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The Scene

The People's Party ☕️

The radical potential of Charlotte's growing cafe culture. PLUS: Cyanca on the cover of Issue 1, and new music from Sonny Miles, Steezie, Maasho & more.

Fola Onifade, Ryan Cocca

• 8 min read
The People's Party ☕️
Dammit Wesley DJs at Indigo Tea & Coffee Co. Photos by Rob: Earth One.

Late last February, my friend and I met up at Charlotte’s Indigo Tea & Coffee Co., a Black-owned coffee shop on the northern edge of Uptown for its first anniversary celebration. 

The Matcha Morning Show featured coffee and cocktail specials, a DJ set by artist Dammit Wesley, and a vibe that fell somewhere between a kickback and a day party. It was still a little too cold to comfortably sit outside, but as we chatted on the second floor sipping our elaborate matcha concoctions and catching up on life and love, I wondered about the city’s budding cafe culture and what its impact would look like in the coming years. 

For about the last year, DJ See Bird Go has been hosting “For the Early Birds,” a live DJ set at Night Swim Coffee every Saturday at 10am. On the second and fourth Saturday of each month, Salud Cerveceria, a Latino-owned cafe and brewery in NoDa, hosts a morning party featuring a rotating cast of electronic DJs called “Coffee Beats.” Charlotte Is Creative, a nonprofit that supports local artists, regularly hosts “Coffee with Creatives,” where individuals are randomly selected to get free coffee and meet other artists. 

There are several other examples in Charlotte alone, and a lot of them can be branded as either sober-inclusive iterations of the beloved day party, caffeine-induced raves to see and be seen, or less expensive versions of the afternoon brunch party that brim with endless mimosas. That’s cool. And there are myriad reasons to explain the new trend: falling rates of alcohol consumption, the hunger for community and third spaces, and perhaps even the rise of remote work that’s elevated the profile of the coffee shop in many of our lives. 

But what revolutionary potential could a setting like Indigo hold? Although the country was one week out from launching air strikes in Iran when my friend and I went out for the Matcha Morning Show, we were still living in the shadows of two ICE murders in Minneapolis and another partial government shutdown that stalled TSA. Historically, coffee shops have served as hubs for social change, safe havens for artists, writers, and organizers.

In 1968, antiwar activist and editor of the Scientific American Fred Gardner opened a cafe in Columbia, South Carolina called UFO. That same year, GIs Against the War in Vietnam, a group organized by a Black soldier named Joe Miles, began publishing the underground newspaper The Short Times and held regular meetings at the UFO that ultimately led to a public relations disaster for the U.S. military after a protest at Fort Jackson. UFO was eventually forced to close following a $10,000 fine, and six staff members were arrested for “operating and maintaining a public nuisance.”  

My friend and I were vibing at Indigo, energized by the people around us engaged in their own conversations and giddy with the early hints of the season’s shifting. I imagined a warmer day in the near future where people could gather around their coffee, spitballing ideas about art, politics, and culture against a soundscape of house music, R&B, and hip-hop. 

We’re yet to see what role, if any, the cafe will play in the future of political and cultural organizing or whether it will simply pass as the latest phase of daytime turn-ups in the social media era. But if history has anything to say about it, coffee pairs well with resistance.

Fola Onifade is a Charlotte-based writer and creative, and the staff writer and associate producer at Democracy in Color. She's also the editorial director for Sistories, an interactive Black feminist literary magazine. Most recently, she became the Marketing & Communications Director for BOOM Charlotte, an arts nonprofit championing local creatives. You can keep up with her at folaonifade.com.

Also This Week:

  • 🗞 Cyanca, photographed by Surf Mitchell, on the cover of our first print issue
  • 🎧 New albums from Sonny Miles, Steezie, and Maasho, plus songs from Brydecisive, 9th Wonder, Rapsody, and JUNE!
  • 🌐 A fresh roundup of links from around the web

🗞 OUR DEBUT COVER: CYANCA

How to go about picking a cover star for the first issue of Super Empty?

To begin with, you'd want someone making real waves within the state and beyond. A fixture of the community, too—the kind of person who over the years has earned not only the adoration of fans but the respect of creative peers. And if they have an imminent album release on the horizon, that would be the cherry on top.

Please to report that with Charlotte artist Cyanca, we went 3-for-3.

Starting next week, you'll find this cover—shot by photographer Surf Mitchell and accompanied by a similarly striking profile from Tyler Bunzey—on newsstand shelves across the state. And if you're a paid subscriber, you'll find it in your mailbox, too. Tap the button below to get an annual membership, and a piece of NC history. ISSUE 1 SHIPS NEXT WEEK!

NOTE: Looking to buy a single copy? In addition to physical stockists (see this post), individual copies will also be available at our launch events in Durham (Thurs, April 16) and Charlotte (Tues, April 21). Online, we're selling copies via subscription only—saving us the overhead of yet another platform (an online store), and saving you $$ on the cost of two issues/year. To learn more, click here.

🎧 THREE NEW ALBUMS 🎧

Alright let's get into some new music writeups, something that has seriously fallen by the wayside over these last few weeks of magazine preparation. I offer my deepest apologies for my truancy, and a few choice selections as remuneration. Without further ado, they are:

G2, by Sonny Miles (Winston) - In recent days, Winston singer and multi-instrumentalist Sonny Miles brandished a white-boarded release schedule, a la Kanye or J. Cole, on his IG account. First in line was the sprawling pack of loosies that was Early Sonny, which we covered when it came out earlier this year. Just below it was something called G2—revealed last Friday to be a resplendent 7-track EP, built on the same foundation of warm and emotive vocals, wry humor, and artistic breadth that made Gamma one of the best releases of 2024. All are present on the standout track "Quarter Love Crisis," a funky, distinctly-Miles ballad that finds the protagonist's partner already wary of him before their story has hardly begun ("she said it better be the real thing, not the games with me").

Other treats abound: "Timex" is a reminder of how Miles' voice can carry a song even when the accompaniment drops out to little more than hand claps, "As Long As I'm With You" builds into a one-man chorus with its rich vocal layering, and the Styles Davis remix of "Wenuneed" injects added bounce into one of the singer's best songs to date. On social, Sonny described G2 as a preliminary offering prior to a forthcoming album. I'm not sure if these songs come from the sessions that became Gamma, those that informed the new album, or a bit of both. What I do know is he remains one of the most talented artists making music in the state today, and that the new project, whenever it drops, will be appointment listening either way.


Steezer, by Steezie (Raleigh) - Speaking of unknowns—I don't know if "Causeway Rap" is a phrase that's been written or spoken before, but I also don't know how better to describe "The Formula," a song which wouldn't do much for me over morning coffee but would absolutely slap on a late-night drive over a lengthy, fluorescent lamppost-lined stretch of remote highway. That pretty much goes for the entirety of Steezer, a crisp, AutoTune-heavy project whose transparency as far as sonic inspirations go doesn't make it any less infectious or pleasant on the ear, and whose execution of spacey, playful croon-raps could give a number of more-lauded melodic rap acts from the area a serious run for their money. Favorite tracks: "Isolation," "Wowsers!"


a well spent evening, by Maasho (Raleigh) - A gentle disclaimer: for those with only a few minutes to spare, or whose listening habits consist of rifling through songs in search of appealing clips like a car thief rummages around a glove box, this album is likely not for you. Maasho, who first broke out years ago amid the same youth wave as Weston Estate, Zack Cokas, the aforementioned Sonny Miles, and more, may list his music on DSPs as "Pop," but these aren't the kind of simple, glossy riffs one drops into and gets the idea within a second or two. Whether through hazy, rippling vocal effects, stilted drum patterns, or the sheer leaps of style being made from song to song (and sometimes within songs), a well spent evening is a project that rewards extended listening, and whose quality warrants it, too. The willingness to take risks results in some ideas getting overcooked (the plodding, semi-comatose back half of "hot"), but that should hardly be counted against it; the same audacity is responsible for the wild medley of influences—late-2010s Sylvan Esso synth bloops and Diplo/Justin Bieber sprite sounds, combined with ghostly Crystal Castles-esque vocal chirps—that makes "LTLG"one of the album's most captivating songs. True to its era, aswe clocks in at just 22 minutes, a brevity that can seem incongruous with its author's obviously grand vision, but could also be interpreted as a pragmatic appeal for end-to-end listening, as if to say: "Every moment here has been thoughtfully planned, and it won't last long, so you might as well start from the top." Favorite songs: "intuition," "eyesore," "LTLG"

OTHER NEW MUSIC:

All the above (where possible) has also been added to the Super Empty playlist on Apple Music. To listen, click here. 📻

That's all for this Thursday, folks. Hope to ship you a magazine, or see you IRL, real soon.

Peace,
Ryan