One of the New York Times' podcasts, your unfulfilled wish list of music news and criticism,

I'm your host, John Keramaka.

The last couple of years, I feel like there have been a number of stories that have maybe

gone a tiny bit under the radar just because of the grand scale of global trauma that we

are all going through. However, one thing that I caught wind of, and Joe and I would talk about

quite a lot back in October, was the murder of Aynar, who is one of the biggest rappers in Sweden,

and reading up a little bit to the best of our abilities here on the backstory. It seemed like

there were a lot of fascinating things happening with how hip-hop was moving in Sweden and the liabilities

for some, frankly, some of its biggest artists. Fortunately, Joe was able to partner up with Alex

Marshall, who is the Times' European Cultural Reporter based in London. Alex went over to Stockholm,

and together they pulled together a story that came out a couple of weeks ago that really

serves as a great primer for the tragedy of Aynar's murder and also the broader context of how hip-hop

is working currently in Sweden and what it means for some of its younger artists as they begin

to find success on the internet. Joe Cosgrole is here. Joe, hey. Good morning, John. How you doing?

Yeah, it is morning. I want to emphasize, at least for me, it's morning. Alex, for you, it's

not. Alex Marshall is here. Hi, it's 4-11, so lovely afternoon. That sounds like my prime time,

and we are also joined by one of the resources for the story who was so helpful and so knowledgeable

about what's going on in Sweden, and that is Petr Halyan. Petr is a DJ on the public service radio

station, P3Dingata, and a long time music journalist and former commenter in the Cocaine Blunts comment

section. It's true. We spoke a lot about Cocaine Blunts. Shout out now, shout out Andrew,

love you, miss you. Petr, welcome to Popcast. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. It is 5-11,

let's not let you ask, but that's okay. No, this is, you know, Popcast is often accused of living

...