On Free Agenda, we often come back to the idea of "from content to person" — the shift from sharing polished thoughts to letting people see who you actually are. In a recent recording, I mentioned that this newsletter and my notes tend to skew toward "heavy content." Substantive, sure, but heavy.

Back when I was active on Twitter and Shizukana Internet, the casual, personal posts — the "person" behind the content — balanced things out. Now that those outlets are gone, I've drifted toward heavier material, and the balance has been off.

So I've decided to start weaving more of the personal into this newsletter. The everyday stuff. Who I am outside of the big ideas.

It might also lower the barrier for me to write more often, which I'm hoping for.

With that, here's something light: clothes and TETE.

Back to the Basic

I've always had my own take on how I dress, adjusting with the seasons and my mood. But lately, I've been drawn to a specific kind of wardrobe: clothes with a proven track record — things with history, available at a reasonable price, and built to last.

Here's what I've been reaching for:

Every item on that list is a certified American casual staple — simple, foundational, and totally unglamorous in the best way.

Each one comes with its own history: skate culture, military heritage, railroad workers. Learning the backstory makes wearing them more interesting, and figuring out how to make them work for me is genuinely fun. They age well. And honestly, they motivate me to keep training — because this kind of simple, clean style looks better when you're in shape.

They're also all cheap. You can put together the whole look for around $200. My mindset is: if you can rock clothes anyone can buy, that's enough.

On the flip side, I've stopped buying anything that feels disposable — the kind of thing you'd throw in a cart at a convenience store without thinking. Compared to the pieces above, those fall apart after a single wash. The difference in durability is genuinely surprising.

TETE and Avirex

TETE is a rapper from Nagasaki who I've been into recently, and he's someone who clearly lives inside this same kind of culture-rooted style.

He regularly wears an Avirex henley tee — always well-worn, faded from use — and it just looks cool. Like, effortlessly cool.

This photo says it all.

In hip-hop, flexing luxury brands and high-end cars is practically part of the job description. But TETE does the opposite — he walks onstage in the same clothes he probably just lives in. And somehow that's what makes it so compelling. There's a quiet confidence in it. A realness.

It reminds me of ZORN in his Vans and WTAPSs. Same energy.

Start with MURASAKI

Let me say a bit more about why TETE is worth your time.

In a documentary, TETE talked about his approach to songwriting: he deliberately keeps his own emotions out of the lyrics. Instead, he captures the scenes and landscapes he saw while feeling those emotions — the concrete, visual details, not the feeling itself.

His 2024 album MURASAKI is the fullest expression of that approach. He said the whole album was his attempt to "express Japan," and you can hear it — the rural landscapes, the quiet corners of the country that rarely make it into mainstream culture. It's a masterpiece.

Good starting points:

Lyrics that burn images into the back of your eyelids, paired with a worn-in Avirex tee — that's TETE's appeal in a nutshell. There's more to him too (he's apparently a devoted dad, among other things), but I'll let you discover the rest yourself.

Please, give TETE a listen.