Brunch with Suki
    Mark Barrott
  • It Runs Through Me (feat. De La Soul)
    Tom Misch, De La Soul
  • Hurt
    Arlo Parks
  • Energy
    Sampa the Great, Nadeem Din-Gabisi
  • Time’s Up
    O.C.
  • The Next Movement
    The Roots, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Jazzyfatnastees
  • Superclassico
    Ernia