Umman Turkoglu
Google
All Records, All Scratched.
Not one escaped it. VG-graded? Hardly. At best, these were “barely passable” copies dressed up with flattering labels and marketing gloss — catchy taglines about tempo or mood masking the fact that the grooves themselves were wounded.
Superfly Records thrives on strong sales, but let’s be honest: the only real beneficiary is the owner, not the shop, not the culture it claims to champion. This isn’t preservation or reverence. It’s boutique colonialism dressed in well-meaning aesthetics. Jaded. Cloaked. Impersonal.
A truly great record shop carries finesse, integrity, and cultural respect. For a place boasting two decades of existence, Superfly misses all three. As someone who has built from scratch and lived deep music culture from the inside, I came expecting substance. Instead, I found a cold, performative storefront posing as a guardian of soul, funk, and African heritage — while failing to honor any of it in practice.
Selling sought-after records isn’t enough. You have to hold space for the culture you’re trading on. What I got instead was glibness, condescension, and a thin elitism — not only toward me, but toward the music itself. It felt like cosplay, not contribution. And that I can’t forgive. I take music, and what it should mean, too personally.
Paris already struggles with its reputation for gatekeeping and aesthetic posturing. Superfly leans straight into it with the guise of “oh, we don’t do that kind of thing.” The result? Cultural tourism with a price tag — a collector’s mindset masquerading as reverence. Rare grooves in the bins, but the spirit? Vacant.
If you’re searching for resonance, recognition, and respect for the music you love, look elsewhere.
P.S. I’ve had my run-ins here, and I stand by every word without hesitation. Understand this: the image they polish and project is a façade. Beneath the curated aesthetics and the surface friendliness is a side you won’t see until you’ve already been pulled in — and by then, the damage is done. It’s not rainbows and sunshine. It’s smoke and mirrors. The truth isn’t nearly as pretty.
Super what? More like Superficial — all pretense, no soul.
Edit: The owner insists I’ve bought “hundreds of records” here — as if that validates them rather than my patience. If anything, it means I know exactly what I’m talking about. And “thirty years of experience”? Please. The shop was founded in 2002 — that’s 23 years, not 30. Mathematics can be cruel, but it is never defamatory.
What is defamatory is pretending longevity excuses negligence: thirty years (or twenty-three, let’s be honest) and still unable to sell a record without scratches. A Parisian tragedy — all posture, no substance.
To dismiss criticism as “defamation” isn’t confidence, it’s cowardice in costume. The arrogance, the condescension, the weary hauteur of someone convinced history will forgive present mediocrity. It won’t.
The average buyer may not even know what proper grading looks like. But this shop? It’s certainly not the Goldmine Standard — the actual industry standard. Funny how “30 years in the business” comes with no mention of Goldmine at all. That’s not oversight, that’s avoidance. Buyer beware.
Overpriced, scratched records dressed up as value. A listening station that’s more gimmick than safeguard (newsflash: headphones don’t erase groove damage). The win is always the seller’s, the loss always the buyer’s. A store that refuses responsibility for its stock has no claim to credibility.
And when professionalism fails, the owner drifts into your private life — loudly speculating about personal matters in front of others, as if humiliating loyal customers were part of the show. That’s not culture, that’s contempt.
To call “all scratched” defamatory is laughable. What’s truly defamatory is mistaking condescension for credibility.
Super what? Superficial. All pretense. No soul.
Thanks for your business.
