#primitiveprimelab

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Wrote an essay on billy woods x Messiah Musik's song 'Frankie' from their 2022 album, Church. Read it here.

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On Drake, Pop Music, & Hip-Hop Culture

ALL SKUS ON ME by Azrael Encarnaión

“Is Drake Hip-Hop?” Yasiin Bey, (a.k.a. Mos Def) was asked in an interview with The Cutting Room. His answer, in a pure what-memes-are-made-of moment, is that Drake is Pop and akin to “shopping with an edge.” This is in reference to the generally likeable sensibilities in Champagne Papi’s music; sensibilities that lend themselves to such commercial experiences as shopping at a Target store.

Since then, various voices have chimed in, from radio personalities to Hip-Hop blogs, streamers, and podcasts. Hot takes ranging from casually entertained to flat out rap beef instigation. Even Drake himself jumped into the mix, offering his defense by way of a 1997 clip of Wu’s Method Man defining Hip-Hop. Meth’s definition, which mentions wordplay and rhyming does help Drake’s legitimacy; but a lot has changed since 1997. Does Hip-Hop even mean the same thing anymore? How has the relationship between Pop and Hip-Hop changed since Method Man’s statement? Is it possible that today, an artist like Drake, who makes Rap music, isn’t necessarily Hip-Hop?

[ Read full essay here ]

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PERLA SANCHEZ

NYC-based illustrator, graphic designer and dedicated plant-mami, Perla Sanchez has launched PerlyBlooms as an on-going series of botanical illustrations centering on themes of nature, femininity, and self-love. 

Prints available here. And for more artwork, do connect with her Insta.

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 HENDRIK KERSTENS

The Dutch photographer pays tongue-in-cheek homage to the Dutch master painters of the past by recreating photo portraits of his own daughter Paula. Mimicking their styles of lighting and composition, most notably the work of Johannes Vermeer (famous for his Girl with the Pearl Earring painting) is a recurring inspiration but Kerstens adds yet another layer of light to manipulate through his chiaroscuro lens...humor. 

In deadpan seriousness each photograph demands we accept its absurdity. Whether of a trash bag bonnet, or lampshade hat, or tablecloth habit--These jokes seem to question idolization of the subject while simultaneously beckoning us to admire how even the most mundane items are perfectly captured to seem painted by oil on canvas. 

Most remarkable of all perhaps, these photos, through camera lenses more than capable of capturing reality, bend instead to mimic the painted ideal of reality as explored by the foregone Dutch artists of light and shadow. Maybe that’s the joke, we can take pictures now of things as they are, but its still higher art to copy the painters who did it less realistically, by hand.

View/read more at Danziger Gallery

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NIYI OKEOWO

Mr. Color is the on-going 3D visual project by artist and art director, Niyi Okeowo. Centering on themes of afrofuturism, isolation, anxiety, exploration and geometric structures. These are a few of the pieces which spoke to me but you can see more of Okeowo’s work via the Mr. Color Tumblr page.

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Diogenes the Cosmopolitan

Alexander the Great once walked up to the philosopher, Diogenes, who was sunbathing, and asked if he could grant him any request--Diogenes replied to Alexander, “you can stand out of my light!”

The idea of being a citizen of the world, or cosmopolitan, has been around for quite some time. In the 5th-Century B.C., philosopher, Diogenes the Cynic proclaimed himself as one, refusing to limit his identity to a singular locality. A controversial figure of his day, Diogenes rejected not only local citizenship but also other values, such as possessions and social status. So much so, he owned little to nothing and lived in a tub or cask in the streets of Athens. He considered society a pretentious construct that filtered out one’s true nature, at times inspiring him to take to town with a lantern in broad daylight in search for an honest man.

An interesting fact about the philosopher is his exile from his native city of Sinope (present day Sinop in Turkey, then a colony of Greece). His father was a banker and either Diogenes, or his father, or both were at some point involved in a counterfeit scandal of minting debased coins; that is, reducing the value of the money by tampering with the amount of the material it should be made out of. Banished, Diogenes lost all his possessions and citizenship. Whether Diogenes took up his cynical philosophy as a result of this earlier experience, or if it instead humbled the man, allowing him to find a better way of life is anyone’s guess. 

His reported disdain for cultural conventions, supposedly, went as far as going against the norms of even sleep and eating, choosing to do either whenever he felt like it, rather than the time(s) of day that society selected as appropriate. Manners and tact, were also fake to Diogenes, he wanted people to be as real as they could be.

“If I were not Alexander, I would want to be Diogenes.” --Alexander the Great

When you read of his exploits, ranging from comically sarcastic remarks to explicitly vulgar public behavior, there’s almost a mission, on the behalf of the philosopher to teach his society a hard lesson. Possibly a spiteful lesson. Whereas he lost his citizenship and possession so too, should everyone else. 

Because of this disposition, one could argue Diogenes’ view of cosmopolitanism—Under the framing of his tendency toward brutal honesty (emphasis on brutal)—Being a “world-citizen” is less about a uniting camp-fire principle of global community. In fact, Diogenes could not practice true world citizenship as much of his world was still limited to a mainly Euro-Mediterranean and Asia-minor geography. Instead, for Diogenes the Cynic, cosmopolitanism is perhaps simply a fact as blunt as a club used to strike a sleeper awake. Easily supported by the common experience we each undergo everyday (unless we’re astronauts)—That of being aboard the same floating planet moving about in space.

In his defense, much of the stories about him are fables, and even some of the previously accepted facts have come under question, so hold space for any misinterpretation. Also, Diogenes believed in self-control and individual excellence; his rejection of the unnecessary was slightly akin to a minimalist view, that included the political complexity of one’s place of origin minimized simply to the planet one lives on.

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TIINA MENZEL

For all their symbolism of death and poison or danger, skeletons always seem to me, wrongly branded—The victims of bad, or unjustifiably outdated PR. We seldom celebrate the human skeleton outside gothic romanticism, or badass counter-culture rebel. To simply look at the bones we are underneath and accept it as a joyous fact, almost seems counter-intuitive because of their innate association with death and the anxiety death itself produces. Artist Tiina Menzel seems to treat them a bit kinder. 

Among her work, are countless re-depictions of skeletons holding, petting, or fondly interacting with cats. According to an interview with Fandom Wire, Menzel explains her skeletons are a metaphor for depression, more specifically, feeling dead inside. In this vulnerable skeletal state, we’re exposed to our mortality, our deepest anxieties from which there is no flesh, no muscle to shield us. The pairing of these skeletons with feline friends was inspired by her own depression and eventual pet cat, who helped ease her anxieties. 

In illustrating this bond between cat and bone, Menzel places these skeletons on a path of self-healing. What’s lovely to watch, for me, is this literal x-ray of a human, undefined by sex, race, color, country, or god; simply enjoying a warm beverage (I’m imagining and smelling coffee) and spending time with a furry buddy. Whatever worries this person might have, they’ve been momentarily exempt. Menzel’s work is also a reminder that during our moments of peace, of comfort, or happiness, we have a skeleton within, sharing the moment with us.

Menzel’s Instagram 

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TISHJ BARZANJI

London-based artist, Tishj Barzanji really makes me understand something about luxury through space, color, and light. The artist’s love for architecture and interior spaces dances hand in hand with what also appears to be a love for fiery, atmospheric light—Like that from the setting or rising of the sun; when the sky offers up its most grand theater of intense hues.

What hits me from viewing illustration after illustration of Barzanji’s living spaces—With their high ceilings, long windows and doors, as if made for columns to enter and exit—Is the prestigious guest who might as well be given a key, the sun. Sunlight is valuable. It paints your home, or rather plays it like a pianist houseguest who unaccidentally discovers your piano. The full drama of a passionate sunrise or violent sunset is transmitted on the luxurious homes Barzanji broadcasts because the homes aren’t blocked by other buildings; because the ceilings are high, the windows as long as the shadows they lure, the rooms minimal and leisurely, not at all practical like an artist studio or factory.

The walls appropriate the sunlight, luxury sells this too. Makes it part of your home most breathtakingly. The grand hall of atmosphere, the ballroom where twilight moves about freely. Right where you dry off after a bath, or sip your morning tea, or even sit in silence after a lover’s quarrel. This capturing of the life-sustaining star--That breathes warmth, daily to the planet--In your habitat like a radio station, or satellite network on your television. Awaiting your engagement should you desire to give it.

To check out more work by Tishj Barzanji, including prints and bio, as well as contact, check out his website.

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A Written Testimony: In the Shadow of Expectation

We Gon See, When That Sun Go Down…

In March of this year, the U.S. began to shut down in efforts to initiate the slowing of the increasingly spreading coronavirus. In the procession of weeks, during the beginning of Spring, when Nature opens back up in The States, humans seemed headed in an opposite direction, closing down restaurants, retailers, clubs, schools, limiting transportation and enacting curfews. Things became, as many of us had never imagined they would, and we adopted what was termed The New Normal.

A Written Testimony, the long-anticipated debut album by Hip-Hop artist, Jay Electronica isn’t about Covid19, or quarantine, or the social protests against police violence that came shortly after but the album did arrive in the beginning of the pandemic lockdown. Perhaps during the week where everyone began to take things a bit more seriously. The album and it’s lean towards lo-production and esoteric wordplay, it’s prophetic tone from a lyricist most revere as a sage, and centering on Nation of Islam teachings and commentary on social ills, both generally and personally, mark A Written Testimony for me, as the herald of what was to come.

I’m not a diehard Jay Electronica fan. Admittedly, I knew very little of him or his work before A Written Testimony—And while I love this new record enough to feel it’s my favorite Hip-Hop album of 2020, I’m still more a fan of the album than the artist, for now. So my expectations of this album or any Jay Electronica debut release for that matter, were zero—Making me easier to satisfy. However, this isn’t the case with most familiar with the artist. Fans have been long awaiting an official solo debut release since 2007. They’ve received teasers to whet their appetite and fuel their faith, as well as jokes about a never-to-be-released debut album. It’s no surprise then, their reception of the album is a bit more divisive.

A Los Que Nos Ofenden

Whether it was the lo-fi production or Jay-Z’s album-wide collaboration, or Jay Electronica’s emphasis on Islam and less accessible deep-cut references, different people felt different ways about all of these things. None of which would matter as much, I’d wager, if it wasn’t Electronica’s debut album. Which brings up an interesting question, I’ve been weighing over the record—Can Jay Electronica even have a debut album?

I ask this in light of the artist’s 13 year build up of expectation. Also, in consideration of his mixtape and features and critically acclaimed singles which detail his talent and biography. On A Written Testimony Jay poses the question as to why he’s been missing or inactive for so long, to which he answers on Ezekiel’s Wheel: “Cuz familiarity don’t breed gratitude just contempt.” But Jay is more familiar than he thinks. Perhaps not the most popular emcee but of those that know him, they know plenty about him. Does he need a full album to spell out what you already know or can easily find out via his rap history?

Again, I’m not the biggest Jay fan and knowing very little of him, I still don’t feel like I’m lost on the album. He’s a witty lyricist with clever references, a love for Nation of Islam, who does things a bit different from everyone else. That’s the overall gist this album provides. He’s confident enough to share what some consider the sacred space of a debut album with Jay-Z, an artist who is as well-known as he his lyrically astute. He’s aware he will be judged for every decision on this first album: he’s likely also aware there’s a blank space in the past where his real debut should’ve landed. 

Rather than dwell and attempt to apologetically recreate that record, the artist moves on as if ready to offer a daring follow up. A sophomore album that tells you where he is rather than where he’s been. Sounding the first alarm that our relationships with the things we’ve become so accustomed to expect are about to be flipped on their heads.

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No Face: A Helpful Spirit

For better and sometimes for frightening worse, Spirited Away’s secondary antagonist, No Face, is motivated by a need to be useful to others.

I don’t think I’ve watched Hayao Miyazaki’s animated classic, Spirited Away enough times to cling to the periphery character, No Face, the way I have over the years. The fantasy adventure film released in 2001, follows a 10-year old girl, Chihiro, as she enters a spirit realm, where she must develop courage, compassion and strength in order to save her parents (who have been turned to pigs) and return home.

No Face, at first appears as a mysterious figure who starts to follow Chihiro (or “Sen” as she comes to be known in the spirit realm). Possessing powers of mimicry, No Face causes trouble after eating a greedy, bathhouse worker and incorporates not only the worker’s voice and frog body but also his personality. No Face, continues to devour other workers and their greedy personalities, eventually turning the spirit into a nasty monster.

As the name implies, No Face has no real face, the spirit wears a deceptive mask that hides its much larger mouth further below the mask. Yet, the mask does seem able to convey emotion, particularly dejection, as when Sen rejects No Face’s indulgent gifts to win her favor. 

Also, No Face has no identity. Its sex is undetermined and only seems male due to the powers of mimicry. Every experience immediately informs No Face’s behavior but the motives are always to be liked or helpful, especially by Sen. After handing her a bath ticket, No Face learns people like being given things. No Face repeats this manipulative gesture with gold to lure the other bathhouse workers, who moments earlier were thrilled to see the same gold left behind by a river spirit but weren’t allowed to keep any. However, receiving the treatment of royalty still isn’t enough for No Face, when Sen rejects yet another gift, this time a handful of gold. But she recognizes the bathhouse is a bad influence for the spirit, who reveals its loneliness to her. She helps No Face regurgitate the workers that were ingested and then invites the spirit (now reverted to its initial form) to accompany her on a journey to save her friend Haku. You get the feeling, this is what No Face wanted all along. To be helpful to her.

Not knowing how to be helpful, not knowing how to connect with others can be hell, a lonely void in fact. And when we misunderstand how to succeed in doing either, we can become manipulative and selfish or narcissistic. Giving fool’s gold to center ourselves as valuable, using others and mimicking opinions and ideas that aren’t our own in order to win people over. No Face is Miyazaki’s study into such behavior, but No Face also teaches us the value of accompaniment and learning. It isn’t in gifts, or protection, or advise, that No Face helps Sen, or rather Chihiro, its simply by being present because honestly No Face isn’t capable of anything else yet.

With Zeniba, No Face learns to knit, she says it seems like a natural talent. This is possibly a play on the fact the character design is based on a silkworm. But it’s the first time we see No Face praised for a talent. Zeniba insists No Face remain with her to continue studying, the spirit seems pleased with this, having both companionship and purpose.

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Caravaggio: Master of Light

I didn’t know Caravaggio was about that life!

Frequently arrested, constantly involved in scandal and controversy (including murder!). The 16-17th Century Italian painter led a wildlife. From painting violence to enacting it—In the hi-definition of tenebrism, a gloomy painting style which used chiaroscuro to dramatically emphasize the contrast between light and shadow—No one could escape the exclamatory scenes of art imitating life.

Evan Puschak, director, writer, and editor of Nerd Writer, examines the artist’s use of this style to escape the need for exterior scenes that used field of depth to establish the subject’s dimensions. This shift allowed Caravaggio to send us inward, pulling the characters he painted forward for us to view, in relation to light and shadow—Fittingly many of his subjects were religious, coupling the technical theme of light and shadow with good and evil. 

A perfect match for figure like Caravaggio who seems to be at home in renaissance wing of any museum or on the cover of a Westside Gunn album.

CARAVAGGIO // MASTER OF LIGHT BY THE NERD WRITER

For more videos by Evan, check his Youtube Video Channel here.

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Road to Abolition:

Geographies of Racial Capitalism with Ruth Wilson Gilmore An Antipode Foundation film (directed by Kenton Card)

“The relationship between slavery and race, race and unfreedom, freedom and labor, is one that we constantly try to untangle. At our peril we ignore it; but also at our peril we make it too simplistic. Because the complexity of it matters for what we do in the current moment to undo the catastrophe of mass incarceration.” -Ruth Wilson Gilmore

A look into the work of geographer and abolitionist, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, who specializes in the study of prisons, carceral punishment, it’s industrialization and policing. A professor of Geography and Environmental Studies, as well as Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the City University of New York, Gilmore constantly intersects the dynamics between people and place, and more specifically, human interaction with long-lasting environmental well-being.

Her provocative stance on prison abolition (and police abolition by extension), is misinterpreted, due to failure to understand abolition is not about absence but rather, presence. To replace the old systems of punishment with the presence of newer systems based on social support in areas including but not limited to education, health, and social services. 

Gilmore furthermore insists, sustainable social solutions must have general impact that can be applied globally for the benefit of the most, if not all the people of the world.

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The Technology School of Guelmim (Morocco)

Designed by Saad El Kabbaj, Driss Kettani & Mohamed Amine Siana.

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Samburu Women Villages in Kenya

In response to limited rights, abuse and culturally accepted practices such as genital mutilation from their traditional patriarchal villages, Samburu women of Kenya have founded and governed their own villages, some not allowing men at all. 

Broadly sends a correspondent to speak with Rebecca Lolosoli who founded Umoja in 1990. Three other women-led villages have since then settled in the neighboring region, spurning surrounding reactions from Samburu men who still hold on to traditional men-women roles.

Able to support themselves, raise children and have relationships on their own terms, many of the women have found a new sense of self and worth without marriage, going as far as seeing such a union as unnecessary. They make beautiful beads which they sell to visitors and have opened schools to educate children from their own villages and those nearby.

Broadly. The Land of No Men: Inside Kenya's Women-Only Village (2015)

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Pyramid Song (800% Slower)

My favorite deep corners of YouTube music contain content like this. Audio manipulations that become augmented experiences of the original tracks. I’m definitely the fan who appreciates hearing all the songs from Talking Heads’ Remain in Light played at the same time or entire songs reversed, and when it comes to Radiohead (one of my favorite bands), whoever decided to upload versions of their songs at -800% deserves a special place in my heart.

Pyramid Song which at normal speed comes in at 4:49 is slowed into a 38:35 ambient hurricane, as elemental and ethereal as a mythology of Nu, Poseidon, Varuna or some other sea deity. Anyone familiar with the death and transformation theme of the song will feel it literally stretch across the track, allowing you almost to feel the molecules of the song.

Kinda reminds me of what Hans Zimmer did with that Edith Piaf song for Inception. Indeed, it feels like I’m listening to Radiohead from within a dream where time has slowed.

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When Future Feels Too Soon

CHALLENGING EXPECTATIONS:

An expectation anticipates a specific outcome or continuum. Faithfully extending the normal course into the future. It’s within the family of assumption and prediction but not quite either. Like an assumption, it sort of jumps the gun, and from a set of known factors, leaps forward to guess the future. Yet, it relates often to a prediction because the criteria for the guessing itself, can be widely random.

Us humans, with our faculty for problem solving and analysis, have a natural tendency for guessing what comes next. If we hear a knock on our door, we will expect the sound to be caused by another human’s hand on the other side of that door. We will not expect, for instance, that the door has suddenly become sentient and now “speaks” by  making knocking and clicking sounds. This normal expectation gives us a useful shortcut for navigating simple questions like “who’s knocking on my door?” It helps us not freak out when surprised, as we surely would, if we lived in a world where a knock on our door could be from a human, the door itself or a complete other unknown variable.

That said, a knock at the door can be alarming enough when you’re not expecting anyone.

In large, the future’s unknown nature can frighten us, introducing surprises we can’t reconcile into the stability and order we wish to establish, to feel safe in the present.  

Our expectation that the present will continue undisturbed, into the near predictable future sits comfortably as a reassuring hope. And while useful for quelling anxiety, it’s not too realistic.

I write this because I’m scared of the future. Some fear death, others the vacuum of infinite space; but to me, nothing is more alarming than the sudden, merciless fact of a new now—One which knocks the present ground right out under my feet. It’s not a crippling fear or phobia, most days in fact, I’m too preoccupied with what’s happening right now to think about tomorrow. More specifically, I’m too preoccupied with what’s happening to me. So then, how could the future (when it arrives) not feel like a sudden invasion when I haven’t even fully taken in, all that’s happening around me today?

It’s become a recent realization how little I pay attention to the present world. How little I know about what got us here. The relationship between past and future, and how the two are forever linked in an endless succession of now has always excluded, in my mind, the concept of agency. That is to say, I didn’t truly know I could play a part in it too. But that’s exactly what happened before, others took certain actions that created the world I currently live in. And more over, in the current world I live in, new others are taking action to shape the future. Some share my vision, some don’t.

Some aim to course correct past pathways, others ignore the past and bravely leap into the future. Some have wonderful ideals and suggestions beyond their own experience, others selfish but dually practical contributions. Some walk grayer areas of in between, neither completely clear nor murky in intention or consequence. All these orbiting satellites of potentiality are intimidating when you feel your place is with the silent audience and not the performance stage.

Expecting you can’t participate.

But that comes from already feeling silenced—Changing that, is what I’m decidedly working towards. And it doesn’t come from perceiving the future as an ambushing enemy—Tho certain entities within that future, no doubt benefit from my absence—But rather, true agency comes from realizing I always had a voice, and the future has always expected to hear it.

Images: Designs by architect Vincent Callebaut