The tiny, iconic popstrel dishes on her $25 million tour.
Why did you decide to go for the ancient Greek look on this tour? It stemmed from the song “Aphrodite,” on my [new] album—there’s so much to play with visually, and of course we don’t go mildly or meekly [Laughs]. We’ve gone Fantasia—you know, we’ve brought Vegas on the road.
There are male dancers in Dolce & Gabbana playing bongos on each other’s bums in the show. How camp is too camp? I don’t think we’ve reached that stage. [Laughs] In a way, this tour is not as camp as some of the others, unless my radar is off-kilter. The On a Night Like This tour had lots of sailors, and I arrived on a bedazzled anchor from the ceiling. Actually, my creative director e-mailed me a little YouTube clip of Miss Piggy—I’m a Muppet maniac—[with] Miss Piggy doing the full Esther Williams. It’s hilarious because that’s our show!
Has burlesque had a big influence on your shows? Both experiences are sexy, but funny, too… Yeah, we’re always really aware of what we’re doing, and we take making joy seriously. But we definitely have a laugh, and I don’t think a lot of what I do would translate if there wasn’t that kind of understanding from the audience that we do it knowingly. You don’t see me winking, but you know I am.
You’re planning a duet with Britney? Will your styles clash? [Laughs] Yeah, I put a tweet up because I’d heard some of her songs and I was genuinely excited by them. Then the question was raised, Would I like to do a duet with her? I think we’re both agreed that, yeah, of course it’d be interesting. And fabulous! And it’s almost, like, in people’s minds it’s already done! They’re just like, [She pretends to swoon.] Oh, Kylie and Britney equals heaven.
What do you make of Lady Gaga’s persona? You’re both showgirls, but you’re in a gold chariot and she’s in a rubber egg womb… [Laughs] I get it, and I really appreciate that—that’s her character and it’s who she is. I watched an interview where she said finally people were seeing beyond the costumes. So I can relate to her. I think what I find really amazing is she’s still so young. Maybe I’m underestimating myself slightly, but when I was her age I was kind of going along and trying to do the best with what was presented to me.
She takes herself very seriously. Your early stuff was more playful. Yup, probably more like an inquisitive puppy. [Laughs] But it’s a lot different now, I’m probably a bit of both.
How do you unwind after performing a Grecian-themed water extravaganza? It’s hard enough to calm down as a fan. Yeah, you’ve got thousands and thousands of people having a joyous experience and screaming your name—and it’s going from that to putting the kettle on, on your own, in your room. It’s a weird one, but I’m still doing it after all these years, so I definitely do love it.
The Bronx Zoo Cobra dishes on fame, freedom and ankle-biting.
For the full interview, click here Have you had any crazy ad opportunities thrown your way since you’ve become famous? Any fears about becoming the reptile Snooki? A few offers, but nothing that really met this cobra’s high standards. Snooki gets attention for showing up. I get attention for disappearing. You now have your own line of merchandise, including thongs. Was that your idea? It wasn’t my idea, but I love the idea of thongs. Snakes love exposed ankles.
Have any celebs gotten in touch? I know you tweeted you were a fan of Tina Fey, and you got a shout-out from Mayor Bloomberg! Ellen DeGeneres, Ryan Seacrest, Jon Favreau, Julie Benz and Martha Stewart all had nice things to say about me. That is the great thing about Twitter. It’s a place where a snake can hobnob with the big shots.
But you heard nothing from Justin Bieber? Sadly, still no word from Justin. But never say never, am I right?
The day after TV on the Radio gives an intoxicating, thunderous performance at the SXSW music festival, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton addresses the Austin Convention Center with a talk titled “What Would Gaga Do?,” asking how musicians can best exploit modern technologies. He suggests that the way for new artists to get championed by big platforms like Vevo is to put themselves out there by any means available. Where does this leave shy musicians, TONY asks. Hilton frowns, then giggles, saying, “Well, Susan Boyle made it!” It’s hard not to leave the discussion thinking that quieter creative types are basically screwed.
Two weeks later, in a Williamsburg coffeeshop, jocular TV on the Radio frontmen Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe have reached a similar conclusion. Malone says his friend, local musician Sharon Van Etten, was giving a guitar lesson to a little girl who said she wanted to make a record someday but wasn’t sure she could: “What if I don’t win on American Idol?”
Singer Adebimpe, whom you may recognize as the groom in Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, laughs and sighs. “I feel lucky to have grown up at a time where I got sent a tape from Seattle recorded on a 4-track that sounded a bit like I could’ve made it,” he says, remembering his own DIY past. “You didn’t have to have a TV studio or a contest to be popular. It’s a strange way to get into any creative field.”
The TVOTR story is now pretty much Brooklyn lore: The band’s emergence in the early 2000s is the reason aspiring artists still spill out of the L train. The group didn’t have to work on its “web presence” to achieve early success, which grew instead from its brand of odd, groovy art rock, running from its 2003 debut, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, to its new fourth album, Nine Types of Light.
There’s always been a romantic streak to TVOTR’s songwriting, and this latest disc is full of love songs and dreamy arrangements. (The album will be released with a download of short films to accompany each song.) But this time around there’s realism to the romanticism; consider the refrain, “You’re the only one I’ve ever loved,” on “You,” which Adebimpe deems the kind of beautiful-sounding lie you resort to when trying to express how much you care. “It requires a lot of delusion to fall in love,” he says. “I think about people that I would’ve thrown myself off a cliff for, and when I think back on it, 80 percent of what was cool about them, I made up [Laughs].”
The album’s tender tone is also a little surprising given the band’s base while recording in Los Angeles: down the street from Rodeo Drive, in what Malone cheerfully describes as “the most soul-sucking, sad, douchebaggy corner in hell.” “Where there are two reality shows being shot in the same café,” Adebimpe adds, grimacing.
So what keeps the band grounded while on the road? “The time you get to actually play music, which is the point of being on the road, becomes the time of sanity,” Malone says. “Every town you get to, it’s like: bookstore, coffeeshop, comic store, art store,” Adebimpe adds. “I’m working on my collection of 9,052 Magic Markers [Laughs].” The group’s members also busy themselves with solo projects: Malone helms Rain Machine; Adebimpe acts and directs; producer Dave Sitek delivered his starry Maximum Balloon project last year; drummer Jaleel Bunton plays with Reverend Vince Anderson; and bassist Gerard Smith (now undergoing treatment for lung cancer) recently composed music for a public-education documentary.
Clearly, a lot of water has passed under the Williamsburg Bridge since TVOTR started out. As if to emphasize the point, three acquaintances trail into the coffeeshop in succession this afternoon with babies, strollers and papooses—delighted to see their old buddies back in the ’hood. Besides fuller beards, success doesn’t seem to have had the least effect on the band. “Popularity is relative,” Adebimpe says. “I’ve definitely got into situations where I think someone recognizes me, and it’s just that I have some crap on my face.” If anything has changed in the past decade, it’s the machinations of the music industry. But perhaps one redeeming factor about its current, rather ugly incarnation is that it makes one hell of a foil for TV on the Radio’s defiantly human way of working.
TV on the Radio plays [node:120084 link=Music Hall of Williamsburg;] Tue 12 and [node:120438 link=Radio City Music Hall;] Wed 13.
This week, we’re having something of a TV on the Radio blowout to coincide with the band’s dates at Music Hall of Williamsburg (Tue 12) and Radio City (Wed 13) and the release of its splendid new album, Nine Types of Light.
There’s our feature in the magazine, plus Wilbert Cooper’s exploration of how TVOTR is connected to pretty much every other artist in the musicsphere; and here, we share our full Q&A with TVOTR frontmen Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe, with whom TONY recently spent a delightful afternoon in a Williamsburg coffeeshop.
Click past the jump to read Malone and Adebimpe’s thoughts on love, death, sleeping on floors (too old), GPS (failure to operate), L.A. (disgustingness therein), Dave Sitek’s lovely house in L.A., witchcraft, fame and perfumed books.
“If it were possible to write a love song about loving absolutely everything equally, with the same fervor that you did a person, or whatever, that would be great to do. I think that would be a terribly long-winded love song. Maybe not so great. I don’t think it would have any words.”—Tunde Adebimpe
TONY: I recently saw Rachel Getting Married[in which Adebimpe stars with Anne Hathaway and sings a cover of "Unknown Legend," above]. Tunde, how do you feel about the movie world—are you into the razzmatazz? Tunde Adebimpe:I’ve been fortunate enough to work with really good people, and any time I can get a job doing that kind of work, I’m psyched about it, but outside of that… I like the spectacle of that world. I mean, Hollywood itself is completely and totally ridiculous. But I like what Hollywood can generate at its best. It’s super beautiful and kind of off-putting to me at the same time. That side of it is interesting. But like we were saying earlier, it’s nice that that part of the world can employ so many artists and creative people.
I’d done different acting things before [check out 2001 indie flick Jump Tomorrow], and that came up just after we got off the tour. I read the script and our manager mentioned that Jonathan Demme was directing it and I said, "Oh yeah? I would like to at least meet Jonathan Demme!" [Laughs] So I went and did a reading and tried out and then I got it—it was really cool. But I would say that that was as far from a traditional Hollywood experience as anyone could have, you know?
Did you go to the Oscars? TA: [Emphatically] No, no, no, no. No. I missed out. [Laughs]
[Kyp starts filming me using an old-fashioned-looking but tiny hand-held device.]
So I was watching your virtual-reality video [at the start of this post]… TA: Oh yeah, the “Will Do” video
And I thought—you’re roughly the same generation as I am, and I remember watching those old TV shows where they’d show the first virtual-reality goggles, or they’d be spreading jam on CDs— TA:It would’ve been cool to have that in the video [Laughs]
I wanted to ask you how you feel about technology. Is there a point where we stop trying to keep up? Kyp Malone:[Looking at my old cassette-tape recorder]The last person we worked with has the same tape recorder. I like these. TA:Me too. It doesn’t take any more time to go through tape than digital. [Laughs]
So do you ever wonder? Or do you love technology? KM:Um. I feel seduced by a lot of it. I did a lot more recording of myself when I was just using a cassette TASCAM four-track. And I have all these things that are supposedly higher quality but they’re just not as accessible to me as that machine was. But I still get seduced by it. I’ve got a phone that’s a Droid or something, and for the first two weeks I had it, I felt romantically toward it. To the point that, I was embarrassed by it, but I kept finding myself like, stroking it.… But I feel like it’s insidious in a way, too.
In what way? KM: Well. There’s things that I’m perfectly fine without, and I don’t think that they are indispensable, but if it becomes, like, part of the societal infrastructure, then it does become indispensable. And it’s… I don’t know. I don’t need an iPad. Everyone talks about the iPad and no one needs one, it’s a toy basically. I know someone who has two. TA:But you’re plugging into this bridge between you and the rest of the world… and that can be knocked out. KM: You’re not in control of it.
It’s enfeebling, I think. I drove down to SXSW using my iPhone as map, which was great—but I’m fucked if I don’t have it.… KM:I mean, I’ve been on tours before where there’s GPS, and we were fucked! [Laughs]
What’s the lostest you’ve gotten? KM: I just did a short run with my friend Jolie Holland, and we woke up one morning in Kentucky, and we didn’t want to eat at a Waffle House, we wanted to go somewhere independent. So I looked up on-the-line about some restaurant and put it in the GPS. Forty-five minutes down this rural single-lane road to, like, an abandoned barn, [with a] Children of the Corn–style vibe. There was nothing there. Except for wild dogs. [Laughs]
I think of you as artists who are understandably a bit shambolic, with the GPS and so on—but at the same time, you are in the mainstream. Are you ever surprised to find yourself here? Or are you secretly ruthlessly brilliant with arrangements? Efficient as well as artistic? TA: No! No. [Laughs] Not in any sort of maneuvering way. KM:I’m a mess. Anything that you’ve heard about that’s worked out in my life has been with help from a lot of other people that are a lot more organized. I’m good at some things, but not that. TA:Just, as far as the place that the band is in? It’s a lot of accidents. [Laughs] KM: There’s some people in the band, like Jaleel, [who are more organized].
Is he the wife-type person, steering the band? KM:I think Jaleel is definitely tired of being the wife of TV on the Radio. [Laughs] It’s hard to be the wife and also still be in the band. TA:He definitely lobbied for divorce many times.
Is it great to be as popular as TVOTR now is? TA:I feel like it’s relative, I totally do. It can be a strange thing to believe. Because it’s constantly something you’re figuring out and finding out about. When we’re somewhere else, in a different country or something, and people are like, Oh yes, TV on the Radio, then it’s a little surprising to me, because I don’t think about it. it’s a weird thing to give a place to in your mind. I’ve definitely gotten into situations when I think someone recognizes me or is looking at me for a certain reason and it’s just that I have some, like, crap on my face. [Malone laughs.] It’s really, like, in different ways, very much like that… "Don’t you know who I am?" "No, I don’t know who you are." [Laughs] KM:if you’re spending time in Silver Lake [L.A.] or North Brooklyn, or you’re on tour and interacting with people who came to see you, or you’re in a college town, it can skew your perspective. I don’t think that my parents would know who TVOTR was if I wasn’t in the band.
Did you aspire to any of this when you started out? TA: I don’t think we really thought or cared about that.
Honestly? KM: Because our kind of music, it’s not the model we grew up with. I wanted to be a drifter… TA: …which you kind of are! You got your wish. But I feel like the bands we grew up with—when I first started getting into music, like, punk rock or a scene in Pittsburgh—it was kind of an embarrassing thing, people who wanted to be pop stars. It was so not punk rock at all [Laughs]. It was more like, you make the work, be part of a community making work and sharing work. It’s not about being above anyone else or being idolized in any way. It’s weird because it’s about being part of the community but also being super individualistic within that community. It’s weird now because I do think about that. Someone was telling us— KM: Sharon Van Etten taught a little girl guitar, and the girl was like, "I wanna make a record someday," and [Van Etten] was like, "That’s great! You should make a record." "I don’t know if I’ll be able to, though." She was like, "Why wouldn’t you be able to make a record? Anyone can." And the little girl was like, "What if I don’t win on American Idol?" TA: And we didn’t have that. I feel lucky enough to have grown up at a time where I got sent a tape from Seattle that was recorded on a four-track that sounded a bit like I could’ve made it, and that was great. That’s the model. There wasn’t the idea of, like, you have to have a TV studio or a contest to be voted to be popular or make it. Which I think is really strange. It’s a strange way to get into any creative field.
Even on another level, I talked to someone recently who is just a little younger than us, 25, and we were talking about how they were just starting out—they asked me for my advice on the music industry. And I basically told them to do everything themselves and initially don’t put too much in a label or wanting to be on a label or seeking acceptance in that way. And he had real concerns, he said, "I wanna put these songs online, but I’m really worried about—it’s so easy to put something online and have a billion comments that would discourage you. Like an hour after you put something up you’ve got strangers from every walk of life going like, [In lunk voice] 'This is terrible!' " And it sounds really fey to be like, "Well, people shouldn’t be so mean!" But if every time I made a four-track song and replayed it back there were 12 people going [Snarky] "Oh, that’s not very good!" then I would’ve shot myself in the face. I wouldn’t have kept going.
I saw Perez Hilton give a talk with the head of Vevo at SXSW that I found pretty alarming, insofar as it seems there’s a handful of people who get to decide which artists get this megapush—and part of the grounds for that decision is, has that person done a lot of work already, put themselves out there? What worries me is that artists are traditionally shy.... KM:I mean, I don’t know how that whole thing works, but what I see promoted via those type of forums [like Vevo], it always seems like slick, commercial, part of the same old, same old. I know that there’s new artists, new names, but it doesn’t seem like something new to me. Just a different haircut and a different hair color. TA:I’m old. I graciously admit that I’m old, as far as that goes. [Laughs]
I have a question about old age. [Adebimpe laughs.]I ask this because there’s lots of love songs on the record. And there’s always been something very romantic about TVOTR. I remember reading an interview a while back with Kyp saying you’re both Pisceans— KM: We already had our birthdays.
Do you think that as you’ve gotten older you’ve got more cynical or more romantic? KM:I feel more cynical right now. And I’m not happy about it. TA:I feel more realistic about it. I remember seeing this Burroughs thing on French TV in the ’70s, where they were talking to William Burroughs about falling in love, and they said, "Well, you were so enamored with that person, is that still the case for you?" And he said, "I know too much about myself and the world to ever fall in love with anything ever again." He just said, "I’m too realistic." KM: Said the man who shot his wife! TA: He said he couldn’t delude himself. It requires a lot of delusion to fall in love. Which is, I think—the initial falling in love part, yeah, it’s probably, chemically, enormous spurts of dopamine that psych you out. But I feel like after that it’s really, I don’t know—I think about people that I would’ve thrown myself off a cliff for and when I think back on it, 80 percent of what was cool about them, I made up! [Laughs] It was a complete projection.
It’s so weird, the difference between falling in love as a grown-up and as a teen, where you’re thinking, I can’t believe this person is talking to me! When you’re older you’re more like, I’m all right! I can believe it. TA: Yeah, you’re not out of your mind nervous every time you speak to this person. But it’s an awesome thing to feel overwhelmed by another person. It’s great. KM:I don’t trust that, though. TA:I don’t trust it at all.
But you wrote “Lover's Day!” KM:I know. Somebody wrote The Wizard of Oz, and it was a made-up fuckin’ story. [Guffaws, nearly chokes laughing]
I wish I hadn’t asked! That song got me through some tough times! KM: I’m glad! That’s what it’s for. That’s what the tooth fairy is for, that’s what Jesus and Santa Claus… to get you through tough times. No, that was an honest expression. But an idealization of desires. Yeah, I mean, there was a time when I felt that way. I was doing lots of acid and I had my first lover and it’s amazing! It’s an amazing experience and a privilege that we have, to get to feel that way. Not sustainable. [Chuckles.]
So you wrote a super-romantic album. TA: That’s what people keep saying. I guess so. I don’t know, I would much rather put the word love into the air as many times as possible than anything else. Just to have it out in the world doing something.
Did you read that The Oxford English Dictionary now includes the heart symbol? TA:Oh really, it got put in? [Malone giggles.]
I flinched at first, but then thought, At least it’s love.... TA:Yeah, exactly. As far as emoticons go, pretty good. Yeah, I would much rather that, in all its permutations. In a love song it’s usually—if it were possible to write a love song about loving absolutely everything equally, with the same fervor that you did a person, or whatever, that would be great to do. I think that would be a terribly long-winded love song. Maybe not so great. I don’t think it would have any words.[Laughs]
But then there’s the soft, wafty song on the album, “Killer Crane.” That’s like when you feel a gentle in-love-with-the-world feeling, no? TA:I guess, maybe KM: But is that a love song? I think it’s about death. TA: Yeah, it is. But it’s also about the grand appreciation. I guess that it can be about love, realizing that you’re going to leave everything, and so the things you love about life are more numerous than the things you won’t really miss about it.
Let’s talk about the record. You made it in L.A.... KM:And New York. A week or two at Headgear in Williamsburg, then we went to Dave’s house in Beverly Hills for two months, then did a week at the end at Brooklyn Recordings this past fall.
Does Dave have a very different life to you all, out in L.A. in his Beverly Hills house? KM: I can only assume so. I mean, it’s one of those things that’s kind of like the tyranny of small details. It’s not that different compared to if he was a bedouin, you know? TA:Yeah. He’s driving around, he’s driving a lot more than he would have here [Laughs]. Yeah, he likes it out there. KM: It’s suiting him.
When I heard you recorded Nine Types of Light in L.A., I assumed that was at the root of the title: The light there is so beautiful… TA:Oh yeah, no, it’s gorgeous. I don’t know if that—yes. Yes! Make that so! [Laughs] Make that part of the folklore!
You recorded it quickly—I wondered if that was because you’ve said you didn’t like where you recorded it… KM:Did I say that? No, where we were staying. TA:Where we recorded was great. KM:The actual process of recording, as long as there’s a good engineer and a minimum of interruptions, it doesn’t matter where it’s happening. Dave has a really beautiful spot and it’s at the top of a canyon and there’s lots of sunlight and greenery. It’s very nice. Where we were actually staying was the opposite.
Couldn’t you just sleep on Dave’s floor? KM:[Flatly] I don’t wanna do that. I’m a grown man. [Laughs] TA:After doing that for the better part of seven years, when you get a chance to not do it, you never wanna do it again. [Laughs]
So you chose to stay next to a plastic-surgery institute rather than sleep on the floor… KM:I didn’t choose that. [Laughs] TA: That was bungled by someone else, who didn’t mean to bungle it that hard, but they did. People have different ideas of what nice is. KM:I think if you live in L.A., you’re used to driving. And I’m not into driving, at all. I don’t like car culture. I choose to live places where I can get around by walking or public transportation. Or taxis. But for someone else… no, I hated where we were staying, I can’t make any excuses for it, it fuckin' sucked. It was like the most soul-sucking, sad, douchebaggy corner in hell. TA:It’s true. But in a way I’m really glad. I used to have this attitude, living here—especially when I’d just moved to New York—I was just like, I’ll never go there. But I realize I had this very, like, cartoon version of New York versus L.A.: New York is black leather jackets and the Ramones and L.A. is… horrible. I didn’t know anything about it, I was just like, L.A. is Pamela Anderson and horrible. So I had this very cliché idea of L.A., and the only place that I saw that cliché matched and overtaken by a more grizzly reality was where we were staying. Where you go to a café and there are two reality shows being shot in the same café with different crews.
Ew. Though they do shoot them here, too; I’ve seen a crew at the Knitting Factory.… TA: Right, but at least when they shoot them here, there are at least four or five people going, That sucks. Whereas over there it’s like, Oh, I wonder if I can get in, move a little closer to that flame. [Laughs] KM:But there’s a lot of incredible culture there, incredible people. I don’t wanna bag on it, cause I actually really love California, I consider California to be one of my homes. I just was not at home where I was.
And when you are in the crazy tour machine or in a funny place like that, is there something you can do to make yourself feel normal? Is it hard keeping grounded? KM: People are adaptable, or can be. I also feel like the time that you get to actually play music, which is the point of being on the road, becomes the time of sanity. That’s the most grounding part of the day for me. And the bunk, on the bus: It’s a place to hide. Make it dark and quiet. Put earplugs in. if you’re in a hotel or motel there’s always, watch Law and Order. TA: And bookstores. Whenever we’re done with a tour, there are boxes of books that are sent home. Every town you get to it’s like, bookstore, coffeeshop, comic store, art store. I’m working on my collection of 9,052 magic markers [Laughs]. I’m almost there! It’s stuff like that. I think we’ve had two tours where I was like, Yeah, I’m on tour! I’m gonna go for it! And then it was just, like, unsustainable. It’s an unsustainable way of being. To hate yourself every day, more than you already do. [Malone laughs.]It’s too much for one person to take on.
I mean, given that you went to art school, you knew that you weren’t signing on to a particularly normal life, to an extent… TA: Yeah, and my experience is, the older that I get—I have a lot of friends who are still, who are definitely making art and having creative lives, but I feel like in my twenties, all my friends had some sort of aspiration, like, I’m gonna paint, or I’m gonna write…and sometimes your life takes you in a different direction. And I think as you get older you realize that you’re [working] kind of by default sometimes; you’re still doing it, but it’s not a normal job. It can be strange. It can also be strange explaining it to someone who thinks you’re having fun 24 hours a day.
Above: Kyp Malone's solo project, Rain Machine, "Give Blood"
Do you miss each other when you’re not playing together? Or is it a necessary breath of fresh air? KM:I mean, we live— TA: —like a block away from each other. [Laughs] KM: I’m sure if I was given enough time in another scenario, I might. No, I don’t miss, but as soon as we started again I was really, really excited and happy to be doing it again. I don’t think it’s a negative to not—you have to kind of be where you’re at. I keep making the analogy, or trying not to, actually, between romantic relationships. Like, I’ve been around the block, I’ve had my share of loves, not-quite-so loves. And I don’t think about my whole history when I’m in the now. TA: It’s like, if someone were to hold me down and go, "Well, how do you feel about everyone you’ve ever loved?" then I would say I still love them, even if I’m not with them right now. Because they made me who I am. And it’s completely irreversible. And I’m gonna see them again. Like, we’re contractually obligated to each other [Laughs]. It’s like, that’s your family and your friends. We go to each other’s shows, we hang out.
How was SXSW for you? KM:I like playing. I like being with friends. I talk a lot about the compulsion, the desire, to bite the hand that feeds [Laughs]. Well, when the hand that feeds is pushing you to do really annoying press things between shows, there’s resistance to being told what to do, regardless of the relationship. I don’t wanna listen to anybody,and I’m not alone in that. Most people don’t wanna be told what to do. TA: It depends on what the situation is. But when you’re supposed to do an interview for a major Internet network and your tour manager comes back to you and says, "Well, the interviewer just told me to ask you what questions to ask you," and I say, "He should not have let that out of his mouth [Laughs] because now that’s going to be super weird and antagonistic when we get there.…" But that’s just, South By is when you can get the most in that period of time, every band is there, every reporter’s there—but it does turn into this very weird…
Does it feel a bit whorish? KM: The whole thing feels whorish. There needs to be, if this structure was the one that was going to keep going, for events like this [bands] wouldn’t just have a drummer and a rapper and a singer, they’d also have the press guy. Who’s totally good at saying what needs to be said and skirting the truth and being enthusiastic. [Laughs]
Like with the Vevo selection process! KM: I know! I don’t think we’re going there, cause I don’t think we’re allowed in that door, but I think that’s where things are going. [Pauses] But there will always be punk rock. It won’t be called punk rock, but there’ll always be resistance to that.
Yeah. And then that resistance will become fashionable and then that will become mainstream and then it’ll go round again.… TA:Yeah, flip it over again.
How did you feel when you got back to Williamsburg? Do you still love it? KM:I hear people, talking about Los Angeles, I hear some people bag on Williamsburg and Brooklyn for so long, and it’s like, guess that’s why people keep movin’ here, cause it sucks so bad. [Laughs] I mean, you could characterize a place and say it’s full of trust-fund kids making bad art or shitty music. And there’s definitely that here. But we’re looking out of the window now, and that group of women is not coming from the bank getting money from their parents. There’s families, there’s been neighborhoods full of families for years and years, and a lot of them are still here. And there was a time when it was a really great place for creative people and artists to be, and a lot of those people are still here. Cause I see them. I don’t think this is the only place I could live, but it’s been really good to me. There’s things that annoy me about it, but there’s things that annoy me about everywhere.
Do you miss it, the way Williamsburg was when you first started? KM:By degrees. The amount of times that I think about the fact that I go by a place and think, Oh, I can’t go into that new place, that’s new shit, and I realize after I’ve been saying that about a place that it’s been there for five years or something…that people have met there, had babies there— TA:And then it closed! [Laughs]
So there’s a movie coming out with the album? TA:It’s ten videos and ten different directors. Every song on the record has a video coming with it. And I shot a short film that’s gonna—it’s not tying everything together, but it’s the frame for everything.
A narrative arc? TA:Kind of. It’s an abstract narrative arc. Our friend Petro [Papahadjopoulos, dir. “Golden Age”] directed a video. And Barnaby Clay did a video. And there are three really incredible animated pieces and I directed one of ’em. I think it’ll be available with the deluxe version of the record; the day the record comes out there’s going to be a screening on YouTube and a broadcast channel screening.
It’d be nice to get it as a DVD.… TA: Initially I thought, yes, this is a DVD, and what I was told was, nobody’s buying DVDs any more. Which is weird cause I bought nine DVDs last week. [Laughs]I dunno, it’s a DVD, you can take it to places and play it. but I guess I’m old.
That’s like Kindle verses book… TA: Yeah. Have you seen the audiobook commercial, though? [Starts laughing] There’s an audiobook commercial that says [In announcer voice] “I love to read, but who has the time?” I said, it takes just as long to listen to someone reading a book! As it does to read a book!
It’s like, don’t take two books to the beach! Take one, that you have to shield from sand and sun! KM:I haven’t looked at what titles are available, I guess I really like looking for arcane obscure shit; that’s interesting to me. I need to make an experiment and see how much of my personal book collection is available online. I don’t think I could find a lot of it—obscure stuff, shit on witchcraft and the occult. TA: Or someone who writes a dissertation on Ionesco or something, can you find it? KM: Or histories outside the dominant narrative? I know there’s a lot, I’m not trying be dismissive of what’s obviously a really incredible pool of information, and I’m sure that it will grow. I just also like collecting books.
And they smell nice. TA: They smell nice, exactly.
Imagine if they started perfuming books! It would give off a fusty smell, or new-paper smell… KM:Eventually you could probably program what smell you want.
And sound as well, like crackling fire. Ambient Kindles! Who has the time? TA: That’s pretty awesome.
It’s exciting you’re playing Radio City. KM: It should be fun. TA:I know, I kinda want to go there before we play.… KM: I feel like it’s a high stage. Maybe it’s just psychologically a high stage. TA: The last show I saw there was probably 12 years ago, the Smashing Pumpkins. It was circa not-the-whole-band. [Laughs] It was circa Billy Corgan coming out and playing the pipe organ for fifteen minutes to start the set.
In a cape. TA: Basically. A real Nosferatu thing going on. KM: Yeah, we need to figure out a way to make it special in there. We could just have the Rockettes. TA:That would be good if we could afford the Rockettes.
Julian Casablancas and Co. debuted in 2001 with the critically acclaimed album Is This It and helped put New York rock back on the map. Now the Strokes are back - after a puzzling, difficult five-year hiatus - with the new album Angles. J. Edward Keyes, editor-in-chief of eMusic, and Sophie Harris, music writer for Time Out New York, join us to debate this comeback album.
This Tuesday I published a column on bet.com recapping the by then confirmed rumors that Biggie's former DJ and mentor had been arrested for public lewdness. I wrote that I was more interested in a discussion about decriminalizing sex work than I was in one about Mister Cee’s sexuality or any same-sex sex habits he may have. As with so many stories that happen in the world today, the Mister Cee story broke for me on Twitter.
As for many, Twitter for me is a place that invokes a buffet of feelings. A political news junkie, the thrill of breaking stories has me both checking my Twitter feed hourly and tweeting my observational predictions about unfolding revolutions or as I perhaps a bit glibly called them on Twitter when demonstrators in Yemen began protesting as March Madness was wrapping up, my ‘North African bracket.’ I “follow” on Twitter a deeply engaged, brilliant and witty group of everyday intellectuals, sports fanatics and rare groove enthusiasts. The idea that my small, eclectic group of friends were some tiny Black exception was blown out of the water when I “met,” through Twitter hundreds of folk who watch The Boondocks, memorize Zeppelin, world travel and are as passionate about Sudan as they are about Ntozake Shange. And then there are the people on Twitter, generally a generation younger than me, who have some (mostly misguided) idea of me as someone “in the industry” and send me links to mixtapes. Or worse. I've closed a Twitter account that had become for me too public, @dreamhampton, and restarted under another name. I've locked and unlocked this new account, in useless attempts to manage how public I am. Still, I am on Twitter. A lot. Because these things are on record, I know that I seldom tweet about hip hop.That my timeline, random and impossible to call one particular thing, places hip hop at its center maybe ten percent of the time.
After publishing my piece on Tuesday, the conversation about Mister Cee resumed on my Twitter feed. I received some homophobic tweets directed at me, some very legitimate responses from Black women who didn't like that I seemed to blame them for down low behavior, and a lot of support for my article. I then remembered on my timeline that Big had a friend from his neighborhood, who always appeared gay to me, but whom Big would always ‘defend’ as simply being ‘feminine.’ A few weeks before Big was murdered, when he came to L.A. where I was living, Big told me this friend had come out of the closet with no verbal announcement, but by quite boldly bringing his boyfriend on The Ave. (Fulton St., in Brooklyn) as if it were the most natural thing in the world to introduce his boyfriend to the men he'd grown up with, the boys who'd become Junior Mafia. Big’s exact words were: “Yo, you were right.... that n---a brought his man on The Ave.” I asked Big at the time, in January of 1997, if his friend bringing his boyfriend back to the hood bothered him. Big told me “Whatever, that’s still my n---a.”
The remembering of that moment between me and Big, who in 1997 had been one of my closest friends for six years, was unpacked in three or four tweets. Those tweets were captured as screen shots and used by Bossip and then allhiphop with sensational headlines that apparently poor readers took to mean I was questioning Big’s sexuality. Even if read correctly, it became an opportunity to speculate about Big’s sexuality, offering his lyrics as evidence. As I wrote in Tuesday's column about Cee, digging in hip hop’s closet is a pitiful sport.
For my part, I apologize to Big’s friend. I always admired the open way he was in his hood. Young New York Black LBGT and/or those merely exploring, often leave their neighborhoods for Manhattan’s West Village and West Side Highway piers to openly be themselves. Big’s lifelong friend, who later became Lil Kim’s stylist, impressed me when he brought a lover on The Ave. It was not only brave of him, but revealed how much he trusted the men he grew up with to, if not ‘support’ his love choices, at least not treat him anydifferently than they had their whole lives. I was inspired when Big didn't have a homophobic response to his friend’s coming out of the closet. I remembered that story on my pubic timeline because I was saddened by the discourse around Mister Cee. Still, by naming him, and tweeting a pic that was readily accessible on the Internet, I have put a spotlight on him that I never intended. As an LBGT ally, I support the position that ‘outing’ is wrong.
That the discussion has further devolved to my receiving rape threats or worse is only so much more misogyny to add to the heap of homophobia from kids who can barely read or even Google.
This Monday I received a copy of Manning Marable’s epic, definitive biography of Malcolm X. I asked my 17 thousand followers on Twitter: “If Marable’s two decades of research yields evidence that Malcolm X had same-sex sex would you abandon him as your hero?” Last week, when statistics were published that show there are more Black men in prison than there were enslaved in early America, I began a Twitter conversation about sex and silence about sex in prison. I won't stop thinking aloud about these issues. I try to do so thoughtfully.
And finally, I never called Big gay. Though calling someone gay, will never for me be an insult. End
Yesterday New York City's two major dailies confirmed the rumor that had set the Internet on fire over the weekend—that Hot 97 DJ personality Calvin Lebrun, 44, better known to music fans as Mister Cee, had been arrested last Wednesday by the NYPD for public lewdness after engaging in a sex act in a parked car around 4 in the morning with what appeared to be a transgendered 20-year-old male. Furthermore, the dailies cited two other similar arrests involving Mister Cee.
On Twitter, where Mister Cee is repeatedly and correctly identified as the man who helped The Notorious B.I.G. get a record deal, homophobic insults were parked on timelines the entire 72-hour weekend. On Monday morning, rival station Power 105.1's Breakfast Club on-air personality Charlemagne Tha God called for "transparency," asking why Cee would "hide his sexuality" in 2011. Those comments raised the ire of Hot 97 legend Funkmaster Flex, who seemed to support Cee's claims of innocence. From what we can tell, Cee seems to be claiming that he was set up by the "hip hop police".
To his credit, Mister Cee showed up for work and played his mixshow, which never involves much talking by him, as scheduled and without on-air comment.
While highly regarded in the hip hop industry and in New York, Mister Cee is not necessarily famous. Still, his arrest gave opportunity to talk about the persistent poking around hip hop's "closet," where speculation about sexual orientation is practically a sport. Charlamagne actually elevated the conversation by asking why a married 44-year-old man was seeking sexual favors from a 20-year-old, professional or otherwise, and if that, then why in a parked car? I argue that none of this would be a discussion, viral or anywhere else, had Cee been arrested with a 20-year-old woman, be she prostitute or not. I also don't believe, 2011 or not, that hip hop is a safe space for anything other than aggressively heterosexual public behavior or affirmation. While obviously lesbian women MCs and personalities remain silent if not closeted about their sexuality, there is even less space for men to appear bisexual or homosexual.
I believe that Mister Cee's sexuality is a personal matter, one he must reckon with himself and his wife. But Charlamagne's co-host Angela Yee took the position widely held by heterosexual women—that closeted bisexual men are a health hazard, exposing trusting women to AIDS and more. While I'm not dismissive of those concerns, particularly in a marriage, where condom use is expected to be abandoned, I do know that we heterosexual Black women don't exactly offer safe spaces for bisexual men to express their desires.
I'm also far more concerned that the transgendered 20-year-old who allegedly serviced him be safe, particularly if he is a sex worker. I wished aloud on my own Twitter feed that the discussion about Mister Cee would be one about decriminalizing sex work and focusing on harm reduction rather than speculating if Mister Cee is closeted. End
The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. It is the most important product of his creative brain. Its ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs." -Nikola Tesla
Jay Electronica is a wildly inventive Master MC who bends and shapes language to his will. His rhymes dazzle; metaphors stacked upon similes, narratives sprouting spontaneously from abstraction. His flow swarms a beat, rendering hooks optional. Were he simply a rhyme stylist, an MC committed to mere aesthetics, he'd be a mammoth talent, the "finally" true hip-hop fans have been rain-dancing for the better part of the 21st century. As it is, he's way more than a rhyme stylist; he's an exceedingly brilliant thinker, an organic intellectual student from the hood whose appetite for knowledge is matched by his ability to transmit knowledge. He's the child of an American Third World ghetto who's concerned with global community. He's an MC who gives a fuck. He's a throwback whose life was changed by hip-hop and believes still in its transformative, magical properties. He's on some serious shit, mysterious shit, an artist whose conscience mandates he be conscious. But as he likes to say---the facts, jack.
Born in New Orleans and raised with his sister by his mother and grandmother, shuttled between the Magnolia Projects and the 17th ward, Jay Electronica was a pre-teen comic book geek who was mesmerized by mythic superheroes. He'd spend whole summers with his collection, memorizing supernatural attributes as he wrote his own parallel stories in his head, complete with his mind's illustrations. His mother had an eclectic collection of vinyl and would spin Steely Dan, Prince, Al Jarreau, and the raven-haired country star Crystal Gayle one after the other. His grandmother had her eyes on the sparrow and hummed along to her gospel favorites, Mighty Clouds of Joy and Shirley Ceaser, as she performed babysitting duty.
When he was nine years old Def Jam's first superstar changed his life. "When I first heard "Radio" I can picture it so clearly...my neighbor was outside washing his car, he had it blasting, I just stood there and froze I said to myself 'That's what I'm doing!' After that I would be in the house writing stories in rhyme and drawing pictures."
While LL served as the catalyst, it was a talent show sensation, Dr. Blue, that brought out the gladiator in our young hero. "My older cousin Mook came home from this talent show at school saying how dope Dr. Blue was and I was like 'Man, Fuck Dr. Blue! I'm better than him!' So I put on a show right there in the living room. I would take my tape recorder, loop the tape and do my little show. I'd be saying my rhymes and then I'd break from rhyming and just start telling a story, right in the middle of my rhyme."
As anyone who's every downloaded his cyber classics "Eternal Sunshine..." or "Dimethyltriptamine" knows, Electronica's penchant for digression is still very much a part of his repertoire. Jay will pass the mic to Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka (his favorite movie), the child actors from the Iraqi film ""Turtles Can Fly, or include a vintage Honorable Elijah Muhammad speech, stretching a song beyond its commercial confines.
In an effort to get his skills up, he began studying the rap game with the same scholarly discipline he'd once applied to comics. He'd videotape Yo' MTV Raps! or rally his neighbors to place simultaneous orders on Video Music Box. Premier's work with Gangstarr and later RZA's with the Wu would later influence his work as a producer. Too Short, NWA, especially Ren and Cube, The Geto Boys, particularly Scarface, and Dallas's D.O.C. were his rap education. "With each new important release I would realize I needed to go and get my game up, that I needed to vibrate on a higher level."
At 18, like a young Ronin, Jay began roaming. He'd trekked to D.C. for Farrakhan's historic Million Man March after meeting a clean and sober Muslim (his first) on Xavier's by the environment." When he returned home, New Orleans had become a size too small. So he boarded a Greyhound and set out on a path towards greatness. "I had a bus ticket, a chunk of change and some clothes in a bag. I was like 'I'm about to be a rapper, I'm headed to New York, you know, 'RapLand'."
Instead, he noticed that more than half the passengers discharged in Atlanta. He too got off the bus during the break. He noticed signs posted, advertising jobs. The Olympics were coming to town and businesses wanted help. Jay retrieved his duffel and learned Atlanta. He lived in shelters, worked in the kitchen at Morris Brown. In the men's shelter he met a fellow hip-hop head named "Q", Quinn Gilbert. They'd walk around Atlanta, Q beatboxing, Jay freestyling, no need for equipment. One day, in downtown Atlanta's Underground, a late 80s, early 90s gathering spot for the city's teens, Jay came across his first cipher.
"There were so many dudes gathered around that I knew they were either gonna fight or rhyme. So I went up to them. They were debating Farrakhan's speech from the march. Half of them were gods [Five Percenters] and the other half was Nation of Islam. The gods were arguing that it was allegorical, while the clean, NOI guys were saying it was both---allegorical and literal."
The minister's four-hour Million Man March speech had been heavy on mathematics, measuring galactic distance, the sun's circumference, man's metabolic composition.
"Because of who I am, I felt such a strong connection to the scientific aspect of the doctrine. I tapped a Five Percenter brother on the shoulder and was like 'that right there, where can I learn that? What book do I need to read to learn about the planets and all that?!'
Jay got his 120 in Atlanta and set out for a short-lived stint in Chicago, where he returned tot he NOI and rose to Lieutenant in the Fruit of Islam. "People who had been killers---guys who when they walked into a party emptied it out because everyone knew they were there to shut it down---I'd see them completely change. Not in terms of becoming robots or bean pie salesman, but real, life saving changes. When I was young and homeless it was hard. I got robbed, I did things I wasn't proud of, thugging it out to get by, to see these men change, I knew it was in me too."
The teachings of Elijah Muhammad, and the organization that Malcolm grew and Farrakhan kept relevant, was the last organized doctrine Jay adhered to but his pledge of allegiance is largely supportive, and from a distance. If you ask him today if he's a Muslim, he'll answer yes. If you ask him if he's a Christian, that answer too is affirmative.
After a Christmas break home in New Orleans, Jay returned to Atlanta. "I knew Atlanta backwards and forwards at this point, I knew the AU campus kids, I knew the homeless people from Buckhead to Bankhead." He met his future best friend, a brother named Johnny (Audible) from Detroit, coming from the masjid one Friday after juma.
"Johnny started a record label with money he won from a legal settlement. When I bumped into him he asked me to come to this spot with him and I ended up getting on this track with this hood superstar named Cool Lace."
Later Jay recorded with Gip from Goodie Mob and hopped on beats by Sol Messiah, the producer who Dallas Austin leaned on for TCL's massive hit "Waterfalls". He finally made it to New York, but by then it was the late 90's, Biggie and Tupac had both been assassinated, and hip-hop's birthplace was struggling to remain relevant. New York didn't feel like the 'RapLand' he'd boarded the bus for years earlier.
He ended up resting in Denver for a minute, after his mom moved there. "There were so many jobs in Denver, you could get one on your lunch break." He learned how to camp in the wilderness, had his first, true friendship with a white guy and celebrated Juneteenth with the Colorado's tight-knit Black community.
In any great hero's journey there are supporting characters who arise like angels to push the protagonist along on his journey. For Jay Electronica these supporters were made manifest in Junior Mafia producer Rashad "Tumbling Dice" Smith who passed Jay's music along to Just Blaze, the super-producer who'd served Jay-Z some of his hottest beats. Just was inspired by Electronica's willingness to take risks, to "go all the way left with it." Then there was Supanova Slom, who after Dave Chapelle's Brooklyn taping of "Block Party" introduced Jay to the maverick singer Erykah Badu, who was so inspired by Jay Electronica's talent she decided to launch her label Control Freaq in 2005.
Badu's wingspan was both angelic and pragmatic; she loaned him her rent controlled Brooklyn apartment and one night he finally settled in and watched Michel Gondry's innovative film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in its entirety. "...for some reason every time it would come on I'd catch it while Jim Carey was regressing into a child, the scene where he's cramped under the table. I thought it was some silly Jim Carey shit. But this one night I actually watched the whole thing."
The scene where Kate Winslet's character Clementine whispered "Don't forget me on Valentine's Day" had a spare piano riff that stayed with Jay. He went online, downloaded the soundtrack and in a fit of inspiration looped it and recorded his own rhymes over the score on Garage Band. "I played it for my boy and he was like 'This is garbage, no one's gonna like this. It started out ok but you always gotta go left...' I was like 'fuck it', I posted it to myspace and the response was incredible. It went from 200 plays a day to a million times that."
Jay had experienced a certain amount of positive response on the Internet before; his "Hard to Get" was ripped so many times by his core fans, each dub degrading the sound quality, that he relented and made the track downloadable. But the response to ESOTSPM created traffic that was so overwhelming that Jay, who'd written the codes for the myspace page he'd designed himself, made the decision to shut down the page altogether. Bloggers carried the momentum, creating fan pages, maintaining a buzz that landed him on the cover of URB's next 100. "My myspace page played a HUGE part in my career, I'm not gonna knock it, but ultimately I had to delete the page to preserve the integrity of my project, to present it with continuity."
Jay considers the current state of hip-hop to be nearly posthumous, he likens today's popular hip hop to "dead fish, on the beach stinking."
His vision for his own project is wide. He imagines live shows that read like dinner theatre. "I want a set that's like a pop-up book, upright piano, an orchestra in the orchestra pit..." He wants the kind of continuity and pageantry that Public Enemy maintained from song to video to concert, a consistent threat that makes you "feel the way you do when you read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment."
Like a yound Cassius Clay calling his fight against the Goliath Sonny Liston, Jay has his future mapped out. He's reconnected with his man Johnny from Detroit, who did indeed build the studio he dreamed aloud about when they were in Atlanta. The D is Jay's second home; he was on Detroit's west side when the government-erected levees were breeched, failing to protect New Orleans from Katrina. He collaborated with the legendary J Dilla a couple times before the genius producer died. He builds bombs in the lab with his comrade Denaun Porter, "Mr.Porter" from D12.
Eventually the songs he's laying now will serve as material for his second and third suites. Jay has given himself assignments to complete. Inspired by the great scientist Nikola Tesla, who believed the Earth's electromagnetic field could be harnessed for energy (and whose radical ideas consequently threatened the existence of at least a half dozen industries) and the movie about Tesla, The Pledge, Jay plans to unveil his music in the three acts. Act I and the cyberspace sensation that is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is Jay Electronica's version of "The Pledge". Act II will be his "Turn." The plan is to make the third act, "The Prestige", his commercial reveal, his offering to the marketplace.
"I'm just a human being. I look at shit and I'm like 'Here's the history of nations, here's the history of geography....' I don't want to waste oxygen", Jay Electronica humbly submits. Then asks himself aloud, as if he's checking his mic: "What's my purpose? How am I perfecting things?"
