I was sitting at home tonight re-watching the excellent Run Up dvd that came out last year from Fifty24SF gallery and Upper Playground and it made me remember how much I respect this girl and her talent / vision. Her work covers all aspects from painting to photography to video, and she is one of the major people involved in the Barnstormers project…
Check out her website.
One more for good measure from the same director who just directed the Jay video below, Rik Cordero. They’re doing some crazy things over at three21media. This video from Joell Ortiz made me laugh with the 5 cats in the 2 door and the baby mama drama! Pure BK.
Got this from House Shoes… Looks like this is either a viral or the official video for one of Jay’s new tracks inspired by American Gangster (which I have to say looks amazing, although I don’t know if I can co-sign Russel Crowe in that role, especially when they initially had Benicio Del Toro). Jay’s new tie-in with the movie incidentally got a sort of ho hum writeup in the NYTimes the other day. I’m feelin’ the track, down to the Oliver North / Iran Contra reference…might have to run that one back! The video is a good concept and I like the street feel of it; but it’s definitely an unexpected turn for the man who made the Show Me What You Got video not a year ago. The whole things feels a little forced. Thoughts?
One of the benefits of being back in Upstate NY and just having time to work and contemplate things has been actually having the time to rent and watch films. I’ve always been a fan of people like Robert Smithson and Richard Long and other artists who work in nature and do land art. The ephemeral nature of it is something that really brings out a strong connection with nature and the constant flow of time, and it’s interesting to see what kind of challenge that poses for the artist. One of my favorite people working in this mode is Andy Goldsworthy, so it was an amazing thing recently to see this documentary film that was made about him and his work in 2001, Rivers & Tides, directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer. Here is a piece of it from YouTube:
“I am so amazed at times, I am actually alive.”
Does anyone else think it’s ironic that Kanye hired So Me to do his video after he stormed the stage at the European MTV Music Video Awards last year? Better late than never I guess…
Apparently this documentary Manda Bala is in limited release around the States right now…I’m planning on going and seeing it at the Angelika in NYC when I’m down this week. The line from the trailer about Sao Paolo being a city of 20 million and them having an anti-kidnapping force of 80 people is mindblowing. Inspiracao pra meu filme tao vez!
This is a funny video of MIA and Diplo fucking around with that new track…new real post tomorrow, meanwhile here are two mp3s of a new Diplo mix that he did for Pitchfork and the remix to Paper Planes:
I apologize in advance because this is going to be disjointed but I’ll get to my point. It’s rare for a musical artist to have a singular original artistic vision for their album these days when looking at the hip hop game. I was talking to Hec about this in NY a couple weeks ago when we were discussing the possibility of him producing on an album for a certain Roc-A-Fella artist and I was talking about how I didn’t think that people would be able to understand that the key is to stray from the model that’s developed and make classic albums with a capital A. Everyone just wants to make hits and get that radio play to cash in, which is why Ye’s Graduation album is just proving yet again that the man can draw inspiration from the craziest places (Old Boy, 2046, Akira, etc) and synthesize it to create something new that doesn’t just sound like a selection of varied tracks, but beyond that, he’s created the character of “Kanye West” that has matured and developed through his three solo projects. (addendum: after listening to the entire Graduation album I think it’s pretty bad…) So it was that I was sitting here on the plane from Panama City and went back to Kavinsky’s (of Ed Banger Records) Teddy Boy EP. For him to create a persona for himself that goes beyond having an artistic presence and have it delve into a whole fictional story about this character that he has created (a guy who crashes his Testarossa and emerges from the wreckage as an electro producing zombie madman) is a direction that I see as an amazing look for the artistic possibilities that are available to people, but the majority just don’t see it. When I think about people that are operating on the kind of level I’m talking about (embodying an original artistic concept rather than just being a recording artist) I come up with a short list that extends to David Bowie, Brian Eno, MF Doom, Ghostface, Daft Punk, DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, Edan, Gnarls Barkley, Gorillaz, Hansome Boy Modeling School, Madlib…I could maybe think of a few more off the top of my head, but the point is, these are all people who are creating a world through their music and they are opening the door to let you into something that is what I said before: a singular artistic vision that goes beyond the music and into a persona that’s been created surrounding the music. That’s the direction I want to see things take, and I’m not referring to a persona in the sense of Fabolous or 50 Cent creating a fictional gangster image for themselves or even someone crafting an identity the way most rappers do; I’m talking about creating a world surrounding the work the way a visual artist or a filmmaker or a performance artist might do. In the end, the term performance artist is a much better term for the above mentioned people that are pushing the envelope in music, because they are doing performance pieces that are encompassing much more than the music they produce.
The interesting about it is that a lot of the concepts come from a sort of Pop Art perspective or influence, in the case of Kanye and Daft Punk we can look to Pop in Japan, with Kavinsky to an 80s cartoon aesthetic, with Doom to comic books and cartoon shows, with Gnarls Barkley to a variety of different movies and tv shows, with handsome boy modeling school to the dandy or gentleman aesthetic, etc. My question is…when do MF Doom and Daft Punk start performing at the Guggenheim & MOMA? Will some of this stuff be immortalized 100 or 200 years from now in museum collections? A change is coming…thoughts?