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WHATS NEXT
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Lil Me
by Wiki
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Its just breathing and

trusting, and allowing the
creativity to flow through.
Erykah Badu

14
16

Contributors
Letter from the Editor

20
26
27
30
34
35

GEN F
Nineteen85
Jessy Lanza
WondaGurl
Toxe
Jamilia Woods
Rostam

54

FEATURES
Metro Boomin

68

Erykah Badu

82

Kaytranada

92

Reality TV

100

New York City

In a fickle industry, hes the producer

everyone wants on their team.

At home with the 45-year-old reigning

queen of soul.

The Haitian-Canadian producer plots

a new course through life.

Inside the bullshit convention where

producers try to keep reality TV alive.

Music students take a break from

practice to try on springs best fits.

109

FADE OUT
Jazz, Podcasts, Svengalis

120
126
128

APPENDIX
Events
Stockist
FadeOut
Covers: Erykah Badu photography Jody Rogac, hair Urania
Terrell, makeup Traci Moore. Metro Boomin photography
Maya Fuhr, styling Matt Holmes, style assistant Jameson
Montgomery, grooming Michael Moreno.

CONTENTS

10

ERYKAH BADU PHOTOGRAPHY JODY ROGAC.

40

FADE IN
Mara Brock Akil, 6 Secret
Weapons, Alternative Comics,
NorBlack NorWhite

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MASTHEAD

12

CONTRIBUTORS
It takes a lot to produce
a Producers Issue. Luckily
we had some help.

GUNNER STAHL

LIZ RAISS

Me and Metro, weve been friends

going on two or three years. I
think hes always been the same,
from the first time I met him and
I asked, Yo, can I take a picture
of you? Ill never forget it. It was
in this session with Wiz Khalifa,
Metro, and Mike WiLLa bunch
of people was in this one little
studio. Metro was like, Yeah, of
course, so I was taking a bunch
of film pictures, like, Yes, this
gon be amazing. That was back
when I was still getting my photos developed at CVS, which was
the worst thing possible. I took it
to CVS, and they came back all
of them horrible.
Now I actually know him, so
doing this story was like hanging
out. I watched him do what he
loves, and then I did what I love.
We went to the mall, went to the

staff writer
strip club, saw the people with
the lean hanging out their pockets. Youre not supposed to bring
cameras into the strip club, but
Metros top-tier high profile, so
he can get away with it.
I like watching people do
what they love. I like when theyre
actually passionate about somethingits pretty amazing to see.
I like seeing Metro in the studio:
he goes through his beats and
hes like, Damn, this is pretty
tight. He starts doing his dances
and all of that. Its real inspiring.

This issues fashion story was

about kids in music schools
around the city who are committed to producing new sounds. We
tried to find clothes that wouldnt
make them look like miniature
adults or fashion plates, but better versions of themselves. We
stuck to a spring paletterobins
egg blue, white, cream.
I loved the idea that we were
bringing different types of kids
into a single conversation. There
were kids that played in string
quartets, kids that jam out to
Led Zeppelin, kids that love
EDM. They were very candid. It
was affirming to learn that there
are so many young people who
truly believe in music, who want
to make it, and make it good.
We shot some of the photos at the Lower Eastside Girls

CONTRIBUTORS

Club, which is a non-profit that

offers a space for girls from the
LES to hang after school and on
the weekends. They have one
of the most incredible facilities
youve ever seen; its all steel
and glass. They have a bakery, a
planetarium, a business school,
and an airstream trailer for making radio shows; Nessa from Hot
97 visited the week before we
came. The girls we met there,
Sophia and Wisdom, were shy.
We initially thought Sophia just
did electronic production, but
she sang for us. Everyoneme,
[style editor-at-large] Mobolaji,
the photographerput down
whatever we were holding and
just listened to her. It was such
a moment. We were stunned. It
crystallized why we decided to
do this.

14

PHOTOGRAPHY GUNNER STAHL.

Metro Boomin photographer

No One Does
Anything
By Themselves

A childhood at church might inspire both

But your vision still matters

discipline and trust

A great producer is able to see potential in

A significant number of producers have re-

someone unknown, like ILoveMakonnen,

ligious backgrounds. Zaytoven, a military

and make them realize it, said Tuesday

brat, was in church a lot as a kid, and still

co-producer Sonny Digital. For Andrew

plays organ at an Atlanta church on Sun-

Pop Wansel, good work has appeared in

days. DJ Dahi grew up in a super-duper

his head before it has in reality: I woke up

Creating music and culture takes a lot of

Christian household, where rap music

singing [a] song, then I realized that it didnt

people, and you rarely get the chance to

wasnt allowed. London on da Track played

exist, and I said, Oh I got something cool.

see them all. With this Producers Issue,

professional piano at church before he

we shine a light on behind-the-scenes

learned to produce. Knxwledge spent five

Psychology can be as important as skill

visionaries of all kinds, something that

days a week for almost 18 years straight in

The producer doesnt just make a beat,

The FADER has been doing for most of its

church, where he sang in choir and, crucial-

Harry Fraud said. He sits there. Its about

history, especially when it comes to rap

ly, borrowed all the instruments.

pulling the best out of the artist, setting

first with cover stories about producers

them in the right headspace to create at

like The Neptunes, and more recently

Family ties can provide a major boost

their top condition. Terrace Martin said he

in our long-running online column Beat

DJ Mustards uncle, DJ Tee, was a big party

prays before recording or playing live, to

Construction. Over the past five years,

DJ who had Mustard cover for him when he

make himself an empty vessel for good

six columnists have interviewed over 60

was just 11. DJ Spinz grew up at his grand-

energy. TM88 said a successful studio is

producers, songwriters, and DJs.

ma and uncles supper club, and made

like a living room. Its a family thing, he

Back when I was manning the fran-

friends with the DJ there. DJ Diamond Kuts

said. Even if we dont make beats together,

chise, I always asked, What was your

watched her dad emcee block parties, and

well still hang out.

upbringing like? Thats a word-for-

The Internets Matt Martians watched his

word copy of a question my predecessor

brother help Janelle Monae start a label.

Survival means not getting stuck in the

Andrew Nosnitsky would sometimes start

Sangos mom messed around with a Casio

sound youre already good at

with. I used it because it worksthe social

keyboard and sampler during her stint in

Our sound is just a constant push for evo-

side of production can be far more instruc-

the Navy, then arranged for a young Sango

lution. That way it never gets played out,

tive than what gear someone used. Great

to get a demo on how to use it because

Pharrell said back in 2001. El-P said he as-

beats can be immaculately conceived off

they wanted to learn as a family.

pires to forget how to make music, so

emotion or achieved after years of study

that every session will feel new and excit-

and practice, but both paths take work,

If your family doesnt put you on, youll

ing. Mike WiLL Made-It saw each beat as

and no success is a fluke. Metro Boomin

probably rely on help from someone else

an opportunity to best himself: How dif-

wouldnt be the hottest out right now if his

When public programs provide access, we

ferent can it get? How can I smoke the last

mom hadnt driven him from St. Louis to

all benefit. Iamsu learned to build loops out

one? In each of his samples, Roc Marciano

Atlanta so he could get studio time when

at the free Oakland program Youth Radio,

sought something that I can learn from. For

he was a teen, providing a model for the

WongaGurl studied at a Toronto non-profit

Zaytoven, it helped to watch his peers, even

loyalty and kindness his collaborators

called The Remix Project, and Stefan Ponce

when he didnt always love what they were

love him for now. Woke years before the

was mentored by a guy named Simeon

doing. I sometimes cant put my finger on

rest of young America, Erykah Badu is still

at the Chicago youth center Street Level

why the kids like it, cause it sounds almost

helping guide a new generation, whether

Youth Media.

terrible, he said of Soulja Boy and his de-

thats her own children, collaborators

scendants. But I know that its something to

around Dallas, or new mothers in her side-

The best shit happens when the biggest

business as a doula.

ego in the room is the song

what theyre doing, with or without me.

On the occasion of this issue, I went

According to Terrace Martin, this is a rule

And looking back usually means regret-

back and read all the Beat Construction

that Snoop Dogg lives by. Id argue its

ting you havent done more

interviews, looking for patterns among

worked for lots of people. As Boi-1da put

Producers have a strong hand in pushing

their stories. There were plenty.

it: No one does anything by themselves.

music forward, but working for hire often

Frank Dukes said producing is like being

entails sacrifice. I would call myself well-

Naomi Zeichner

in a band where everyone plays to their

rounded, but a lot of the stuff Ive released

Editor-in-chief

strengths, and DJ Dahi, three years earlier,

is just what these niggas want, that shoot-

agreed: Somebody else is better than you

em-up, regular shit, said Metro Boomin.

at this, youre better at that, he said. Why

Peoples brains could be a little more

not work with that person and make some-

open, said Raye Rich of FKi. His real job, he

thing thats worth sharing with the world?

added, is learning how to trick people into

greenlighting the weird stuff.

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

16

GEN F

Artists To Know Now

Nineteen

OVOs secretive
hit-wizard
Story by Nick Sylvester
Photography by Dan Ehrenworth

n85
Try your best to forget the video. The remixes. The
parodies. The corny Super Bowl commercial. The
time Trump danced to it, the time Jimmy Fallon did
whatever he did to it, the hydrant of thirsty covers.
Where were you the first time you heard Drakes Hotline Bling?
Paul Jefferies was in his car, driving around Toronto, futzing with the radio. But Jefferies, who produces pop songs as Nineteen85, didnt hear the same
song you and I did. This was months before Hotline
Bling would be released. Rifling through station presets, Jefferies stumbled onto Timmy Thomas Why
Cant We Live Together, a chintzy soul hit from 1972.
The track is thin and demo-y and a bit like old elevator music. But Jefferies heard a song within the song.
As soon as I heard it, I knew exactly what to do, he
says to me over the phone. He sped it up, threw some
light drum programming behind it. Mostly though?
He tried to stay out of the way.
Jefferies is not a very public person. I think I have
like one follower on Snapchat, the 30-year-old says.
Thats unusual for big-time hip-hop producers, who
are often as popular as the artists they service. Its
particularly unusual when you consider some of the
songs Jefferies has been behind: last years Hotline
(quintuple platinum), 2013s Hold On, Were Going
Home (triple platinum), and Truffle Butter for Nicki
Minaj (merely platinum). If youre one of the 9,275
people who follow Jefferies on Instagram, youd think
his biggest accomplishment was the time he sat
courtside at a Raptors game and gave Kobe Bryant
a pack of gum. True story. Even in our interview, he
seemed genuinely grateful (and a little surprised) that
I was asking him about himself.
Jefferies was born in Torontos Scarborough district in 1985. Hes old enough to remember actual hotlines, perhaps to have even called one with a rotary
telephone. His mother is Jamaican, his father is Ca-

GEN F

21

nadian, and his friends were the children

has been subtle but significant. Shebib

didnt write? How do you build an identity

of Chinese, Caribbean, and European im-

broke him out of what Jefferies charac-

out of omission? Jefferies struggles with

migrants. He studied Taekwondo, worked

terizes as selfish impulses. Early on in

that, he says. Many contemporary pro-

a paper route. He liked Biggie, but Chris-

my producing, I would just layer on every

ducers he admires have distinct signature

tian music and gospel were his house-

single sound I wanted to hear, he says.

sounds: 40s low-passed pads, DJ Mus-

holds soundtrack. He hated it.

Getting all my dreams out on just one

tards house-stab basslines, Mike WiLL

So when I was 11, he says, I came

song. Shebib taught him how to leave

Made-Its pointillist hi-hat rhythms. In

up with the brilliant idea that I could be

room for the artist to singwhich in turn

the back of my mind, Im always incredibly

the next Jimi Hendrix. After delivering

leaves room for the listener to connect.

scared that I dont own anything, he says.

enough newspapers, Jefferies bought

Too Much, the sparsest song on Drakes

But does he need to? When the A&Rs

a guitar and taught himself Hendrix and

Nothing Was The Same, was a personal

start hollering for more of That Thing You

Zeppelin songs. His parents allowed it

breakthrough. I tried a bunch of differ-

Do, its hard not to become a slave to your

at least it was a real instrument. In high

ent beats, he says. Anything more than

own doo wop. Deliberately or not, Jefferies

school he fronted a punk outfit with too

a clap sounded like...too much.

avoids the trap. Hes free to stay contem-

many terrible band names to count. (The

If Jefferies seems proud of anything, its

poraryTruffle Butter sits nicely along-

only one I get out of him is Coffee Double

what he hasnt done to a song. Dont make

side anything Mustards done, 0 To 100

The Cream.) This was when he began to

it about me, he says. Its not about me, its

alongside Mike WiLLs best work. But Jef-

learn how to write music and make re-

not about, I did that. But how do you get

feries is also free to make something time-

cordings. I fell into producing without

a writing credit for a part you deliberately

less, like the effortlessly bouncy Hold On

GEN F

22

knowing it, he says.

For Jefferies, a producer is not a beatmaker but a feelmakerpardon the neologism. In the business of making feels, you
invent a vibe and try to bring out something special from each artist you work
with. Theres some black magic involved
beyond where the kick drum goesall the
songs little modulations we might not
hear, but would undoubtedly miss were
they not there. Producing means knowing which mistakes are the good ones, the
ones that are crucial to the songs spirit.
You are making stuff that changes the
way people feel, says Jefferies. You can
change peoples day.
If youre steeped in OVO mythology,
perhaps all this sounds familiar: Jefferiess mentor is fellow Toronto producer
Noah 40 Shebib. The two met when Jefferies needed a mixer for a song he had
produced, and the whole town seemed to
recommend 40. This was right when 40
and Drakes careers were really taking off;
they had just finished up a major North
American tour with Lil Wayne, which made
Shebibs enthusiasm for Jefferies work
all the more surprising. I was on break at
H&M, and 40 called me, Jefferies remembers. 40 had just heard Jefferiess song on
a local Toronto radio station and called to
congratulate him. I dont even remember
the song, Jefferies admits. I just remember I was working at H&M.
Shebib slowly brought Jefferies into
the OVO fold. His influence, Jefferies says,

ONEPIECE.COM

#COMFORTBRINGSCONFIDENCE

@ONEPIECE

I was on break
at H&M, and
40 called me.

with credits to Jefferies, Majid Jordan,

the seven-minute space jam Halluci-

Timbaland, the late Static Major, Maneesh,

nationsare much longer and weirder

and the Toronto singer Daniel Daley.

than Jefferiess commercial radio hits.

In any case, Jefferies started dvsn

They remind me of pop songwriting ses-

to explore some stuff that I normally

sions, how a formless demo gradually

wouldnt get to do as this quote-unquote

transforms into a song. Take The Line:

pop producer, he says. He and his mys-

a simple stock piano loop slowly becomes

tery bandmates met up and supposedly

a synth pad. A singers placeholder vowel

Were Going Home, or go straight-up

just jammed it out. First thought best

sounds steadily become real words. If

soulful, like on Too Deep, a song from

thought, keep the DAW rolling. The gos-

sections repeat, theyre rarely on sched-

the debut release by Jefferiess new R&B

pel-y With Me debuted on OVO Sounds

ule. The first 10 seconds barely resemble

project, dvsn.

Apple Beats 1 show on September 5

the last 10. Its intimate, maybe even a

and a dvsn full-length called SEPT. 5TH

little voyeuristic, and unlike anything else

dropped this April.

out there right now.

Its pronounced division, in case

there was any doubt. Division instead of
multiplicationvery Jefferies. The mys-

Maybe its too convenient to say that

I say all this to Jefferies. Thats liter-

tery of this project doesnt strike me as a

dvsn is Jefferies coming around on his

ally how these things happen, he says.

deliberate media rollout plan. If anything,

parents Christian and gospel music. But

But of course he has to add: Its a docu-

it was a reflection of its low-key master-

theres an undeniable spirituality to the

mentary piece. In the project he owns

mind, though you cant beat a good who-

project. (In March, when dvsn performed

the most, he still cant help but stay out

dunnit. A quick ASCAP repertoire search

its first-ever show at an annual showcase

of the way. Maybe thats the Nineteen85

reveals just one officially registered dvsn

for this magazine in Texas, backing sing-

sound: songs that refuse to know how

song, the aforementioned Too Deep,

ers wore choir robes.) The songslike

good they are.

GEN F

24

Jessy
Lanza
A small town
composer
makes peace
with her
weirdness

Do you like Limmy? Jessy Lanza asks,

record as a series of happy accidents in

referring to the bleak Scottish humor-

experimenting with South African house

ist known for online skits about mental

loops, husky R&B harmonies, and pulsing

health and human behavior. Lanza has

hardware. Lanza made Oh No in Hamilton,

just finished a DJ set of lively dance music

Ontario, the Rust Belt city where she grew

on London radio station NTS and is holed

up and now lives with her partner and co-

up in a nearby cafe. I find watching him

producer, Jeremy Greenspan, of the elec-

therapeutic, she says. Theres one skit

tronic pop duo Junior Boys. She doesnt

where hes sitting with all of these little

know many other musicians in town, but

Limmys around him, and theyre basically

she sees that as a virtue. Compared to

telling him, Everythings shit, your best

larger Canadian cities, Hamilton is less

years are behind you. Hes tripping out on

about people trying to get somewhere

the banal, and that resonates with me so

else, she says. Theres a sincerity in

much. Im always thinking of ways to al-

that. On especially cold days, she strolls

leviate waking up every day and feeling

through Jackson Square, a mall thats

a deep sense of dread.

halfway between her home and studio,

Three years after Hyperdub released

her debut album, Pull My Hair Back, the

Story by Lauren Martin

Photography by
Bella Howard

and makes field recordings of the shuffling din.

Canadian producer and vocalist is ready-

Oh No sounds confident, especially

ing its follow-up, Oh No. As a classically

compared to Lanzas debut, thanks to a

trained jazz musician who inherited syn-

fresh perspective on her voice. As a child,

thesizers from her late father, Lanzas

she took singing lessons that taught her to

accustomed to hours of practice yield-

emulate a Disney princess style, which

ing results, and she describes the new

is apparent in her early materials runs

GEN F

26

and flourishes. Over the past three years,

while dealing with her daily dread as best
as possible, shes worked hard to undo

WondaGurl

that decorative habit. I have conversations with Jeremy where I say, Ugh, my
voice sounds like shit, she says, throwing
her hands up in faux exasperation. But he
always pulls this face at me and says, You
have a weird voice. Just go for it. For reassurance, Lanza listened to fellow odd

The quiet hustle

behind raps
biggest beats

vocalists like the R&B powerhouse Patrice Rushen and Yellow Magic Orchestra
synth-pop affiliate Miharu Koshiespecially the latters 1983 album, Tutu. Now,
on songs like It Means I Love You, Lanza
has a cleaner, more conversational vocal
style that nicely complements her buoyant, sample-stitched productions.
Between solo albums, a number of collaborations also encouraged her to strip
down her sound. In 2015, she lent insistent
vocals to the Latin freestyle-inflected pop
of Calling Card by N.Y.C. house producer
Morgan Geists new project The Galleria.
Later that summer, on a 12-inch with DJ
Spinn and Taso of Chicagos Teklife crew
called You Never Show Your Love, she
helped distill the mania of footwork into
a low-end love song. My ideal sound scenario would be that the bass would be really big, and my voice would be high, thin,
and weird to counteract it, she says today. Making music makes me anxious,
but I need it.
After the coffee shop, Lanza heads off
to prepare for tonights live performance
in a converted train station. When I arrive
at the East London venue later on, shes
up on stage and her gear table is swathed
in sparkling organza. Damn, I nearly
forgot! she whispers before she starts,
clicking a glowing pink-and-green aroma

Story by Anupa Mistry

Photography by Megan McIsaac

diffuser into life. Then she sets a roughedged beat in motion, and live drummer
Tori Tizzard joins in. When you look into

Within hip-hops increasingly complex constellation

my eyes, boy, know it means I love you,

of celebrity, producers are now almost as beloved as

Lanza sings to the crowd, playful and di-

rappers. At home, we feverishly catalog their beats;

rect. A pretty footwork melody skitters

online, we make them into memes; in the club, we

across the walls and then, in the quiet,

scream their drops. If a producer doesnt have a drop

she sings it again, this time a cappella.

in 2016, do they even exist? In the case of Ebony Os-

The air seems to stops moving. For a mo-

hunrinde, the young producer better known as Won-

ment, shes shaken all the little Jessys off

daGurl, the answer is very much yes.

her shoulders.

I first met Oshunrinde four years ago, at a listening party in Toronto thrown by the rapper Rich Kidd.
Though Oshunrinde was clearly more comfortable

GEN F

27

standing off to the side, Rich made sure

everyone there knew who was responsible for the calamitous drums on Money
Money, his single with Vancouver rapper
Son Real. A few months later, two weeks
before her 16th birthday, the quiet girl in
the corner bested over 30 aspiring producers in a local Battle of the Beat Makers competition. The following summer,
she became a flashpoint in the news cycle
surrounding Jay Zs Magna Carta Holy
Grail after co-producing Crown, a pummeling, post-Yeezus-era Sizzla flip. She
wasnt yet a high school senior.
Oshunrindes suburban hometown of
Brampton, Ontario, is downright quaint
compared to brassy Los Angeles, where
the now 19-year-old is temporarily logging
studio time, doing sessions with Big Sean
and Travis Scott. When we catch up on the
phone, shes friendly and upbeat but clearly still uninterested in the self-promoting
side of modern life as a musician. All she
wants to talk about is making beats.
Whats she done with the spoils of
placing music with Jay Z, Drake, and Rihanna? [I bought] studio equipment so I
could have a nice setup in my house, she
says. How has her process changed since
she broke out professionally in 2013? I
got into mixing, so everything just sounds

I dream about completely

taking over the game.

better. What fills those few spare hours

between waking up and going to the studio? Nothing. I just make beats. Travel
has been a bright spot, she says. I want
to go to Europe more. Ive been to Berlin
for work.
Big-room label meetings arent her
favorite, but theyve been getting easier,

Toronto artists sometimes feels more

Its thanks to Oshunrindes head-down

Oshunrinde says. I dont like them, but I

significant, not least because it reveals

focus and chameleonic production style

have toyou know? Studio sessions are

what shes like as a solo producer. Tracks

sometimes industrial, sometimes psy-

harder. Im not really good at working with

like Jahkoys twinkling Odd Future show

chedelicthat she has outlasted those

people, as weird as that sounds, she says

a softer side. One of her best beats is for

first 15 minutes of fame. Though shes the

slowly, choosing her words carefully. Its

YKTO (You Know the Ones) by Redway,

rare woman making rap beats full-time,

just more about being comfortable. I cant

a beloved local rapper who was killed in a

she notably lacks a gender parity agenda.

work with a random person. I have a hard

car accident in August 2015. He was like

Consistently shes been less focused on

time doing that. Even her friendships

my brother, she says. The songs groan-

the industrys problems and more con-

revolve around beats. At home in Bramp-

ing undercarriage and zig-zagging synth

cerned with setting a positive example

ton, she spends time with the producer

loops sound borderline 3D when ampli-

through hard work. I dream about com-

Eestbound; together, they combined a

fied by a diligent kick and some silky hi-

pletely taking over the game, in a Timba-

zooted bassline and a sped-up Lee Fields

hats. Below Redways teasing cadence,

land kind of way, she tells me. Wonda-

riff to make Travis Scotts Antidote, one

the beat is polished and genuinely uplift-

Gurls beats might not have a drop, but

of the biggest-sounding rap songs of 2015.

ing. No one in Toronto was making feel-

she definitely wants recognition. From

While shes most known for high-pro-

good music [at that time], she says. I like

what shes accomplished already, she de-

to hear things Ive never heard before.

serves plenty.

file placements, Oshunrindes work with

GEN F

28

Toxe
A teenage club
producer brings
a sisterly spirit
to Sweden

Toxe is swinging side-to-side on a chair

and eating crisps in the office of independent London station Radar Radio. With her
hair half up in bunches, the 18-year-old
Swedish producer speaks softly accented English at a mile a minute, and shes
quick to smile, laugh, and dole out hugs.
Right now, you might easily identify her
as the youngest person in the room, but it
wasnt so obvious less than 24 hours before, when she was playing menacing productions in a dark basement. The crowd
loomed much larger than her physically,
but they moved in thrall to her precise, fo-

Story by Aimee Cliff

Photography by Simone Steenberg

cused control of the decks. As she puts it,

When I perform, Im always super calm.
Theres a delicacy to the DJ sets that
Tove Aglii plays as Toxenot a fragile
delicacy, but the kind youd associate with
an Olympic rhythmic gymnast, whose
twirls only seem light and graceful because of the immense muscular power
behind them. By pulling together skeletal

GEN F

30

thought that was too technical, she remembers. My first track was so weirdI
just sampled my voice a lot. I didnt really
know what I was doing, but I posted tracks
[on SoundCloud] quite early because I felt
really empowered. Online she connected
with Ghazal and Dinamarca, the Stockholm-based founding members of international DJ crew and label STAYCORE. All
the people contacting me [were] guys,
remembers Aglii. When Im surrounded
by men, I feel so small, like I can never really trust them fully. She describes incidents of men calling her babe or not taking her work seriouslyand, more gravely,
harassing her online. [Ghazal] linked me
up with loads of girls from Stockholm,
she says. I realized that having women
around is so important for me to feel safe.
In 2015, she took a step towards creating more spaces for woman producers
and DJs everywhere by founding Sister, a
private Facebook group that now has over
800 female-identifying members. Alongside a SoundCloud mix series designed to
spotlight music made by women, Sister
provides a space for musicians to connect
and discuss issues of music-making and
the industry, far removed from bro culture. As its grown, shes taken a back seat
in the group, viewing herself more as listener than leader. Am I the best person to
manage this group, a young, white Scandinavian? she wonders. Im still learning
hip-hop beats, juddering house rhythms,

maybe I wasnt that powerfuI. I was just a

and fluttering samples, her production

17-year-old girl from Sweden.

[about feminism].
Even so, like much of what she does,

style is as tough as rubber, as evidenced

For Aglii, breaking out of confine-

the creation of the group was a graceful

by the Britney Spears-sampling Xic, an

ment is a recurring theme. Im very iso-

assertion of power. Men are just so frag-

explosive single released in December

lated, Aglii says later over Skype from

ile when it comes to their power being

2015 on Texan producer Rabits Halcyon

her home in Gothenburg, where she lives

questioned, Aglii explains. Theyve al-

Veil imprint. While her tracks are cut with

with her artist parents. Its so small here,

ways had their privilege, so I guess theyre

glass-smashing sound effects, theres a

theres not that much to do, she says.

scared of losing it. When they dont have

playfulness amidst the abrasive materials

The cool side of me has always been on-

that power, all thats left is just some

that hints at something soft and human.

line. These days, she gets away when she

dude. Maybe they should be scared.

Take the artwork for her 2015 debut EP

can. In 2015, she spent two weeks in Paris

Muscle Memory, which Aglii designed

as a participant of Red Bull Music Acad-

with computer artist and DJ Alx9696, for

emy, and shes been traveling around Eu-

example: it looks like the jagged rock of a

rope almost every other weekend to play,

caves opening, but also incorporates im-

all while juggling her high school studies.

ages of her skin, including a scar on her

Someday soon, she hopes to leave behind

forehead that she obtained by falling over

Gothenburg for good.

at age 4. I kinda needed to smack people

Agliis world first began to open up

in the face, Aglii says of the EP. I want-

at 15, when her older brother installed

ed to do an entrance in the music world

Ableton on her laptop. I couldnt really

that was powerful because me, myself

believe that I could manage software. I

GEN F

32

Jamila
Woods
A Chicago artist
pieces together
soulful puzzles
Story by Rawiya Kameir
Photography by
Matthew Avignone

On any given day, Jamila Woods might

and make it into a beat with my voice.

climb into bed accompanied by a stack

Woodss penchant for layering comes di-

of books, a Moleskine, scraps of loose

rectly from her interest in hip-hop, gospel,

paper, and a thin-tipped black marker.

and soul, genres that have long given new

Every artist has a process and this is

consideration to sampling and allusion as

hers: the multi-hyphenate Woodspo-

artistic devices. Growing up on the citys

et-singer-songwriter and full-time arts

South Sideher father is a second-gener-

non-profiterbundles sundry influences

ation Chicagoan and her mother an army

and takes what she needs out of them.

brat who lived all overWoods and her

On an evening this past February, as she

three younger siblings sang Disney tunes

worked on songs for a debut solo album,

to entertain each other, tracks from Ste-

those influences included lyrics by In-

vie Wonders Conversation Peace album

cubus and Taking Back Sunday, tweets

to put sick family members at ease, and

culled from a friends timeline, and books

songs from their grandmothers Sunday

by writers like Toni Morrison and Gwen-

choir to bring the feeling of church home.

dolyn Brooks. The 26-year-olds best art

Theres something about Chicago

is patchwork, made up, like her, of things

maybe the eight months of cruel winter,

that came before.

maybe the landlocked, little-big-town

Im always collecting, says Woods,

complex cities of its size often havethat

speaking over Skype from her Chicago

makes it loom large in the work of its resi-

apartment. Ill be on the subway and a

dents. In Ghazal for White Hen Pantry, a

guitarist will be playing with a hat out,

poem by Woods published in Poetry mag-

and Ill record a little part, take it home,

azine last year, the white neighborhood

hostile to her black family plays a potent
backdrop: oreos in your palm, perm in your
hair/ everyones irish in beverly, you just
missin the white skin, she writes. Woods,
who earned her own footing in the arts by
shuttling through a number of community
programs, now teaches at the renowned
literary organization Young Chicago Authors. The group hosts WordplayYCA, a
long-running youth open mic that served
as an incubator for guys like Chance The
Rapper, Vic Mensa, and Mick Jenkins.
Even when I was in college in Rhode Island, whenever I was home I would go
there and read something so I could make
sure I was still speaking the language of
my people, she says, a persistent smile
peeking through her steady voice.
After graduating from Brown with
majors in Africana Studies and Theatre
and Performance Studies, Woods moved
back to Chicago and spent a couple of
years as one half of a minimal, organicsounding R&B duo with a college friend.
When the band broke up last year, it was
Woodss crystalline vocals alongside
Chance on Sunday Candy, off of Donnie
Trumpet & The Social Experiments Surf,
that introduced her to much of the world.
(She closes her contribution to the song
with a reference: an interpolation of the
gospel standard Its Gonna Rain.) But

GEN F

34

Woods attracted even more eyes a year

later, when she guested on Macklemore
& Ryan Lewis White Privilege II. Mackl-

Rostam

emores music and celebrity frequently

play host to a battleground of ideas about
race and appropriation, and the song, for
all of its earnestness, earned rigorous
criticism for both his intentions and politics. I cant say I feel regret, but I felt like
a turtle. I went back into my shell a little

On his own, a veteran

connector plots his
next steps

bit, says Woods of being swept up in

the social media backlash over the song.
The thing I was most afraid of was that
people would think I was, like, being inauthentic to myself or just wanting to be on
a Macklemore song.
Her concerns are understandable.
Whereas the Macklemore collaboration
was intended to spur introspection and
dialogue among his majority-white audience, Woodss poetry and music mindfully
target black girls. If a black girl hears
my music, I hope it would sound affirming and soothingwhether thats traditionally soothing like a lullaby, or the kind
of soothing that comes from, Wow, you
just said that thing that is talking to me,
says Woods. On her first solo single, Blk
Grl Soldier, which she describes as a
freedom song, she calls out the names
of black women heroes like Audre Lorde,
Assata Shakur, and Angela Davis over a
drone-y beat produced by fellow Chicagoans Saba and Just Cuz. They want us in
kitchen/ Kill our sons with lynchings/ We
get loud about it/ Oh, now were the bitches, Woods sings, mincing absolutely zero
words. The songs affirming vibe and layered arrangement offer an early glimpse
of what she hopes to accomplish with her
album, which will be released this summer
by Chicago indie Closed Sessions. It feels
like a challenge sometimes to even feel
joy on a day-to-day basis, Woods says. So

Story by Eric Ducker

Photography by Taylor Rainbolt

shell continue finding somesomewhere,

anywhereand stack it all up.
In Rostam Batmanglijs Echo Park backyard, past
a wooden deck shaded by two trees sagging with
grapefruits and avocados, is a small recording studio.
When Batmanglij moved here, he filled the space with
racks of acoustic guitars, analog keyboards, a vintage
drum kit, a Pro Tools setup, speakers, lots of sunglasses, and a desk scattered with clementine-colored portable hard drives. The walls were already white, but he
brought in a white L-shaped couch and a white carpet

GEN F

35

because hed heard that Yoko Ono has a

days later, he announced via Twitter that

15, hed already begun experimenting with

room just like it in her apartment.

he was leaving the band, but kept open the

home recording, trying to put together Dr.

Batmanglij moved to Los Angeles in

possibility to continue working with Ezra

Dre-influenced beats in the music record-

2014, when he was still the co-songwriter

Koenig, Vampire Weekends frontman and

ing software Reason, but it wasnt until he

and main producer of Vampire Weekend,

other principal songwriter. When Batman-

met Koenig in college that he joined his

one of the bands that has defined New

glij briefly lets our conversation turn to his

first band.

York indie music after emerging from Co-

departure, the pauses before his sentenc-

Even as a member of Vampire Week-

lumbia University in 2007, burbling with

es get noticeably longer. He explains that

end, Batmanglij always had outside

clever ideas and a culture-grafting ap-

even during the bands start, there was

pursuits. In 2009, he made a catchy, un-

proach to rock. Sitting in the studio, I ask

talk of him only writing and recording, and

justly slept-on record with Ra Ra Riot

the 32-year-old why he swapped his loft

not playing live. It made less sense back

vocalist Wes Miles under the name Dis-

apartment in DUMBO for a leased Crafts-

in those earlier days, he says. Maybe it

covery. More recently, hes produced un-

man on the Eastside. I realized I was go-

didnt, maybe it could have been different

derstated and intoxicating songs for art-

ing to spend a lot of my life in studios, he

from the beginning. I dont know.

ists like Charli XCX and Santigold, singers

says. I didnt want to do that in a window-

Batmanglij grew up in Washington D.C.

who flirt with big-time pop stardom but

as the son of two Iranian immigrantshis

would rather stay true to their own weird-

In January of this year, Batmanglij re-

mother is a celebrated cookbook author

ness. He points to the spot on his carpet

leased the dual single of EOS/WOOD,

and his father is the co-owner of the com-

where Carly Rae Jepsen sat to record the

his first under the name Rostam. The

pany that published her. He started taking

first verse from Warm Blood, the palpi-

songs are delicate compositions, a bal-

guitar lessons at 13 to learn the songs that

tating heater from last years cult favor-

ance of airy atmospherics, straightfor-

were in rotation on his local alt-rock sta-

ite EMOTION. It all fits into his sensitive

ward percussion, and plaintive sing-

tion. Once he realized he could basically

aesthetic, which tends to pair profound

ingmore ambient and tender than

figure out how to play anything on his

melancholy with indie-pop whimsy.

Vampire Weekends slowest jams, but just

own, he convinced his teacher to spend

But Batmanglij quietly deflects the

as catchy and smartly arranged. Twelve

the lessons explaining music theory. By

idea that he came to Los Angeles to join

less one.

the pop music industry. As a producer, I

dont think thats my path, he says. Im
more of someone who connects with the
artists. I like writing with the artists, not
writing for them. For now, Batmanglij
seems comfortable not knowing whats
next. A couple of weeks after our talk
during which he tells me that live performance isnt a primary interest to him right
nowits announced that hell open for
Brian Wilson in Brooklyn this June.
Before I leave, Batmanglij says he
recently finished recording a collaborative album with Hamilton Leithauser,
the former lead singer of The Walkmen.
As a longtime admirer of the natty rock
band, Batmanglij says hes spent 10 years
thinking up ideas of how hed like to hear
Leithauser sound. He swivels over to the
computer and plays back a track that
has Leithauser crooning like a Hollywood
cowboy over what could be the theme to
a Cinerama-sized western. Thats something thats fun for me to do, to make
the singer into the superhero version of
themselves, make them sing stuff they
dont want to sing, get them to nail it,
Batmanglij says, forever a collaborator,
even when hes on his own. Then theyre
happy, I think.

GEN F

36

MARA BROCK AKILS

MASTER
PLAN

The TV producer
and showrunner
has made hit
shows for black
girls for 23 years,
but shes just
getting started.
Story by Rawiya Kameir
Photography by
Brad Ogbonna

There are certain things people want to

hear Mara Brock Akil say. As the force
behind some of televisions best and
blackest showsthe epochal sitcom Girl-

Theres one question everyone I know is

dying to hear the answer to: when is Girlfriends coming to Netflix, and why isnt it
there yet?

Back when I was trying to shop a potential

Girlfriends movie, I was like, Guys, dont
you understand the money youre missing? Do you not know how black women
shop? Like, what are you doing? You have
the analytics for it, why dont you want
this money? Sometimes you cant help
but think, Is there some conspiracy? You
just dont want black women to feel good
about themselves? I dont understand. A
lot of times, theres oversight. They dont
think about us. There are blinders on
and, whether theyre deliberate or not, it
doesnt make any sense.
But I have sought out, in many incarnations, a way to end the Girlfriends story.
I never had a chance to end it, so Joan,
Maya, Toni, Lynn, William, Monica, Darnelltheyre all with me. Sometimes its
sad to think that theyre out at sea because
they didnt get a proper ending. It took
quite a few years for me to let go of that in
order to create space for newer work.

friends, the record-breaking dramedy The

Game, the Gabrielle Union drama Being

Now that youre moving from BET to War-

Mary JaneBrock Akil is often expect-

ner Bros., youll be leaving Being Mary

ed to beg for equal footing to her white

Jane in someone elses hands. What does

showrunner counterparts, demand more

that feel like?

opportunities for black actors, and de-

This is something Ive been thinking about

for a long time, and its still so hard to answer. When the decision happened, I was
hoping that I could be helpful to the transition. Although theyve announced that
Being Mary Jane is coming back, I havent
heard anything thats made it seem real,
and I dont know whos running it. All this
time went by that I couldve helped figure
it out, but now Im in a position where I
dont know what BETs gonna do.

nounce the industry that marginalizes her

and her vast audience simply because her
programs air on BET. Diversity is a hot button topic these days, but Brock Akil is an
OG whos been pushing for it for two decades. Though she doesnt shy away from
acknowledging the flaws of Americas
very white television industry, shes far
HAIR BY LACY REDWAY. MAKEUP BY ALEXIS WILLIAMS.

too busy working to worry about proving

her worth.
When we meet for coffee at SoHos
Mercer Hotel, Brock Akil is buzzing with

Do you think Being Mary Jane can exist

energy about the new Warner Bros. deal

without you?

she and her husband, director and long-

My ego answer? No. [Laughs] But really, Im neutrally curious. Having gone
through what I went through with the
other showstwo cancellations, a revival,
squeaking out an ending for The Game
its funny to sit here in this position again.
Its not to say that BET couldnt make it
work, its just that I know what it takes
to be a producer and theres so much that

time collaborator Salim Akil, are due to

embark on in May. Shes coy about the
shows shes working on there (at least
one of which is anticipated to begin airing
next year) but insistent that she intends
to continue telling black storieshonest
ones with complex, imperfect charactersto anyone wholl watch.

FADE IN

goes into making any show. Theres a lot

that goes into this show in particular, so
I wonder who they will get to help shepherd and hone some of its intellectual artistry. It really would depend on that person: how do they see and view Mary Jane
and black women? If they pick someone
that I dont like, Im gonna go, Oh shit. I
cant watch. [Laughs] I hope theres another Mara out there whos like, Bring it
on. Give me the ball.
Theres this dialogue thats surrounded
you for a while nowand it implicates
some of us in the audience as wellthat
relies on the word forgotten. Your work
is talked about as forgotten, your viewership is forgotten. I find it frustrating because there are millions of people
watching. Where exactly do you think this
forgetting happening?

Ive kinda been an off-Broadway sensation. There arent a lot of lights or big
marquees around my name or my work,
yet my core audience knows exactly
where I am. Weve been having a conversation through the work for years. Weve
been here, we are here, and well always
continue to be here. But there is no value
in us until they need to exploit us. I used
to want to make sure that the powers that
be could see value in us. Now Im over it
because that aint my problem anymore. If
you dont see us, then youve missed out
on something beautiful and rich and interesting or even boringblack girls can
be boring too. Its really not my job anymore to make people see our value.
The music supervision on Being Mary
Jane is always on-point. Is music an important consideration for you?

Oh my God, yes, Im all over it. Some

episodes are written based on pieces of
music. Music is part of our communication, and music is also a portal into my
creativity. When I created the series, I
played Alanis Morissettes Mary Jane
the acoustic version. Let me tell you, the
scenes would just fly, fly, fly, fly out of
me. I tried with the regular version and
it didnt work. I knew I was having a conversation through the music.

39

In addition to your job on the creative side

of things, you also have to consider business when you interact with the larger
Hollywood machine. How do you navigate

perspective, you can panic and lose your

creativity, or you could look at it like,
Well, I got six months, I better write the
shit out of this.

those politics?

When I walk into a room I know my storytelling has value and I have to sell my idea.
I have to help people see the financial
value and gain in my work. In television
and film, black people have typically had
moments of great success when theres
chaos and things are falling apart: when
networks are on the brink of canceling
shows or the ratings are super, super low.
I always tell people to get real still and focused. Dont jump off the ship.
Ive been writing for 23 years consistently, and my success has come from
seizing the moment where it looks like
youre supposed to run. Girlfriends, for
instancenobody would touch it. I went
straight to UPN and sold it. So I go to the
studios, like, Hello guys, I have a show
who wants it? Nobody wanted it. No
studio wanted to be the financier of that,
even though it was already sold. Thats
how Kelsey Grammer got involved. He
still had money left on his development
slate at Paramount/Viacom. I appreciate
him having the business acumen to be
like, Oh shit, she sold it, lets roll! Theres
no work to do.
There were articles at the same time
saying, UPN is probably gonna collapse
in the next six months. From a business

What do you think of whats happening

in the general landscape of television,
which now has more so-called diversity
than film?

Television is expanding beyond our domestic marketnow theyre looking at

whats happening in Africa, Asia, and
South America. Theres a global model
built for movies, but theyre saying, Oh,
wait a minute, TV can go global too. What
they realize is that the global community
is mostly of color, and emerging middle
class markets are in places where people
look more like all those people here that
they didnt value! [Laughs]
Technology has changed our industry,
and I think thats opened up different revenue streams and ways to make money
and distribute television. Its made the
global conversation easier, quicker. The
analytics of just social media has also sustained my career. My audience was able
to show themselves.
For television, is there opportunity in the
chaos of the broader world, in the news or
on the streets? Whats your role there?

Its funny, I get a little jealous of musicians

because they can respond immediately. So
a lot of times Im having that conversation
about what, like, Kendrick is doing. I try to
find the arc and use it in, say, a dinner party
scene. The chaos that was going around us
when it was all Mike Brown, Eric Garner
all tragic, horrible [incidents]. But I was
like, Yo, uh, what about the black women?
Were not even talking about black women.
Weve gotta get this in the conversation. I
went to journalism school, so sometimes
writing the script of Being Mary Jane is me
putting my journalism hat on.

I used to want to
make sure that
the powers that be
could see value in
us. That aint my
problem anymore.
If you dont see
us, then youve
missed out.
what I wanna say about black women. Im
really excited that this deal will be more
inclusive of [Salims] voice and what he
wants to say about black men. No ones
really heard his voice yet.
Do you feel, now, that your work is being
watched very closely?

Its a big stage and theres a lot more at

stake, but Salim and I are reminding ourselves to be ourselves. We are looking forward to the assumption that we want to
make art for commerce, and not just product to sell. We are storytellers that consistently have something to say. My husband
did an episode of Soul Food years ago, and it
was a Mike Brown-like story. He put it on
TV a while ago; weve been trying to have
the conversation this whole time. Im looking forward to the assets and resources and
business acumen, but Im not unaware that
[those things] also come with their own set
of negotiating.
How do you intend to translate those
kinds of stories to an audience thats presumably going to be broader?

I still love talking about women and the

contemporary journey of women. I still
love talking about women of color. There
are places I didnt get to go with Being
Mary Jane. Those things still live in me.
The past years have been me getting out

By being me. By believing that human

stories will connect. By believing that resources and marketing will make them
come and they will stay for the story, that
they will see themselves. I expect that the
broader audience will be there. I think
they want more. I think theyre bored
with their own story too. Want to know
why ratings are down? They need something new. They need us.

FADE IN

40

What are the stories you want to tell with

your new WB venture?

S E C R E T

PHOTOGRAPHY SHANIQWA JARVIS, PAUL BLAIR GORDON, DANIEL EHRENWORTH.

6 next-level minds work

behind the scenes in politics,
art, and culture.

The Social Media

Star Whose Taste
The Art World
Follows
Kimberly Drew, 25
Associate Online Community Producer
for the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Founder of the Contemporary Black Art
Tumblr, @museummammy

Kimberly Drew: When I started my blog,

Contemporary Black Art, I just wanted

something like it to exist. I would search
and find links to books or art criticism
websites, but I didnt find anything that
looked like a site for black artists. I didnt
want a revisionist look at the history of
black art; I wanted to center on the artists who I thought should be online. In
the beginning, I would mill through museum websites and find black artists and
search Tumblr to see if their names were
there. And if their name wasnt there, I
would write a post for them so that they
were a part of a recorded history. Being a
20-year-old at the time, I was like, If its
not on Tumblr, it doesnt matter yet.
I didnt really have a long-term plan,
but I did it so consistently that people began to follow. Now, Ive been able to inad-

vertently position myself as a friend to the

artist. I like that I can have a different connection with an artist than someone like a
critic or a traditional curator would. If a
curator does a studio visit, theres always
this immediate end goal that the artist
might end up in a collection or an exhibition. With me, its more casual. I can get to
know artists as people, then get to know
their artwork without an agenda. I always
push back on the word curator because
even though I make decisions about the
things that I post on the blog and on social
media, its more of a broadcasting than a
conventional curation process.
On Instagram, I like to post in the moment. Thats a deliberate thing. I go to a
lot of Instagram meet-ups and I meet with
a lot of Instagrammers in general. Ive totally been drinking the Kool-Aid on that
lifestyle. I want to be able to share the
art that Im looking at and show the fullness of what it means to work in the arts.
I want to open the door. I want people to
know that these are the shows going on
that you could go see. I want to present
the possibility of being in those spaces,
whether or not that means my followers
physically go to an opening. I wake up on
Sunday mornings and post three things
before I get out of bed because Im looking at images that I find to be compelling.
I want people to use my posts as prompts
to find the things that they think are interesting, and I want to give as many avenues
into the work that Im doing as possible. I
want to pass as many batons as I can.
As told to Lakin Starling
Photography by Shaniqwa Jarvis

FADE IN

42

Immigration
Reforms First
Couple

Erika Andiola, 28
National Press Secretary for Hispanic
Media for Bernie Sanderss Presidential
Campaign
Cesar Vargas, 32
National Latino Outreach Strategist for
Bernie Sanderss Presidential Campaign
Erika Andiola: I started organizing with the

immigrant rights movement to push for

the DREAM Act back in 2009-2010. Mostly
I was doing work in Arizona, a state that,
unfortunately, is a laboratory for a lot of
dangerous anti-immigrant laws. We wanted to push for legislation and policies that
would help the Latino community stay
together and avoid deportation, so I organized with the DREAMers to make sure
that we were telling our stories, coming
out of our shadows, changing the way the
media was portraying who we were and
the way American people would see us.
It was difficult to go from working in
the movement to working in politics, but I
think of it as a different tactic for the same
goals. We need to make sure that immigration reform is spoken about within this
election, and not just the vague rhetoric that
politicians have been using for a while. On a
daily basis, Im making sure we are getting
the press to cover our events, talking to our
supporters, and coordinating with Latino
communities across the country.
Some days are very encouraging, and
some days are more discouraging. Sometimes I go homewell, not home, but
to the hotel where Im stayingand its
tough. Its tough to try to convey a message and get completely misquoted by
other campaigns. And sometimes its
tough for me to transition out of being the
outspoken activist.
But what I learned in the movement
is that we need to be very strategic, to use
both our heads and our hearts. My mom

is still in deportation proceedings. That is

something that I wake up every day and
remember. Some day the campaign will
be over, but you could still have the consequences of your family being separated.
Cesar Vargas: I joined Bernie Sanderss
campaign in the beginning, when people
still had a lot of doubts. I worked with him
very closely; we connected with each other because were both from Brooklyn, and
we graduated from the same high school.
Working on the campaign is a logical continuation of my activism. His whole career
has been challenging both parties, and
thats what the DREAMers were: we challenged the establishment to get results for
our families, not for a political party.
Its definitely not the same day every
day in this campaign. Its not just us focusing on policy papers. Its not just us

FADE IN

lobbying in Washington, D.C. Its actually

organizing Latinos. Thats the exciting
componentto know that we can mobilize communities that havent been engaged in the political process, let alone a
presidential campaign.
I didnt join the campaign just to get a
job at the White House with a fancy plaque
that says staffer. I cant even work at the
White House because Im undocumented.
I could still be deported anytime. From being in high school and being told I couldnt
go to college to now working in a presidential race and influencing national politics
it speaks volumes to what we can do in this
nation. My mom, she didnt come to the
U.S. just to live a better life. She came for
her children to live better lives too.
As told to Rawiya Kameir
Photography by Paul Blair Gordon

43

The Entrepreneur
Manufacturing
Trendy Clothes
Regular Women
Can Afford
Erica Phelan, 29
President and Creative Director
of LUX LA

Erica Phelan: I opened my first clothing

store in 2010 and then I launched an online store with a partner. I was very picky
as a buyer, so we used more than 90 different vendors. Each time they would
launch a new collection, I would pick only
two percent of the line. I was spending so
much time trying to find trendy items that
werent crazy expensive that it prompted
the question: Can we do this ourselves?
We started super small-scale, with five
styles of bodysuits. Soon, in our sales records, we saw that our own LUX LA pieces
were the top-selling items in the store. So
we decided to launch our own line.
We sell to Nasty Gal, Fashion Nova,
Hot Miami Styles, a lot of big trendy retailers. Im trying to release about 22 to 25
styles a month. We have to produce new
styles way more often than a normal fash-

ion line with seasonal collections because

our buyers set appointments with us every
two weeks, and we like to show them new
styles each time. I always feel like Im in
a race against time to submit new designs
because the trends come up so fast. If we
have an appointment with a client and we
dont have much new to show them, they
may not want to rebook with us. Sometimes well make custom colors of a piece
for Nasty Gal, and we wont produce it
for anyone else. And theres styles that we
wont sell to anybody except Hot Miami
Styles. But, to be honest, if you were to go
on our website right now, you would see
some of the exact same things that you can
see in their stores. And their price points
are a lot higher too.
I set aside a couple days a week solely
to sketch and do research. I look at whats
hot on Instagram, what celebrities have
been wearing. Khloe Kardashian wore a
really gorgeous Balmain dress recently
and I was like, We have to have this for
Nasty Gal. So we whipped up a design, a
pattern, made some tweaks to it, and they
bought it. Like 90 percent of our demographic is 20- to 25-year-old girls. They
love Kylie Jenner, Gigi and Bella Hadid.
Its so funny, when we make something
based on what one of these It Girls has
worn, our customers go nuts. They wanna
be just like them. It makes me really happy when I see girls get a dress from us for
under $100, and its identical to a Dior that
Selena Gomez wore on the red carpet.
Our line is very runway-inspired and
in no way can I claim that everything is
100 percent my design. Im taking what
these greats have done and bringing it to
a new market that couldnt otherwise afford to wear these clothes. A lot of times
Ive not really wanted to attach my name
because people would email and say Im
taking credit for designs that theyve seen
on the runway, like, Oh, thats a Dior design! How dare she? I dont want to take
full credit for anything. I am just so in love
with fashion, and when I put out my own
collection of unique designs in five years,
Ill come out from the background and put
my name behind it.
As told to Rawiya Kameir
Photography by Daniel Ehrenworth

FADE IN

44

OUT NOW on CD, 2LP, Fools Gold 2LP & Download

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www.yeasayer.xyz

The Graphic
Designers Making
Big Brands Look
Sharp

Marshall Rake, 28
Founder and Creative Director,
Public-Library
Ramn Coronado, 31
Founder and Creative Director,
Public-Library
Marshall Rake: Ramn and I never like
to say were graphic designers; we like
to do basically everything. Thats kind
of where the Public-Library name came
from: a library is whatever the people decide to access in it. We both had a similar
mindset in wanting to work pretty much
every possible design job. We wanted to
learn not only the creative side but also
the business side. Its such different nuances. Like, how you talk to people, how
you structure files, and all of these crazy
details that you dont really get exposed to
when you go to school for graphic design.
In clients, we look for people who
are excited about what they are doing,
whether thats someone thats opening a
caf or someone that is doing a fashion
line or a jewelry line. You really feel like
you have to deliver for them. Bigger clients like Nike and OVO are a little similar
that way. Drake is a company, there is no
mistake about that. Hes got all the levels
to him. Hes got the departments, hes got
the people. When OVO came to us in 2012,
that was like a tipping point for him. They
were seeing what they had: Drake was
going to be huge. Really, he was huge already, but his visuals were nowhere near
what he was doing musically. The climate
for hip-hop was changing and people
were talking about branding and putting
out beautiful album artKanye had started getting into what Kanye is doing now.
Ramn Coronado: We like to think of our
job as being to help show people who they
really are. With Drake, we were showing

his true self by setting the brand guidelines for him and OVOfor their photography, composition, single art, website,
email, typography. In OVOs case, it was
really like breaking the owl apart. Can we
just use the head? Can we make it more
minimal? Can we invert it? Its about playing with all of the elements and exploring
and seeing all the legs a brand has.
Rake: Graphic design is weird because
theres a part of you thats an artist and
theres a part of you that has a real understanding that youre doing commercial
work. Designers dont sign their work, and
you have to learn not to have an ego. Like a
music producer, in our world youre nothing without all the other people involved,
whether thats the client or the photogra-

FADE IN

pher or the web developer or a friend that

introduces us to the clients. There are so
many pieces that come into making what
people see in the end.
Coronado: The work all evolves. It starts

with a little book design or a little magazine spread to working with restaurants
and to now these big global brands like
Nike. Weve done so many projects that
weve never been able to show or talk
about that we are super proud of. It does
kind of suck a little bit to not be able to
show it off. But to be behind the scenes,
that is part of our role when we work with
these brands.
As told to Zara Golden
Photography by Shaniqwa Jarvis

46

NEW
FOR
A

COMICS
NEW
ERA

How a tiny
Toronto press
found success
by prioritizing
diversity.
Story by Zainab Akhtar

The dramatic story of Koyama Presss inception could easily be the plot of one of
the poignant autobiographical comics it
publishes. In 2007, after recovering from
a risky operation that removed a terminal
aneurysm from her brain, Annie Koyama
left her career in film production, seized
on the sizable nest egg shed amassed
playing the stock market while on bedrest, and launched her own independent
press. I wasnt entirely surprised at the
Illustration by Lisa Hanawalt

serious diagnosis, but I wasnt prepared

for being told to go home straight away
and settle your affairs, she recalls,

For its first six years, Koyama Press

written off by the established alternative

speaking in an email from the companys

functioned somewhat like a non-profit

comics community, which often views

headquarters in Toronto. Though shed

organization: Annie funded local artists

this new generation of cartoonists work-

been in poor health for some time, the

venturesstreet art, zines, comicsthen

ing primarily online as somehow less

surgery prompted Annie to dive into her

gave them all the proceeds. An insomni-

legitimate. On a broader scale, her com-

lifelong love of print. Today she lives with

ac, she spent nights scouring the internet

mitment to taking risks on emerging art-

a second, inoperable aneurysm, and her

for the work of young, little-known car-

ists reflected an ongoing paradigm shift

publishing house, which has released

toonists and gave them the opportunity

affecting the way alternative comics are

work by award-winning artists like Mi-

to publish their comics, often for the first

produced and consumed.

chael DeForge and Jane Mai, is widely

time. On an immediate level, Annies gen-

The manga boom of the 90s signifi-

considered one of the most important

erous yet meritocratic approach validat-

cantly diversified audience demograph-

forces in independent comics.

ed the work of artists who were otherwise

ics: the Japanese comics often featured,

FADE IN

48

and were produced by, women, result-

disinterested in comics, beyond the oc-

ing in many characters and storylines

casional best-selling graphic novel. We

that neither objectified nor excluded

are still in an uphill battle to find a wider

them. And because they were largely

readership for alternative comics, Annie

produced by Asian writers and artists,

says. We reach the people who are al-

they appealed to people of color around

ready fans, but to have our artists become

the world, too. Subsequent democratic

better known in larger book circles would

shifts in technology, like the rise of per-

be great. Still, in a world that sees com-

sonal blogs and proliferation of self-pub-

ic imprints flare enthusiastically to life

lishing services, only broadened norms

and then disappear with rapid regularity,

about who could make and read com-

Koyama has succeeded by enforcing a

ics, with new artists effectively serving

positive pragmatism: a steady growth at-

as both publisher and distributor, and

tained via small print runs, regular releas-

connecting directly to their fans. Alter-

es, and smart marketing. In the nine years

native comics were no longer defined

since the companys launch, Annie has

by misanthropic, self-absorbed ruminations by men, as demonstrated by Dave

modeled the scrappiness and ingenuity it

Annie Koyama by Matthew Forsythe

Sims long-running sexist, homophobic

takes for any artist with DIY ambitions to

find success in todays creative economy.

Cerebus series, or the work of Chester

books, comics, and childrens literature

And in her ongoing health concerns, she

Brown, whose misogynistic documenta-

that span everything from autobiography

continues to find the ambition that origi-

tion of visits to brothels were presented

to photography, from horror to humor.

nally led her to create Koyama Press. Im

as legitimate commentary on the sex

Among the presss most resonant releas-

not out of the woods completely, but I

work industry. Instead, attention shifted

es are the quasi-biographical works of

choose to carry on, she says. Id be lying

to a broader suite of cartoonists, like

artists like Jane Mai, whose See You Next

if I said that I wasnt motivated often by

L.A.-based artist Nilah Magruder and

Tuesday features raw discussion of her

the thought of possibly having less time

Libyan-British artist Asia Alfasi, who ex-

mental health and her body, and of Seo

to do what I wish to accomplish.

perimented with looser, more expres-

Kim, whose witty Cat Person features Kim

sive styles while offering thoughtful and

and her cat as its primary characters.

empathetic discourse about identities

and ideologies.

One of Koyamas most visible triumphs is the career of surrealist illustrator Michael DeForge. In 2009, Annie contacted him after seeing his work online;
the meeting resulted in the production of
Lose #1, DeForges first published work.
In the seven years since, he has become
a multiple award-winning author, widely
recognized as one of the principal cartoonists of his generation. DeForge credits Annies support for his success, and
says that her experience outside of comics is crucial to the range of content and
artists in Koyamas catalog. She was a
comics reader, but Koyama Press didnt

Illustration by Cathy G. Johnson

start out primarily as a comics publisher,

so she didnt have that weird, insular point
of view that some people whove spent
Illustration by Ben Sears

too long in comics can develop, says DeForge. She didnt have preconceived no-

Koyama Press was at the heart of the

tions about what a proper comic looked

movement to diversify. We live in a mul-

like, what a sellable one looked like, or the

ticultural society and we need more art-

formats they should be printed in.

ists telling their stories wellfrom every

In comics, the middle way is a nar-

background, Annie says now. Id like to

row pass, wedged between mainstream

see the youngest kids grow up exposed

billion-dollar superhero franchises and a

to all kinds of stories. She has published

traditional literary establishment that is

FADE IN

49

THIS HOODIE
MADE
*

PHOTOGRAPHY HANLEY HING YIU CHU.

OPPOSITE PAGE: IMAGES COURTSEY NORBLACK NORWHITE

H OW
WAS

*Between 3 cities,
in 4 months, by 18 people
Story by Liz Raiss
FADE IN

50

In 2009, Mriga Kapadiya visited India on a

family vacation and ended up staying for
four years. A few months into the trip, she
was joined by fellow Toronto native Amrit
Kumar. The pair settled in an apartment in

The shape and symmetry of the pull-

Bombay that soon became the design stu-

over echoes the sportswear the design-

dio, office space, and official headquar-

ers wore growing up and saw on cultural

ters of their clothing brand NorBlack Nor-

touchstones like A Different World and on

White. Today, the label is based between

artists like Jodeci.

Delhi and Toronto; its defining signature is

a marriage of traditional textiles and yantra-inspired patternwork with silhouettes
referencing the designers adolescence

in 90s Canada. From watching episodes

of In Living Color for reference, to visiting artisans in Indian villages, to sharing
pattern ideas over WhatsApp, heres the
story of how they produced one NorBlack

The hoodies pattern is also inspired by

NorWhite hoodie.

the ubiquity of spiritual imagery in Bombay, Mriga explains. The designers drew
particular inspiration from yantrasmystical circular diagrams that often incorpo-

rate trianglesand the yin-yang.

Like many designers, Amrit and Mriga

start with a moodboard. Theirs features
photos of 90s hip-hop and R&B heavyhitters like Aaliyah and Missy Elliott, images of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama

Part of NorBlack NorWhites charm is

surrounded by her work, and black-and-

that the garments function as unisex. At

white pictures of stark triangular archi-

first, Mriga says, we were immersed in

tecture. We start with reference points

Indias approach to style and traditional

to what were feeling, what were listening

womenswear. But as the pair began to

to, people were meeting, and things were

travel between India and Canada more

seeing around India, says Mriga.

often, they found themselves naturally

incorporating the aesthetics of their Toronto social circle, which is a very queer,
accessible space with a lot of fluidity in
gender lines.

5
After deciding on a theme, Mriga and Amrit experiment with patterns on Photoshop.
We can come up with all the ideas we want,
but the final word comes from the weav-

We can come up with all the ideas

we want, but the final word comes
from the weavers.
Mriga Kapadiya

ers, Mriga says. Because of the complexity

of the weaving techniques of their textiles,
they spend a lot of time going back and
forth with their weavers. After meeting the
artisans in person, Mriga and Amrit send
images of mock-ups and color swatches
through WhatsApp, communicating in
Hinglish until a final pattern is decided on.

FADE IN

51

8
Initially, our pattern-cutter Master Ji was
working for someone else full-time, says
Mriga. He would come to our house after
work and wed give him two designs. Hed
take them home in a backpack and come
back three days later, and then wed give

him two more designs. After four years of

Shortly after settling into their Bombay

Mriga and Amrit have traveled to villages

and now works for NorBlack NorWhite

lives, and a year before they would re-

across India, seeking out families who

full-time.

lease NorBlack NorWhites first collection,

have perfected textile techniques over

Mriga and Amrit discovered Kala Raksha,

generations. Each collection showcases

a non-profit specializing in reviving the

a different technique. In the case of this

textile techniques of the Kutch region, in

hoodie, its Ikat, a process that requires a

the western state of Gujarat. We went

close bond between weavers and dyers. It

there without even thinking about a collec-

can take up to 20 days of preparation for a

tion, Mriga recalls. We saw their archive

handloom to be ready for one style.

living and working in the same space, the

girls shifted their operation to Delhi. Master Ji, whom they initially met through a
family friend, quit his job, left Bombay,

and their textile library and were both so

overwhelmed. The non-profit introduced
Mriga and Amrit to the Khatri family, which
has been tie-dying for over 100 years. An
evening visit evolved into a weeklong stay
and cemented the first of their designerartisan relationships. We get a lot of love
within India for creating accessibility to

traditional textiles, says Mriga.

When people wear

it, thats when it
starts to feel real.
Mriga Kapadiya

After Master Ji leaves the labels Delhi

studio for the night, Mriga and Amrit try
on the finished hoodie. We nerd out in the
studio, wearing the garment and figuring
out how to style it. It takes us a good few
days, says Mriga. When people wear it,
thats when it starts to feel real.

FADE IN

52

I N N O V AT I V E L E I S U R E . N E T

B o o m

T o w n

CREDIT TK

Story by Amos Barshad

Photography by Gunner Stahl

METRO BOOMIN has been

climbing raps ranks since high
school. In a competitive and fickle
industry, how did he become the
guy everyone wants on their team?

METRO BOOMIN

55

his February in Toronto, during a

mind-bogglingly frigid NBA All-Star
Weekend, Metro Boomin brought out
his famed confidante Future for a surprise appearance that turned a late
night set at a small club into a spazzy,
sweaty basement rave. Two weeks later, in East London on Metros first trip overseas, the crowd
was so big that hundreds of kids were plowing through iron
barriers and the cops had to shut down the bus lines outside
the venue. The promoter, Hm Mohamed, would later say, in
lightly broken English: It was so much a riot.
At 22, Metroslim, precocious, and prone to toothy
smilesis arguably the most in-demand producer in hiphop. The success has made him increasingly itinerant, and
nocturnal: when hes not keeping rap hours with stars in studios, hes on the road living out of Airbnb rentals and DJing
sold-out thousand-cap venues around the world.
But right now, in a corner suite at the downtown Atlanta
W hotel, hes just trying to decide where to buy pants. A few
of his buddies, all gregarious young guys with music-industry affiliations that hes known for years, are hanging out.
They consider popping open the minibar Bombay Gin, but
opt for the fancy gummy bears instead. Metro gets a phone
call, and his eyes widen. He shows the pals the phone, and
sings: Can we get much higher?! Its Kanye. Gummy bears in
mouth, they nod approvingly.
His ear to the phone, Metro picks out a bandana from
among the sprawl of chargers and clothes on the tightlypulled hotel sheets. This ones spotted. He folds it carefully
and swaps it out for the camouflage one hes currently wearing. Then, immediately, he swaps back. The continued nonexposure of his forehead, clearly, is something to which he
gives diligent consideration.
We pile into an Uber, then head out to Lenox Square Mall,
the decided-upon pants-purchasing location. This whole
time, Metro has kept up the phone call. Theres chatter about
samples received, beats sent out, the tossing around of alluring names (Abel! Young Chop!). I appreciate that, Metro
tells Kanye. Long pause. Yeah. Long pause. Yeah, Im just
trying to put shotguns to niggas chests.
Ambling through the racks of shredded Balmain jeans
and $1,000 Givenchy crew necks at Neiman Marcus, Metro
recaps the conversation. This nigga Ye was talking about
a lotta shit. He said he was in some country I never heard
of. I was like, What you doing there? Hes like, Im in a
IKEA. Also, he told Metro: We really should do a production group together.
By this, clearly, Metro is honored. But hes also taken
aback. Someone asks, politely: Sos Kanye trying to sign you?
Metro scoffs at the thought. Never. Im a boss nigga.
The crew pings around the mall in a manner befitting
their age. Passing a pole, they unthinkingly split up and

cross it on either sidea practice traditionally considered

bad luck. Nearly giggling, they bow to superstition and retrace their steps to pass the pole on the right side. At regular
clips, Metro is stopped and asked for photos. But its always
done good naturedly, like the interlopers are actually old
pals: Ayo Metroooo! In the Vans store, a kid in braces and
a blazingly yellow Michigan pullover FaceTimes his friend,
and puts the phone in Metros face. Metro Booooomin in
the cut! he announces.
These days, Metro is as famous as a rap producer gets.
Its an odd phenomenon that happens every once in awhile:
suddenly, one persons sound pervades and dominates music. It might seem spontaneous, but in fact, its taken Metro
years to get here. And now that his plans have come to fruitionits not just Kanye West that cant stop blowing up his
phonehe seems well at ease. In the shoe store, in his socks,
he rolls with the attention gamely.
Ay, where you at with the purple ceiling? he asks the kid
on FaceTime. The kid, perplexed, a bit starstruck, considers
the question carefully before answering. Uh. My room.
Metro: Oh, your room purple? Thats hard.
etro was a 7-year-old kid in St. Louis,
Missouri, when Country Grammar, the
blockbuster debut from hometown
hero Nelly, dropped. From his mothers collection, hed heard everything
from MC Lyte and Ice Cube to Yo Yo
Ma and Faith Hill. But he fell in love
with Nelly, and thats when he decided he wanted to make
rap music. He also wanted his mother to take him seriously.
So he picked a different job title, one that sounded to him
more respectable. He told her he wanted to be a producer.
By 13, he had a keyboard and the production software
Fruity Loops. With a hunger and a willingness to sacrifice,
he promised himself that there would be no normal high
school kid lifefucking around and going to parties and just
chilling and shit.
Countless, obsessive hours of trial and error followed;
days and nights were spent hacking away. It was so foreign
to me, he says. I was trying to Google like, How do you get
a bass sound? Until a fortuitous high school piano class, he
didnt even know what a chord was.
Hed look up album credits on Wikipedia, find the names
of A&Rs, and tweet at them ceaselessly. He gave beats to rappers he never met and would never hear from againin St.
Louis, in D.C., and in Mississippi. Sometimes, hed get paid,
in Western Union transfers for $100 or $200 a pop. A lot of
time hed give the beats away for free. Man, I just wanted to
hear people rap on this shit, he says. Thats all I wanted.
One day, a recording engineer called Caveman heard and
liked Metros stuff enough that he passed it on to OJ da Juiceman, then a budding mixtape star. OJ invited Metro to Atlanta.

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Recalling the day it all started, Leslie, Metros mother,

sounds as proud as if it had happened that morning. I came
home from work, and he was waiting for me, ready for a
business meeting, she says. He had a green folder with information on all the people he wanted to work with. Hed
printed it out from the internet, and he left me with the folder overnight so I could go through it. He was so prepared!
So Metro was granted parental permission to meet OJ.
Not just permission but a ride: Leslie was the one who chauffeured him, in her Camry, on the 17-hour round-trip drive.
Metro and OJ had lunch, went to the studio, and made songs.
Then OJ kept inviting him back. Nearly every weekend after, mother and son would make the trip to Atlanta, rushing
back for school on Monday morning, which was imperative:
Leslies approval was contingent on Metro maintaining his
Honor Roll grades.
We wasnt smoking in the studio back then cause his
momma was coming in, OJ remembers. We had to have
him back at a certain time. It was fun though. We had fun!
It was around this time that Metro gave himself a professional name. The first part was almost generically selectedthe subway system in St. Louis is called the MetroLink. The second part was from OJ. Juiceman, hed always
say, Im booming! Im bucking! Metro explains. That was
his thing.
It isnt surprising that his mother was game for all this.
Effusively, Metro describes her as a warmhearted, protective
woman, whose support and care knows no limits. And it was
from birth that he had her absolute belief. My name is Leland Tyler Wayne, he says, pronouncing it with the grandness it connotes. My mom wanted to give me a name where,
no matter what I wanted to do, Id be able to do it. An astronaut. President. Whatever. Leland Wayne.
n 2012, Metro was accepted to Morehouse, the prestigious Atlanta HBCU.
By that time, he had gone from working with OJ to producing for OJs mentor, Gucci Mane. But he felt obligated
to enroll. What black mom is not gon
be happy about their son going to
Morehouse? he says now. From birth, Leslie says, I always
called him my little Morehouse man.
Just months into the first semester, though, he couldnt
ignore his own momentum. He was just an 18-year-old
freshman when his Future collaboration Karate Chop
became a surprise hit. And he was spending as much
time in class as he was at fellow producer Sonny Digitals house. Sonnys place, 516 North Ave., was a makeshift studio/crash-spot for any number of Atlantas current bumper crop of talent: Migos, Rae Sremmurd, and
ILoveMakonnen all used to hang out and record there before their songs charted.

The place was a bit wild: years after Metro was spending time there regularly, a bullet accidentally wizzed into the
downstairs apartment, and an eviction notice soon followed.
But for Metro, it was a lovely little oasis of productivity and
positivity. And that communal vibe was elemental to Metro
and Sonny and their class of producers damn-near socialist
mentality. To this day, they all cheerily make beats togetherSouthside and DJ Spinz and 808 Mafiaworrying about
how to split out songwriting credits only long after the music has been made.
At 516, Sonny, patiently, would hear Metro out as he
bitched about how much he hated school. I seen how he was
stressing, Sonny says now. I knew, damn, that aint what he
really wanna do. So he told Metro: Bro, you really might
have to dead that.
Metro didnt want to think about how his mother would
react. Drop out?! But Sonny calmly insisted he consider it.
And knowing that without the Morehouse dorms Metro
would be homeless, Sonny promised him a place, rent-free,
for as long as he wanted. Sonnys always been that openhearted person, Metro says.
Metro went into the bathroom and paced for an hour and
a half, working up the nerve. Then finally, he called his mother. He couched it, at first, saying he was only taking a semester off. And still, she was furious. But as she lit into him, there
was relief, too: this wasnt part-time hustling anymore. He
was now, God help him, a full-time, professional producer.
n a Monday night at Means Street Studios in March, Metros at work. Ostensibly hes here for an interview on
a satellite radio show hosted by hiphop elder statesman DJ Drama. But
perhaps out of respect for the particular moment that Metro is enjoying,
Drama has temporarily ceded control of the Atlanta studio,
which he owns, to the younger man.
In Metros hands, the speakers are blanketing us with an
unreleased track that could very well be his next big one. Its
a flip of Bone Thugs N Harmonys Crossroads. And it has,
with all of the audaciousness of youth, been stripped of its
iconic melancholia in favor of woozy, late-night horndoggery. Meet me at my houuuuuuse, sings the beloved cult rapper Lil B, again and again. It is inexplicable and brilliant and
odd. The room is in thrall, but no one person more so than
Metro. His eyes squinted, his lips sneered, he drops his chin
hard to the perfect dry snap of his drums.
A central table is cluttered with Metros laptop-stuff ed
Louis Vuitton backpack and Bic lighters and cartons of
Chinese delivery. Its a chatty, smoky party. A string of visitors comes through, including a woman with a baby resting
peacefully in a carrier seat and the preternaturally animated Philadelphia rapper Lil Uzi Vert. This nigga hopping

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out the Lyft with the Desert on! Uzi says at one point, hitting the climax of a confusing but stirring anecdote about
riding in taxis with firearms. The cheap ass Uber! With the
Desert Eagle!
A few hours north of midnight, its decided: the proper
vibe has been achieved. Metro plops down his stickered laptop, using a $30,000 mixing board like a glorified computer
stand, and cues up a sketch of a beat, just three big fuzzy bass
notes. He gets on the MIDI controller to mess around, plinking out a piano line that rises, spare and ominous, above the
dark bass. He runs it back again and again, thinking of what
to do next.
Fundamentally, this is the same thing Metro used to do
at his mothers house, and at Sonnys; there is no division
between his life and his music. Your party is your studio session, and vice versa. Your collaborators are your best friends.
As Metro will explain later, its at this moment when he is
receiving all of this love and attention that this studio time
is vital. Its obsessiveness that got him here, and hed like
nothing to get in the way of that obsessiveness now. I started making beats when I was 13, he explains. And Im about
to be 23. Thats 10 years. And its just now starting to pay off.
By the time he calls the session to a close, its nearly daybreak. The bass notes have transformed into a proper, ornate beat. It sparkles with little bells, but has somehow been
rendered sinister, too: it feels like the soundtrack to falling
through thin ice and desperately trying to claw your way
back to breathable air.
etros client roster these days is motley. With recent work for the R&B acts
Ty Dolla $ign and Tinashe, hes flexed
his versatility (for the latters single
Ride of Your Life, he somehow made
a drum roll sound lilting). He still sets
aside plenty of time for his young
pals, cultivating new talent like 21 Savage, Madeintyo, and
Uzi. Then theres the high-profile gigs, which yank him to
and fro: in the past months, hes been in Miami, in L.A., and
in Toronto working on Drakes meticulously workshopped
Views From the 6.
Meanwhile, in his adopted hometown, hes learned to finesse the internecine industry politics. Though it was never
released, in 2014 Metro recorded a collaborative album with
Young Thug, the thrilling experimentalist long locked in a
subtle Cold War of competitiveness with Future. In situations like that, I suggest to him, Its almost like youre the child
of divorced parents?
Yeah, its some crazy shit, he says. You cant have either
one of them feel like you fucking with the other one more
than them. Either one of them would be offended. You gotta remain neutral as much as possible. Its no bias. Atlanta,
maneverybodys a male, theres a lot of ego. Somebody got-

ta be number one. Neither one of them are the type to settle

for number two. I feel like they both motivate each other,
and its good for the culture and the musicjust as long as it
stay at that.
Metro says he feels as close as brothers to both men: Futures like an older brother to me, and Thugs more like a
brother my age. Like an actual family member would, he
fondly remembers a time they all spent a month together
in the studio before Thugs Rich Gang phase, and hopes
theyll do it again. I wanna bring that together, he says.
The songs we were doing, theyre so great. Theyre still
great. It could be so much better.
Metro has been Futures most trusted producer since Karate Chop, back in 2012. With DJ Spinz, he fashioned the
title track on Futures sophomore album, an ambitious and
elegant release felled by its aspirations: perhaps because of
its great sonic leap forward, Honest was tepidly received. And
thats when Metro and Future really went in.
Over the course of the remarkable run of mixtapes that
followed, Metroalong with Atlanta cornerstones like Zaytoven, Southside, and TM88helped reimagine the crooning R&B crossover as a paranoiac libertine folk hero, running free on prescription pills and nihilism and gnarly beats.
Some of their best stuff came from Future going into the
booth and unloading, almost in a stream of consciousness;
it was then Metros job to sift through and, line by line, construct the cohesive, potent tracks.
That process culminated with What a Time to Be Alive, the
smash split album from Future and Drake that was recorded
in one nutso week in Atlanta under Metros careful watch.
He crafted the majority of its massive sounds, both elegant
and defiled at the same damn time. For his work, he holds the
albums honorific title Executive Producer.
I remember, it was like six in the morning, Metro says,
of one typically hectic session for What a Time. I had been
up in the studio all night mixing beats. And [Drake] come in
in the middle of the night to fuck with Jumpman.
[Drake] was playing a new verse, Metro says. And I
heard Jumpman, jumpman/ Metro Boomin on production,
wow. Then Drake turned around and looked at Metro, expectantly, waiting for approval. Its funny to imagine: Drake,
the increasingly calculated, increasingly remote superstar,
just wanting Metro to feel him. Recalling the moment Metro
lets off one of his regular easy smiles, showing the endearing
bit of snaggle-tooth on the left side of his mouth. And I was
like, OK. OK. I fuck with that! I fuck with you!
When trying to wrestle down the source of Metros success, theres a clutch of factors to weigh. The decade of plugging away, the adaptability of his sounds, the forehead-accoutrement-based image-branding. And then there is something
more amorphous: his all-together warm vibes.
It sounds silly, to call his lovability an asset. But remember that this is a business in which people spend long, late

METRO BOOMIN

61

My mom wanted to give me a

name where, no matter what
I wanted to do, Id be able to
do it. An astronaut. President.
Whatever. LELAND WAYNE.

METRO BOOMIN

63

METRO BOOMIN

64

hours together. And know that thats what people tack to

when describing him, again and again. DJ Spinz, his collaborator and close friend, remembers thinking this early upon
meeting him: He has good energy, deep down inside. I think
hes gonna end up in a good place. Says Sonny Digital of
the early days: He brought the energy. He made me wanna
make beats. I wanted him around.
Earlier this year, Metro got his biggest look to date: Kanye
West tapped him to co-produce a small chunk of his event album The Life of Pablo. The co-sign felt like a natural recognition of the run that Metro has had in the last few years. But
Kanye stood to gain something too. Would TLOP have felt as
virally, vividly of-its-time without Metro?
At one point, early on the album, nestled perfectly between a sample of sweet 70s gospel from Pastor T.L. Barrett
and the drop of the drums, is the sound of Futures voice.
Hes rolling out a twisty little phrase: If young Metro dont trust
you, Imma shoot ya.
Metro had been using that peculiar stanza (its from a
little known Uncle Murda song called Right Now) as his
tag for a few months at that point. But from that Kanye
plug, it took on a life of its own. Which is to saythe memes
have abounded.
The tag has been spliced into clips of Degrassi and The
Social Network and New Jack City and Taken. (Liam Neeson,
phone to his ear, a gun extended out: Young Metro, you
trust this nigga?) After protesters managed to shut down a
Donald Trump rally in Chicago early this spring, a photo of
one joyous sign made the rounds: Metro Boomin Doesnt
Trust Trump. When presidential washout Ben Carson was
asked, and failed, to complete the phrase in an interview
with Complex, it cemented its status as the current communal
secret-handshake of young America.
Maybe its an accident, the way that drop has connectedthe way it has served to nod at a kind of generational
the-world-is-burning-but-we-know-the-answers malaise.
But know that the tag you hear is an alternate take nearly left on the trash heap. Metro just liked it better: it was
more muted.

Now, every show I play it at, its crazy, Metro says. They
scream that part.

etween Metros life now and his life

before his breakthroughs, there are
substantial consistencies. Hes been
dating the same girl, Chelsea, since
the 12th grade. For about a year, hes
had his mother and his four younger
siblings set up in a house nearby, in a

suburb of Atlanta.
But some things, unavoidably, have changed. For one: he
bought a firearm, a Smith & Wesson 9mm. Gun ownership is
something hes given the same diligence he does the rest of
his life: before he purchased it, he asked his friend, the rapper Pimp Jones, to give him lessons at the gun range.
A gun? You gotta take that serious, Metro says. [But]
Atlantas crazy, at the end of the day. Its, Id rather be caught
with one than without one. And knowing a lot of things that
have happened to a lot of people
Metro isnt necessarily referring to his friend Bankroll
Fresh, the beloved and once ascendant local rapper. But
the tragic topic is unavoidable: just days before our talk,
Bankroll is shot to death outside a recording studio in northwest Atlanta.
I miss how fun and natural this shit used to be, before it
felt like as much of a job as it does now, Metro would write
in an Instagram post. I miss recording songs at the house all
night and u would just stay and sleep on the couch because
you wanted to win as bad as I wanted to win.
Its surreal to me, Metro adds now. People die, people
get murdered all the time. But Fresh? How can somebody so
live die? Hed be at my house like, Man, once I start getting
my show money up, Im pulling up right back here, Imma
just start giving you money. Ten thousand dollars, fifteen
thousand dollarsboom boom boom!
He sounds wistful, but self-aware. Im only 22, he says.
At the same time that Im learning how to move properly
this wayas an artist and a public personIm still try-

Atlanta, man, theres a lot of ego.

Somebody gotta be number one.
METRO BOOMIN

65

ing to learn how to move in the world, period. As a son, as

a brother, as an anything. Its both at once. And those things
conflict sometime. What do you do?
As if illustrating his point Metro tells me about his father, Lamont, who still lives in St. Louis, and with whom
he hasnt spoken in years. Metros parents split up when he
was in the 3rd grade, and growing up, it ate away at him. He
remembers his father bringing back bird cages, from his job
at Lowes, that theyd assemble together. Paying homage as
a kid, Metro even briefly adopted the stage name Lil Mont.
Later, he realized, his mother was sheltering him from the
hard reality that his father simply wasnt trying to be available or supportive. I knew that he was hurting so much,
Leslie says, which is part of what made me support him so
much in the music. For his part, Metro did his best to file it
away. Its not something that Im sad or heartbroken about.
I mean, of course, when I was young...
But now, he says, hes been thinking about reaching out
again. Just, with all the blessings I have my heart in a different place. Before I used to be like, OK, Im just gonna ignore you how you ignored me. So you gon have to feel this.
You gon have to text me and Im not gon text back for a
couple of years.
And I still havent. But Im really at the point where
thats still my father. Weve had great memories. And God
forbid, what if anything were to happen to him? I wouldnt
want us to end on that note. Its been years already. I feel like
its time to bring everything back.
ate on our last night together, Metro is
in the endearingly shabby VIP room at
the beloved strip club Follies flinging
dollars in the air with abandon. The
room is covered with joyously bouncing strippers slapping asses: their own,
their coworkers. Intentionally or otherwise, Metros girl Chelsea seems to be getting most of the
professional attention.
Metro hops up on the couch, encouraging it all, doing
a bit of conducting. He leaps from that couch to the other
couch to the banquet. Futures latest single Wicked comes
on: another Metro production. The crowd loves it. See how
the music changes the vibe?! he announces, over the drums,
to no one in particular. No one wanna throw their money to
the floor to bullshit!
Afterward, back out in the parking lot, the mood is jubilant, and there is talk of hitting Aroma, a late night spot. Instead, we head to a diner tucked under a massive billboard advertising Horsetown.com, the worlds largest Western store.
Good quality whiskey gets slopped into plastic cups of orange
juice. Market price lobster tails are nonsensically ordered.
The waiter gets increasingly tense.

As more people show up, Metro makes sure were all

seated around the same long table. And he laughs a lot, but
never more so than when his friend Meechiea YouTube and
Vine star whose dance videos have helped blow up songs like
Metro and Young Thugs Herculeslooks up from his
plates of cheeseburger and fries and pancakes and grumbles,
Im not sure if Im gon have room for the cheesecake. Howling, Metro shouts, He got the burger the pancakes and the
cheesecake! He thinks this a movie! He thinks this Home
Alone! He said, I dont know if Ill have room for the cheesecake!
Earlier, wed talked about how no one, other than his
mother and Chelsea, calls him Leland anymore. (And even
then: My girlfriend, if shes mad, shell call me Metrotrying
to be slick.) I like my name, he said. If somebody wants to
call me Leland, thats cool. Then he used some interesting
word choices: But Ive just gotten so used to it because Ive
been drownedcompletely submerged in my career.
We can call up a Jungian analyst and break out the dream
book and ask, what does the use of water-based suffocation
imagery here mean? Or we can take a deep breath and remember that whether or not Metro was being presciently
evocativeof crushing pressures, still-yet growinglargely
depends on what happens next.
Because tomorrow, certainly, will bring more opportunities, and more complications: more calls from Ye, more Atlanta politicking, more work. For now, as another evening
creeps towards 6 a.m., Metro seems more than happy. His
girlfriend is to his side, his friends are all around him, and
hes whiling a night away at the diner. Comfortable, he even
thumbs that ever-present Metro Boomin bandana, pulling it
loose and letting it slip, for now, off his forehead.

METRO BOOMIN

66

B a d u
ERYKAH BADU is a soul singer,
midwife-in-training, and the
co-owner of a new production
company. On the eve of her 45th
birthday, she opens the doors to
her magnificent, orchestrated life.
Story by Vinson Cunningham
Photography by Jody Rogac

W o r l d

ERYKAH BADU

70

rykah Badus housesurrounded by

tall trees and mounds of soft, unkempt
grass; the window trims painted in a
neon yellow that brings to mind some
architects eyeglass framessits close
to the shore of White Rock Lake in
Dallas, Texas. Wind chimes drone
outside in an irregular breeze. Inside, tracks from John Lennons Plastic Ono Band play from a series of invisible speakers
that blanket the whole place in sound.
As we sit across from one another in her living room,
Badu tells me that the speakers were the first thing she
bought when she moved here in 1997, the same year she released her debut album, Baduizm. In the intervening years, as
she grew into one of soul musics foremost visionariesnot
just a singer or songwriter, but a producer in the broadest,
most creatively generative senseshe filled the house, piece
by piece. Some of the beloved items were made by friends,
some by fans, and some by her three children, who all paint
whenever a whim strikes. Theres a Wurlitzer against a wall,
an electric bass yoked up in a minimalist stand, and a massive collection of records behind a pair of turntables, a laptop aloft between them. There are easels in a leaning stack,
and two cartoonish paintings: one of Badu and one of Andr
Benjamin, the father of her son and eldest child, Seven. Everywhere is art and the means to create it.
Its late February, two days before her 45th birthday and
the concert shes planned to celebrate it. Through the big
rectangular window, we watch the suns calm, glinting walk
across the lake, and the heaped-together skyline of Dallas beyond. This is the city where Badu was born and grew up, the
home to five generations of her family. I ask her what Dallas
means to her, and she almost grins. I just like the air, she
says. I like the sound of the birds.
Shes quiet for a while, until suddenly I do hear a chirp,
then another. Badu laughsthis is not the sound of her beloved Dallas birdsong. Its a pet.
My mom bought that bird for Marss birthday, she says.
Her name is, uh, Sparkle. Mars is her youngest, 7 years old.
Her father is the rapper Jay Electronica. Badu walks over to
the little cage, which is less than clean. Her living conditions are horrible. To the bird: Sparkle, Im sorry. To me:
I did not want the bird. She moves Sparkle nearer to us,
into the sunlight. The bird is the size of a skipping stone and
moves in quick, bright, paranoid gestures.
But its what I know, she says, returning to Dallas. Its
where Ive created, where I started, where I She shrugs: its
everything. Her family is still the basic unit of reality in her
life. Both of her grandmothers are still alive and verging on
90one was once her accountant, the other her archivist,
keeping years of articles and reviews and album covers in a
tightly organized set of binders. Both, despite retiring from
their official duties, remain, Badu says, smirking, very ac-

tively opinionated in my life. Her mother is her nannyand

boss. Her sister Koryan, or Koko, slips around the house,
braids of pale-blonde and purple flowing down her back and
past her waist; she is personal assistant, house manager, background vocalist. Her brother sells merchandise. Her cousin
Ken is her estate manager and travels with her on tour.
Gotta pay em anyway, Badu says. Might as well put
em to work.
Her speaking voice is very clear, very flexibleeven when
shes quiet, or travels down an octave for comic effect, shes
audible across the room. She talks in a continuous negotiation between a drawl and a song. Two huge braids tumble
out of a knit hat and down her torso; her toes are painted the
same bright yellow that accents the house.
I start to ask a question and realize halfway through that
she is looking past me with her eyebrows furrowed, her
mouth set sardonically. Say that again? she says. I was
looking at Seven. Before I can repeat myself: Boy! I thought
your dad was picking you up.
Yeah, comes the voice from somewhere behind me.
We about to go eat or something. Seven18 years old and
skinny, a wide-mouthed second strain of his father walking
around in the worldambles into the living room to hug his
mother goodbye.
Later in the afternoon, Badu will meet up with Seven and
Andr. An Atlanta native, Badus ex moved to Dallas after
their son entered high school; he is the picture of the modern co-parent and the man Badu calls her best friend for
the past almost 20 years. The three plan to visit a Buddhist
temple to see a priest who gave Seven and Andr a reading
a few weeks ago. Badu says shes a skeptic, but decided to go
along after hearing that the priest told Seven to clean out the
refrigerator in his roomsomething, she says, that he really
does need to do.
I ask whats in the fridge.
I dont know, hot sauce with the top off? It smells like hot
sauce when you open the door. I dont go in there, but its
just cans of shit, open. She smiles with obvious pride. Hes
worked real hard. He home-schooled from 3 to 7, so hes kinda focused. Hes like a nerd. Seven likes art, designs shirts
and buttons, and has studied Latin since the fifth grade: So
he knows how to spell a whole lot of shit. Next year, she
says, in college, hes gonna major in psychology and minor
in business, so he can trick people into buying his things.
Thats his idea.
Badus second child, Puma, is 11. Her father is the Dallasnative rapper The D.O.C. She singsShes just like me, Badu
saysand she goes to a French immersion school, where she
is beginning to dabble in Mandarin. Mars, in the first grade,
goes to an immersion school, toohers for Spanish.
I just wanted to make sure, Badu says, that whenever I
take over the country, I have a secretary of state, defense, and
a peace ambassador at hand.

ERYKAH BADU

71

e move to the kitchen, where Badu

makes an impromptu arrangement of
fruit: freshly chopped pineapple in the
center, with berries moving in red and
blue and purple waves toward the edges of the big squarish plate. She uses
four or five long, thin scoops of lettuce
as a garnish; on the white spine of each, she places an evenly
spaced line of raspberries.
The intricacy of the display is impressive, and I say so.
Thank you, she says. Its art. Everything is art to me.
Were making artthis in reference to the interview were
conducting. Thats what were doing.
Considered this way, even the kitchen is a kind of largescale collage: every square inch covered with drawings and
photographs of her kids, siblings, cousins, famous friends
like Yasiin Bey and the late producer J Dilla.
This is a high-alkaline lunch, Badu says. Were gonna
have a lot of energy.
We move the fruit to a dining table toward the back of
the house, where Badu feeds a spare lettuce leaf to another
of Marss unlikely, half-wanted pets: a guinea pig named
Young Tonya. Nearby, seven colored boxes sit on a windowsill. Badu tells me that shes starting the process of writing
an autobiography, and that the boxes are a kind of outline.
I just painted them, she says. Im gonna line them up on
the table, one for each chapter, and Im gonna drop things in
each box so I can have a visual for what Im doing. Red is for
family, orange for sexbaby daddies, love affairsyellow
for the creative life, green for her work as a doula and holistic healer, light blue for music, darker blue for spirituality,
and a purple box that she calls a mystery.
Thats when the calls start to come, every few minutes. A
while back Badu dropped her phone into a bowl of soup, so
she has to take each one on speaker.
The callers all have a slightly cagey air, each getting
caught up in some weird detail about her birthday party
that cant be explained over the phone. They like to give me
some kind of surprise thing every year, she says between
calls. And I like to ruin it.
The only guileless reacher-out is Badus paternal grandmother, Ganny. Their exchange is loving, all coos, and ends
with Ganny squealing in excitement for her granddaughters birthday.
Im still not no grown woman, Badu says.
I know it, Ganny says. You my baby.
Its the week before the Super Tuesday primary in Texas,
so I ask about politicsby which, of course, I mean that I ask
about Donald Trump and the various walls, physical and attitudinal, that he threatens to build.
Oh, I dont believe in any of that shit, she says.
The walls?
Politics. I dont know how much we have a sayIts a

show, its a game. On the smaller scale, I think that your city
reps and district reps are very serious about what theyre doing, and then when they get up a little higher it becomes a
show. Everybody gets kinda turned out.
This is the craziest shit Ive ever seen in my life, she says
of Trumps success so far. Is this real? Butcryptically, with
a shrugit will become a reality, if thats what the plan is.
Badu points to albums like 2008s New Amerykah Part 1
(4th World War) as evidence of her own ability, through art,
not only to speak to social trouble, but also, in some sense,
to anticipate it. Take, for example, her song Twinkle: They
keep us uneducated/ Sick and depressed/ Doctor Im addicted now/
Im under arrest.
I felt it coming on, she says, of the police violence crisis that sparked and sustained the Black Lives Matter movement. I was really feeling a strong affinity toward writing
about what was going on around me. And I actually wrote
about whats happening right now in that album. So I dont
feel the need to write it now, because I got it out.
She sees our political present as a test of seriousness on
more than one front. We can organize like a motherfucker
when police beat us up, she says. But can we organize to
stop black-on-black crime, or poor-on-poor crime? Because,
you know, poor is the new black. You dont have to be black
now.
But I see other people doing it, she adds. I think its
cool what Beyoncs doing. Kendrick Lamar is consciously
writing and effecting change by showing the other side of
what happens in his community. Believe it or not, NWA
started out doing that too. Gangsta, Gangsta was actually a
parody. On the way to her point, she effortlessly rattles off
the first verse of the song:
Heres a little somethin bout a nigga like me
Never should have been let out the penitentiary
Ice Cube, would like to say
That Im a crazy mothafucka from around the way
Since I was a youth, I smoked weed out
Now Im the muthafucka that ya read about
Takin a life or two, thats what the hell I do
You dont like how Im livin: well, fuck you
This is a gang, and Im in it.
Its Cubes way of saying: this is what youve created.
Hes not a gangster. But I think it felt so good to em. Whatever gets you the most pussy, I guess. Activist pussy or gangsta pussy? Gangsta pussy was a little bit more plentiful.
Thisthe cynicism about the nature and efficacy of political activity, the interest, instead, in humor as a means of
protest, if not change, and the throwaway line about sex as
counter-incentive to struggleconfirms something Ive always suspected about Erykah Badu. As a singer and songwriter and performer, the thing that distinguishes her in the

ERYKAH BADU

72

history of soul music is her consistent deployment of irony.

No one since the height of the blues is funnier, or, crucially,
more aware of how her funniness distorts the world around
her and the history that created her. With her jerky movements and the rough plasticity of her voice, she is less a descendent of Billie Holiday and Diana Ross than a comment
on those predecessors, and on the styles and tics that gave
them their power; she is the artist, and the meta-artist.
This is most apparent when watching Badu perform live,
which, incidentally, she considers her most fundamental talent: Performance is what I do, she tells me. Onstage, she
cracks wise and tells stories between numbers, often setting a
premise so convincingly that the entire ensuing song comes
off as an elongated, meter-bound punchline. She undermines
her most deeply felt ballads, just after they peter out, with
a slow, exaggerated spinthe move not of a dancer but of a
dancers uncanny parodistor with a melodramatic gesture
upward, toward the lights. Hers are performances fully aware
of the artifice, and the silliness, of performance. Better than
almost anyone, she uses the opportunity presented by physical presence to exert a spontaneous creative control, using
familiar material to fashion something genuinely new.
Much of this sensibility, she says, she owes to the absurdity that backlights the blues, one of Dallass great cultural
inheritances. Thats my roots, she says. We have a part of

Dallas called Deep Ellum. Deep Ellum was a deep, rich blues
part of town. She catalogues the legendsher forerunners
who flocked to the place to play: Muddy Waters, B.B. King,
Johnny Taylor, Denise LaSalle.
Its a dying art, she says, but not at all wistfully. Its fine.
Its the way things are, and you evolve or you die.
adu gave birth to all three of her children totally naturally, in the house
where she grew up; now she is a fully
credentialed doula working towards
certification as a midwife. I love
motherhood, she says. Its natural for
me. Being a doula, or being a mom, or
even, like, making foodits just breathing and trusting, and
allowing the creativity to flow through.
Her doula career began in 2001, after she vowed to her
friend Afya Ibomuthe wife of Stic from the hip-hop group
Dead Prezthat shed assist with the birth of her child. After a frenzied international flight back to New York and
a travail of 54 hours in labor, Badu was there to catch the
baby. She has been devoted to the practice ever since. Between tour dates and recording, shes beset by textbooks,
essays, research, anatomy lessons, and shadowing the midwife well see today.

ERYKAH BADU

73

Being a doula, or being a

mom, or even, like, making
foodits
just
breathing
and trusting, and allowing the
creativity to flow through.

ERYKAH BADU

74

Badu pulls up to the birthing center in a sleek, low-riding black Porsche with a license plate that says SHE ILL.
Inside, her midwife mentor, a white woman with a halo of
short hair, is leading a tour of the large, warmly lit main
birthing room.
Shes got a huge belly, says the midwife. Shes also the
proprietor of the center, and shes setting a scenario for the
small crowd: The contractions are coming every five to seven minutes, and theyre getting stronger.
She continues the role-play from pains to happy birth:
the pregnant woman barreling through the doors of the center, moaning with increasing intensity, and leaning everywhereagainst the bed, the toilet, the wall. At each step, the
midwife reveals a possible choice. You might give birth in the
tub, or on the bed, or standing in the shower with the water
pelting down. Her voice, even when indicating pain, exudes
a weird calm. Still, its possible, listening to her, surrounded
by 10 or 15 rapt and terrified future parents, to imagineor, if
youve ever witnessed a birth, to rememberthe grislier aspects of the experience: the thick, coppery smell of blood, the
slick and fishlike conveyance of the child out of the body and
into the dim but irrefutable light. Clearly, the midwifeso
unperturbed, so solemnly comfortable, so acquainted with

the dangers of lifeinspires a wary awe in her audience. The

only other person smiling, moving easily, sort of bouncing
on the balls of her feet, is Badu.
After the tour, we return to her house. Its dark now, and
the downtown lights flit like static across the lakes surface.
Badus sister Koko makes a weak excuse for needing to leave.
I gotta she says, um, go to church.
Awww, Badu says, thinking of her birthday tomorrow.
You gotta go do something for me! You aint going to church
on a Thursday night. Yall are acting funny.
When Kokos gone, Badu strolls over to her turntables
and does a quick DJ set: Biz Markies Vapors, Beanie Sigels
Roc the Mic, Musiq Soulchilds Just Friends, Jay Zs Hustler, Carl Thomass I Wish, Check the Rhime by A Tribe
Called Quest. I like to rock the party, she says, smiling.
When shes done, we go into the kitchen and eat rice,
imitation chicken, and greens from Badus yard. Mars runs
around, picks food off the plate, then somehow tricks her
mother into agreeing to help her count her entire collection
of Shopkins, scores of hard, plastic figurines of which Ive
never heard. While the little girl arranges her boxesShes
a neat freak, her mother tells meBadu explains the schoolyard economy that sprouts up around the toys.

ERYKAH BADU

76

So say, like, I got two Blowannes, and somebody might

have a Molly Moccasin to trade.
I already have Molly Moccasin, Mars says.
Well, I know that. Im just using it as an example. Being
hypothetical. Can you say that, hypothetical?
Hypothetical. I cant express how satisfied the child
seems to have done it so perfectly on the first try.
It means, like, a made-up version of the truth. A demo
version.
And so they count, holding each miniature up so that I
can see it, calling each by its improbable name: Dressica,
Fluscious, Penelope Treats, Peter Plant, on and on. In all,
there are 123 of the thingscollecting them has clearly been
as much the work of the mother as of her child. Mars sometimes starts to hum Rihannas Work, and Badu hums along.
I love that song, Badu says.
he afternoon of Erykah Badus birthday, I walk to the cavernous club
where the party will happen later that
night to meet the musicians in Badus
band, The Cannabinoids. Theyre funny guys in their thirties and forties,
all dressed in sweatshirts and stylish
sneakers, eating catering and adjusting their equipment in
anticipation of Badus arrival, so they can do a soundcheck.
You can tell theyre used to time as a negotiable item: nobody had a clear start time in mind, they just showed up.
Big Mike, Badus friendly tour manager, has been with
her since the beginning, in 97. He explains how professionalism works in Badu World: Her thing is, Dont watch when
I get here. Just have my shit ready when I do. Just do the fuck
what yall supposed to do. Sometimes the band is last-minute, he tells me, and sometimes haphazard. But they always
want us to come back. We get more work than we can do.
The mood among the crew is friendly, almost familial, as
they all joke in the rat-a-tat shorthand youd expect from a
group that has traveled the world together several times over.
Somebody reminisces about a fight that once broke out over
a missed flight back home from Polanda fight ended, for
good, by Badu, who threw a glass across the room and told
everybody to get over it. Another remembers the night when
they were all crowded into a small club in London, maybe it
was, and sat through a bad rendition of Badus slow-building,
djembe-propulsed Bag Lady by a singer who didnt know
that the songs creator was waiting just beneath the stage,
bopping her head.
Theres a younger group hanging around, too: Badus
opening acts, including Aubrey Davis, a tall, thin 21-year-old
with glasses and a huge, bushy ponytail. Badu found Davis, a
rapper and Drake sound-alike known as ItsRoutine, through
Seven, whom she has appointed A&R head of her independent record label, Control FreaQ. The central promise of

Control FreaQ is to return ownership of its artists music after an agreed-upon period ranging from 10 to 15 years, and
its where Davis is now signed.
Looking slightly anxious in anticipation of his short set,
he describes the process of helping to write Badus remake
of Mr. Telephone Man, a New Edition tune turned woozy
on Badus recent mixtape, But You Caint Use My Phone. Shed
never seen the program I use on my computer, he says. But
she just showed me so many things on it that I didnt even
know. How to place vocals, everything. She basically mastered the song by herself.
The process of making Phone reveals Badu to be not just
a reservoir of creative knowledge but also someone invested
in passing that knowledge on, a veteran unafraid of working with new talent on new things. The way the kids write
today, its different, she says. The drums are different, everything is trapped out. And I felt like, Ooh, I can do that.
She met the tapes producer, Zach Witness, also 21, after
he released a remix of Bag Lady. First the two created Cel
U Lar Device, a remix of Hotline Bling, as a jokey birthday
surprise for Big Mike, who loves the Drake song. Then, after
an overwhelmingly positive reception on SoundCloud, Badu
called Witness and asked him to work with her on an entire
set of phone-related remakes. The two worked at a song-aday pace in his modest studio, in the one-story Dallas house
where he grew up, ultimately crafting a body of work that
proves Badus ability to adapt her signature brand of songcraft to modern sounds, and offers a playful analysis of our
technology-dependent present.
Suddenly, I hear Badu up on the stage, singing a bit, asking for adjustments to the lights and to the levels on the mics.
The backstage empties, and The Cannabinoids head toward
their instruments. Big Mike didnt lie: Badu, standing next to
a pink, morbidly detailed replica of a brain, is brisk and exact
in her leadership of the band. She wants to achieve precision,
and she wants to do it quickly.
fter the soundcheck, Badu and I drive
back to her house. Before her own party, she has to help Puma get ready for
a school dance. On the way, she asks
me if I want to hear the birthday song
shes chosen for this year. I say sure,
and she pulls it up on YouTube, fairly
quickly for someone whose hand is on the wheel. Its Nina
Simone, stomping in a long, billowing dress, a set of pearls
swaying from her neck.

Be my husband, man, Ill be your wife

Be my husband, man, Ill be your wife
Be my husband, man, Ill be your wife
Loving all of you the rest of your life

ERYKAH BADU

77

ERYKAH BADU

78

Its the way things are, and

you evolve or you die.

Badu sings along as Simones shoulders stoop and turn

inward. Their voices sound good together like this; each remains distinct, but as the song wears on, they achieve a kind
of blend.
Thats a good birthday song, I say when its over, and
Badu says, Yeah.
When we get to the house, Pumadollfaced in lacy pink
with black bootsand a friend stand ready to go. Badu fusses
over her clothes, her long, spiraling twists of hair, whether
she should or shouldnt wear stockings to the dance. Soon
Puma is ready, and her father comes to pick her up. Badu
sits fiddling with her phone, making sure shes put all of her
friends and family on the list for her party.
Its dark when Carl Jones shows up at the house. Jones
worked as a producer on The Boondocks and created Black
Dynamite, where he met Badu when she came in to do some
voiceover work. Now theyre a couple with their own production company; their first project was Badus much-praised
turn as host of the Soul Train Awards. Shes got a great point
of view, Jones tells me of Badu-as-comic. Shes like a modern day Carol Burnett. Shes got so many characters that she
does, and shes such a witty writer.
Badu slips away to get dressed for the show, and when
she emerges, shes in all black, with a tall, wide-brimmed hat.
Carlito, she calls to Jones in a sing-song, can you help me
put on my shoes? Theres a tenderness between the two, a
happy silence, and he rushes over, grabs her arm for balance
as she slips her foot into the combat boot.
Even on the night of a show, Badu drives herself to work.
She puts on a sleek pair of glasses and presses the gas on the
Porsche with Jones riding shotgun, driving how she always
does: worryingly but joyfully fast, especially on the on-ramp,
swerving impatiently around drivers doing the speed limit.
She does a lap around the venue to check out the line, then
steers into the parking lot out back.
A back door slides up, garage-like, and Badu steers the car
right into the backstage, where, yes, the band, and, yes, Dave
Chappellethe M.C. for the nightand, yes, several light
and sound technicians and, yes, family members, but also
seemingly hundreds of enthusiastic and colorfully dressed
and dubiously necessary hangers-on are milling around. Everybody flocks when Badu emerges from the car. Shes gracious: shakes hands, hugs, takes pictures, embraces Chappelle, takes more picturesall before she sees the first inch
of her dressing room.
There, in a space bedecked with gifts of flowers and intricate plants, she burns a huge bundle of sage and twirls
around, quiet, in pirouettes. When the purification ritual is
done, she looks happy. She glances around at the contents of
the room. Ive never had a birthday that was sofloral. So
many presents. The show starts, and she rushes closer to the
stage when she hears, of all people, Chico DeBarge.

Chico? she says. Hes the younger brother to the

old Motown Records family act DeBarge. Oh, shit. I gotta
hear that.
oon its her turn to perform. I stand in
the wings as Badu does what she has
told me so often over the past few days
that she loves to do. All the spins and
asides, the offers of affection to her
hometown crowd. The lightsbluish, the way she insists they always
bereach out to her in thin, finger-like strands. She loves to
cast attention toward her band, often asking each member
to offer a solo, and at some point, when she mentions Koko,
who should be behind her singing, her sister is nowhere to
be found.
At the end of the set, while Badu sings Trill Friends, her
recently released take on Kanye Wests Real Friends, something beautiful begins to happen.
Friends, Badu sings. A word we use ev-er-y day/ But most the
time we use it in the wrong way
and her own real friends, led by Koko, flood the stage,
offering her a cake and a thin gold crown that fits over her
hat. Andr is up therenobody noticed him when he slipped
onto the stageand when Badu sees him and introduces him
to the 4,000 some-odd members of the crowd, the roof almost flies off the building.
Soon Chappelles got the mic and, for whatever reason,
hes moved to tell a story about driving to the Kentucky Derby with Erykah Badu in the car, when Mtumes Juicy Fruit
came on the radio. I forgot that my friend was one of the
best singers in the world, Chappelle says. And all of a sudden she is going at it, and the whole car is knocking.
As he goes on, the band goes into an impromptu version
of the song.
This woman is so special, he says, and its the sincerest
thing anybodys ever seen Dave Chappelle say.
So lets give it up for my friend: Erykah Badu!

ERYKAH BADU

80

With
a
new
album
and
chapter
in
his
life,
KAYTRANADA is giving all
of himself for the first time
Story by Alex Frank
Photography by Alexandra Gavillet

ast fall, Louis Kevin Celestin found

himself in an unbreakably terrible
mood. As Kaytranada, he had sold out
shows all over the world with his joyful house and disco music, but when
it came time to finish up his debut
album, 99.9%, the 23-year-old producer was exhausted and lashing out at his family, including his younger brother Louis-Philippe, 21, with whom he
still shares a basement bedroom in his Montreal childhood
home. Kay would sit up all night working on music, sleep
into the afternoon, then spend the day generally inconsolable. My mom would always say, Whats wrong with you?
he remembers. I was hella depressed.
It was the first significant stretch of time Kay had spent
at home since hed started touring three years earlier, in
2012, after his unofficial remix of Janet Jacksons If went
viral among SoundClouds emerging dance scene. The rework took a song that pretty much everyone on the planet
had heard and put it in a contemporary, context-less light,
with euphoric percussion and a new spin on Jacksons vocals
that shifted her from foreground to background, so she appeared to whisper seductively at first then shout with command. The song has always been about intense desire, but in
Kays hands, it practically became desire itself. It was thanks
to If, and his equally ebullient follow-up remixes of Amerie
and Missy Elliott, that, in early 2013, he flew on a plane for
the first time since he was a child to play a show in Halifax,
and was soon booking shows across Europe.
Tour money was good, so Kay dropped out of high school
and began helping to support his family, which had immigrated from Haiti to Montreal in 1993, shortly after he was
born. His dad has earned money as a taxi driver and real estate agent, and his mother worked in the healthcare industry; they divorced when Kay was 14, and proceeds from his
shows were a big help to everyone. But being on the road
didnt always suit him. I was touring with Ryan Hemsworth,
and Id see him have so much fun, Kay remembers. It was
depressing for me. I was lonely. He asked Louis-Philippe,
whom he calls his best friend, to drop out, too, and join him
on the road to cheer him up, but it didnt fix things.
Part of the problem was that nonstop touring was keeping
Kay from working on the album hed long dreamed of making. In 2014, he signed to XL Recordings, the storied London
label thats been home to M.I.A. and Adele. He wanted to be
known as an artist, not just a DJ and remixer, and thought
that if he could make a statement with his debut, maybe the
world would see him that way. But despite the deal, his managers kept insisting he stay on the road, building momentum instead of hunkering down with his songs. In early 2015,
he finally told his agents to stop booking shows. One day I
woke up like, I cant do this, Kay says. I was like, Im not
that dude. He went back to Montreal to focus on recording,

but even then he wasnt free: should his goal be experimentation, or, as others were pressuring him, to craft radio hits?
At home, his depression only escalated. One day, he got
in a fight with his mom and his brother about stupid shit,
and he ran down to the basement. I knew what was wrong,
he says. I knew why I was pissed off out of nowhere. His
older sister, who also lives at home, came down to console
him. She found him in tears and started to cry, too. It was
then that he told her a truth about himself, the root cause of
his turmoil: he was gay. I just snapped, he says. Something
inside me was like, Wake the fuck up. I felt like there were
two people inside me. I was trying to be somebody I was not,
and I was frustrated that people didnt know who I was.
His sister offered to help him find a psychologist, but he
declined. Instead, he focused on coming out to his mom and
his brother. In truth, he had sort of already told them. At the
age of 16, in a fit of self-assertion, he had admitted to both
of them that he was bisexual, but had quickly retreated and
never spoke about it again. It was too many emotions at
the same time, Louis-Philippe remembers. I was like, Oh
thats good, and at the same time, I was like, Oh what does
mom think? Were Haitians, and Haitians dont appreciate
gay people at all. I thought maybe it was a phase. And on
the outside it may have looked like one: not long after, Kay
ended up involved in a long-term relationship with a woman
that ended only last year. Finally, in early winter, he told his
brother and mother definitively that he was gay. Though his
mother, a Catholic, did bring up Bible verses that condemn
homosexuality, Kay says both were supportive and told
him that theyd always love him no matter what. I feel better than I ever have, you know? he says. Ive been sad my
whole life, but fuck that. I know I have good things ahead. I
dont know honestly if Im fully, 100 percent happy, but Im
starting to get there.
ay and his family live 15 miles from the
city center, in quiet Saint-Hubert, in a
house shaped almost exactly like the
Monopoly piece: classically suburban
and noticeably compact. Theres not
really anywhere to hide. Sitting together in the living room, beside family photos and wooden statues, we can hear his mom milling
about upstairs. His dad, who is visiting, keeps yelling excitedly to Kays brother in a thick Haitian accent. Kays little
dog Boris, who he constantly Snapchats, clicks around. I
dont go out that much because when Im out, I just think
about the dog, Kay jokes. Were keeping the lights off, so the
room only glows dimly from the neighboring kitchen. Our
voices are hushed so as not to disturb the family.
Though Kay seems relieved to be finally making his truth
known, he still expresses a stilted caution borne of life in the
uber-straight world of a tiny suburb of Montreal or a tra-

KAYTRANADA

84

ditional immigrant community. Growing up with a lot of

friends who are making homophobic remarks, he says. Its
kind of like, Damn, I dont want nobody to know that Im
that person. Kay has not told his father yet, something he
is still slightly unsure of how to handle. As for the rest of the
world, he says, hes treating this interview in part like the
rip of a Band-Aid. Hes talking to me so he wont have to go
through the painstaking process of coming out to every single person he knows. He says he guessed I was gay, too, after
I mentioned how much I loved Nicki Minaj when we first
met. Im the first gay person hes ever told about his sexuality, it turns out. He asks me about my own coming out.
At first, hes tentative with the gay label, unsure of what
committing to it will mean for his life and his career. I dont
call myself straight, I dont call myself gay, its just me
he says quietly, before finally speaking more directly. But,
I guess, I am gay. He says he hasnt hooked up with a boy
yet, nor has he visited a gay bar, as he doesnt have any gay
friends to go with and, though he recently told most of his
straight homies about his sexuality, he feels weird about
bringing them along. Using apps to meet guys makes him
nervous because of his relative fame. Like so many before
him, he is doing all of this blindly, with few people to help
guide his path. I just wanna come clean and shit, he says.
Just to be less awkward with people. Its so wack [to lie].
This is another step in my life. I havent changed since high
school. Im ready to move on.
99.9% is an integral part of his next step. Out in May, its
the exuberant proof of the weight off his shoulders. A consistent, insatiable rhythm carries you through disco and
soul and hip-hop and R&B, as guest vocalists like Anderson
.Paak, Craig David, and Vic Mensa sing and rap about flossing your freedom and hooking up at the club. When I tell
him I am shocked that an artist on the brink of such a big,
boisterous debut is still living at home, sharing a room and
sleeping on a twin bed, he says that after the album comes
out, he has plans to finally move out of the house, maybe to
an apartment in Montreal proper. When the album comes
out, I swear Im gonna be everywhere. Im gonna be, like, not
just staying here in this basement making beats all the time,
he says. Ill be like a fucking bird from the nest, just fucking
flying away to be free.
ay was just a couple months old when
his family immigrated to Montreal,
and he spent his childhood in their
close-knit care. It was another level
of strict, he says. Like, I didnt even
see other kids growing up. After his
father lefthe simply disappeared one
day and called the house to reveal that he had decided to live
elsewherehis mother struggled to make ends meet. People
look at Kay and the fact that he doesnt have his own apart-

ment and they think its weird, says Louis-Philippe. But we

went through so much shit, and thats why were so unified.
Divorce, struggle, literally being poor, living on $100 per
week, saving lunch money to do stuff. I didnt eat at school
because I wanted to buy video games. Thats how Kay remembers it too: Wed order food, and there would be five
chicken wings for the whole family.
Kays not the only musician in the house: Louis-Philippe
has been trying to make it as a rapper in the Montreal hiphop scene, though he hasnt had much luck yet. (In 2014, they
released a mixtape together as The Celestics; Louis-Philippe
rapped and Kay made the beats.) Perhaps its with that in
mind that their mother describes Kay as uniquely blessed.
I think that Kevin is a little genius, she says, one afternoon
when were all sitting in the kitchen, drinking mango nectar and eating bountiful macaroni with shrimp and turkey
wings that she has made. I didnt expect that it would be like
that, OK? [But] I am a person who prays a lot. And I know
that its a miracle. After the meal, his sister, standing by the
fridge, calls him the chosen one. For Kays part, he says
he knew what music meant to him by the age of 3, when he
heard a Bob Marley song at a family reunion. They used to
play straight Haitian music, and then they just switched it
up and played No Woman, No Cry, and I started to cry, he
remembers. He was a sweet one, a calm one, his mother
remembers. Hes still shy!
At school, though, he was bullied mercilessly. He was
held back in seventh grade for three years in a row because,
as Kay explains, he was never good at subjects like math
and history. But thats how he fell in so tight with LouisPhilippe and his group of friends, all hip-hop nerds obsessed with A Tribe Called Quest and J Dilla. They were
funny as hell, Kay says, and they were all immigrants, so
we could relate to each other. It was Louis-Philippe who
first showed him how to use FruityLoops. At 15, 16, I started putting things online, and there was a whole YouTube
community of beatmakers, like Munoz and Tek.Lun, Kay
says. Uploaded under the name Kaytradamus, his earliest
works are unsophisticated but excitable, choppy little beats
with samples sliced up at the speed of a sugar rush: It was
straight hip-hop shit.
Eventually his style evolved, expanding in part thanks
to an obsession with collecting vinyl from across the genre
spectrum. I barely buy any records that are made past, like,
1989, he says. (This is a playful exaggeration more than a
statement of fact: when I visit, he has just received a package containing Ushers 2001 single U Dont Have to Call,
produced by two of his heroes, Pharrell Williams and Chad
Hugo.) Around 2010, he started posting songs that were increasingly dance-leaning to SoundCloud, a then-novel service that was was quickly becoming known for breaking new
producers and DJsthough Kay says the attention was both
a gift and a curse. They put me in this box of people like

KAYTRANADA

87

Disclosure and Soulection, but I wasnt only making house

beats [like them], he says. They were calling me a house
producer, but thats not me. I make all kinds of beats.
His goal since his early days had always been to produce
for rappers, but he found himself pushed by unexpected success into party DJing and making remixes. Madonna personally called and asked if hed be her opening tour DJ, which he
did on a few dates of her North American run. Janet Jackson
reached out to tell him that she liked his If remix, and they
are currently in talks about him making her a new, official
one. I feel like we won the lottery when I got on tour and
made all this money, Kay tells me. Im about to cryto just
help my mom and the whole family, that was our main fucking goal growing up. At first, his mother didnt quite understand how music, which she thought of as a hobby, could be
an entire life. I told her, Kevins gonna be the one to take us
out of the struggle, says Louis-Philippe. His income has allowed their mother to work less. Now, I can breathe more,
she says of the financial support.
What happens next is a source of some tension within
the household. Kay doesnt have his high school diploma as a
backup, in case the music thing doesnt work out, and many
in his family, especially his mother, dont feel like hes quite
ready to leave the nest. Im very afraid if Kevin leaves now,
perhaps something bad can happen, she says. I would like
to have him more strong in everything. I dont know. Everything can fall down. Making music, its risky, its very risky.
Kay seems to have absorbed these nerves, and in our conversations he often dials back his plan to fly away, even though
he knows that living solo could give him a better chance to
explore his newly declared sexuality. He seems caught between the idea that the rest of his life is beckoning and a selfprotective desire to stay where he is. You gotta, like, move
out at one point, he says. [But] I dont have any motivation.
And I have my mama.
Wherever his personal life is at, 99.9% certainly sounds
like the work of a mature artist. He rides a dominant wave
throughout that could come to be seen as the signature Kaytranada sound, an amalgamation of house, disco, and hip-hop
that he and his brother jokingly call black tropical house, a
play on the recent, notably white, EDM trend. Kay often uses
a synth called FM8 that he has customized uniquely, so it
sounds something like a cross between a church organ and
an accordion. Pharrell did the same thing, he says. There
are sounds that we recognize, Oh this is Pharrell, this is Timbaland, this is Trackmasters. He recently locked in a publishing deal with Def Jam legend Rick Rubin, who brought
Kay out to Shangri-La, his studio in California. He told me
he liked how the drums were out of place sometimes, Kay
says. He knows that Im doing an art form, and he really, really likes it. Hes from hip-hop, so he understands.
Though Kay has sent beats to Drake and Kanye, he has
had little luck getting big-name rappers to record over his

work. His shyness has probably hindered him, but its not
like his sample-flipping style is especially suited to the music of the moment. They want that 808, he says. I still put
808 on my shit, but its just a different kind of 808. In the
face of raps dominant, bleak trap sound, hes making nostalgic songs about breakdancing, and imagining the genre the
way he wants to hear it: cheerful and utopian. One song on
99.9%, for example, features North Carolina cult rap legend
Phontenot exactly a sought-after collaborator these days,
but someone Kay has worshipped since his youth precisely
because of his commitment to his own style. Hes got soul,
Kay says simply.
At times, Louis-Philippe seems to have a clearer sense
of Kays strengths than even Kay himself. Every EDM producer is white, or its dominated by the white population,
Louis-Philippe explains. Kaytra is one of the only ones who
is black and is making black music. He mixes disco, funk,
hip-hop, houseall of that togetherand everybody goes
crazy because they never heard that sound before. Maybe it
could be a birth of a movement, like, Damn, this black guy
is doing something big for the community. At one point, the
three of us are sitting around Kays computer listening to
his music with his dad, who has a near-spiritual pride about
hearing his native countrys influence in Kays newest songs.
Me, I didnt accept that he wasnt making Haitian music at
first, his father says. But Kevin, hes a revolutionary. Now I
understand that he didnt forget Haiti! You can feel it! Kay
puts on a song from 99.9%. Tak takka tak, tak tak tak, takka tak
tak! his dad exclaims, taking a sip from his Heineken and
hitting his knee to the beat. Thats Haitian roots!
usic journalists often have to beg their
subjects for time, but Kay seemed more
and more happy to hang out with me.
His whole family had described him as
shy, but to me, it seemed his openness
came naturally once given the space.
On whats meant to be our last night
together, we head to a nightclub on Saint Laurent Street, a
cool stretch of the city, with his manager, his brother, and
a friend from high school named JC. The staff treats them
like big shots: we skip the line, and the clubs owner, one of
Kays earliest supporters in the city, comes over to personally
take drink orders and chit-chat. We take shots and huddle as
the DJ plays rap radio hits, and servers deliver champagne
bottles with sparklers around us.
Later that night, once Im back in my hotel, Kay sends
me a text to see if we could talk the next morning, before my
plane heads back to New York. I say sure, but given his usual
sleeping schedule, Im still a little surprised to see him follow
through the next morning, promptly at 9:30 a.m. We meet up
at my hotel and walk to a breakfast place nearby. Hes freshly
showered and looking smart, in a slim blue hoodie and tor-

KAYTRANADA

88

Ive been sad my whole life,

but
fuck
that.
I
know
I have good things ahead.

toise eyeglasses. We both order eggs, but Kay barely touches

his and sips tea instead. He tells me he hasnt had much of an
appetite this past week.
We talk about the normal things that two guys might talk
about over brunch in any city: last nights party, the type of
person we hope to end up with, how much we hated high
school. I tell him Ill take him out in New York after this article comes out. Sometimes, we veer into more serious topics. He remembers a kid throwing a rock at his forehead. He
remembers how his dad used to tell him to fight back against
bullies at school, but that he always just felt like a wimp. Its
hard to be objective in moments like this. I tell him I hope he
does move out on his own. I tell him I think hell have a good
year ahead of him, maybe the best of his life.
Afterward, we walk back to my hotel. He worries at one
point that Ill get sick because I am not wearing a hat. As I
pack, we listen to Kanye. He sits on my bed, and we pull up

funny videos of Azealia Banks interviews. The hotel maitre

d knocks on the door to tell me I have stayed too long past
checkout, but still, Kay sticks by me. We sit in the lobby bar
while I wait for my car to the airport. I order a glass of white
wine to soothe my hangover.
Sitting there, Kay tells me about a happy time he remembers from last year, a year filled with difficult and important moments, but one in which he began to take the tough
steps required to live life exactly as the person he is. He had
gone to the south of France to play a festival and happened
to wake up early the morning after the show. It was quiet
there, he says, and he noticed he was, for once, all by himself.
He had nothing to do and nowhere to be. It was warm, and
he opened the door and felt the sun shining on his face. He
went swimming. I ask him why that moment made him so
happy but he cant really find an answer. Nothing major happened. It was just a nice day.

KAYTRANADA

90

Reality

Story by Lucas Mann

Illustrations by Emily Keegin

C h e c k

In a golden
television
why do we
TV? These
they
have

age for scripted

and
Snapchat,
still need reality
producers think
the
answers.

If theres such a thing as a cameramans body

type, I imagine Nathan Stoll has it. Tall and
fit, hes the kind of guy who has probably been
told, and tells himself, that hes not meant to
be crammed behind a desk. Now 37, hes spent
his whole adult life working in TV, mostly as a
cameraman. On the side, hes an independent
reality TV producer. He has been trying for half
a decade to find the right idea, one with staying
power, whatever that quality is that makes a hit.
I met Nathan in early February at the 18th
annual RealScreen Summitthe definitive
global market and conference for the business of
unscripted and non-fiction entertainment. Like
a lot of people there, he has seen enough reality TV from a close enough proximity to think:
Shit, whats stopping me from doing this? I know
the game, I can work the camera, he says. Why
shouldnt I be coming up with ideas?
So hes here with one or two concepts to
pitch; other independent producers have come
with five, or ten, or, as with one person I spoke
to, 18. Like them, Nathans life involves a lot of
looking around and a lot of hoping. When he
meets people, he thinks of them as potential
characters; he files them away in his mind and
then follows up, and prays that another producer or agent hasnt already had the same idea,
a common danger in this crowded industry.

Sometimes, he says, a network will just be

like, Bring us the next Bourdain. He rolls his
eyes. And Im like, Oh, sure, OK, man. Ill get
right on that.
This years RealScreen is being held at the
Washington D.C. Marriott Marquis, where the
walls lining the escalators have been taken over
by promotional posters. Descending into the
hotels bowels, one passes pictures of the Duck
Dynasty fam, their arms folded, glaring or grinning. Theres the cast of season four of Marriage
Boot Camp: Reality Stars, with new additions
MaMa June and Sugar Bear positioned in front.
Theres Tamar and Vince, spun off from Braxton
Family Values, posing in mock frustration next
to the tagline, Hes her Mr. Right, shes never
wrong. Theres L.A. Hair and Cutting It: In the
ATL (which is also about hair, but in a geographically and racially specialized way). Also
Kendra on Top. And #RichKids of Beverly Hills.
Many more that Ive never heard of.
At stake here is the possibility of the next
elevator-gracing concept. Over 2,000 producers,
performers, agents, buyers, and network execs
have all converged, each trying to determine
what might be deemed familiar enough yet simultaneously titillating enough to be watchable,
repeatedly, for millions of viewers. As one Canadian producer puts it to me at the hotel bar:

REALITY TV

93

You can call it a marketplace

of ideas, or you can call it a bullshit
convention.
An American Family, the 1973 PBS
show that provided viewers with unprecedented intimate access to the daily
life of a family in Santa Barbara, is widely
regarded as the most crucial ancestor to
modern reality TV. It was serialized semianthropology, the first time the dramas of
ordinary domestic life were turned into
gripping, sometimes salacious entertainment. (Ask a baby boomer if they remember the Mexican restaurant scene.)
But when it aired, An American Family
was very much an outlier, an experiment.
When we talk about reality TV now, were
usually referring to a cultural ubiquity
that didnt begin until 2000, ignited by
the scheming spectacle and high stakes of
shows like Survivor and Big Brother.
Today, after tens of seasons and nearly two decades of those marquee shows,
theres a lot of argument over what reality TV even means. Plenty of producers
try to make the distinction for me between reality and unscripted and nonfiction, with different levels of prestige and
factual-ness attached to each (theres a
reason why the producers of the E! networks I Am Cait emphasized that its a
documentary series, unlike its reality
Kardashian forebears). RealScreen gives
out annual awards, and the categories are
dizzyingly specific, ranging from Shiny
Floor Competition Game Show to Nonfiction: Social Issues/Current Affairs to
Reality: Docusoap.
Reality TV scholarship struggles with the fact that the genre
is so nebulous, encompassing
news magazine, documentary,
and competition traditions.
Though An American Family was
clearly influential, some look
even earlier. Alan Funts Candid

Camera began in 1948 and ran for

decades, putting real and unsuspecting citizens in odd situations
so the audience could gawk at
their reactions. The 40s and 50s
also saw the birth of competition
shows like The Amateur Hour and
Opportunity Knocks, which gave viewers
the power to vote on the fortunes of
hopeful ordinaries.
By the late 80s, producers combined
the allure of access with lighter, cheaper
cameras and a Reagan-born sense of
cultural terrorenter Cops, Rescue 911,
Americas Most Wanted. Then there was
MTVs The Real World, which jacked
up An American Familys notion of
peeping at normal folks by making its
subjects a group of total strangers. Its
fly-on-the-wall styling and generally
guileless subjects seemed revolutionary in 1992 but quaint now. The formula was tweaked and broadened over
generations, but all of these shows leveraged the same instinctive appeal: actual lives with actual stakes, captured
and broadcast repeatedly. At the dawn
of the new millennium, that voyeuristic formula, in all its messy, maligned,
big-tented majesty, finally boomed, with
unscripted programming dominating
primetime and completely sustaining
dozens of new cable channels.
Bruce David Klein, the 52-year-old
founder of the production company
Atlas Media, has helmed over a dozen
shows since the late 90swhat he calls
the industrys golden age. We meet
in his giant company suite on the
hotels eighth floor, where he keeps little
bottles of disinfectant by the
door for all his lucky guests,
to keep them safe from germs
when they return to the crush
of the conference. His biggest
hit is Hotel Impossible, now in
its sixth season on the Travel

Authenticity. This is what networks are

claiming to want, and what producers are
claiming to provide. But Im beginning to think
authenticity is being equated with novelty.
Channel. Each episode reignites the drama of
hoteliers fighting to save their family business.
Its a great format, the kind of show thats just
like some other shows (the Food Networks
Restaurant Impossible, for instance), but different
enough to fill its niche.
Down at the hotel bar, theres a huge field
of people who want what Kleins got. There are
guys like Will Autry, 46 and dapper in his trademark bowtie, who works as a train conductor
on the Norfolk Southern line out of Atlanta and
scribbles his ideas on a notepad in his jump seat:
a show about criminals facing their accusers,
another about dads late on their child support,
another about military veterans competing in
challenges of bravery. Theres Jennifer Walters,
from San Francisco, who quit her job at
a lifestyle network to follow her own producer
dreams. Shes got cooking, shes got home renovation, shes got a wacky dude named Berlin
whom shes calling The Bad Boy of Style.
But this generation of hopeful producers
faces a market that has maybe, finally, run out
of room. At the Marriott, I hear a lot of wistful
statements that begin with, Man, its not 2008
anymore. A couple years ago, people say, you
could show up to the conference as a nobody
with a three-minute sizzle reelhonestly, sometimes not even a sizzle, just a little one-sheet
about your conceptand sell a show in 20 minutes at the Starbucks in the lobby.
The Writers Guild strike of 2007 created
a feeding frenzy. All it took was 100 days of no
script-writing and a stagnant, hostile environment for scripted TV. Reality ideas rushed in
seamlessly to plug holes in schedules, offering shoestring budgets, fast turn-around, and
a union-free workforce. There was so much

airtime to fill, so little competition, and so many

formulas that were already working: chef with
outsized personality, former celebrities dating,
former celebrities in rehab, house renovation,
style renovation, life renovation, weird people,
rich people, peopled shoved on an island.
Now theres Netflix, Amazon, and more
moneyed services that define themselves
around prestige scripted programming. Theyre
making the kind of shit you seek out, then brag
about having watched. Its the golden age of
scripted, right? From network shows like Empire
to streaming critical darlings like Orange Is The
New Black and Transparent, TV has suddenly
surpassed film as the medium for artistic heft,
offering a greater diversity in perspectives and
more creative freedom, luring the most talented
writers, directors, and stars. The scenes are
long and stylized (Don Draper sitting silent and
pensive at a bar), the production value luscious
(the Mediterranean castles in Game of Thrones
or the replica Oval Office in House of Cards),
the ideas uniformly heady. The question for
everyone here is whether reality will survive
televisions renaissance of taste.
2015s RealScreen Summit was apparently
the Sky Is Falling one. What had been new was
suddenly old. Trusted formulas were breaking
down. The mighty Duck Dynasty, which has
run for nine seasons on A&E, finally had a ratings drop. Ditto for mainstays like FOXs American Idol. A Forbes article quoted an agent who
described a malaise that had fallen over everything, the tiredness of an industry confronting
what it means to decline.
But this year, there is an atmosphere of tense,
resolved optimism. Attendance is up again, the
third highest in the Summits history, and every

REALITY TV

95

panel I go to pushes some version of the weregonna-be-OK mantra. After all, the sky didnt
exactly fall. Its not like unscripted TV has ceased
to be. The Kardashians are all still megastars. And
a show like HGTVs Fixer Upper, about a charming
couple remodeling homes in Texas, is a legitimate
success story. On a finale night, Bravos Real Housewives of Atlanta still pulls solid ratings in its eighth
season. Netflix hit big with the unscripted Making
a Murderer and now, not surprisingly, everyones
out looking for mysterious deaths to pitch.
The spin is that good storytellerseveryone
here embraces that termwill always tell good
stories, and those good stories will adjust to new
challenges, across new media. A guy on a panel
actually titled What Just Happened? puts it like
this: Reality is a genre in its adolescence. Right
now, things are changing, but well come out on
the other side with a deeper voice.
I meet Jason Stant at the A&E happy hour,
the best, least-middle-school-danceish of all the
RealScreen happy hours. Jason is a bit of a selfstyled rebel here. His shirtsleeves are rolled up
to expose his tattoos, his beard is long, his glasses
boast thick black rims. Hes someone who believes in real documentarybadass, gonzo shit
where you hunt out intense subjects and implant
yourself among their intensity. But there isnt
much of a living to be made in feature docs, so
hes modified his ambitions to become another
aspiring independent TV producer, chasing
down stories for network consumption. This
can be frustrating.
Look, sure Im proud of what I make, he
says, but Im 41. Ive got a kid. This is TV. Im in
it to make some fucking money. Indeed, unscripted budgets are small compared to scripted,
which can pull upwards of $2 million per episode,
but a production companies standard cut of the
budget is 10 percent. Get 10 percent of 10 episodes
at $275K per, then get renewed for a second seasonthats more than making a living.
Jasons got a guy in Louisiana scouting for
him, trying to find bayou weirdos and Texas family businesses with personality. By himself, Jason
looks closer to homea buddy who fought in

Iraq and is now a military contractor, a guy-witha-mouth-on-him who runs an exclusive sneaker
shop in The Bronx.
Today he met with Red Bull. Theyre starting
their own network with a ton of money behind
it, lots of action stuff, very masculine. Thats
Jasons demo. Last year, the show he was working on about that military contractor came close
to being made, but the network pulled out of the
deal. It wouldve involved travel to dangerous
places, which was part of the appeal, but such
intensity comes with a whopper of an insurance
policy, and then this French production crew in
Argentina lost 10 people in a helicopter crash
and got really bad press, and that was enough to
spook the network.
Now Jasons most excited for a show about
life in New Orleans. I met these guys in a strip
club, he says. The bouncer found out what
I do and said, Man, Im a show. Thats sort of an
occupational hazard. Most peoples stories suck.
So I have to figure out a way to be like, Heres
some free advice: nobody wants to watch a show
about some un-famous rich dude skiing.
He liked his prospects in New Orleans,
though. He met an ordained minister/hustler
who was building an empire (of what, Im not
exactly sure), and a dwarf who makes his living
posing for photos on Bourbon Street. Its gritty,
he tells me, as we sip complimentary pinot grigio
on the hotels ground floor. Its real. I invested
weeks filming these guys. I lived it with them.
No bullshit.
Jasons agent has arranged close to 20 meetings for him this weekend. Tomorrow hes got
Esquire, MTV, Fuse, and WE tvhes not sold on
that one, but hes open to whatever. Hes feeling
good. He says his agent is for real, and these meetings are for real, and if he has a good conversation
tomorrow and a good follow-up in a couple of
weeks, he could be running a show by years end.
It can still happen that fastor at least everyone
here seems to know at least one person that it
happened that fast for.
The next day I catch up with Nathan, the
cameraman, in the delegate lounge. Were sitting
on a couch in the corner, each sipping compli-

mentary green juice. He tells me that, like Jason,

he almost sold a show last year. The contract
was signed and everything, he says. It was in
that Duck Dynasty moment when everyone was
chasing the comedy/soap, redneck-with-money
sort of thing. And I always loved cars, so I went
up to this dirt race track near Albany, NY and
started shaking hands.
The result was called Dirt Track Outlaws. It
centered on a family of racersreal gruff, real
rednecky. Nathan says that A&E, at that point,
was announcing that it had $90 million to throw
behind Duck-like content.
Then all of a sudden, nine of those shows
flop, like boom, boom, boom, he says. And
then that executive got fired. And then that was
it. Nathan pocketed $14,000 for his idea. A&E
licked its wounds, admitted its fuck-up, and
went back to content like Intervention, the sort
of reality TV where the idea is that you dont
think anyone is kidding.
Because the word of the moment is authenticity. This is what networks are claiming to
want, and what producers are claiming to provide. Its an unspecific but crucial designation.
Over three days worth of panels, I hear the word
spoken like gospel and see crowds of hopefuls
smile in silent amen each time.
At the Finding Game Changers in a Changed
Game panel, Atlas Medias Klein moderates
a discussion about whether or not reality will
ever rediscover the vibrant magic of shows like
Survivor and Big Brother. Look, he says. Big
Brother is a hit because its tapping into something inGod help ushuman nature. True,
but Im beginning to think authenticity is being
equated with novelty. Wed never seen anything
like Big Brother before it hit, so how could it have
felt contrived? At this point, it feels like weve
seen everything. As the panel draws to a close,
Eden Gaha, superstar producer behind Survivor
and MasterChef, leaves us with this pearl: Remember, sometimes making it look like its not
produced is the trickiest production of all.
In every panel I attend, new shows are held
up as examples of a return to real, but I often
have a hard time understanding why. This season

the FYI network had a hit with Married at First

Sight, a show that arranges instant marriages,
then follows the stranger-couples for the next
six weeks as they decide whether to stick it out.
Originally a Danish show, it was broadcast in 27
different countries before coming to the States.
Executives tell the crowd that they began calling it the anti-Bachelor in the development
roomcue knowing titters. The difference, they
explain, lies in Marrieds fidelity to science over
spectacle. The action is orchestrated by a team
of experts who appear on screena sociologist,
a psychologist, a sexologist, and a chaplainand
somehow this bastardized laboratory provides a
more authentic portrayal of human interaction?
At the very least, the conceit allows the show
a sense of gravitas. Its a social experiment, not
a reality show, one producer says. We do not
take this process lightly.
Also lauded for its so-called authenticity is
Discovery Channels Naked and Afraid, which
is successful enough to have birthed a spin-off,
Naked and Afraid XL, which seems like the exact
same premise but the people suffer over a longer
course of time. I get the appealcontestants are
certainly naked and, if not afraid, at least cold
at night. But if the goal is to move away from
a meddling, contriving production apparatus, its
kind of hard to ignore the thought of a bunch
of suits in a boardroom saying, Strip em naked!
Throw em in the jungle!
FYI is also really pumped about Nicole and
Jionnis Shore Flip, which sends Jersey Shore star
Snooki to flip houses with her husband, combining three potentially stale formulas. It seems to
go completely against what everyone has been
preaching. But Snookis so good at being Snooki.
Everything she says, FYIs head of development
tells the crowd, is a catchphrase, without them
even trying for it. Thats authenticity.
As for Nathan, now that his dirt track shows
been canned, hes most excited about an idea
hes calling Heroin Highway, a series following the
sheriff s department in the little town of Vergennes, VT as they combat the opiate crisis by
any means necessary. He shows me the sizzle. Its
good: hardcore music spliced with gruff, sincere

REALITY TV

98

cop-talk, even a drug-bust with cool

mini-cameras attached to bulletproof
vests. Its got action, but its got character. Its got an honest-to-God issue.
So this is, like, a one-off ? I
ask him. He smiles and leans back
into the couch, spreads his arms.
No, dude, think about it. Heroin is
everywhere. Different season,
different cops.
Nathans sizzle is more polished and ambitious than most
that Ive seen, many of which
feature actors playing the roles
that real people may hopefully
soon fill. Its got documentary
ambition, which is part of
whats being sold. Its would-be
stars ostensibly have a purpose
beyond the desire for stardom.
Sure, the potential hook is an endless
heroin epidemic, but maybe this show
could help someone. Still, if no network bites, fuck it. Nathans also got
Dallas By Design, a show about a hot,
young fashion illustrator named Dallas looking to make it to the top while
staying true to her small-town roots.
That night, at one of the hotel bars,
a Canadian producer named Daniel tells me I should write a book
called Reality TV Ruined My Life. He
wanted to make a show of the same
name, which would have followed
up with the first generation of reality stars, the ones who didnt know
any better. Licensing clips wouldve
been a nightmare, though. Daniel looks
young, but apparently hes
been successful at this game
for 20 years, so theres a posse
of fledgling producers that
orbits him, waiting for morsels
of boozy advice. He has a habit
of saying, My heart would go
out to you, if I had a heart.

He tells a story about a YouTube star,

famous for opening boxes or something.
This leads to derisive laughter and eye
rolls. YouTube is another threat to reality TVs viability, as are Periscope,
Snapchat, and all the other platforms that
allow for the cheap, instant, and constant
broadcast of a persons life. After all, if
production value and plot are the
purview of scripted TV, and reality is left chasing some shifting
notion of authenticity, whats more
authentic than a person broadcasting themself to 10 million strangers over the internet with no story
at all, or no production apparatus
beyond their laptop? Its no secret:
young viewers are turning away
from cableaccording to a 2015
Nielsen report, TV viewership fell
20 percent among millennial consumers since 2014and internet stars are
making compelling content, and thats
not a fun topic to broach in a conference full of cable producers.
But Daniel met this YouTube
box-opener and figured he should try
to butter him up, right? Get in on the
action. The guy lit into him: Why
would I want to work with you? People like me dont need people like you
anymore. Youre a dinosaur. A couple
of drinks later, Daniel tells us with a
grin, he signed the YouTube prick to a
talent deal. Who knows for what,
but at least hes locked down.
Everyones laughing by the
end of the story. In a weird way,
its hopeful. The old system, at
least for now, remains. The
couches in the delegate lounge
are still full, and the ideas are
still flowing over drinks as
business cards are slipped from
hand to hand like ecstasy at
a festival. Say what you will
people still want to be on TV.

C l a s s
Story by Liz Raiss
Styling by Mobolaji Dawodu and Liz Raiss
Photography by Shane J. Smith

Music students from around

NEW
YO R K
C I T Y on
what matters to them now

A c t s

Jack, 12
Guitar and bass, School of Rock Brooklyn
Whats your favorite song to play?

Scar Tissue by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Whos your favorite artist, living or dead?

ASSISTANTS LAKIN STARLING, ALI SULIMAN, LIA MCGARRIGLE.

HAIR AND MAKEUP NETTY JORDAN.

Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Shirt CWST CALIFORNIA, jacket SUNSPEL,

jeans models own, shoes CLARKS.

FASHION

101

Boubacar, 16
Cello, Kaufman Music Centers
Special Music School
How many hours do you practice a day?

It ranges from five to seven hours, but its

never all at one time. Maybe Ill do some in
the morning before school, some right before rehearsal, and then some after school.
Sometimes Ill practice and Ill feel really
discouraged, but theres nothing that stops
me from getting right back into it.
Whats it like to spend so much time with
classical music?

No one wants to sit down and discipline

themselves and say, Im going to play this
instrument and learn this music. Even
though Im surrounded by all this new and
contemporary music, I want to stay focused.
Im kind of weird like that, and Im in a community where there are people like me who
want to play classical music, too, instead of
just doing what everyone else does.

Shirt H&M, jacket and pants DAVID HART,

sneakers FLORSHEIM.

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102

Daniel, 13
Guitar, School of Rock Brooklyn
Whats your dream stage to perform on?

For starters, if I become big Id love to play

back at School of Rock, just to make them
feel happy. After that, when I become even
bigger, Id like to play at Barclays. The more
people there are, the better. I just love being
in front of crowds and sharing that.
What style of music do you think is the most
under-represented?

Indie rock is not given the credit that it

should get. Wherever you go at my school,
you hear rap and R&B. I never really hear
indie rock around Brooklyn that much.

Shirt GUESS ORIGINALS A$AP ROCKY,

jacket SUNSPEL, belt COS,
pants and shoes models own.

Wisdom aka
DJ Wiz, 14
Turntables and guitar, Lower East Side
Girls Club
How often do you practice?

Once a week in class, as I dont have a DJ

setup at home yet.
Whos your favorite artist, living or dead?

Michael Jackson or Deadmau5.

What do you like about being a musician?

I enjoy the feeling I get when I am really in

the flow and can use some of the cool techniques I have learned.

Top TOPSHOP,

jeans and shoes models own.

Turtleneck TOPSHOP,

dress CLAUDIA LI, shoes TOPSHOP.

Emma, 17
Violin, Kaufman Music Centers Lucy
Moses School
What do you like about classical music?

People say its a dying art form, but Im really passionate about contemporary classical music. Its very avant-garde, but theres
some really beautiful and thought-provoking pieces in there. Its perfect for millennials because were more open-minded.
Who is your favorite popular musician?

Kanye. I definitely appreciate the sounds.

People often judge artists by how they present themselves, but you really cant deny
good music. All the classical composers
were insane. Beethoven was straight-up
crazy, and Mozart was a horny crazy person
with so many wives.

Sophia, 13
Ableton Live, guitar, and vocals,
Lower East Side Girls Club
Whos your favorite artist, living or dead?

Dolly Parton.
Whats one of the biggest misconceptions
about your generation?

People say teens are always on their phones.

I dont have a phone yet, so I spend my time
making music!
What are you excited about in music now?

The most exciting thing so far in 2016

was Kendrick Lamars performance at
the Grammys.

Turtleneck H&M, jumpsuit TOPSHOP,

boots DR. MARTENS.

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105

Jonathan, 16
Drums, School of Rock Brooklyn
Do you like practicing?

I like it. Theres no one there so I can do

whatever I want. I prefer practicing by myself because I can correct my own errors. I
know having a teacher there would be beneficial, but I do this for myself and I care
that much about the instrument and how
it makes me feel. Its more than passion, its
a massive attraction. School puts a lot of
pressure and stress on my shoulder, but
when I drum I forget about that. Id rather
drum than hang out with friends.
Whos a good gateway artist for people
to get into rock music?

Led Zeppelin. They were the pioneers of

what metal and heavy rock is today, and
their musicality was outrageous. Such good
musicians could produce such great music.
They really set the bar for what rock & roll
really is. I like Moby Dick because it has
a lot of drum stuff.

FASHION

106

 Jacket TOPSHOP, shirt PLAC,

pants models own, shoes RED WING.

107

FASHION

SUBSCRIBE.
Everything you love about The FADER, on video.
With episodes on Metro Boomin, Illegal Civilization, and more.
youtube.com/TheFADER

J A Z Z
A L W A Y S
R
E
L
E

W I L L
B E
A
N
T

By Greg Tate
How jazz tripped from blues
to rap, and why we need it
more than ever.
Quiet as its kept, the music we call jazz began life as an experimental remix of dance
grooves from Africa and Europe that got
chopped and screwed by high-stepping
bluesicians of New Orleans over a century
ago. From the git-go, the jazz thing has been
as much about alchemy as flashy chops.
Everything we love about modern
song, noise, and dance sprang from swing
and bebop roots: R&B, rock, Motown,
funk, disco, hip-hop, Detroit techno, Chicago house, drum & bass, et al. are all
extensions of a movement-inciting continuum that started in antebellum New
Orleans Congo Squarebreakbeat cultures ground zero. It was the explosive
site where enslaved Africans were permitted to get their ya-yas out to the beat of
the drumwell, at least until the human
traffickers of that time figured out rebellion was also being plotted in the Square
under the cover of a funky good time.
Same as it ever was.
Early New Orleans jazz connected
those rebel riddims to funereal and carnivalesque marching band stomps; Jelly
Roll Morton decided ragtime piano was
needed to further excite the cipher of tubas, trumpets, clarinets, bass drums, and
tambourines. Duke Ellington brought a
rich palette of colors to big band swing that
was adopted from the spirituals, Debussy,
and Stravinsky. Louis Armstrong made a
trumpet emulate a man laughing to keep

from crying his eyes out and transformed

his singing voice into a sardonic freestyle
horn. What did I do to be so black and blue?
Armstrong inquired in 1925, and his existential query has yet to stop worrying the
minds, bodies, and souls of African-Americans to this day.
The flavors that Armstrongs triumphant horn shot out so perplexed the
French manufacturers of his instrument
that they sent engineers to his first Paris
concerts to find out what modifications
hed made to his trumpet. Sacre bleu could
have been the only response when the
builders realized Satchmos ancestral African lips and tongue were the only technological innovations at play.
By the 1970s, Sun Ra had already pioneered the introduction of electric pianos
and Moog synths into serious freedom
jazz: Miles Davis had strapped a wahwah pedal to his horn and was in the studio making vicious breakbeats with tape
loops, tabla players, and live handclaps
on electronic jazz masterpieces like On
the Corner and Get Up With It. Students of
Mileslike Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea,
and Weather Reportsoon followed, with
sublime composition, improv chops, and
grooves steady enough to yank in hardcore disciples of James Brown, Sly Stone,
and Funkadelic. Meanwhile, Maurice
Whites Earth, Wind & Fire so wickedly
blurred the line between avant-garde soul
and electronic jazz as to render distinctions between the genres patently absurd.
In a nutshell, the pioneers of 80s and
90s breakbeat dance culture were following precedents set by jazz musicians

of the 1920s, 40s, 60s, and 70seven if

some didnt know it. Not entirely their
fault: serious jazz got a lot less concerned
with the dance floor from the mid-40s on,
thanks to Charlie Parker and Thelonious
Monk, who were more concerned if their
virtuosic flights made them happy than if
they did everyday people; all the serious
hoofers, toe-tappers, and lindy-hoppers
got the message and moved on. Where
they moved to was a hot, newfangled
conflagration of gospel beats and vocalizing gone blasphemously secular, jazz
harmonies and gutbucket blues forms
all that mess being pioneered by one Ray
Charles. This kitchen-sink template set
the stage for everything thats come down
the pike since, from mojo-handed talents
as diverse as Little Richard, Nina Simone,
Jimi Hendrix, The Isley Brothers, Larry
Levan, Ron Hardy, A Tribe Called Quest,
and Lauryn Hill. Collage, cut-and-paste,
sampling, remixing, and genre contamination has been a preferred mode in African-American music since the 1800s.
Guru and DJ Premier of GangStarr
did much to assert the common humanity and creative urges of rappers and
beboppers in their collaborations with
Donald Byrd and others on their epochal
Jazzmatazz series of albums of the late
90s and aughts. They sparked a breakbeat-jazz hybrid scene on both sides of
the Atlantic that yielded much musical
fruit for a brief time but never cracked the
blinged-out materialist hip-hop mainstream of the late Clinton and early Bush
years. The Soulquarian Movement rallied by The Roots to assemble DAngelo,

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109

OutKast, Jill Scott, Common, Bilal, Black

Star, and Erykah Badu under one roof,
and all threw hints and flashes of their
own jazz genes into the conversation for
those who knew the codes.
On the contemporary set, cats like
Christian Scott, Jason Moran, Flying Lotus, Thundercat, Marc Cary, Vijay Iyer,
and Robert Glasper are reuniting the urge
to cunningly improvize with the urge to
move the crowd. So of late were seeing a
revival within the jazz world of electroacoustic forays that refuse any opposition
between software-driven sonic modernity
and a good old-fashioned bebop-infested
blowing sessionboth in the studio or
on the stage. Ironically enough, as DJing
has evolved into a standalone art form,
its become much akin to 60s freedom
jazz, drawing crowds who dont feel weird

about gathering to hear turntablists experiment in public with their craft.

The ever-ambitious Flying Lotus
grand-nephew of Alice Coltrane and her
husband John, a far-flung composer of
dream-dusted cosmic music in his own
righthas done much to surgically conjoin the beatmeisters and jazzers of now
through his Brainfeeder label. Its an enterprise which in a relatively short while
has normalized the curious drift of instrumental improvisers to the dark side
of hiss-and-glitch clouded boom-bap, and
vice-versa.
Political upheaval and jazz revivals
tend to go hand in hand for African-Americans, and this Black Lives Matter-defined
moment is no different in that regard. The
jazz-damaged hip-hop artist of now who
has made the convergence of ambient

sonics, beats, and sexy improv seem inevitable, a seamless fait accompli, has been
Kendrick Lamarespecially given how
fluidly and fluently he deployed Glasper,
Thundercat, and other bi-coastal jazz
pros in the composing process that produced To Pimp a Butterfly. Because critics
were so quick to label the album a black
protest psalm, Butterfly hasnt yet been
fully recognized as the Bitches Brew of our
timean artists nuclear meltdown of this
eras dominant musical tropes into a definitive abstract-expressionist statement
one that We The People can feel, call and
respond, rally around, freely quote, space
out, get our wiggle on to, etc., etc.
Butterfly is a bedazzling combo of beats,
rhymes, and live in-the-studio experimentation. Jazz heads have no choice but to
flip over For Free, a straight-up freedom

Illustration by Pablo Delcan

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110

Collage, cut-and-paste, sampling, remixing,

and genre contamination has been
a preferred mode in African-American
music since the 1800s.
Greg Tate

swing where Kendrick turns rapping into

scatting and what author Jack Kerouac
called bebop prosody, while string and
drum breaks pop like bomb bursts around
his head. Its a ballsy declaration of jazzfunk allegiance from an MC not afraid
to play a game of virtuoso chicken with
players who routinely eat knotty changes
for brunch. Theres as much Isley Brothers and P-Funk influence as Coltrane and
Mingus, but in the 70s it was never unusual to hear funk bands sharing stages and
tours with Miles acolytes like Hancock
and Corea. A musical rapport and mutual
language was shared, one bonded by the
warm-blooded tones of the Fender Rhodes
pianothe universal solvent of 70s black
music across the rhythmic spectrum. Ya
gotta love that Kendrick recognized having Glasper on Butterflywith his sumptuous touch on the Rhodesgives more life
to the sonic beds his rhymes flowed over.
Ditto Terrace Martins yearning-burning
alto sax on Alright, which establishes a
stellar emotional plateau for jazz and hiphop hybrids.
That Lamar is a multidirectional rapperable to supershift his cadences,
character-acting, and melodic caches on
a dimeis what unveils him as a jazzer in
hip-hop guise. Hes not alone in these mutant abilities: the members of Freestyle
Fellowship, The Pharcyde, Snoop Dogg,
and Del Tha Funky Homosapien all inject
that gene into a loosey-goosey California
rap skill set. Lamars just the first artist to
make it so fearlessly explicit at breakneck
tempos when many of his generational
peers are still drawling lockstep to goth-

ic trap beats. Its hard to imagine Drake,

Young Thug, or even Chance The Rapper so viciously and fluently going toeto-toe with a stomp in 9/8 like Kendrick
does at the midway point on Momma.
Fortunately, the race toward the dreamy
side of the jazz-ecstatic aesthetic continued on K-Dots surprise March release,
untitled unmastereda spooky revisitation
of the trans-dimensional realm of loops
and live-riffing in modern rap that he and
his cohorts have made their privileged
wheelhouse.
The most immediate beneficiary of
this perfect storm, though, has been Kamasi Washington and his comrades in the
West Coast Get Down crew. Washingtons
May 2015 release, The Epic, signals how
modern acoustic jazz could go down to
the breakbeat and improv, harvesting a
global flow of heads ready once again to
embrace 15-minute tenor saxophone solos with as much ardor and attention as
theyll bestow on their favorite MCs next
64 bars.
Washingtons rapid ascent to worldstage prominence has been linked to both
exceptional good fortune and family ties
within jazz, but the striking thing about
The Epic is that theres nothing overtly
hip-hop-friendly about it. Its as pure
a sonic throwback to the 70s freedomcum-cosmic swing of his dads youth
as has been heard in acoustic jazz since
that era, when Alice Coltrane, Pharoah
Sanders, and McCoy Tyner extended the
range of Sun Ras intergalactic inventions
into forms that found traction among a
post-Black Power generation of listeners

on historically black college campuses.

Also woven in are nods to the smoother
funk-jazz of the ear, purveyed by Grover
Washington Jr. and The Crusaders. The
twain rarely met up and played nice back
thendue to political divisions in jazz over
spiritual purity and pop ambitions. But
as frequently happens when the gems of
our parents eras undergo rediscovery, old
rhetorical baggage fades and the glorious
innocence of crate-digging for soul gold
remains. Even more remarkable, though,
is how Washington has made those openended modal jazz forms relevant, rabidly
followed by the musically intrepid and
curious collegiate crowds of nowthe
Black Power flower children of the Black
Lives Matter era. Many of us jazz lifers
got lifted seeing more twentysomethings
at Washingtons February coming-out gig
in New York City than wed witnessed at
a Gotham jazz club since The Marsalis
brothers and Steve Colemans confederates stormed their youth movement onto
the scene in the 1980s.
As always, jazz never went away; it
just kept vibrating in its batcave, laying
in stealthy wait for a shaken-and-stirred
world to get hip and revolutionary-minded again, between wars and between
the ears.

FADE OUT

111

By Megan Reynolds

H
O
W
PODCASTING
GOT
BETTER

The hosts of two POC-helmed

and women-anchored podcasts discuss how they created a home for listeners.
The first-ever podcast hit the internet in
2003. Radio Open Source, a show about global politics (and ideas through an American
lens) hosted by WBUR Bostons Christopher Lydon, is still going strong. In the
years following Lydons first show, the
nascent medium was dominated by the
kinds of aural signifiers typically associated with public radio: jangly intro music,
measured pauses, a mildly distinct voice.
Its Terry Grosss purr; its Ira Glass at his
most earnest and all-knowing; its Sarah
Koenigs nervous giggle when accepting
a collect call from Adnan Syed. For more
than a decade, that was the standard: white
hosts telling stories to an audience that reflected what they saw when they looked in
the mirror.

But thanks to this conversational mediums natural ability to express its show
creators identitiesin addition to the
ways that producing podcasts sidesteps
broadcastings traditional power structure
by placing control directly in the hands of
the creators themselvespodcasting has
become a valuable platform for once-marginal voices. Shows like For Colored Nerds
and Call Your Girlfriend offer dynamic
takes on anemic Oscar selections, Michelle
Obamas greatness, period snacks, millenial anxiety, and the aesthetic value of peak
Eddie Murphy as quasi-feminist praxis,
while also smashing preconceived notions
about how a podcast should function.
As the hosts of FCN and CYG explain,
shows made and produced by women and
people of color are gradually breathing
new life into a previously static format.
Illustration by Pablo Delcan
Brittany Luse, co-host, For Colored Nerds:

Part of the reason why you start a podcast

in the first place is because, on some level,
you just talk too much. Our podcast, in and
of itself, started as an extension of the conversations we would have with each other;
it was like taking the discussions we had
all day long on Gchat and putting them
on wax for other people to listen to. When
Eric first proposed the idea about two
years ago, The Read was the only podcast
that I really listened to on a regular basis.
As we started to make our show, podcasting became a part of the cultural tableau in
a way that wasnt there before. There was
StartUp, Bodega Boys [formerly titled Desus
vs. Mero], Longformthose were the shows
I began listening to a lot.
Beyond making sure that other people
hear it, we dont feel like the show has to go
through some amazing transformation for
it to be what it wants it to be. The fact that
people are finding the conversations valuable means we can focus on trying to get
[the shows] in the phones or on the desktops of people who will listen.

For people of color making podcasts, the

fact remains: its difficult to gain listenership, especially organically, if you dont
have access to the resources of a network.
We get a lot of word-of-mouth recommendations. Its crazy to me to think thatnot

even in the context of, like, Twitterpeople were at a social function talking about
our show. That speaks to how we have to
[continue to] work to make sure that our
stories are heard, shared, and get that traction. Discovery is actually the challenge;
thats the thing that people are trying to
figure out.
Obviously, [weve grown and] we know
more people are listening now, and thats
not something we completely ignore. We
take this into account, but we try to make
sure that were discussing things the way
that we know, and thats from the lens of
two young black people. We just started
getting criticismluckily, we dont feel
moved at all to act on that. Some questions
are interesting, and we will try to incorporate them into the show, but we want
to make sure that were not changing the
gaze, and that were centering ourselves in
terms of how were framing the conversation. Which is what we thought was sort of
initially missing [in podcasting]. If youre
not focused on everybody else in the medium, your show will be pretty authentically youwhich ours is, and its relatively
unique.
We have an episode called Dear White
People where this family wrote to us
about their desire to move to the South
Side of Chicago. They were a white fam-

FADE OUT

112

Eric Eddings, co-host, For Colored Nerds:

  

OUT NOW
A molotov cocktail aimed directly at our complacent,
social media-obsessed culture, numbed by easy distractions.
Boston Globe
A fevered slice of righteous rage, filled to the brim
with unsettling production and vivid imaginary.
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An amalgam of hip-hop, punk, dance music and rock, shifting between
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A true revolutionary in a world that needs one but doesnt know it yet.
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We choose our own lanes;

we dont have to participate in
traditional media to be heard.
Aminatou Sow

ily, and their reason to do that was to

combat their own privilege and lack of
understanding; they wanted to connect
with a community. We wrestled with it a
lot in the episode. We ultimately decided
to devote a show to it because, in regular
daily life, I wouldnt get a question that extreme. Though we talk about and dissect
cultureabout race and how we fit into
the worldwe are by no means experts,
and we would not necessarily consider
ourselves qualified to give you advice on
where you should move, especially in that
particular scenario. But we answered it
knowing what we know. We recognized
that we had a platform, and that it was an
opportunity to discuss the role those types
of [experiences play in our world] and how
black people internalize them.
Aminatou Sow, co-host, Call Your Girlfriend: For over a year, our producer Gina
Delvacwho has a background in public
radiohad been bugging us, like, You
guys should do a podcast. This was in
2012 or 2013. Every time, Anne [Friedman,
my co-host,] and I would laugh and say,
Yeah, that sounds great but I don't know
how to do that. We were unclear as to the
mechanics of how it would work. Around
the same time, I had started listening to
more podcastsIm low-key obsessed with
themand noticed that all of my favorite
ones were with men. I was talking to some
dude-bro about it at a party, and he was
like, Its probably that men are better at it
or something. And nothing will make me
do something faster than if you tell me that
a woman cant do it. Hearing him articulate that [turned into] a 2 a.m. phone call,
like, Hello Gina, we are ready!
I love Marc Marons podcast [WTF];
I listen to it all the time. If you asked me
what my favorite podcast isany year, any

day of the weekI will say This American

Life. But that stuff is there, its not going
away; theyre serious institutions. Thats
whats really happened with this kind of
democratization of podcasts: you have
more variety, you have different things to
choose from, and its validated a different
kind of art form.
For me, it was really important to have
representation. When I started doing this I
couldnt name you one black woman who
was hosting a podcasteither because others werent there, or for my own personal
ignorance. Now, I can name 10.
The magic that we have within the
show, you cant really replicate that to another format. Were very unapologetically
ourselves. Theres no posturing. Theres
also something about the fact that women
have really strong friendships and relationships with each other, and in pop culture
that representation is lacking. I think that
people genuinely like to see that. But if Im
really honestthe thing that makes our
show the best is that everybody is a fucking eavesdropper. People love to hear other
people talk to other people.
And Ive learned so much from listening to other shows like For Colored Nerds.
Its just been really eye-opening. Theres
an amazing kind of magic, when youre
like, OK, theres black ladies on the airwaves. This is cool. And theyre part of
making content, have different opinions,
and see things in different ways.
Im obsessed with listening to Tax Season, on Loud Speakers Network. Its hosted
by this guy Taxstone; hes problematic for
many reasons and hes a protg of [Power
105.1s] Charlamagne Tha God, but his podcast is insane. Theres transphobia, theres
a ton of misogyny, but hes an ex-felon who
has a really popular podcast. Nobodys
gonna give that man a radio show, but

FADE OUT

Chris Morrow, the CEO at LSN, was like,

Youre a great personality, here, have a show.
Taxstone has such good insight, and for as
much as I disagree with a lot of his disposition, he says things that are so crucial and
clutch and true. I cant even deny that shit.
Listen to the episode with him and Bobby
Shmurdas attorney; they start breaking
down the penal system in this country and
your brain is just exploding. I was like,
NPR isnt gonna give me thisnever.
Podcasts are right now. I dont want
to say that theyre the futurethis wave is
good. Its interesting to see the ways they
replicate some of the awfulness of everything thats happening in media, like who
gets press, who gets exposed, and what
people are listening to. But at the same
time, the future is that we get to make. We
choose our own lanes; we dont have to participate in traditional media to be heard.

114

MyMusicRx programs engage hospitalized kids of all ages and diagnoses

to relieve stress, anxiety, and perception of pain. You can help us deliver the
healing power of music to over 5,000 kids at 20 pediatric hospitals across the
country. Learn more at MyMusicRx.org.

WHEN
PRODUCERS
ARE
PUPPET
MASTERS
By Amos Barshad
A history of how the Svengali
producer has manifested in
pop music.
He was a tall, bony individual, George
du Maurier wrote in his 1894 novel Trilby,
well-featured but sinister. He had bold,
brilliant black eyes and a thin, sallow
face and a beard of burnt-up black which
grew almost from his under eyelids. And
he went by the name of Svengali.
That is the first-ever appearance of a
character that has been both obscured and
made elemental by the passing of time. Du
Mauriers Svengali was a diabolical, explicitly anti-Semitic caricature with no shadings as to his character. It was with pure
villainy and literal hypnotism that he transformed our titular heroinethe joyous,
poor Parisian milkmaid Trilby, with whom
everyone fell in loveinto a dead-eyed international singing sensation. Throughout
the glorious opera houses of Europe, and
all while under his masterful trance, she became known as La Svengali, and she bred
a craze: Svengalismus.
Trilby was a populist smash in its time.
It birthed a musical, a stage play revived
repeatedly over decades, and at least seven
cinematic adaptations. And somewhere
along the way, as its lore grew, the prototype gave way to an archetype. Most of us
dont know du Mauriers tall, bony individual. But we know the svengali: the dark
figure that, with undue control and perilous personal cost, manipulates another
into greatness.
A century and change since it first appeared, the idea of the svengali worms its
way into wherever power dynamics exist:
national electioneering, international espionage, the break room at the Tommys

Illustration by Pablo Delcan

Pretzel Hut at the mall. But it still seems to

have its natural home in our most individualistic mass-market art form. That is to say,
the truest form of the svengali remains that
of the master puppeteering the pop star.
How does the svengali manifest itself in
todays pop? And why is it still so present?
To chop it up bluntly, we can split up our
pop svengalis by their respective levels
of malice.
First, a small step into the murk. These
are svengalis who are technically well-in-

tentioned, yet they are still somehow suspect in their position of control.
Consider Scooter Brauns shepherding
of Justin Bieber: it was only when Bieber
shook off the Scooter yoke and ran wild,
driving fast and peeing into buckets, that
we realized how firm that yoke once was.
Look, as well, at the young Rick Rubin.
He was instrumental in transforming the
Beastie Boys from hardcore kids to a hiphop phenomenon: he gifted them the big
drums of their early sound; he bought them
matching Puma tracksuits. But the Beasties

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116

FADE OUT

Amos Barshad

Ike Turner, the man who may have invented rock & roll, also joins us here. His
machine-gun bursts of tortured, quivering
chordal slams, wrote the Los Angeles Timess
Robert Palmer in 1993, were like nothing heard before and have rarely been
equaled since. But while Ike was possibly
a genius, he could not sing. He found his
greatest muse in Anna Mae Bullock from
Nutbush, Tennesseethe woman who
would meet the world as Tina Turner. Ikes
vision, as once summed up by Steely Dans
Donald Fagen: The band plays tight; Tina
goes berserk.
Years later, rendered utterly ignominious by Tinas accounting of his brazen philandering and his physical abuse, Ike would
still take outsized pride in his role in the
crafting of his ex-wifes famed showmanship. The lights came down on her, there
was no spotlight on me, Ike told SPIN in
1985. Shed stroke that mike and shit like
thatI was the one who told her to do that

In other artistic fields, the

svengali occurs regularly. In pop,
the svengali is baked into
the system.

would grow to resent his outsized role and

his egging-on of boozy frat-boy antics. In
order to recuse themselves of Rubins control, they would quit Def Jam in its iconic
prime and run off to California.
Next, we take an incremental step up,
into actual criminality. Here we have the
likes of Cash Moneys Bryan Birdman
Williams, who groomed New Orleans rapper Lil Wayne to stardom from the age of
11. Wayne would grow to feel that Birdman
was the only proper father hed had. But
Birdman allegedly ran his business like a
mob outfit, which meant there wasnt much
of an accounting department; one-off lavish gifts were said to come much more regularly than royalty checks. In January 2015,
the son would sue the father over withheld
payments for $51 million.
Worse: Lou Pearlman, who initially
funded the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC
with money generated from a pyramid
scheme built on blimp rentalsthen later
stole millions from the boys to desperately
prop up said blimp scheme. Justin Timberlake has said working with him was like
being financially raped by a Svengali. And
it gets crazier: when the warrant for Pearlmans arrest for fraud was issued, he fled
to Jakarta, where he was eventually found
registered at a hotel under the name A.
Incognito Johnson. Hes currently in federal prison in Texarkana, Texas, where he
swears he could whip up a new hit boy band
if just given regular access to a phone line.
Lastly, a look at the most dastardly:
those whose prodigious talent is only
topped by their psychosis.
Phil Spectors here. In the 60s, his obsessively deliberate Wall of Soundlayers and layers of strings and guitarselevated girl-group pop into high art. But it
was with creeping dictatorism that he created a sound so heart-quaking and eternal.
Five years after Spector produced Be My
Baby for The Ronettes, he married their
lead singer, Ronnie, virtually imprisoning
her in their home. I was brainwashed, he
wouldnt let me out of his sight, Ronnie
has said. All he wanted me to do was stay
at home and sing Born to Be Together to
him every night. He told her there was a
gold coffin in the basement, and that the
only way I would ever leave him would be
in that coffin.

And Tina being the sex symbol, thats what

happened. People think that came from the
visual part of an Ike and Tina show, but
man, thats not it. I styled her that wayI
made it happen. I gave the drummer the
signal, and it sounded like a gunshot.
And now threatening to enter history
alongside the notorious Ike and Phil: Lukasz Gottwald, the ubiquitous and powerful hitmaker known as Dr. Luke.
In the winter of 2016, the legal battle between Dr. Luke and his former protge
Kesha Sebert, once known professionally
as Ke$ha, dominated music-industry news.
Kesha has alleged that over the decade of
their collaborationwhich produced charttopping hits such as Tik Tok and Die
Youngthe producer abused her both
verbally and sexually. In a civil lawsuit filed
in hopes of voiding her contractual obligations, Kesha made a string of nightmarish
allegations, including that she was once
given what Dr. Luke called sober pills
and woke up the next day naked in his bed
without memory of the night before.
Dr. Luke has denied all charges, tweeting at one point that Kesha was like my little sister; hes suggested the charges stem
from a misguided attempt at a more favorable contract renegotiation. In February,
a New York Supreme Court judge denied
an injunction which would have allowed
Kesha to release music out from under
the jurisdiction of Dr. Lukes Sony-backed
Kemosabe Records.
This is a story that, if it didnt feel so
horrible, would sound clichd. Kesha was
18 when Luke signed her, an aspiring starlet
from Nashville with a country music background and a lovely natural singing voice.
She dropped out of high school, moved to
L.A. When she broke through a few years
later, it was as an unbathed, whiskey-loving, quasi-rapping delinquent.
Dr. Luke was a protg once, too. His
mentor was Max Martin, the Swedish
songsmith who has dominated the pop
landscape for nearly two decades. From the
outset, Martin was eager for total control:
Robyn, the dance-music experimentalist, was in the Martin camp as a teenager,
but bristled under his command and often
shook off his directives (I really wanted to
stand on my own two feet, she would later

117

say). In the late 90s, Jive Records introduced Martin to their new artist: the thenunknown, 15-year-old Britney Spears. And
he found his blank canvas.
All those years later, Luke would too.
Hed crafted smash hits before, for Kelly
Clarkson and Katy Perry. But Kesha was
the first act that Luke had discovered and
developed himself; to Luke, this seemed to
mean he had a natural ownership over Keshas career. And thats where the svengali archetype really kicks in. We may never know
the details of Dr. Lukes alleged sexual assault. But we can understand the dynamic
at play in this contentious relationship: its
that of a powerful, highly connected older
man and a younger woman being denied
her agency.
Keshas lawsuit describes a working relationship in which she had no true control
over her creative choices or her public persona. Kesha says Dr. Luke made his control
explicitly clear: during one spat, according
to an affidavit, he icily told her that he could
manipulate my voicein his computerto
say whatever he wanted. And when taking
aim at Kemosabe, the lawsuit paints the
record label as less of an unwitting participant and more of a pimp. The label, the suit
says, provided Dr. Luke with unfettered
and unsupervised access to vulnerable female artists beginning their careerswho
would be totally dependent upon Dr. Luke
for success.
This is a formulation that is maddeningly easy to grasp. Because this is how our
pop music naturally functions: the star at
the front of the stage dancing and singing
gets the mass adulation and the magazine
covers; the operator behind the curtain
maintains the control. This is how wethe
engaged fans, informed as to the full machinations of the song machinegenerally
believe the best pop music is made.
Svengalis are persuasive not just because they promise money and fame; they
are persuasive as well because they promise
grandness. Thats the currency of pop. An
aspiring pop star doesnt just want red-carpet glitz: they want the stature, the legacy,
the iconicity that pop can grant.
An actor can dazzle millions with a
vulnerable debut performance. A novelist
can find awards and audience with direct,
thinly-veiled memoir. But the pop star, we

know, never just arrives fully formed. Even

when the pop stars rallying cry is individualism above all else, we know, there has
been a process.
Which means the string-pullerthe one
who orchestrates the processis elemental.
In other artistic fields, the svengali occurs
regularly. In pop, the svengali is baked into
the system.
Some of those svengalis are, possibly, true
psychopaths. Decades after his abuse of
Ronnie, Phil would be convicted of killing
Lana Clarkson in his California home by
shooting her in the head. This was a tragedy made worse by its foreshadowing. For
decades before, tales of an arms-crazed
Spector pulling guns in studio sessions
with John Lennon, with Leonard Cohen,
with The Ramoneswere passed along and
gawked at.
Most of the time, though, svengalis
seem driven by something less than outand-out mania: they believe their control is
warranted by their singular talent and their
uncompromised vision. And in that, they
find some kind of complicated redemption.
Is abuse justified if it produces great
art? Most of us wouldnt have a hard time
answering this question. The respective
greatnesswhether its Fellinis La Strada
or Keshas (truly great) CMonis irrelevant. Human abuse cannot be justified
by product.
The svengali would disagree. And in
that, they are cheered by the public response. As long as the true extent of the
control is kept secret, the art can stand on
its own. The fans love it, and the svengali is
proven right. Once the control is revealed,
the fans turn on the svengali. And the svengali is rendered confused, dejected, bitter,
and combative. The svengali is left shouting, from deep within the bowels of theoretical gated mansions, But you loved me
before you knew!
Take Ike: to the end, he was unrepentant. He was, he believed, the only one
who understood how hard it was to create
a force as commanding as the young Tina
Turner. He was, he believed, the only one
who could have pulled it off. And years later,
some music historians would grapple with
a problematic, widely shared thought: that
the brilliant, violent Ike Turner had died

FADE OUT

not being paid his proper due. Wrote the

LA Timess Palmer, perhaps [Ike] played
the behind-the-scenes svengali too seamlessly for his own good.
Keshas case has brought a wave of discourse about assault and the ugly things
that happen in the back corridors of power,
and about how and why victims are believed. Its also brought attention to this
storied tradition of svengalismand reminded us quite how rife it is.
Even with Keshas case in the news, is
it hard to imagine, as we speak, her same
trajectory reoccurring? A high school dropout moving to California and throwing her
lot in with a producer she perhaps should
not be so trusting of? There will always
be raw talent. And there will always be
bony individuals believing they should, by
any means necessary, shape raw talent
into supernovas.
Lets go back to du Maurier. He was the
inventor of the svengali, and so the svengalis original, fiercest critic. But even he fell
prey to the svengalis defense: that in the
songs, there is salvation.
By the end of his book, everybody dies.
Svengali has a sudden heart attack midperformance; finally free of his hypnosis,
Trilby dies soon after of a vaguely defined
illness. We, the readers, are meant to be
happy that Trilby moves on with some
measure of peace. But theres a lamentation too. Despite his lecherous treachery,
despite his cowardice and greed, were left
feeling regret that the music that Svengali
svengalid into existence is no more.
Her voice was so immense in its softness, richness, freshness, that it seemed to
be pouring itself out from all round, du
Maurier writes. If she had spread a pair
of large white wings and gracefully fluttered up to the roof and perched upon the
chandelier, she could not have produced a
greater sensation. The like of that voice has
never been heard, nor ever will be again.

118

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