THE
HOTLIST54 | Rolling Stone | July 2019
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T
A
TREAMING
services
were once
nonstarters
in the audiophile world
because of their com-
pressed, compromised
sound. But that’s finally
beginning to change
thanks to the advent of
CD-quality — and even
higher-res — streaming.
French company Qobuz
is offering several
million high-res songs,
Tidal now has streams
with CD- level sound or
better, and according to
Music Business World-
wide, Amazon will offer
a better-than-CD- quality
streaming service
before the end of 2019.
(Amazon calls the
report “speculative.”)
Qobuz USA managing
director Dan Mackta
credits an unlikely
source with getting
the high-res streaming
revolution going: Neil
Young, whose much-
mocked early-aughts
audio player, Pono,
aimed for the same
fidelity Qobuz has now
attained. “Everything
Neil said was true,”
Mackta says. JESSE WILL
NDREW YANG WANTS TO put a thousand extra dollars in
your pocket every month — no strings attached. Yang is run-
ning for president on the single issue of a basic universal in-
come of $12,000 for every American — what he calls a Free-
dom Dividend. The idea polls especially well with younger voters, and
it’s pushed Yang, a 44-year-old New York entrepreneur, high enough in
the polls to qualify for the next round of Democratic debates. Hot-pink
#YangGang hats have become a new in-group signifier online, though
Yang himself favors a Trump-trolling “MATH” cap. He says his idea
would lift millions out of poverty without distorting the labor market
by being so generous it disincentivizes work. “We lost 4 million jobs in
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa,” Yang says.
“Trump needed to win those states in 2016, and he did.” TESSA STUARTHOT STREAMING
UPGRADEBetter-
Than-CD
Sound
HOT SAFETY NETThe
$1,0 00
Freedom
Dividend
HE AFTERNOON BEFORE Ramadan starts, Ramy
Youssef, 28, is sitting in a restaurant in down-
town Manhattan, dressed in sweats and a black
Nike snapback hat. He’s loading up on food: a
hearty stack of lemon-curd pancakes, a side of turkey sausage,
ketchup he seasons liberally with pepper. He has just finished
performing downstairs at the Comedy Cellar, starting his set
by bemoaning the fact that he doesn’t have a girlfriend with
whom he can grab fro-yo. So far, so bro-comedian. Then he
segued into a bit about watching Surviving R. Kelly and feeling
increasingly anxious the documentary would reveal that the
singer had converted to Islam. “I was just waiting for them to
find the Quran,” he deadpanned. “Episode Five was going to be
like, ‘The R Actually Stands for Rahman.’ ”
A stand-up and a devout Muslim, Youssef seamlessly weaves
together piety and obscenity, often hitting the two notes at the
exact same time (“I remember the moment I really believed
in God.... This girl texted me two minutes after I jerked off toher Facebook photo”). It’s a
mix evident in his first stand-
up special, Feelings, which
debuted on HBO in June, and
even more in his semi-auto-
biographical hit series, Ramy.
The first scripted TV comedy
to focus on a family of Muslim
Americans, the show — star-
ring Youssef as a loose version
of himself — immediately
became a hit and a critical
darling when it premiered
on Hulu back in April; the
streaming service has already
given the go-ahead for a sec-
ond season. “You go into TV,
especially if you haven’t made
a season of something before,
and you’re like, ‘Am I going to
get out on the other end of this
thing still looking like me?’ ” he
says. “And I think I do.”
Born in Queens to Egyptian
immigrants — his dad was a
manager at the Plaza Hotel
back when Donald Trump
owned it — and raised in
nearby Rutherford, New Jer-
sey, Youssef grew up a fan of
George Carlin and Allen Iverson’s 76ers. He enrolled at Rutgers
for political science, eventually dropping out to pursue a com-
edy career in Los Angeles. Real-life Ramy has it more together
than the TV version, who still lives at home with his parents
and works at his uncle’s jewelry store. But the show is true to
Youssef ’s experience: a messy, poignant, often surprising por-
trait of a Muslim millennial who desperately wants to adhere to
his faith and struggles with “trying to be good,” as his character
puts it. He sleeps around, gets high on weed gummies and, in
one surreal flashback dream sequence, comes across Osama
bin Laden in his kitchen.
Whether you think Ramy leans more heavily on the trap-
pings of the secular world or the religious, of course, depends
on your perspective. “People who are part of the various
Muslim communities that have a sensitivity to discussing sex,
they watch this show and they’re like, ‘This is all sex,’ ” he says.
“And people who don’t have that sensitivity watch the show
and they’re like, ‘All this dude does is pray.’ ” GABRIELLA PAIELLARamy Youssef
HOT COMEDYYang at
a rally
in D.C.