HIGHRISE

What came first—the need to run or the need to stop thinking? I've been trying to figure that out for three years now, and I'm no closer to an answer. What I do know is this: some playlists work too hard. They're all drama and crescendo, trying to convince you that mile two is the emotional climax of your entire life. This one doesn't do that. It flows. Thirteen tracks of jazz rap, nu disco, future bass, and stutter house that just... move. No top-five-greatest-workout-anthems nonsense. Just momentum.

Louis The Child open with "Right To It" featuring Ashe, and it's the perfect temperature—warm enough to get you out the door, loose enough that you're not clenching your jaw at the first stoplight. Future bass gets a bad rap from purists (Barry would lose his mind if I played this at the store), but that's because purists forget that not everything needs to be difficult. Sometimes you just need propulsion. The Polish Ambassador's "Rise and Release" keeps that energy going, layering in indie soul textures that make the Lakefront Trail feel less like a slog and more like you're actually going somewhere.

Here's what I've learned about running music after a thousand failed attempts: tempo matters less than texture. You don't need 170 BPM and someone screaming at you about overcoming obstacles. You need grooves that carry you forward without announcing themselves every thirty seconds. That's what the middle section of this playlist understands. "Lose My Cool" in the Franc Moody Remix, "Show Me the Right," "Didn't I"—these tracks live in the pocket. Jazz rap influence, alternative R&B vocals, and enough space in the production that you can actually hear yourself breathe.

There's a reason moombahton and stutter house work for running, even if nobody talks about it: syncopation. When the beat doesn't land exactly where you expect it, your body adjusts. You stop running like a metronome and start running like a person. Mile three becomes less about discipline and more about finding the rhythm inside the rhythm. That's where "Feel It Still" in the Medasin Remix lives. Portugal. The Man's original was already great—Danger Mouse production, that bassline, the whole retro-soul-meets-indie-rock thing. But Medasin strips it down, adds stutter, and suddenly you're not listening to a song. You're inside it.

Top 5 Reasons This Playlist Works When Others Just Yell At You:

1. No false promises—it doesn't pretend mile one will feel good, it just keeps you moving through it.

2. Genre fluidity—jazz rap into nu disco into future bass, and none of it feels like whiplash because the BPM range stays human.

3. Vocal features that add warmth without demanding your attention—Ashe, INJI on "Pretty People," voices that guide instead of command.

4. The moombahton backbone in tracks like "Lost" and "Off The Ground"—that halftime reggaeton pulse is basically designed for steady-state cardio.

5. It ends with "California Girls - Remix" which is either a joke or genius, and I can't tell which, and that uncertainty is exactly the vibe this whole playlist traffics in.

By the time you hit "Electric Feel," you've been running for thirty minutes and you haven't thought about your ex, your job, or the fact that you're running in the first place. That's the trick. The playlist flows because it refuses to announce itself. MGMT's original is indie rock canon—obviously—but in this context, surrounded by electronic textures and jazz rap breaks, it becomes something else. A bridge. A reminder that the best playlists aren't about genre purity. They're about movement.

Dick once told me that the mark of a great compilation is that you forget you're listening to a compilation. You just think you're listening to music. That's what this does. It doesn't try to be your personal trainer or your therapist. It just keeps you going. And when you're someone who runs to clear your head (it never works), that's all you really need. Momentum. Flow. The sense that even if you're not running toward anything, at least you're not standing still.