Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig Chats With Dev Hynes, @Seinfeld2000, Joe Mande on Beats 1

Vampire Weekend‘s Ezra Koenig was joined on this week’s episode of his Beats 1 radio show “Time Crisis” by several guests. One was Blood Orange‘s Dev Hynes. Hynes provided some background for Blood Orange’s recent song “Sandra’s Smile”, which is named after Sandra Bland. He says he wanted to highlight a “really positive memory of [Bland]“. Listen to the whole episode here.

Hynes said:

My views on that were that even if police didn’t touch her, they still killed her by the way they treated her. My initial thoughts when the case happened, I was devastated, of course, but it took a couple days before it really hit me in a personal place. … It’s called “Sandra’s Smile” because every photo I saw of her not in prison was of her smiling. … I really wanted to highlight that, this really positive memory of her. 

Koenig’s other guests on the show were painter Jake Longstreth (Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth’s brother), comedian Joe Mande, and Jason Richards (@Seinfeld2000 on Twitter). Last year, Koenig sang the “Seinfeld” theme song for a @Seinfeld2000 video game. During the show, Koenig reads Richards’ script for “The Galaxy”, an imagined “Seinfeld” episode if it were still on TV in 2017. Apparently, Elaine will be dating one of the Rae Sremmurd brothers (but she can’t remember which!).

They also talked about Starbucks’ alleged “war on Christmas” and played their favorite Christmas rap songs. Mande picked Jim Jones’ “Dipset X-mas Time” and Longstreth chose Run-D.M.C.’s “Christmas in Hollis”. Koenig, who is Jewish, recalls being a child and screaming “I hate the Jews!” at the supermarket because his mother wouldn’t let him get Christmas candy.

Prior to the show’s airing, Koenig tweeted that it was recorded prior to Friday night’s attacks in Paris. He added, “our thoughts are with everyone affected by the violence.”

Watch Blood Orange’s video for “Sandra’s Smile”:

Watch Koenig and Vampire Weekend on an episode of Pitchfork.tv’s “Over/Under”:

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