Introducing IP'S PICKS

A music sharing and discovery club with daily song posts carefully curated by writer Daniel Isenberg aka Stan Ipcus.

Okay! I’m excited to introduce IP’S PICKS. Quick back story—around 2007, I started IP’S PICKS by simply sending a daily email to a large group of friends and family with a personally recommended “song of the day” in mp3 format for everyone to check out. As time went on, I stayed consistent with my IP’S PICKS emails, and I encouraged others on the email list to join in and share songs too. And sure enough, they did.

For years, it was our own little music discovery club. We emailed each other songs, cracked jokes, and even had a few online rap battles. It was fun, and we all got put on to a lot of great music. My boy Timmy P even used to take the songs from IP’S PICKS and burn them to CDs with printed out tracklists and all.

In 2010, I started having kids and focusing more on my writing career, and IP’S PICKS sort of faded away. Then platforms like Spotify and Apple Music emerged, and the idea of sending mp3s via email became outdated. So I would use media outlets and blogs I was writing for like Complex, Pigeons & Planes, and NahRight to share the music I was listening to and cared about on a grander scale.

More recently, as the blog era fully transitioned to the streaming era, I found solace in taking my music writing back to the essence when my friend Ev Boogie and I published the coffee table-style oral and pictorial history book Do Remember! The Golden Era of NYC Hip-Hop Mixtapes with Rizzoli in 2023. It was a chance to do what we loved most—write about music, interview legends, dig for dope visuals, and curate it all in a creative format for others to enjoy.

Now, in 2025, I find myself longing for a new outlet to write about music. Something that feels fresh yet still rooted in where I came from. I really enjoyed my experience on Substack promoting Do Remember! with our 50 Tapes series, and during a silent, solo brainstorm on my drive home from my day job yesterday, a light bulb went ON.

“IP’S PICKS!”

Yes, of course. IP’S PICKS is a chance for me to do the thing I love most in the world of music writing, which is share music I love and the details and stories that accompany them. And it’s also a chance for me to build a new community of like-minded music lovers in the process.

So I’m gonna take the great advice that my boy Bats once gave to me years ago that has always stuck with me—just start. So starting today, a random Thursday in July of 2025, IP’S PICKS is making its glorious return. I’m excited, and I hope you are too.

Tomorrow, I’m going to simply begin posting a “song of the day” once a day, and encourage my friends, family, and followers to subscribe. In this oversaturated social media era where there seems to be endless noise flooding our feeds, my hope is that music fans will gravitate toward a curated, community forum like this, where the format of receiving one new song every day (new or old) via email from a trusted bud to check out and chat about feels not only beneficial and manageable but like something to truly look forward to. And hopefully, the opportunity for IP’S PICKS club members aka what I would affectionately like to refer to as the PICKS POSSE to share their own favorite songs of the moment will be enticing, too.

So let’s set it off! IP’S PICKS is now in full effect. Please subscribe and share with any folks who you think might be interested. And stay tuned for my first official IP’S PICKS post tomorrow.

Thanks! And hit me up anytime!

ip