Have you been wanting some new vibes for your playlists? Look no further than Grammy-nominated, singer, songwriter, and musician Daniel Caesar. For one thing, the Canadian-born star has been in the music industry since 2014 but was considered truly indie up until 2016. He was nominated for two Grammy Awards at the 2017 awards show, including Best Album of the Year and Best R&B Album for his 2017 album, Freudian and his album rose to number eleven on the Billboard charts according to Billboard.

I’ve been a fan of Caesar since 2016, when his smooth, R&B song “Get You” captured my soul. As of today, the song has received over 150 million streams on Spotify alone.

Caesar’s soulful voice immediately struck me, singing the opening lyrics, “Through drought and famine/natural disaster/my baby has been around for me.” This is the first song that hooked me on Caesar and I’ve followed him ever since. You can find me listening to his music on any given day, no matter what I’m doing, whether that’s cooking, cleaning, or writing a paper. I’ve come to know his music as food for the soul and comforting no matter what mood I find myself in.

In recent interviews with Billboard Magazine and Now Toronto, the humble twenty three year old has discussed his rise to fame and what  the pressure of stardom feels like. Caesar began gaining notoriety back in 2016 following the release of his 2015 EP Pilgrim’s Paradise. His music is heavily influenced by his background of gospel music, especially his most recent album, Freudian. Caesar has released several EPs over the years, including 2014 Praise Break and 2015 Pilgrim’s Paradise.

Another interesting dimension to Caesar’s success is that he has remained an independent artist through all of his EP and album releases. He released Freudian under his own label, Golden Child and it has exploded in the music industry, with over 353 million streams as of last year according to Nielsen Music.

His songwriting comes from his personal real-life experiences, and it shows. Caesar produces relatable, soulful tunes that are meaningful and capture the essence of heartbreak and love using only his voice and an acoustic guitar. He accredits his playing abilities to John Mayer, even though he has never met him. He learned every song by Mayer so he could improve his instrumental chops.

The video below is a visual accompaniment of another one of Caesar’s (put adjective here) songs from Freudian, “Best Part” featuring female R&B artist, H.E.R.

Caesar is known for collaborating with other artists in the industry, specifically female singers such as H.E.R. and Kali Uchis. Every collaboration on Freudian is with a female artist which adds dimension and diversity in sound.

Each of the voices are different yet blend with his to create an almost magical sound that warms your soul with every note. The addition of female voices on many of the tracks balances Caesar’s warm vocals/warm vocal tone.

Caesar is a star who’s rising quickly. Don’t be surprised if you see him flying high on every US chart within the next year. His sound is fresh and bold in a day and age when so much of the music we consume sounds the same. Do yourself a favor and go listen to his music on whatever music platform you use and have  a chill weekend.

A lot of what we think of as prestige television, shows like Game of Thrones, or The Americans, or Mad Men, or Breaking Bad, are basically shows about bad people doing bad things. Sometimes, those shows seem to take a particular pleasure in killing off (in elaborately gruesome ways) their few well-meaning characters. For example, here’s a 20-minute montage of character deaths from Game of Thrones:

This context makes ‘The Good Place,’ an ABC sitcom now in its third season, stand out in the current cultural moment. The show, which is more philosophically inclined than just about anything airing on American television, has spent the past two seasons advancing a particular kind of philosophical argument: that it’s possible to become a better person, but only with the help of other people.

The show makes this argument by killing a few really awful people. When the show begins, Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) has died. As she was leaving the grocery store, a runaway shopping cart pushed her out into the street, where she was hit by a truck.

She wakes up in The Good Place, where only the best people go when they die. As Michael (Ted Danson), the otherworldly administrator of The Good Place cheerfully explains to her, 99% of people go to The Bad Place instead, where they’re tortured for eternity.

Since Eleanor was a world-changing human rights lawyer, she made it into The Good Place! The only problem is that Eleanor wasn’t a human rights lawyer—she was kind of a disaster of a human being. She sold fake medicine to old people over the phone, she was a selfish friend, and she didn’t even try to be a good person. Somehow, she got into The Good Place by mistake.

But she tries to become a better person, and the show is largely about how that happens. She relies on her ‘soulmate,’ a professor of moral philosophy named Chidi Anagonye (William Jackson Harper) to teach her ethics, and sometimes friends Tahani (Jameela Jamil) and Jianyu (Manny Jacinto) to teach her how to be a good person in more than just theory.

Along the way, the show develops a real philosophical premise—when Eleanor tries to solve a problem on her own, her ethical skills usually fail her; when she wants to find out why Tahani is in a bad mood, she steals her diary, for example. But when she relies on others, she learns how to take other people’s perspectives and feelings into account, and figures out the right thing to do. (For example: Tahani explains to her why it’s important to actually pay attention to Chidi’s long lessons about Plato and Aristotle—because it makes Chidi feel appreciated). It all amounts to a show that offers a convincing rebuttal to the endemically individual-focused ethical philosophy of so much of the Western Tradition (here’s looking at you, Immanuel Kant).

This isn’t to say that the show isn’t funny. It is, in fact, extremely funny. Bell and Danson especially have honed the rhythms of sitcom performance into something like brain surgery—each line is delivered so precisely that it sneaks right into your laughbox before you even figure out why it’s supposed to be funny.

However, the jokes are always backed up by a real idea, and by real, sometimes painfully-complex philosophy, and that gives the show a real intellectual and emotional depth. The humor comes from an eminently human place, one that’s grounded in the always-complicated real world, no matter how fanciful The Good Place gets.