"The third of the trinity, and definitely the holy ghost of the analogy. The DKs were more sarcastic, political, and just plain weird—I think East Bay Ray's guitar work is hugely underrated, and they were generally musically more interesting than a lot of their peers. I could have picked any of their records, really, but this one has the classics."

"His shit influenced everybody, because he came out and he was proclaimed the greatest rapper at the time. Everybody was 50 Cent happy and shit, and I think he did a lot. He lived up to his name at that time. He was putting out endless classic shit. Shout out to Fif. That album was the soundtrack to the hood at that time."

"I've created a lot of breakup playlists for friends. One of my standbys is 'You Wanted It,' by MoZella. I first heard it in an airport bathroom when I was going through a situation with a guy—I'd thought he was in, but he was just chasing me for the sake of the chase. This song sounds like she can empathize."

"Like lots of people, I really love Roxane Gay. This is one of my favorite essay collections I’ve read in the past five to ten years. She’s really good at conversational writing that’s also academic and intelligent and funny. After #MeToo there’s a lot of introspection, and people need to analyze themselves and see what feminist they’ll be. There’s no perfect feminist."

"Another film would be E.T. from Spielberg. I think somehow it’s a kind of fantasy film — very grounded in reality, very respectful of childhood. It’s a multi-layer, so the complexity of childhood — the way they portrayed a kid going through a very difficult moment in his life — I think it reminded me a lot of the kinds of movies that I love."

"If David Lynch is the American take on surrealism, this is the Soviet take. Iranians share a lot of cultural references with people from Armenia, and seeing this, I almost saw a path through Iranian culture. The movie juxtaposes surreal elements from my culture without going through a Western gaze. It has some of the most amazing imagery I’ve ever seen."