If you hate rap, then you haven't been exposed to enough rap. That's where these guys come in - Das Racist are a pair of rappers from NYC and Alameda, and they are obscene and vulgar brown men. However, they are also the most literate and hilarious rappers I've heard in a long time - it's hard not to open a new tab while listening and voraciously googling every reference they make, from Rumi to Gitmo to Harold and Kumar.
Joke rap sucks though, right? Well, not really, and especially not when it's as self-reflexive and intelligent as Das Racist are. They succeed in the face of the backpack-rapper backlash - people are sick of hearing about the shortcomings of hip-hop, but Das Racist bring those topics up and mock them without being didactic and preachy - quite the opposite, in fact. Just listen to the opening banter on hahahaha jk, and we already have a discussion and implicit derision for the tough-guy persona that most rappers build up.
Their discography is pretty slim at the moment - they came up with the rise of "internet music" and have only released two mixtapes and one retail album, as well as a handful of solo mixtapes and some unreleased stuff in the invaluable URC collection: a .rar full of their rarities and features, definitely worth checking out. If you're still undecided, give the impressive Womyn a listen:
They released their best stuff for free online, which you can grab when you hit the jump:
I chose to use Klaus Nomi's Samson and Delilah aria mainly because of his persona - he donned the mantle of a complete and utter "other", and his music comes from that perspective. Having been born as an ethnic minority in a largely racist country, and growing up as a Mormon in a largely atheist country, it has been easy for me to relate to the outsider's perspective. I also decided to use visuals from Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch Drunk Love in order to complement the Nomi song as it is a film that champions the role of the introverted outsider. Both of these texts speak from a similar viewpoint, and I tried to create a comparison and suggest intertextual links between these two works that I admire deeply.
Klaus Nomi's otherworldly persona.
Nomi was a social outsider due to his sexuality, which he manifested visually in his bizarre appearance and theatrical stage performances. Despite his strangeness, he was still a classically trained singer and had an excellent ear for music, as shown in his performance of this aria - it is something of an anomaly on his pop/new wave fuelled LP, and stands out as a nod to the classical masters - the artists that went before him. I find it particularly beautiful, and decided that rather than cutting it up and producing a garish "remix," I would recontextualise the piece by placing it alongside images in a pseudo-music video format. I hoped that this would change the meaning of the piece and highlight the aspects that I can relate to. I followed the example of Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegans Wake by taking fragmentary moments and letting them run together, rather than telling a narrative. I feel like this pushes the focus towards the music.
Although I am not as extreme an outsider as Nomi, I can sympathise with his position and can appreciate his efforts as an artist. In my home country, I was a racial and religious "other." This was a central part of my identity regardless of whether I wanted it to be, and I feel as if I have grown into the role. On the other hand, I am also an aspiring artist and I believe in the unifying nature of art - even the most homophobic individual would have a hard time deriding Nomi's beautiful rendition of Samson and Delilah. This is proof to me that the acknowledgment of beauty is a natural, almost primal quality, and that it can overcome the discriminatory viewpoint that some individuals are taught and eventually embrace. This is not to put myself into the role of a token performer, but to give myself hope and an ideal to aspire to in my work.
The people I shared this idea with liked it but didn't offer any deeper feedback - they could draw textual links but I needed to explain the way they related to me, as it related to often unspoken aspects of my childhood and youth, and the overt and covert discrimination I faced.
