| Being an artist nowadays is being this false version of perfection that we promote through Instagram, through our socials. It’s like 'Wizard of Oz.' They’re behind the f***ing screen falling apart, trying to keep up this image. And people need to take down the sheet because it’s unsustainable. |
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| PnB Rock in Los Angeles, May 22, 2019. |
| (Scott Dudelson/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“Being an artist nowadays is being this false version of perfection that we promote through Instagram, through our socials. It’s like 'Wizard of Oz.' They’re behind the f***ing screen falling apart, trying to keep up this image. And people need to take down the sheet because it’s unsustainable.”
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- Santigold
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| rantnrave:// |
Bad News
The murders of three rappers in Los Angeles County in the past month, including the shocking killing of PNB ROCK while he was eating lunch with his girlfriend at Roscoe’s House of Chicken & Waffles, has put a national spotlight on a tragic, ongoing story that’s normally limited to the news feeds of hip-hop blogs and the inside pages of local newspapers. These are thoughtful, important stories from AUGUST BROWN and KENAN DRAUGHORNE in the LA Times, CHAR ADAMS at NBC News and TOURÉ writing for TheGrio. They each, in different ways, chart a story that has shook the hip-hop community but isn’t strictly about hip-hop, and that shouldn’t be blamed on the music. They’re also incomplete stories. The shooting of PnB Rock was seen by the media, and by the wider music community, in a way that the murders of BFG STRAAP and LOTTA CASH DESTO, both in Texas, and YOUNG SLO-BE, in Northern California, all around the same time, were not. In all, by my count, at least 23 rappers have been murdered in the US so far in 2022 (it isn’t an anomaly; I’m aware of 29 in 2021). These are their names:
- 23 RACKZ (from Maryland)
- 414 LIL MOE (Milwaukee)
- BABY CINO (Miami)
- ROLLIE BANDS (Tampa)
- BFG STRAAP (Dallas)
- JOHNNY MAY CASH (Chicago)
- C-HII WVTTZ (the Bronx)
- ARCHIE EVERSOLE (Atlanta)
- FBG CASH (Chicago)
- GOONEW (Maryland)
- HALF OUNCE (Inglewood, Calif.)
- JAYDAYOUNGAN (Louisiana)
- KEE RICHES (Los Angeles)
- LOTTA CASH DESTO (Memphis)
- MONEYGANGVONTAE (Los Angeles)
- PNB ROCK (Philadelphia originally)
- SNOOTIE WILD (Memphis)
- EARL SWAVEY (Los Angeles)
- TDOTT WOO (Brooklyn)
- TROUBLE (Atlanta)
- TRUEBLEEDA (Baton Rouge)
- WAVY NAVY POOH (Miami)
- YOUNG SLO-BE (Stockton, Calif.)
It would be doubly tragic if these men—they’re all men—were to remain invisible. They should be remembered and their stories should be told. The stories may connect and overlap, and they may not. They were West Coasters, Southerners, Midwesterners, Northerners. Some were young, up-and-coming artists; some were older, maybe having found some tangible success, maybe not. There are questions that don’t yet have answers and communities that don’t yet have resolution. There are questions that haven’t even been asked. There’s gun culture and gang culture, sometimes reflected in the victims’ music and sometimes not. There’s poverty and hopelessness and ambition and hopefulness, which you can definitely find in the music. There are people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, both literally and figuratively. “The death rate in hip-hop,” writes Touré, who connects the murders to other hip-hop deaths from natural causes, “doesn’t mean something is wrong with hip-hop. It’s an extension of the problems all Black people go through.” Much of which, of course, can be heard in hip-hop itself. As University of Virginia hip-hop professor A.D. CARSON wrote earlier this year, “the music emerging from these places is a reflection of crisis, not the source of it.” And these are 23 particular victims of a crisis, each of whom deserves to be counted.
Rest in Peace
Canadian violinist GEOFF NUTTALL, who co-founded the acclaimed St. Lawrence String Quartet, taught at Stanford and directed the chamber music series at the Spoleto Festival, where he earned the sobriquet “The Jon Stewart of Chamber Music.”
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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And The Writer Is... |
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| And The Writer Is...Take A Daytrip |
| By Ross Golan and Take a Daytrip |
| Denzel Baptiste and David Biral became friends during the first week of freshman year at NYU in 2011, bonding over music and genre collisions. As Take A Daytrip, they’re musical omnivores who do their best to inhabit the world of the sound they’re working on, from afrobeats to grime, latin trap to garage, country to pop. |
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The Walrus |
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| Groupies Deserve More Credit |
| By Lisa Levy |
| Superfans contribute just as much to culture as the male musicians they love. Why haven’t they had the shine they deserve? |
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| what we're into |
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| Music of the day |
| “Cerulean” |
| Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn |
| From "Pigments," out Friday on Merge. Yet another astonishing left turn from New Orleans singer/songwriter Dawn Richard, late (very) of Danity Kane and Diddy Dirty Money, in collaboration with New York bassist Spencer Zahn. |
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| Music | Media |
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Suggest a link  |
| “REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask ‘why?’” |
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