your vivacious Valentine's Day gift guide

massage guns + magenta paper + just one Marlboro Light

square one.

Hello. Happy first day of Black History Month. For the Valentine’s Day gift guide — with its puzzles and scents and sandy toes, scroll down.

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How are you? I hope, in these wild times, you’re shining bright and finding time for you, as well as for the people and things that make you most glad and inspire the most peace. As for me, I was resting for a few days to get my body back on track, so I had time to (among other things) listen to my 4-hour Whitney Houston/Aretha Franklin playlist.

It’s glorious. A soft mountain of music featuring Whitney and Aretha songs that have saved my life and brought me back to life thousands of times. There are also covers of songs the two powerhouses made famous, original versions of songs they made more famous, as well as songs from artists they were inspired by and songs from artists inspired by them. Plus: songs that are dissected and celebrated in the Whitney/Aretha chapter of my Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop.

I also finalized this ⬇️ for the New York Times Magazine (paywall-free access).