Hip-hop is having a renaissance right now in the city of New York, where it seems like every other day a new MC rises up out of the five boroughs with an even more unique style and approach to the music than what we thought was possible before. Motley crews like the A$AP Mob, the Beast Coast, and World's Fair have given us a reason to love rhymes again. We've written a lot about this stuff, but sometimes words don't do it justice. So, we've linked up with scene insider Verena Stefanie Grotto to document the new New York movement as it happens in real time, with intimate shots of rappers, scenesters, artists, and fashion fiends.

This week Verena caught up with Black Dave, Bodega Bamz and the Tanboys, Chase N Cashe, OG Ron C, Maybach Music's Stalley, Remy Banks of World's Fair, and Meyhem Lauren with his Snow Beach team laced in vintage Polo. 

Photographer Verena Stefanie was born and bred in Bassano del Grappa, Italy. The small town is not known for hip-hop, but they do make a very tasty grape-based pomace brandy there called grappa. Stefanie left Bassano del Grappa at the age of 17 to go and live the wild skateboarding life in Barcelona, Spain, where she worked as the Fashion Coordinator for VICE Spain. Tired of guiding photographers to catch the best shots, she eventually grabbed the camera herself and is now devoted to documenting artists, rappers, style-heads, and more. She recently directed a renowned documentary about the Grime scene in UK and has had photo features in GQ, Cosmopolitan, VICE, and many more. Check out her website and follow her on twitter and instagram @VerenaStefanie.

Previously - Brooke Candy, Black Dave, Chase 'n' Cashe, and Bodega Bamz

More hip-hop photos:

Meet Mike Schreiber: Hip-Hop's Illest Photographer

A$AP PLAYLI$T MANIFE$TED

Finally, the Hip Hop Kids Are Taking Acid 

I've been instructed by VICE's supreme overlords to always adopt a "global" tone in my writing, one that doesn't single out a specific city as any better than, say, Decatur, Illinois. The truth is, me and a lot of my dumb little writing buddies live in New York City, and we're all pretty sure it's at least one of the more tolerable spots on this dying sphere we're currently riding around space on.

One of the reasons I like New York so much are the sounds that it emits, and one of the reasons I like those sounds so much is that there are bands like Japanther you can see on Friday nights. I used to bike out to the middle of the Williamsburg Bridge at 2 AM to see them perform a few songs before getting shut down by the cops. It helped 20-year-old me realize that life in this city may not be like Seinfeld, but it can be alright if you just go to shows all the time instead of trying to get a real job or develop a dumb hobby or something.

Japanther just sent us their new video for "Stolen Flowers," a song that sounds a lot like the other scuzzy pop-punk coming out of Brooklyn loft parties right now. (Note: this means that it is inherently good.) The video is directed Mason Orflea, and features the duo performing in front of a kaleidoscopic, stop-motion barrage of flower petals. You can find the song on their amazingly-titled new record, Eat Like Lisa Act Like Bart, which came out yesterday on Recess Records. Be sure to pick up your very own copy by clicking right here, and catch the band on tour starting next month.

Japanther Tour Dates

6/28: San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill
6/29: Oakland, CA @ Metro Theater
6/30: Los Angeles, CA @ The American Legion Hall (Growing Up Dumb Festival)
7/1: Chicago, IL @ Schuba's
7/2: Bloomington, IN @ Rachel's
7/3: Detroit, MI @ Old Miami
7/4: Detroit, MI @ Gratiot Gallery
7/5: Northport, MI @ 109 E Nagonaba
7/6: Northport, MI @ 109 E Nagonaba
7/7: Cleveland, OH @ Now That's Class
7/9: Baltimore, MD @ Metro Gallery
7/10: Philadelphia, PA @ Ortliebs Lounge
7/11: Brooklyn, NY @ Rare Form
7/12: Washington, NJ @ Washington Theater
7/13: Providence, RI @ AS220
7/14: Cambridge, MA @ Cambridge Elks Lodge

@b_shap

Booty girls, car crashes, and guys walking away from explosions without looking back are three things that don't feature in this new clip by Auckland's Ghost Wave.

“I like to think that we leave the girls dancing in bikinis to Drake" said guitarist Matt Paul when we asked him what was up with their cerebral video. According to him, champagne and cocaine fuelled video shoots are less important than "trying to learn more about how to match images with the style of our sound and songs.”

What the clip lacks in backup dancers, it makes up in birds. Shooting in Bushwick, NY, they happened across a guy with a rooftop cage full of trained pigeons. Is Matt a bird enthusiast? Apparently not. "I'm not really a bird guy," he tells us before adding, "We’re more into bats and squirrels."

Either way, who needs action and sex when you have warm colours, chill tunes and an army of winged critters?  

I Skyped Mark Sultan of King Khan & BBQ (he’s the meat) at 9AM Berlin time to talk to him about the band's upcoming Australian tour. He’d spent the morning looking for a café with an Internet connection after his sputtered out the night before while he was babysitting some friends' kids. The shitty café connection meant I was the only one with video, and for a minute and I sort of creeped myself out thinking, This is what a webcam model must feel like and then quickly shut the video off before I could wonder what that would mean Mark was doing on the other end.

He was up “way too early” and apologised for not being zany, but still strung together some potent thoughts on brotherhood, getting old, and how no one drinks piss at his shows anymore.

VICE: Where are you?
Mark Sultan: I’m in Berlin right now.

You’re from Montreal, yeah?
Yeah, but I live out here. My wife’s German, so, I’m living out here.

Is it still the place to be?
Uhm… I mean it’s changed a lot. I still enjoy it very much. It has changed, I’ve been coming here for years and years and whatever, I’m a tourist but also, I can’t say very much, “Well you know, it used to be so cool.” I mean, in my experience it was a lot different. I guess it’s become a cool destination for people to come and try living and stuff.

So what’s the deal, what brought you guys back? You’d broken up or took a little break a while ago, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It seems like you’ve always been doing things together and things like that. Was it a legit break?
No, no – it was like, [laughing] “meltdown style” we hated each other when we weren’t playing. Actually we were on tour with Black Lips and we were in Europe and we were on tour and things just started getting weird but it was a lot of fun and it was really crazy and everything was great and then right from Europe me and Khan went to Australia to do this Sydney Opera House show and then yeah, it just started, then it was maximum Hate Fest and were like “Ahhhh!”

You guys were in a band when you were kids, basically?
Yeah, like, that’s it. We’ve known each other for a long time and played forever. We had a band together when we were teenagers. It was one of those things – you’re brothers, you love each other and you hate each other. We hated each other and for a couple years we didn’t talk… well, I don’t know how long we were broken up for. Let’s say like two years we didn’t even talk we hated each other.

And what was it? Was it just being in such close proximity?
Yeah, I think it’s like, two crazy dudes versus being too close together all the time. Not all the time, but you know, it’s one thing to be friends, you know, when you’re buddies and hanging out drinking or doing whatever… watching a movie… I don’t know what people do but, you know, when you’re that close on tour and it’s just the two of you in some foreign countries and you’re just trying to get by and do stuff together it can get kind of weird depending on what your relationship is. It just kind of turned sour. It was funny – looking back, it’s like, “Oh man, that was ridiculous.” I mean we’re the type of band we wouldn’t get back together if we weren’t like, having a good time or being friends, so it’s cool. Now we love each other again.

What’s the dynamic? You guys have worked together for ages, is it sort of, like do you bring your own thing to it and he brings his own thing and do you try to make it mesh?
Recordings, because of the time when we were recording last we on different continents it was kind of that, you know, bringing in ideas. Or when we did hang out together just collaborating on the spot. Then live it’s just completely feeding off each other and just pure nonsense. Like we just love – if the crowd’s really fun that’s going to help. We’ve had shows where we’ve just stopped playing and we’re laughing at each other and we can’t help it, we’re like little kids, you know.

When you guys started in the Spaceshits you did these crazy sort of shows.
Yeah, I mean we were hyperactive LSD freaks.

And you got Blacklisted in Montreal. Is that true?
Yeah.

Is that a casual sort of, “These guys are assholes, let’s not book them.” Or was it a hardcore blacklist?
No, no, no, it was a Blacklist. A lot of it was because, in my opinion, we were like young kind of jerks and I guess people were bitter and jealous. We had like 45’s on international labels and were touring and were kind of renowned and I think that pissed people off.

Canada’s quite claustrophobic.
Well that’s it. It’s like, “How come my Pearl Jam cover band isn’t” isn’t, you know, doing this or that. There’s a lack of understanding and what we were doing was Rock n’ Roll and Punk or whatever and if you don’t know that scene it’s, it’s a scene where you can float. It’s almost like couch surfing or something. You can do it if you know what you’re doing. And I was like a punk kid so I knew who to hit and what to do and I think that we’d play shows and sure, they were sort of violent shows, but not violent in a bad way, but you know, lots of mess and nonsense. People were just too uppity about it and were like “Eh! Okay, fuck those guys.” It’s kind of one of those situations where we were like, alright, we’ll go to the States instead. It didn’t really matter. But I think they thought they were really ruining our careers.

You’ve been doing that for a long time, do you still feel like you are still legitimately…a bit nuts? Or do you sort of step into your BBQ role and you’ve got to be a bit nuts.
I was just talking to my wife about – in saying this, “I was talking to my wife” – it doesn’t sound too crazy – I’m recently married and I love my wife, I love my lifestyle too somehow, I guess because it’s such a break from my norm, but no, we’re still nut heads because we have to be. Neither of us have real jobs. This is our lifestyle and not to say this is our career either where we’re forced to do this. This happens to be how we live our lives and we get to travel and do all this stuff. I was listening to like DRI yesterday and I told my wife, it was like a, what’s that song? Anyway it was these anti-societal kind of songs and I was like “I’m glad I can actual live in this lifestyle and these lyrics still resonate with me because I’m still that guy. I’m still this piece of shit.” In that sense when we get on stage we’re still two pieces of shit and it’s fucking amazing. I love it.

Have you guys changed at all, with your music, or are you still just pushing what you’ve done before? Not like “pushing what you’ve done before” but do you know what I mean?
Obviously, we still have a very limited sound. There’s two of us. But I honestly think it’s the most energy the two of us have ever achieved together. I think we’ve channelled this new energy that’s a mix between wheatgrass and LSD residue. I don’t understand where it’s coming from but it’s pretty serious. I mean, there’s no more piss drinking and no more, you know, boners being inserted, scratching a lotto ticket, I don’t know what’s going on – but there’s other stuff that’s taken over that’s also causing the audience to react really crazily and it’s this really good energy. I thought we we going to turn into some like some kind of weird poopal state, turn into larvae and turn into slugs on stage but we’re actually more maniacal than ever. So it’s pretty awesome.

So you’re not the Aerosmith heritage tour?
No. I mean on some level, probably. I looked at my ass in the mirror and I was like “What the hell is happening to that thing?” We’re getting older. Our hearts are younger than ever. So it’s awesome.
 

King Khan & BBQ will be playing:

The Tote in Melbourne on the 11th and 12th of June  

Goodgod in Sydney on the 13th of June  

Deville's on the 14th of June.

Join host Matt Sweeney as he learns a thing or two about solo technique, Indian-style guitar, and unlocking the secrets of the six-string. 

Guitar Moves, hosted by Matt Sweeney, is a show where the viewer gets an opportunity to sit in on a private, interesting, and hilarious conversation about guitars, music, life, and craft. During the season, Sweeney and his guests play through licks, riffs, and solos that inform their style, influence their playing, and define their sound. 

Presented in partnership with with XL Strings by D'Addario.

Check out D'Addario on Tumblr here!

When you’re really busy, it’s easy to forget normal things like “Where are my keys?” or “Did I blow out those candles?” or “When was the last time I showered, cuz my hair kinda smells like a dog?” or “Did I already have a tampon in?” or “Did I already have a tampon in and now I have two tampons in?!” or “Where are those two tampons I had in?!” and then you end up at the emergency room because you think you have toxic shock syndrome, only to discover that you had no tampons in. That kind of stuff. Easy-to-forget stuff.

Other times you can forget entire major life events: “So, wait, I didn’t tell you I starred with Ashton Kutcher in that pilot where I had to make this kid steal stuff from a liquor store, and he peed his pants?” (Tell you ’bout  that one later.) It’s just normal. Everybody does it.

I tell you this so you understand how it could've slipped my mind that I may have discovered a white rapper in 2005, and that I should, maybe, check in on that.

That was the year I moved from Texas to Los Angeles, and it fucking sucked. So no shit I forgot that day. I’ve basically blocked out that whole year. In those days I was very aggressive about my hatred for LA—looking for any and all excuses that involved even sort of getting away from the shitstorm I associated with everyone and everything LA-related. So, when Texas friends …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead rolled into town to record a new album at Interscope, I was there in a second. I would’ve moved into the Interscope offices if I could’ve, solely because it was in Santa Monica and not LA.

Anyway, I ended up spending a lot of time at the studio and eventually did vocals with Conrad as a way to kill time. After a while, though, you just start to lose your mind, and that’s when Conrad and I decided to go for a drive by the beach.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and there was no one else in the building other than a security guard. As the guard unlocked the doors to let us out, I lost my step and almost tripped over this crazy pile of stuff that was blocking the front doors. I looked down. It was… CDs. Yep. Compact. Fucking. Discs. There was this ridiculous mountain of CDs that people had just left at the front doors of Interscope. People still do this kind of shit?! I thought. The whole give-your-tape-to-a-radio-station-and-pray-to-the-radio-gods-that-you’re-gonna-get-“discovered”-like-Elvis-Presley style? I, genuinely, had no idea. My mind was blown.

Naturally, Conrad and I dropped to the ground and went in on this scattered pile of pain. Basically, it was like an immediate unspoken competition to find the best-worst with “Oh man” being said at almost every CD we turned over. It was a rough group—a world of douche chills and grossbumps. My leg hairs were growing at record speed. I’m half-Persian, so my leg hairs already grow at quite an impressive rate. So, just imagine that… doubled.

Werewolf.

THEN… It happened.

It was like the world stopped and everything was in slow motion. My eyes widened and my vomit face replaced my shocked face as I turned over the one. It pretty much glowed. This. CD. It looked like… I really can’t even explain its levels of wrong. Imagine the worst possible images you have ever seen, but all in one spot: the worst possible fonts, the worst possible colors, the worst possible photoshopping, title, spelling, whatever—everything—the worst. It made me straight-up uncomfortable. I felt bad for even gazing upon it.

In hindsight, I couldn’t remember his name. All I remember is that it was made by this white rapper who didn’t have a traditional rap name. But that cover. THAT COVER. I will never forget that cover. I didn’t understand any of it. I was having a hard time even believing that it was real and not just the perfect joke.

Obviously, this little number was the winner of the beach drive soundtrack competition.

We started driving, put the CD in, and braced ourselves. Honest to God I was filled with a pure joy that I can only describe as Christmas morning or maybe the pleasure a bully gets watching something really mean go down… like the meanest type of happiness, waiting to hear just how bad this CD was going to be. I mean like pee-your-pants-smiling-from-ear-to-ear-giggling-playing-hide-n-go-seek-thinking-you-have-the-best-spot-ever-and-you-know-you’re-either-going-to-be-found-or-just-pee-all-over-the-place kind of anticipation. And, oh my God… THAT COVER. It was immediately seared into my brain.

So, basically, my expectations were high.

We waited for the perfect moment as we hit the Pacific Coast Highway and hit play.

Silence.
Listening.
“OK. Next song.”
Silence.
Listening.
“OK. Next song.”
Silence.
Listening.
Our heads bobbing. A little.
Fuck.
We just looked at each other.
Fuck.

“It’s kind of good. Like, it’s really, really good. What the fuck,” I said. There was nothing more to say. I think we even went back and listened to some of the songs again. And then, maybe, just maybe, again. And then perhaps once more. Fuck. Fuuuuuckkkkkkk.

We made the decision at that moment that we should put it on someone’s desk at Interscope. I mean, no one was in the office. It was Saturday. And Conrad had said that he knew which desk belonged to the head of A&R for rap/hip-hop.

So… that’s what we did.

We put the CD right there in the middle of the desk of the head of whatever it was, and I attached a Post-it that said something like “Important: Listen ASAP.” I mean, if it’s right there in the middle of his desk with a Post-it… I feel like, if I were that guy, I would think I probably, really needed to listen to it. And no one is going to suspect that some that “indie” or fill-in-the-blank stereotype kids from Texas decided one afternoon that they would be the heads of A&R at Interscope. So, why would they not listen to it? Especially, if it said “important”?

We felt pretty proud of ourselves, and wished it well—like Prince as he let go of that dove with, like, a note or like some kind of message of positivity. (Yeah, I’m trying to say that I, casually, felt like Prince.)

Years went by and, like I said earlier, I fully forgot about the whole ordeal. So, I never checked to see if anything happened to that guy, this dude who had created such a singular aesthetic and sound. I mean, what are the chances that somebody at Interscope picked it up, right? And since I didn’t remember the guy’s name, I wouldn’t have known how to check even if I wanted to.

Then, recently, I was in the studio recording with Dave Sitek. We were bullshitting, exchanging stories of how certain people were “discovered” or whatever and suddenly I remembered that day with Conrad back in 2005.

I was telling him the story with this big big build up… and then, it kind of just ended with me going “So, yeah. I don’t know what happened with that.” Dave screamed, “WAIT WHO WAS IT??” He persisted, and all I could say was “Yeah. I don’t know.” Then Dave stopped and said, “Um. Was it… YELAWOLF???”

I justd stared straight into the ether. Thinking. I wasn’t really familiar with his music… but wait…

“Well, he did have a name that wasn’t a typical ‘rap name’…”

Holy shit. Was it?

Then I thought, THE COVER! I will never forget the cover!

So, I looked him up… I looked up YelaWolf.

And it was like Jesus Christ had said, "Go, my child," and put his hand on mine as the cover popped up. A cover that made me fully speechless and most importantly—nauseated. It was the same cover.

It hit me remembering that the “ho” in the background was wearing this denim backless thing. I remember having been very concerned that I looked like a “ho” stereotype, because I pretty much had the same exact outfit. I actually stopped wearing it for a while after that solely because of that girl on the cover.

I checked out the song titles… “Pissed On,” “White Boys.” Those aren’t titles you just forget. You may want to. But you really can’t. Try it sometime.

The album (shout-out to Google search) is a mixtape called Pissin in a Barrel of Beez, released in 2005.

So… I’m not fully positive… but… I might have… could have… maybe… discovered Yelawolf?

So, yeah. There’s that. 

@Tearist

For more strange brushes with rappers, check these out:

Earl Is Free

Never Party with the Brick Squad 

The Cosmic Adventures of Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire

Hey everyone,

The last time we spoke, I was writing from the venue in Detroit. After we played we ended up at a house with three big dogs including a saint Bernard.

The next morning, we went for a drive to look at the abandoned buildings. The best one we found was a old train station. The photo of all us in front a big building is the abandoned train station.

We then drove to Columbus Ohio and met up with the guys from Pink Reason. It was a fun show. Before the show we went to a Mexican bar and drank $3 margaritas.

The venue, The Ace Of Cups, had a cool sign with our name in it. The photo of the sign is that sign

From Columbus we drove to Cleveland. On the way we stopped at this huge outlet shipping centre that had a mini train and railway tracks. Just near the shopping centre was a shed with Lodi station painted on it. I took a photo of it because of the Credence Clearwater Revival song called “Lodi.”

We were in Cleveland from Thursday to early Sunday. We played Horrible Fest twice. Mr California also played on a roof as part of horrible fest. That's the photo of the man on the roof.

Horrible Fest also had a hot tub set up at the back of the venue which I got in before we played. It was a relaxing way to get ready to play. The photo of me in the hot tub shows me having a good time.

It's Sunday night and I am in Rochester, Upstate New York for our gig at the Bug Bar. Tomorrow we head to Boston to play Obrien's then. We will be in NYC on Tuesday where we play Death by Audio.

It's been great seeing all the different cities of America and the personalities they have. It's also been a lot of fun meeting people who are into our music.

I hope you enjoy the photos. I think they are entertaining.

Love Marcus

Previously:

Love Marcus: The Tour Started in LA

Click here for their US tour dates

Check our film about them on Noisey

We went to Wee Waa for the global launch of the new Daft Punk record (even though the internet had already released it). If you’ve never been to Wee Waa, it’s 7 hours from Sydney and 12 hours from Melbourne. Which roughly triangulates to the middle of nowhere. There were a mix of dressed up die-hard fans, Sydney dance music kids, Wee Waa locals and other country folk who had stumbled in for a good time. The local paper read 'Dog Jumping and Daft Punk', so you can imagine how excited people were for this event. The Wee Waa show-girl pageant unsurprisingly also drew a strong crowd.

The set-up was in the shape of an octagon with a big circular light-up glass dance floor in the middle. Kind of like what people in Los Angeles might have on top of their pools. A soccer riot-like mosh formed in the middle and letting off a flare wouldn't have been totally out of place. It was on for young and old, so much so that you could have described it as a hoedown or possibly even a hootenanny. People danced and generally lost their shit for the entire album, so it lost any of the jarring pretentiousness that a listening party can otherwise imply. The lulls in the album made sense and only made the crowd dance harder as it built up again. It was no surprise that Sydney kids were doing drugs up their noses and inadvertently spilling them all over the dance floor. The highlight of the night possibly came from a woman in boot-scooting attire, doing her best line dancing routine along to the music.

It's unclear why people were still speculating that Daft Punk were going to be there, possibly hiding in the disco ball only to be unveiled at the very end. People want something to believe in. As the policeman who pulled us over on the drive told us, 'You know Daft Punk aren't gonna be there'.

The disco ball made it a semi-spiritual experience, as if we were worshipping at the temple of disco. Huge lights from each corner beamed up into the sky pointing out that there is something more out there after all.

This guy was actually launching fireworks out of his helmet. He seemed fine with it.

So alluring.

The onesie has taken over the world, regardless of the occasion an animal suit is apparently always appropriate. It would be too obvious to say that his nose and fluffy white rabbit cheeks look like a stubby cock and balls, but they really do.

Everyone was making out when the slow lovey-dovey track came on. Everyone knows that slow burning love is better than a one-night fling. This dude’s comforting hand is showing his lady that he's not going anywhere.

The Wee Waa show president was loving it. It was the biggest turn out in its 79 year history, so he'd earned a few XXXX lagers.

Saint Laurent may be overpriced, but surely making your own isn't the answer?

He was taking a break from his “Around The World” robot dance to grab a lager. Fun fact: he'd painted his face black underneath. We're not sure why either.

And then it was over. We hung around for a bit watching drunk people flying around on carnival rides before going to bed. The next day, before hitting the road for the long drive home, we stopped to chat to some locals about their thoughts on the big event. 

Jess & Jason

What'd you think of the show last night?
Jason: It was pretty big for Wee Waa! There were so many more rides this year.

What was the best part?
Jess: Me winning! I lead cattle.

How do you judge that?
Well there's junior judging, parade and breed classes. They get judged on their attributes like their colours, their size... and this is a bit dodgy, but their testicular development and stuff like that. Parading is how the person shows off their cow.

What's the best way to show off your cow?
So you don't want to go into the ring with mud on your cow. You want it nicely brushed and washed. You blow dry them as well.

Do you own your own cow?
No, not yet! The cow that I want is probably about $60K. They're worth that because they're pure-breds.

What else is on?
There's demolition derby on later on tonight. They're pretty cool. Normally there's a rodeo but because Daft Punk were here it had to be postponed.

Would you enter the rodeo?
Yeah I'd go steer riding. You might break a few bones though.

Emma (Winner of the Wee Waa Showgirl competition)

How does it feel?
Oh it's so exciting! It still hasn't sunk in yet properly. I love it.

How was it?
It was pretty nerve-wracking! It was just before the Daft Punk show so the arena was full.

How do you become a showgirl?
You just have to have grown up around here really. You need to know a bit about the area.

How did they judge the competition?
We were asked questions about ourselves, general knowledge about the area and stuff like that. It was very easy, almost relaxing. It was fun.

Where do you buy your clothes from?
There's Robbies clothing in Wee Waa and some really good shops in Narrabri (35 km away) as well.

Do you ever go interstate?
Occasionally if we go on holiday we might go to the Gold Coast.

What'd you think of the Daft Punk show?
I thought it was great! I remember being on the dance floor and just thinking that I can't believe this is happening in Wee Waa. It's just crazy. I saw so many people from town having the time of their lives. Everyone was so happy that they chose Wee Waa.

Sarah

What's your horse's name?
Her stable name is Poppy.

How do you get her ready?
You have to make sure you get all the stuff out of her coat, you plait her mane, you make up her face and put black stuff on her hooves.

How old are you?
I'm ten.

Have you been riding for long?
Yeah. Since I was four.

Have you hurt yourself riding at all?
I had a pretty bad fall once. My horse was named Kit Kat and was a bit small. It bucked, which means that its hind legs were up and I ate dirt. My lip cracked too. But I've never broken a bone or dislocated anything.

Angus

Did you come for the show last night?
No I live here.

Are there many people in Wee Waa with long hair?
Not really. My brother has longer hair than I do.

Do you play music?
Yeah I play the bass. I'm into black metal. I'm trying to put a band together.

Gravitron controller

Do people throw up a lot in there?
They do outside yeah. They've been spun a couple of hundred times, but it only hits you once you've stopped. A guy just threw up over there [points two metres away from where we're standing].

Do you get sick controlling the ride?
It can mess with your head, even though you're not moving. Its especially bad if you're hungover.

Do you do this full-time?
Yeah I do. The whole ride's on a semi-trailer and we go all around the country.

Dodgem Car Man

Is he happy hanging out with you here?
Well I went back to my caravan for lunch and he was crying, so I decided to take him back with me. They're men's dogs, so they don't like to be around women. They only like men.

What's his name?
His name's black boy. I didn't think he'd pull through because he's so small. His mother's name was BB, so I called him black boy, so he'd have the same initials.

For more Daft Punk:

Daft Punk's 'Random Access Memories' Collaborators: Pharrell Williams

Daft Punk's 'Random Access Memories' Collaborators: Panda Bear

Gangsta Boo is hip-hop legend. As the sole female member of the epochal Three 6 Mafia during the late 90s and early 2000s, she helped forge a space for females in hardcore rap, with aggressive rhymes on classic records like Choices: The Album, When the Smoke Clears: Sixty 6, Sixty 1, and her solo debut Enquiring Minds. I've been listening to Gangsta Boo since I was a kid, and she always fascinated me—and scared me a little. As a prepubescent horndog, I loved bumping girl rappers who talked about explicit sex shit because it was perfect fodder for my wankbank. But Boo never played herself like that for her male listeners. Even when her verses started off sexy, they ended defiant—like "Tongue Ring," which begins with her "pussy wet as a river" and ends with her using a razor blade to horrifically "slice yo' shit."  There's no beating off to that. You just have to respect it, because the rhymes are hard as hell. 

I had the rare pleasure of meeting Boo at my 25th-birthday party thrown by VICE's funny-book tsar and DJ extraordinaire Nick Gazin. Boo and I hit it off talking about what's great and what sucks bloody AIDS-infected penises in modern hip-hop. As agressive as her raps are, one thing that struck me about her was how genial and graceful she was. She reminded me of the ladies who offer you a candy when you sit next to them in church when you're a little kid. Basically, Gangsta Boo is a hardcore rapping saint. 

I think she embodies a lot of what is desperately missing in the rap game right now. So, I invited her to the VICE offices in Brooklyn to continue our discussion of hip-hop, by sitting together and watching some music videos by some of the hottest lady rappers out today. Here's what she had to say:

AZEALIA BANKS'S "212"

VICE: You’ve seen this before?
Gangsta Boo: A couple of times.

What do you think of it?
She’s pretty, and she is representing for the brown-skinned ladies. I like that. She’s got an international vibe too. I don’t know too many of her songs to be honest, but I do like this one.

What do you think about the style of the video?
It’s black-and-white, and it has a retro feel to it. It’s simple. It focuses on her teeth a lot. She’s got some pretty teeth. It’’s cute, it’s basic. It’s one of those classic New York videos.

When you were working with Three 6 Mafia, was New York a hard place for you guys to break into?
Yeah. Absolutely.

Were there any female NYC MCs you looked up to?
Yeah, Lil' Kim, Foxy Brown... Rah Digga—she’s not from New York, but she is East Coast or whatever. I’m not an Azealia Banks fan, but I love how she uses “cunt” in this song. A strong a black female saying cunt is kind of ratchet.

IGGY AZALEA'S "MY WORLD"

You know she’s from Australia or something?
Really? I had no idea. She doesn’t rap like it. She doesn’t have an accent or anything. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, but she’s definitely sexy and fly. She’s got swag for days and she knows how to work it in this video.

Do you think it’s weird for somebody to take on a different place’s twang—like her sounding like she’s from the States?
Nah. I’m a fan of The Walking Dead and it's so weird how they all talk like they have an American accent, but they are actually all from Australia, London, and other places. Sometimes it’s believable, sometimes it’s not. This particular video is believable, but a lot of her music isn't. However, I do like this song

Do you feel like artists taking on other styles is part of the creative process? Or are there rules in hip-hop?
Absolutely. There should definitely be rules in hip-hop because there are G-code rules in the streets. It’s cool to have fun, but at the end of the day it would be wack for me to rap like I’m from New York. It is cool to get influences from other places, but I want everyone to know that I’m from Memphis.

KITTY PRYDE'S "OKAY CUPID"

Do you know Kitty Pryde?
I know her. We have a song together.

Oh really? Is it out, yet?
No, I haven’t put it out yet, but Nick Catchdubs did the beat. It’s called “Fool's Gold.”

What do you think of Kitty?
I like her because she’s poetic. You can tell she’s a writer and what she is talking about is very believable. I hang with white girls like her all the time.

When you were first coming up, was there a lot of white female MCs?
No, but they’re everywhere now. It’s like a flood of these little white bitches. That’s what’s up though. I think Kitty Pryde is dope. She’s got that TV-friendly face.

Speaking of Kitty’s writing style, how do you write?
I get inspired by different things that I go through. That’s why I like traveling to different cities and catching vibes. I like to get outside of Memphis and get inspired by other people and new scenery.   

Do you write with a pen and a pad?
It depends. Sometimes I write on my phone, and sometimes I write on paper and sometimes I just go off the the top of my head.

WASH 'N' SET'S "PRIVATE PLAY"

I premiered this one on VICE.
Yeah, I only know about them because of you.

Do you like it?
To me, honestly, it’s wack. Everybody doesn’t need to rap, man. It is cute. But I can’t take them serious. 

I think some younger rap artists feel like they can just have fun with the art form. But when you were coming up, more doors were closed to female MCs, so you guys had to go harder on the mic than the best male rappers.  
Exactly. For me, this kind of stuff is offensive because I feel like they’re taking up space for somebody who takes it serious and is starving in a place where there are no opportunities. There’s a lane for this, and there’s a lane for real shit. I just stick to the real shit.

Damn. I like this song. Besides the rapping, do you at least dig the beat?
It reminds me of “It’s So Cold in the D.” It was like extra wack. But I would tear this beat up.

KILO KISH'S "NAVY"

What’s your take on Kish?
I think it’s nice that a lot of cute girls are rapping now, but I just don’t know if I would bump them personally. I would take this more serious at an open mic. I don’t consider these girls rappers.

You're saying she is trying to do something, but she hasn’t mastered her craft yet?
No, I think she’s mastered what she’s doing. I just don’t think she’s really rapping. It’s more poetic. My homegirl does poetry in Houston. I went to a few of her open mics and it sounded a lot like this. Not saying Kish couldn’t write a rap or be a dope MC, I just don’t think that’s what she trying to do and that is OK for her.

What do you think the line is between poetry and rap?
Rap to me is more aggressive, more in your face.

When was the first time you heard a girl rap with an aggressive flow that inspired you?   
Da Brat. She was dope.

Which song?
Probably “Funkdafied.” She was the first female MC to go platinum.

Did you ever feel like you had to be extra aggressive to get respect as a female MC?
I had to rap with, like, five different dudes, so I always had the mentality that I had to outdo everyone I was on a song with in order to stand out. I’m a girl in a man’s world, so I trained myself to always go harder than them. Period.

PINK DOLLAZ'S "BAD BITCH"

Any thoughts?
The concept is basic. I don’t consider myself a "bad bitch." I’m over that. The hook is wack too. But it does have a dope beat. I like the whole West Coast flow too. But the “bad bitch” concept throws me off. It’s just kind of tired of it. I don’t want my daughter calling herself a “bad bitch.” What does that even mean? I don’t have kids, but if my daughter said something like that, it better be because she is in school making good grades. Not because she has red bottoms. Being a bad bitch is fine, I’m just kinda over the materialistic aspect of it.

Do you think materialism is hurting rap right now?
Let’s get back to the music and less of this fashion stuff. It’s an expensive lifestyle to keep up with, and it’s all an illusion anyway. But hey, if you got it, rock that shit. I really can’t tell you what hip-hop needs today. People need to just stand out on their own and do them.

LADY'S "TWERK"

Look at those bootiess shake! I love this video. This song is strictly for...
The strippers? I’m known for making stripper anthems. Maybe she’s a stripper and she just wants to represent her set.

What do you think about the video?
Basic bitches shaking their ass.

When you write a “stripper anthem,” how do you approach it?
When I did “Where Dem Dollas At,” it was inspired by Jazze Pha. He did a beat for Tela called “Hoes in the Club.” But when I came up with “Can I Get Paid,” that was considered the stripper's anthem. Writing those songs, I was thinking about the mind frame of a stripper. I was younger then. Now that I’m older, I wouldn’t make a video like Pink Dollaz. I might make a strip-club song, but the video would be different. This looks low class.

Did you spend any time in strip clubs when you were younger?
Oh yeah. Man, watching the girls dance and do tricks—that’s what I like to do. Magic City in Atlanta has some dope females who do some crazy tricks. I fuck with the A and their strip clubs. Maybe these girls are strippers turned rappers. There’s a few of them nowadays. Make your money, ladies. But there’s a fine line between classy and trashy, and sexy and messy. And it takes time to figure it out.

SNOW THA PRODUCT'S "COOKIE CUTTER BITCHES"

I found this a few minutes before you got here. I was surprised it had so many hits. A lot of people are talking about this girl.
She's almost at a million. Yeah, they're talking about her.

What do you think?
I fuck with her. I like gangsta bitches. We met at South by Southwest and may do a song together. She’s thick, she’s pretty, but she’s not showing her ass. She wants people to hear her lyrics and not that other mess. If she wanted to take off her clothes, men would just die. But they have to respect her for what she’s saying—having a nice body and being pretty is just a plus.

Because rap is a lyrical art form, do you have to come with the rhymes whether you’re pretty or not?
I think so. It’s like, "OK, I know you have a big ass. Who doesn’t? You can pay for those nowadays. Let’s hear what you can say."

BROOKE CANDY'S "I WANNA FUCK RIGHT NOW"

I love Brooke Candy.
Yeah, I couldn’t believe this video. I was like, "Oh my God."

You can tell that she has been listening to some Gangsta Boo records.
Definitely. And for some reason, I believe this video is just representing how she really is. She doesn’t seem like she is lying. She must have been a stripper or something. I can tell by the way she hits that pole. It just seems like it’s her. Plus, any chick that rocks snakes and shit in their hair is hands down, a real bad bitch.

Yeah, this video is insane. What was it like making your early videos?
I did “Where Dem Dollas At?” in New York my first time out there. It was fun, especially coming from country-ass Memphis. It was fun then and it’s still fun. The cool part about it now is receiving the love from the younger generation. It’s just dope and it feels good and that’s why I get down with the young artists like the Raider Klan.

Was it hard to get your videos played back in the day?
Not that much after we got signed. It was pay-to-play at that point [laughs]... Are all Brooke’s songs like this?

Yeah, they’re pretty intense. It’s weird because a lot of people hate on her.
What are they hating on her for?

Too much sex stuff, I guess. And they think she looks like a man or something. I think she looks great.  
Shit! They’re always saying somebody looks like a man. I don’t care. I like her. There’s so many dancers that come into the rap game and act like they don’t dance anymore and then have to end up going back to the strip club. At least she’s still in the strip club.

MIA'S "BAD GIRLS"

This is a good one.
This bitch is one of my favorite bitches of all time. This is one of the hardest videos ever, just because she’s so sexy and she’s just swagged out. And she's got that whole Sri Lankan vibe. Her and Brooke Candy are my favorites out of everybody you've shown me thus far.

When did you first hear MIA?
“Paper Planes.” And then when this video came out, everyone was talking about it, so I got on YouTube and watched it... Was that car really doing that?

Yeah. From what I hear, they really do that.
Wow. I wish she didn’t settle down and have a baby. But she went and got her some money and that’s real... Are they on skates?

Looks like plain old sneakers to me.
Boy, what are you talking about? Sneakers? I love how they have her chain bouncing on her chest. That’s crazy. Her videos are empowering.

Does it ever surprise you when you see people interpreting rap, a culture that you’ve been a part of, and spit it back at you in different ways?
I think it’s cool. It’s inspiring to know that people are watching you everywhere.

DIE ANTWOORD'S "BABIES ON FIRE"

But I don’t think this is dope. It’s weird. She looks like a fucking freak.

ANGEL HAZE'S "WERKIN' GIRLS"

OK, moving on to Angel Haze. What do you think?
To me she kind of sounds like Nicki Minaj.

Is that played out?
I don’t think it’s played out, I just think it’s Nicki. It’s that whole New York thing.

I think she’s from LA actually. That’s what’s weird about rap today and the internet. Regional sounds have kind of faded away.
She’s cool. I would need to hear some more to tell if I'm really into her.

She’s definitely a spitter, but it takes more than great bars to make a good song. When you write, how do you approach hooks?
Man, those hooks are not easy to write. It has to fall off your tongue. You can’t think too hard and you just have to go with it. Sometimes when you’re writing those lyrical songs you have to take a step back. That’s why Gucci Mane has been able to stay relevant for so long, he just says whatever. Gucci just raps. Literally. He freestyle raps. And I think sometimes when you write hooks and stuff like that, especially if you’re a rapper, you should just let it roll out of you. That’s how I write a lot of hooks. I just let it roll. Sometimes you have to—not dumb it down—but make it people friendly.

For sure. Thanks, Gangsta Boo!

Gangsta Boo has a new mixtape dropping this month called It's Game Involved, which she assures us will mark the return of Ms. Yeah Hoe. Look out for it on LiveMixtapes.

For more rap stuff from Wilbert, check these out:

Never Party with the Brick Squad

Gunplay Doesn't Fear the Pine Box or Prison

A$AP Rocky and Jeremy Scott Schooled Me on How to Be a Pretty Motherfucker

The Underachievers Talk About Stop-and-Frisk and Kimani Gray

Scroll to the bottom of this piece to watch the exclusive premiere of Tony Clifton's music video for "Lonely Girl." It's safe for work... ish.

Before the flood, Jeremy Johnson and his wife were always in the process of starting or ending some new independent business venture. Nothing ever stuck. Before Hurricane Katrina filled their New Orleans home with poisonous water, they’d curated a personal museum of pop-culture knick-knacks that they eventually tried turning into a thrift shop. Looking back on it, the most important items in Jeremy’s collection included the official WWF Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lawler figurines, and a copy of Lynne Margulies's Kaufman documentary I'm From Hollywood, which told the story of the aggressively strange, groundbreaking comedian and performer’s venture into the wrestling ring. “Andy Kaufman hit me hard at a young age,” Johnson explains. “In sixth grade, this male friend of mine would get these girls in the neighborhood to come over, we would watch videotapes of Andy Kaufman wrestling women, and we would wrestle the girls in his parents’ living room while watching the videos.”

Katrina also flooded the school where Jeremy had been teaching moderately disabled high school kids, so in 2007, at the age of 27, Johnson began working at a coffee shop, while rebuilding his home. As an emotional booby prize, Johnson finally had the time to indulge his amateur filmmaking urges. “For a long time I’d been denying my creative side,” Johnson says. He slung coffee to a number of New Orleans layabouts, including an old gray-haired hippie type who began coming in every day to chat up Jeremy about pop culture, especially film. Not until the ponytailed fellow asked Jeremy to help him film a commercial for insult comic and “singer” Tony Clifton’s big comeback tour did Johnson recognize him as Andy Kaufman’s former writing partner, Bob Zmuda.

By the time he approached Johnson, Zmuda had been doing charity work for decades, pretty much ever since Kaufman's death in 1984. He founded the American version of Comic Relief in 1986 in Kaufman’s memory and put on a number of high-profile comedy shows to raise money for philanthropic causes, mainly benefitting the homeless. The organization has raised tens of millions of dollars and in the process helped break the careers of Dave Chappelle, Bill Hicks, Dane Cook, Sarah Silverman, and many others. In 2006, after an eight-year hiatus, Comic Relief reemerged to put on a show to benefit the victims of Katrina. When he hired Johnson as a videographer, Zmuda was working on a more ambitious project than a one-off gig: a tour featuring two dozen New Orleans musicians and dancers that would both raise money for performers still dealing with the effects of Katrina and restart the long-dormant career of Tony Clifton.

Clifton is a character, both figuratively and literally. Andy Kaufman claimed to have “discovered” the drunken, foul-mouthed nightclub performer in 1969, but in reality—if the word reality applies to any of Kaufman’s projects—he might have emerged from Kaufman’s head, like Foreign Man. In any case, since the 70s, the Clifton costume and persona has been passed around like a handle of warm whiskey in a green room. In his book Andy Kaufman Exposed! Zmuda copped to having first worn Tony’s signature thick prescription sunglasses, and starting in 1979 Kaufman impersonated Clifton as well—so often and with such hateful aplomb that audiences quickly came to consider the character Andy’s original creation and forgot that a “real” Clifton supposedly existed somewhere. In public, Zmuda and Kaufman played an elaborate, years-long Tony Clifton shell game that lasted until Kaufman’s death in 1984. In the 1999 Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon, Jim Carrey played Kaufman doing Clifton, and Paul Giametti imitated Zmuda imitating Clifton. Andy’s brother Michael Kaufman has also publicly donned the Clifton leisure suit, as has Criss Angel, though both Johnson and Clifton say Angel sucked at it.

“I work for the original Tony Clifton, though,” Johnson says, “the guy Kaufman discovered in a Vegas nightclub.”

Most people believe today’s Tony Clifton to “be” Zmuda, who’s now old enough that he no longer needs prosthetics to approximate Clifton’s jowls. Either way, Jeremy has always served two bosses: Zmuda—who Johnson by now considers “a dick”—and Clifton, whom he much prefers. Johnson has spent over five years as Clifton’s de facto assistant, on-call videographer, and sometimes writing partner. People close to the duo have suggested that Johnson is to Tony what Zmuda was to Kaufman. Which still doesn’t mean he can answer the most basic of questions: Who is Tony Clifton?

Jeremy Johnson and Tony Clifton pose in a photo booth.

Jeremy’s employment with Comic Relief began in earnest in 2008, when Clifton and his Katrina Kiss My Ass Orchestra  spent several weeks' worth of long afternoons practicing more than 100 songs at One Eyed Jacks in New Orleans’s French Quarter. A lot of work needed to be done if the crew was to revive Clifton’s career—other than a one-off appearance in 2004 commemorating the 20th anniversary of Kaufman’s death, Clifton hadn’t performed live onstage since 1985. Suddenly here he was, rising from Katrina’s toxic floodwaters for a second act.

Johnson’s job was to film the shows and also run the videos that played during the performances, like the footage of ships battling on the high seas that accompanied Tony’s nasal rendition of Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” The show did not debut in New Orleans but rather with a successful run in Georgia. Jonhson was then asked to stay in Chicago for the summer, to shoot another set of Clifton’s live shows, a gig that turned into a cross-country tour. The show’s cast included famed burlesque dancer Trixie Minx and members of her Fleur De Tease troupe, plus musicians on the level of backup singer Whitney Meyer, who recently impressed the judges on The Voice. Clifton’s trumpet player Ashlin Parker has backed Aretha Franklin, while saxophonist Adrian Crutchfield has played with Prince and Lionel Ritchie.

Like so many other well-meaning Katrina charity projects based in New York and LA, Clifton’s show helped in one way but also removed a lot of important talent from an already weakened New Orleans music scene. Still, Clifton maintains, “I did a good thing getting them out of this hellhole.”

Despite fronting a charity project benefiting New Orleans, Clifton claimed to hate the town. “While Bob Zmuda, president and founder of Comic Relief, cared a great deal about New Orleans after the flood,” says Johnson, “Tony Clifton didn’t give a fuck about it.” Tony supposedly only ended up on the tour as part of a plea bargain in a New Orleans rape case. Tony calls it a drunkard’s simple mistake: he came back to his hotel very late and wasted, accidentally entered the wrong room, and crawled in bed with a woman who got the wrong idea, freaked out, and pressed charges. “That broad was old as dirt,” he says in his defense. “I do not under any circumstance fuck anything over half my age.” He claims to have only led his band of Katrina survivors as part of his community service. “Fuck New Orleans. New Orleans put me in fuckin jail," Clifton grunts. "I think the best thing that happened to this place was that big fucking wave comin’ here and cleaning out a lot of the nigs.”

Another thing about Clifton: he has the tendency to be as racist as you’d expect a weathered old alcoholic lounge singer to be, both privately and especially publicly.   

The Katrina Kiss My Ass tour came to a close with two killer shows in New Orleans. The first night’s collection of songs, skits, racist and pedophilic jokes, and puppet shows was so awe-inspiring, I returned the next night and caught a completely different, equally hair-raising show. A lot of comedy is falsely described as “dangerous,” but at those two shows it genuinely felt like something bad might happen. Clifton doesn’t use the word nigger to break down its associations and our prejudices, the way Louis C. K. does with hot-button words; he spits it out with abandon. Tony makes Quentin Tarantino seem tasteful. You wonder how he would ever find even one black musician to work for him, much less five of his 11 band members—especially since he claims he doesn’t warn anyone what they’re in for before he hires them. Johnson admits, however, that the show’s musical director went behind Clifton’s back to explain things. “Think of Tony Clifton as Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse,” Johnson says, quoting the official line. “Heʼs a bigoted Archie Bunker–type man, and he says what he wants. Part of his shtick onstage is to always push boundaries. No matter how hard it hurts, he’s just going to go for it all the time.”

Carved into Jeremy’s shoulder is a large Public Enemy tattoo, which makes one wonder how he feels about hearing the N word constantly from a white man. Chuck D likely wouldn’t see it as funny. “I have felt guilty in certain situations, where I just don’t want to be there while he’s saying that stuff,” Johnson admits. “But then I remember this is part of the game, the ride, the act. And also, what the fuck else am I gonna do?”

Zmuda claims to not like the racial component to Clifton’s act either. “I don’t agree with people saying the N word onstage,” he says. “But Tony’s able to get away with it because people perceive him to be a character. Use your own name and say it? You’re dead. It’s different when said by a character. But to do it at all, it has to be well thought out.”

It was Clifton’s offstage verbal abuse, however, that finally sunk the ship. “One night Tony didn’t like the ending of a song, or something,” Johnson recalls. “He was hammered as usual, and backstage, I’d never seen Tony Clifton more pissed. He was runnin’ around with his shirt off, stomping up and down, yelling, screaming in the hallways, ‘Just fire these fucking niggers!’ And the band was like, ‘Wait a minute. We were cool with what you were doing onstage, but you’re not on stage right now.’” At the next night’s performance in Denver, Colorado, an extra large dose of N words finally compelled four black members of the Katrina Kiss My Ass Orchestra to abandon Clifton midset. Trombone player Kyle Rothchild got behind the drum kit and moved the awkward show forward. “Some of the burlesque dancers came out on stage crying,” remembers Jeremy. “They still felt they needed to do the numbers to get the paycheck.

“I came to tears, too,” he admits. “I mean, this really wasn’t what I signed on for. It was too much, every day for a month, with no relief, stuck out on the road with Tony Clifton.”

When asked why he abruptly quit on Clifton, respected New Orleans sax player Khris Royal answers simply, “Somewhere there has to be a line.” While he doesn’t regret walking off stage that night, Royal does feel conflicted. “Tony just wanted to see where our line was, so in some ways I was a sucker,” he says. “I did maintain my line, but he got the reaction he was after.”

Clifton claims that “the Denver Massacre,” as he calls it, made him realize he needed to henceforth really befriend all of his employees. “I am now very close to my band members,” he says. “I’ve learned that I need to be talking with my people and communicating with them directly. People who work with me now know who I am, and know where I’m comin’ from... Some of the people who decided not to leave the band that night, by the way, were also black. But they saw the bigger picture. So, it’s not like all the blacks left the band at once. Just the niggers left.”

Tony Clifton's house.

After that precarious first tour, the remaining employees were rewarded with an invitation to Clifton’s killer digs on Lake Tahoe just south of Reno, Nevada—a grand estate equipped with a recording studio, movie theater, dance studio, and hot tub. His backyard opens onto 10,000 acres of protected forest and mountains. When Johnson arrived there with the rest of the staff, he had been working for Clifton for seven months. “In Tahoe, Tony was the most relaxed I’d ever seen him,” recalls Jeremy. “He pegged us all with a lot of questions about what happened on the road, and a lot of truth came out. He also needed to know where his loyalties lay. He invited us out there so he could figure out who had to go, and who needed to stay.”

At that two-week retreat, Johnson and Clifton grew close, as the story of Comic Relief’s new Sony Z7U camera illustrates. “I was at first using old hand-me-down gear from the 90s,” says Jeremy. “But I wanted to stay on the Clifton project so badly I went into $7,000 worth of debt for a serious camera. Then, after a while, I told Comic Relief we really needed a second camera. I got shut down by Zmuda. But when the cast was out in Tahoe and we finally got to hang with Tony as a real person, I brought it up again. After a few drinks, he asked me, ‘Will the HD make me look good?’ I said, ‘The HD is gonna make you look fabulous.’ He said, ‘OK, I’ll talk to 'em.’

“So the next morning I got a phone call from Zmuda. He said, ‘I’m kind of angry about something. We hired Tony to do this thing mainly because we don’t have to pay him, and it’s not costing us much money. But I got a phone call from Tony this morning, telling me that he thinks the HD is going to make him look good, and that we really need to get this second camera. You’re not in trouble this time, but any time you’re fucking hanging out with Tony Clifton don’t you ever talk to him about money or ask him for any kind of fucking equipment. He will always want it, and we’ll have to pay for it. And we really don’t have any money, Jeremy.’”

Johnson got down on a more personal level with Tony after the cast all left the estate and Jeremy stayed behind. Soon, a snowfall made Tony’s driveway impossible to traverse—and Johnson didn’t have the money to return to New Orleans even if the ice melted. He was trapped, forced into living alone with Tony Clifton in Tahoe for a winter that turned into an entire year.

During that time, Johnson never saw Zmuda—meaning he either never broke character, or else Clifton's not his character. Jeremy and Tony filmed continuously and made six music videos. “There’s so much beautiful green space there around Tahoe,” says Johnson. “We shot tons of stuff up in Reno, Carson City, in the woods, up on a mountain.” It wasn’t all beauty though. “Tony Clifton was all up in my shit the whole time,” Johnson recalls. “Once he had me there, he had me. I was on the clock the entire day, and the day would stretch into weeks and then months. I just couldn’t get any fresh air. We started to not have such a great relationship after a while because I was trapped in his magic castle. Any time of the day he could bombard me. I mean, I like talking about ideas, but it was just nonstop.”

Meanwhile, back home in New Orleans, Johnson’s marriage began to crumble and he was losing his house to bankruptcy, situations aggravated by his absence. “I was having a total breakdown,” Johnson says. “The only thing I had that I could almost call stable was the Tony Clifton gig. It sounds fucked up because you should also have a commitment to marriage but… it’s not every day that an historic comedy icon gives you a job. Sometimes something will cross your path and you have to have the gumption to take it."

Predictably, Clifton wasn’t exactly Ann Landers when it came to marriage advice. “When I first mentioned divorce to Tony, he immediately said, ‘I think that sounds like a good idea,’” Johnson remembers. “He has a strict policy: no relationships with women except hookers. So there were a lot of times in Tahoe that I just wanted to say to him, ‘This is not the life I pictured for myself at 32 years old, you know? Getting divorced and having no friends and being trapped in the snow sleeping on your couch… Can’t you just act like a human being?’”

Clifton and companions.

By Thanksgiving of 2009, Johnson was officially separated—and thus free to be taken by Clifton for the first time to Moonlite Bunny Ranch in Mound House, Nevada, the whorehouse most famous as the set of HBO’s Cathouse. Though Clifton admits to being a “big supporter” of legalized prostitution, and to visiting Thailand multiple times a year, he denies he bought his Tahoe property 22 years ago to be close to the Bunny Ranch. “He claims he lives there because he likes the fresh air,” Johnson chuckles. “But yeah, absolutely, he’s a 45-minute drive from the biggest legal brothel in America, with the best girls.”

Clifton tells anyone else who’ll listen how he's the “official tester” at the Bunny Ranch. He calls Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof “the PT Barnum of booty” and claims, “Nobody gets laid more than Tony Clifton... As soon as Hof gets a new girl, I go down there and test to make sure they can do all the nasty things that clients want. I’ve fucked, on average, two or three girls under 25 years of age every week for the last 12 years. And they get nervous that I’m not gonna give them a good report! So they’re like, ‘Do you want me to suck your cock again? Do you want me to swallow your cum? Do you want anal?’ I am the luckiest guy on the Earth.”

Zmuda has never joined the crew at the Ranch, so Johnson has gone either with Clifton or alone on all of his roughly 40 visits so far. Clearly, Tony has rubbed off on him. “Not that I have participated every time,” Jeremy says. “But I was completely alone in Tahoe with the snow, and I was going through divorce, and I didn’t have any friends. So just going to the Bunny Ranch and hanging out at the bar and shooting the shit with the girls, those were some of the most fun times I’ve ever had. You don’t have to be fucking ‘em.”

Johnson remains most impressed by the Thanksgiving feast he shared that first night with the girls. “There is always food at the whorehouse,” he says. “The Bunny Ranch has this immaculate kitchen. Hof hires special chefs. Great people come from all over the place to cook and eat in there.” Once, around an opulent Thanksgiving spread, Clifton gathered Johnson, Hof, and all the girls to make a poignant toast. “Today is not a day for thinking,” he said. “I don’t want to intellectualize, or think too much today. The only serious decision I want to make today, is: Will I have white meat? Or dark meat?”

It wasn’t until Christmas 2009 that Johnson finally came back to New Orleans for a visit. His marriage was officially over, but he had a partner in Tony Clifton.  

Following the stint in Tahoe, Johnson moved to LA and says that only recently, finally, have his prospects improved. This year Clifton and Johnson premiered their Katrina Kiss My Ass Orchestra concert documentary Tony Clifton: the Movie to a sold-out crowd at New York’s Museum of Modern Art; afterward, Tony and crew traveled to Austin’s South by Southwest festival to again screen their documentary, hang with the Flaming Lips, and accept High Times magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award. “For a couple years after those Katrina tours, there was a lull,” admits Johnson. “And I wondered if the project was going anywhere. But MOMA reinstituted my faith, and [New Orleans-based event-planning company] Huka Entertainment has hooked Tony into events with all kinds of musicians and comedians. He’s working with R.E.M. and Smashing Pumpkins. I think Tony is about to blow up, finally. And maybe I can one day buy a house again.”

Johnson hadn’t been back to New Orleans—which he still considers home—until earlier this year, when he made the trip with Clifton for Buku Fest, where Huka had booked Tony to judge an air sex competition.

It’s a more corporate vibe than Andy Kaufman traveling the country, challenging women to wrestling matches to be sure—Huka is owned by SFX Entertainment, which is in turned owned by giant Clear Channel. But Clifton is clearly excited for new opportunities to do his act for a younger crowd who know nothing of the dead comedian who popularized him. “I have energy and I have a big fucking heart,” he brags. “And the trick is to keep yourself associated with young people. Going back to Dennis Hof: I don’t fuck any girl over half my age, and I promise you.” He pokes my chest for emphasis: “Fucking, young, girls, will, keep, you, young. Their pussy juice is the nectar of the gods. It’s my secret to life.”     

Clifton and Johnson at work on the set of one of the singer's videos.

Like the Republican party, Clifton may have to remake certain aspects of himself to appeal to this younger demographic. These days, Tony rarely unpacks the mean version of his act for strangers. “He’s trying to adapt to people he wants to work with,” Johnson says. “After 30 or 40 years, he’s learning to respect people.” And that includes respecting Jeremy. “One thing that changed after our miserable year in Tahoe,” Johnson says, “is it made us much more honest with each other, and helped us keep less secrets—secrecy being a huge part of this project. Up till then I’d been a good little soldier, but after that I just said what I thought, regardless of the consequences.” This mostly meant Johnson limiting his work hours, and not answering his phone for every one of Clifton’s drunken 3 AM epiphanies about women or performing.

When I accompanied him and Johnson to the Buku Fest, Clifton didn't insult even one young person, all of whom were clearly rolling their faces off—he was feeling the contact high and seemed enamored of the incredible bass and ear-splitting squiggles that the kids these days call music. He smiled and waved at the oblivious young’uns who shouted, “Nice costume, man!” In New Orleans he’s just another costumed kook.

“I don’t think Tony’s ever been able to come to life the way he has in the last five years,” Johnson shouted over the blaring dubstep. “Ever since he finished his community service, he’s felt rejuvenated to actually want this career again. And now that he finally has Andy Kaufman off his back, this is the first chance Tony’s had to just be himself, to be who he wants to be.”

A scantily clad Lolita led Clifton into some heavy, molly-induced flirting, and we all danced a bit as Kid Cudi performed “Man on the Moon,” which is named after the movie named after the R.E.M. song about Kaufman. An extremely high young man cut between us, aimed his swirling eyes down at Tony and asked, “Andy? Are you in there?”

As we headed towards the scheduled air sex contest, I noticed Johnson didn't walk beside Clifton, so I took the chance to ask Jeremy, finally, if he and Clifton are friends. “We definitely are on a certain level,” he replied. “But I’ve separated myself somewhat because I realized it wasn’t a good thing to be friends with my boss. Because one day everything’s good, then the next day he’s screaming at me. And then I’m like, ‘Wait, aren’t you my friend?’”

Here's the premiere of Tony Clifton's new video:

Epilogue:
The Katrina relief funding that had paid Johnson's salary has now run out. He is now moving home to New Orleans, where he will continue to do Comic Relief’s bidding on a more limited basis.  

Michael Patrick Welch is a New Orleans musician, journalist, and author of books including The Donkey Show and New Orleans: the Underground Guide. His work has appeared at McSweeney's, Oxford American, Newsweek, Salon, and many other publications. Follow him on Twitter here.  

More about Andy Kaufman and his legacy:

Kaufman on Kaufman: An Interview with Andy’s Brother

Everyone’s favourite high-energy punk outfit from Melbourne, the UV Race, is currently on tour in the US. This is the first instalment of a tour diary of sorts by lead singer Marcus Rechsteiner.

Hey Guys,

The tour started in L.A. That's where the photo from the Griffith park lookout was taken of Georgia and Moses. The show was cool. We played at a Latin club called Los Globos.

We then drove to San Francisco and played a gig at the Rick Shaw stop. The photo of Dan next to the van was taken outside of that gig.

We then played Oakland the next night.

We then drove to Portland the next day and played a fun gig at the Doug Fir. Then the next night was Seattle.

From Seattle we drove to Billings, Montana because we had a gig at Fargo in North Dakota the next night. The photo of Dan with the snow in the background and mountains was taken two hours into the drive, still in Washington state.

The scenery in Montana was amazing. The mountains and lakes made the long drive a little bit easier.

When we arrived at Fargo, we met our driver and van man for the rest of the tour. His name is Joe. We also said goodbye to Julia who had been our driver and general helper since L.A.

Joe is in the photo of Dan and myself which shows off my great new hair cut which Moses gave me in Fargo.

We have been giving each other nicknames on this tour and mine is big poppa because I bought a walking Kane at a Montana service station.

I am writing this as I sit at the venue in Detroit we are playing. It's called the magic stick.

Tomorrow we head to Columbus, Ohio which should be fun.

From Thursday to Saturday we will be in Cleveland for Horrible Fest, and Sunday night we will be in Rochester in upstate New York.

I hope you enjoy the photos and my text.

Love Marcus

Love UV Race?

Click here for their US tour dates

Check our film about them on Noisey

Guitar Moves, hosted by Matt Sweeney, is a show where the viewer gets an opportunity to sit in on a private, interesting, and hilarious conversation about guitars, music, life, and their craft. During the season, Sweeney and his guest play through licks, riffs, and solos that inform their style, influence their playing, and define their sound. 

Presented in partnership with our friends at D'Addario XL.

In addition to logging time with parent-repellers like KMFDM and Ministry, Nivek Ogre (né Kevin Graham Ogilvie) is best known as the guttural screech that is synonymous with Skinny Puppy, who arguably invented electro-industrial in the early 80s. This pedigree, coupled with a history of serious drug use and a penchant for slitting his throat onstage, has led generations of depressed teenagers who are curious about things like Anton LaVey and animal sacrifice to embrace Ogre’s macabre worldview: one in which we are all currently coasting along on a dying sphere, counting down the hours until life on Earth is made impossible due to human stupidity, negligence, and aggression. 

This month marks the release of Skinny Puppy’s 15th record, Weapon, which features a giant spider made of guns, bombs, and knives on the cover and a quote from atom-bomb developer J. Robert Oppenheimer in its liner notes. I recently spoke with Ogre about such joyful matters as the Fukushima meltdown, mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer, and the giant “Machiavellian death shroud” that imprisons us all.

VICE: Here’s an almost stupidly obvious question to start with, but I’m curious: Why did you call your new record Weapon?
Nivek Ogre: I recently came to this weird gestalt in my mind that everything we do has the potential to either harm or cause good. This is a choice we all make with every action. But I view the human being primarily as a weapon, and a lot of the things that we’ve created have had disastrous effects on us as a species. Guns are a tiny element of a much larger iceberg that’s latticed throughout history. 

Did the Newtown massacre spark this record?
No, this started way before: March 11, 2011, when Fukushima melted down. It was at that point that I began to view abstract things as weapons. Right now we’re being inundated with a huge amount of radiation, so much so that in April, the EPA relaxed the amounts of radioactive iodine-131 allowed in water in the event of a radiological disaster like Fukushima. It was three picocuries per liter, now it’s 81,000 picocuries per liter. Now here we’ve got a huge Machiavellian death shroud being pulled over people, all based on nuclear power, and the underlying reason for that energy system is a weapons system. My question here is this: What inhuman force could possibly allow this atrocity to take place?

Speaking of inhumanity, I’ve read that Jeffrey Dahmer once came to a Skinny Puppy show. Is that true?
Yeah. Apparently Dahmer came to a show in Milwaukee to stalk a victim. I heard it from some people at a hotel I was staying at. We were playing a club that was sort of a gay and straight club. He would hang out there, stalking his victims. 

Getting back to the record, I keep listening to the second track, “illisiT.” In the chorus you keep repeating, “This is the Criminal Age.” Considering you started your career at the height of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race, do you really think of 2013 as any more criminal than the early 80s?
Absolutely. At least during the Cold War, the military-industrial complex kind of trickled down [laughs], and that’s why there was this huge boom in the middle class. I’m not a proponent of this, but at least people’s day-to-day lives were a bit better, and there was a glimmer of hope. But if the 70s and 80s were the Plastic Age, today we’ve entered an age where we’re openly embracing criminality. Although there’s apparently less death from wars these days, so I guess we’re living in a comparatively more peaceful time. People are living longer.

I’m really worried about the average lifespan increasing, honestly. I’m concerned that people living longer is profoundly unhealthy, and creates a pretty serious strain on the economy—
Oh, you shouldn’t go there, Ben. You’re talking about eugenics.

That’s not what I mean, though.
No, I know. And look, I almost agree with you. There is a dark side of me that thinks that if we were all living like cavemen, things would be better. That’s for your generation to figure out. I feel like I’m fucking tipping the scales here at 50. 

Weapon is out this month on Metropolis Records. 

Next month, Johnny from Children Collide is releasing a solo mini-album under the name Fascinator and each of the tracks featured therein will be accompanied by a film clip. First up is the synthed-out instrumental "Rise and Fall," and we have it right here for your viewing pleasure. 

VICE: Hey Jonny, where did you shoot this video?
Jonny Mackay: In a generally deserted court in Greenpoint just across the East River from Manhattan.

The song is pretty chill. Aside from playing basketball in a bikini, what is an appropriate situation for listening to this track?
Playing Aussie Rules Football in a bikini.

Was it more fun making this video, or the one where you had your hair shaved off?
Depends on your idea of fun.

After Clayton introduced us to John six months ago, John instantly became our new hero. Growing up in bad foster homes throughout New York City, John eventually ended up in the the Lower East Side where he met Clayton. John has lived many lives, overcoming every possible hardship known to mankind. His experiences have transformed him into a super-natural being. Nowadays, when he is not raging the stage with the Cro-Mags or competing in the Ironman Triathlon, he spends his mornings feeding the homeless in front of Tompkin Square Park. Here is our photographic insight into John's life.

To hang out with the man himself and get some serious insight into the city, check out his Walking Tour. He will also be doing a one man show Wednesday July 10th and Thursday July 11th. 

Photos by Clayton Patterson and Jade Katz.

Words by Taji Ameen.

@RedAlurk 

Continue reading over at The Creators Project.

Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning firm that’s normally one of the most accurate political pollsters around, sometimes has too much time on its hands. When it does, it takes national nonpolitical surveys of basically whatever the people running PPP think would be funny. In the past they’ve discovered that 62 percent of voters have a favorable opinion of Halloween, 47 percent think there’s a war on Christmas, and a surprisingly large amount believe in all kinds of conspiracy theories.

This month, they polled over 500 Americans about music, famous musicians, and hipsters. Some results went up yesterday, and it turns out that voters like classical music and jazz more than other genres by a fairly large margin, are into Adele and Taylor Swift, dislike Justin Beiber and Chris Brown, and like Beyonce better than Jay-Z. Oh yeah, and they hate rap—50 percent of the voters polled said that it’s their least favorite genre of music, and 68 percent of them had an unfavorable view of it. Dubstep and Skrillex had bad numbers as well, but 47 percent and 54 percent, respectively, were “not sure” what their opinions of those entities were, which makes it pretty clear that a lot of the folks taking this phone poll had never heard of them.

The real purpose of this poll is to remind us that the voting population of the United States, especially the ones who get polled in surveys, is old. PPP weighs its results for age, but 60 percent of the people polled were older than 45, and only 16 percent were younger than 30. Part of this is due to polls only calling landlines (how many 20-somethings have actual “home numbers”?), and part of it is that more old people are willing to go, “Oh, sure, I do have a few minutes to respond to an automated polls about musical genres!” But also, the electorate—defined as the people who actually bother to vote—remains full of people who don’t like the rappity-rapping and who probably think Skrillex is a no-stick frying pan sold on QVC. Despite the efforts of Rock the Vote and its Youth Spokespeople™ like Madonna, the Ramones, Miley Cyrus, and both Gyllenhaals, the olds are still kicking the youngs' collective ass when it comes to participating in democracy.   

So when PPP asks voters about music, it’s really asking old people about music, which explains the results of the other two sections of the poll, which PPP gave me a look at before their scheduled release. Some shocking statistics from the section dealing with classic rock: a whopping 26 percent of voters have an unfavorable opinion of the Rolling Stones (and only 61 percent of voters like them), more voters have an unfavorable opinion of Kurt Cobain (44 percent) than a favorable one (25 percent), and 86 percent have never downloaded music illegally. The average voter, as we speak, is listening to old-timey jazz on a CD he bought at Circuit City (RIP) in preparation to call his son via landline and ask, again, how to get Google on his computer.

The third part of the poll deals with hipsters without explaining the term, which has been diluted and redefined so much it now just means, “A young person who likes… bikes? And Wu-Tang? And flannel? And tattoos? I don’t know anymore, guys.” Not surprisingly, voters don’t like hipsters, whoever they are—46 percent of them agreed that hipsters “just soullessly appropriate cultural tropes from the past for their own ironic amusement.”

The only notable thing about the hipster section of the survey is that when you filter the results to remove the old people, hipsters don’t have such a bad rap after all: 

Young people have different opinions than older people—not just on silly shit like Bieber and rap and whoever a hipster is, but on the more substantial stuff that pollsters usually deal in. Young people, for instance, have greater levels of cynicism toward government and politics. Their opinions, though, are often overshadowed in polls that tilt toward middle-aged and older people due to methodological reasons.

But that doesn't make them invalid. Today’s 18–29-year-olds are going to inherit the Earth, after all, and although the Cobain-hating, jazz-loving seniors haven’t left it in great shape, maybe the millenials will be able to improve it through the force of their ideas. For instance, young people are all about drugs:

And the 90s:

It seems to me that the world is going to be in pretty good shape when it passes into the next generation's hands.

@HCheadle

More on polling:

Bad Polls? Racism Is the Answer

In Defense of Paranoia

Are Cats Spies Sent by Aliens?     

If you've ever wanted to shower with Australian abrasionist Kirin J Callinan, or if you lie awake at night wondering what shower gel he uses on his lithe, lily-white body, this could be the video you've been waiting for. Directed by NY-based photographer Cara Stricker, it features the wild man of loop performing his morning ablutions in what is, for the most part, an ordinary-looking bathroom.

"Interesting fact" says Cara when we ask her about the clip, "I messed around with some coding, and replaced chunks of binary code with Kirin's lyrics, which in turn corrupted the visuals. So what you're actually seeing in the introduction is a visual representation of his lyrics as pixels." 

So long as it contains actual footage of Kirin's real-life buttcrack, we don't care if it's a visual representation of a pigeon eating vomit; our eyeballs need to see that.
 

Noisey: Hi Fred. So who are you guys anyway?
Fred Pessaro: I've been a writer, DJ, and photographer in various different incarnations for all of my life. Currently, I'm Editor-in-Chief at InvisibleOranges, Senior Writer at BrooklynVegan, DJ/Host on a radio show on East Village Radio, booker/promoter of gigs around the city, photographer at the aforementioned sites as well as places like NPR, Decibel, Terrorizer, VICE, and many other places. I've also written at places as varied as Time Out and even Fuse.

Jake's viewpoint is less journalistic, but far more crucial. His experience as a back-patch-adorned, tattooed, worn-thin-Pentagram-shirt-wearing metal lifer is more important than any sort of bullshit resume I could give. Good music lives in the underground, and Jake and I have been part of that underground scene for years now.

Plus, he's super handsome, has the best mustache in Brooklyn and can totally drink you under the table. I've got beer bong video of that to prove it.  

How did you become a metal fan?
After my early days following hair bands and the like, I found myself enthralled by youth-crew hardcore and straight edge. That phase didn't last  long, but the DC music scene was pretty incredible. I still love Fugazi and much of Dischord, but eventually nothing felt "extreme enough." Then I came across Integrity, a hardcore band that dared to fuck with the dark side and dabble in metal riffs and imagery. From there it was punk-y metal bands and on into infinity. Bands like Slayer, Napalm Death, Cannibal Corpse, Mercyful Fate, Iron Maiden, Entombed, and of course Metallica all rearranged my head space. 

What's the concept behind Heavy Dicks?
Jake and I have been fans of metal for many years, but the thing that's always confused us is the rep that metalheads get as frightening people. In fact, its the opposite. Think back to high school. Most of the metal fans were usually painfully smart. We've always found those that devote their lives to metal to be affable, intelligent, and genuinely fun people, so we made Heavy Dicks to expose the very important side of their personality that most people cant see through all the tattoos and leather. This is a show about metalheads, musicians, and the people who make up our scene.  

So you're trying to save the reputation of metal heads.
Yeah. Metal isn't the frightening thing most people think it is. I'd say a lot of catharsis comes from putting on a Slayer record and cranking it to the top. That may be why metal guys are calm and respectful people as a whole. Ask any bar-owner or venue booker: metalheads are, more often than not, respectful of their surroundings.  

Yeah, you seem pretty nice. What kind of stuff will you be doing on Heavy Dicks?
We have some pretty fun episodes coming up with our friends in bands like Voivod, Saint Vitus, Neurosis, Pilgrim, and Black Tusk. We're doing some pretty hilarious shit. I'll leave some things to the imagination, but I'll leave you with two words—porn, and convention. 

A few days ago, I went to see Bob Dylan play in Charleston, South Carolina. As I was leaving the show, I walked by a trio of hippie-ish young guys who were enthusiastically passing out newsletters to people as they left the venue. One of them thrust some paper into my hand, so I stuck it in my bag and quickly forgot about it.

It wasn't until the next day that I realized I'd been given 23 pages of religious craziness written to/about Bob Dylan by some cult called Twelve Tribes who were trying to recruit Bob and his fans.

I'm writing about it now, a week later, because as much as I wanted to read through it and make fun of it right there and then, it was so poorly written and flat-out insane that it took me three days to make it all the way through. 

It seems that the cult's obsession with Bob stems from a rambling, 1985 interview he did with SPIN, which was so fucking crazy I assumed they must have made it up themselves. But I looked into it, and it turns out it's legit. Here's some weird stuff he said about "the messianic thing":

"The messianic thing has to do with the world of mankind, like it is. This world is scheduled to go for 7,000 years. Six thousand years of this, where man has his way, and 1,000 years when God has his way. Just like a week. Six days work, one day rest. The last thousand years is called the Messianic Age. Messiah will rule. He is, was, and will be about God—doing God’s business. Drought, famine, war, murder, theft, earthquake, and all other evil things will be no more. No more disease. That’s all of this world."

He then went on to say some confusing stuff about Jews:

"There will be a run on godliness, just like now there’s a run on refrigerators, headphones, and fishing gear. It’s going to be a matter of survival. People are going to be running to find out about God, and who are they going to run to? They’re gonna run to the Jews, ’cause the Jews wrote the book, and you know what? The Jews ain’t gonna know. They’re too busy in the fur business and in the pawn shops and in sending their kids to some atheist school. They’re too busy doing all that stuff to know."

Jeeeeez, Bob. I didn't know you was like that. 

The Twelve Tribes address Bob directly in a section appropriately titled “To Bob Dylan," in which they kiss his ass pretty heavily. Here’s the (totally not creepy) intro:

“Your songs from the early years were anthems for generations to come. They are prophetic in so many ways at many different levels. They touch the complex and deep longing of the soul for a real answer... your lyrics bring the ills of society and the pain and suffering of our individual lives to the surface.”

That's ordinary, teenager-who-just-started-listening-to-Dylan stuff, but then they move into a section where they take a ton of his greatest hits and make completely unfounded, nonsensical speculations as to their lyrical meanings.

For example, did you know that “Blowin' in the Wind” was about Dylan recognizing “that if hope for a better life in a better world dies in the human heart, evil will reign forever over the human race”? Or that "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" lets us know that "a day of reckoning is coming for all the injustice and cruelty and selfishness that fills humanity"? Or that Bob wrote "I Shall Be Released" because he knew there must be "a real King who could lead us into a real kingdom"? Me either. 

Then they give up on Dylan for a while and ask, "What would God's house be like if he lived on my street?" Answer: It would be big and nice (but not like, new nice) and he would invite everyone over to hang out. Even "the lame boy with the funny legs." Cool.

And then, for the next few thousand sentences, it just says... stuff. I have no idea. Here are some select quotes, maybe you can work out what they mean:

"The Messiah’s words, 'no man can work,' rang true in Bob Dylan’s mind. These remarkable words caused him to wonder. It is so significant that he wondered because his wondering helps others wonder. There is a shortage of wonder in the world today. But one thing you never have to wonder about is where what you heard came from.”

And:

"It’s only in the darkness that someone could show up at a building to listen to one man ramble on, week after week, and think that matches up to Paul’s instructions to the churches... For 1900 years, the institution called Christianity, which supposedly has something to do with God (but nothing to do with true love), has held center stage. Maybe that’s why Bob didn’t stick with Jesus for very long."

And:

"A people is being gathered.... The prophetic voice of a new millennium is faintly heard.... No longer separated... no longer alienated.... Living together in tribes… a commonwealth is being formed. This new commonwealth is not like the 'British Commonwealth' or the 'Commonwealth of Massachusetts.' This one is really a 'common wealth.' It goes by a whole new set of rules! It is a place where we have all things in common, and our highest law is LOVE."

I've read through this stuff like, 30 times now and have no idea what they're talking about. 

The pamphlet ends with some letters the cult members have written to Bob. Like this lady, Rose. Here’s Rose being crazy about her relationship with her husband and Bob:

"The deep passion of our romance was radiated through every word Dylan uttered. It says in scripture that a cord of three strands is not easily broken. He was our third strand.... We couldn’t go on without him. We needed him. What was life anymore without him!... When I first met Messiah, I prayed for Dylan every day. I had such a deep kinship to him in my heart. When I heard that he got 'saved' I was ecstatic. But I know that we were so far removed from being Christians.... I knew that if Dylan could just come and see this life, he’d fall in love as I had. I’m still waiting for this to happen."

This is pretty much the only reference in the whole thing that Bob Dylan doesn’t share their religious views. She goes on to say more batshit things, like a story about the time she drove over 500 miles to give Bob a letter but showed up too late and missed him (whoops!). Luckily she printed the letter here so he could see it:

"If someone took the time to write a letter straight from her heart to yours... would you take the time to read it? And if that same person traveled 500 miles that very day, to stand face to face with you, eye to eye, to express something to you from the depths of her heart.... Hey Bobby (thats awfully informal) there’s this lady outside who wants to tell you something. She said something about a place to belong, to be... long."

Not sure I would've driven 500 miles to deliver that...

Then, convinced that they've made a compelling argument, they ask if you would consider joining them, claiming it's what Bob Dylan would want you to do:

"You can come for a day or to stay. This is the answer that Dylan could only see dimly. This is what he wanted. Please come."

Photo by B. Gibson Barkley

After reading this ENTIRE FUCKING NOVEL, I still had no real clue as to what these guys believe. So I ended up consulting their website and trying to work it out. After getting sucked into a another vortex of bullshit for several hours, I think I've figured it out: They're essentially Christians who take the Bible literally, live in communes, and do stuff like whatever-is-happening-in-the-picture-above. And, oh yeah, they're pretty open about being racist, antisemitic, sexist, and homophobic.

To conclude: I really regret reading this thing. Why did I read this thing? I think I wanna punch Bob Dylan in the face now. 

More on cults:

The 40-Year-Old Town at the End of the World

Happy Science Is the Laziest Cult Ever

Cult Kids: Westboro

Since its inauguration in 1956, the Eurovision song contest has been the biggest, cheesiest pop-music event in Europe, showcasing schmaltzy, sometimes bizarre entertainers and launching the careers of such culturally base phenomena as ABBA, Celine Dion, and RiverDance. This March, however, Europe’s version of American Idol featured a few unexpected guests: Nazis. Or, more accurately, drummers wearing Nazi regalia.

A performance by Denmark’s Eurovision entry, singer Emmelie de Forest’s “Only Teardrops,” featured drummers in Waffen-SS outfits that were reportedly grabbed by a costumer who was unaware that they were worn by the propagators of one of mankind’s worst atrocities. (They were made for a TV show about Nazis.) Luckily, DR, the network broadcasting the performance, realized the mistake and made the last-minute decision to blur the arm stripes that would have made the origin of the outfits clear. Everyone involved has since apologized for the blunder, chalking it up to an unfortunate oversight.

Even Danish left-wing radicals seem pretty relaxed about the gaffe. “It was human error,” said René Karpantschof, a sociologist and former member of BZ, a militant Danish squatter movement. “It’s quite clear that the artists used these costumes by accident and that no political agenda was involved… Danes are very sensitive people, but it depends on who the actors are. Hugo Boss designed very handsome SS uniforms. The artists must have seen the uniforms and thought, Wow they look nice… But I don’t know how they didn’t notice the band on the sleeve.” 

Silas Adler, co-founder and creative director of Danish menswear label Soulland said that the reason for the lack of outrage could be that the Third Reich is ancient history. “Nazi symbolism is just as powerful today, but newer generations don’t associate the symbols with history as much.” He added that, for some young people, Nazi iconography isn’t always linked to events that happened long before they were born. 

“For a lot of people, history is just a couple of sentences on Wikipedia,” Silas continued. “In general, military clothing is something that has always been in the fashion loop. I guess people are drawn to its tightness.” 

Read more from our The World Hates You issue:

Beware the Lizzies

A Long Way from Home

Reviews

Good thing I was interviewing party-time, fun-loving, summer-channeling TacocaT for this installment of Irrelevant Interviews. For me, they epitomize summer. Playing with kittens in your neighbor's yard. Running through the sprinkler while you blast party music, and dance with your friends in sun-bleached dresses. Crashing neighborhood house parties, drinking cheap cans of beer, biking home intoxicated. You know, THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE. In fact, if your life this summer is a fun-time, teenage-channeling, romp-in-the-sun, TacocaT should be your soundtrack. Guaranteed.

If you don’t trust me, take it from these guys. The Coconut Coolouts may not have made it to the national arena in their short time here on earth, but I guarantee you, they were the best Seattle party band of their time. Hell—I’d even venture to say that, in my humble opinion, they were the best band to come out of Seattle since Nirvana. Or maybe Jimi Hendrix. Fact: their lineup included two stand-up drums, a keytarist, and a man dressed as a banana. WHAT IS BETTER THAN THAT? If you look up fun-time-party-band in the dictionary, their picture comes up and here’s what one of their drummers and self-described “recovering party animal, Mexican Jim Morrison, the King of the Pizza Ring, the man behind Gold Van, the dabbler in the downers, the mystical and probably magical” Rubin Mendez, has to say:

Now that the Coconut Coolouts are gone, that leaves TacocaT as the only band in SEATTLE that fits the, "We need a party band that people across the board can get into." For a while there were others, you know, bands with goofy names, funny songs, and novelty dance crazes… but TacocaT is still bringing it. Seriously! Pop, punk pop, pop punk, fun-party-time tunes. They are the leaders in the internet-kitten-and-420-tie-dye-rainbow-and-alien-with-a-peace-sign-cotton-candy-hair thing. They were doing that first. Their music is Trapper Keeper music. It's scented-sticker-book music mixed with a ca-razed-4LOKO-party-animal-drenched-in-beer-vibe. They have a vibrant energy that is endearing to most intelligent folks. The macho machismo, sexist, hard-headed types won't get it, but, you know… that's how you separate the humans from the Neanderthals.

If you haven’t checked out their songs, I suggest it. Their last seven-inch, Take Me To Your Dealer, was released on Hardly Art this March, and they are in the midst of recording a new album set to come out in September. I called them up, they put me on speaker, we all smoked a shit ton of weed (it’s legal now, right?), and I asked them about the summer.

VICE: How was a typical summer spent growing up?
Lelah Maupin (drums & vocals): When I was growing up, I spent my summers at my best friend's house with a sprinkler, under the trampoline, listening to The Lion King soundtrack. My mom bought me a go-cart for no reason once when I was a kid, too, and we would ride that around. 
Emily Nokes (vocals & tambourine): I grew up in Montana so a lot of my summers when I was really little were spent at a cabin, or watching my dad fly-fish. Sometimes my hippie parents would put us in a car for three months, too, and we would drive around the United States. I never knew where we were, but it was still really fun. 
Bree McKenna (bass & vocals):  I’m from Southern California, so summer was less exciting. It’s always kind of the same there. And I would go to the beach a lot in the summer, but I’d mostly watch Friends reruns and stuff. And Seinfeld.
Eric Randall (guitar & vocals): I played a lot of wiffle ball, I would say. Mostly wiffle ball.  A lot of wiffle ball.

What’s the worst summer vacation you can remember having?
Leleh: Oh my God. I’ll go first. So when I was seventh grade, I think… sixth grade or seventh grade.  My best friend—same one with the trampoline—her mom met and married a southern pastor in, like, two months and then tried to convert everyone to Christianity. Me included. She sent us to church camp. It was awful. It was like three church services a day and then a bunch of bizarre kids. There were the same kind of social cliques that you get in high school, just with strangers in a weird camp setting, for Christians. And everybody had a pair of Oakley sunglasses. And they took away our Nirvana CD, because it was so… what’s the word? Satanic?
Bree: Secular!
Lelah: Secular, that’s the word. 
Bree: I think the worst vacation I had was when I was 18. One of my best friends convinced me to move to Eugene, Oregon, for the summer. She was living in her ex-boyfriend’s house, but then their lease was up, and I think we ended up squatting or something. I was really unclear on the situation. You can’t get jobs in Eugene, because it’s all students. So we got jobs at some data-entry place, and we got fired a week later. Then we made a bunch of money selling cans from parties we were throwing at that house. Then the landlord evicted us for squatting. Then we had to go back home.    


Photo by Sarah Creighton

Do you have one article of clothing that signifies that summer’s begun?
Eric: I have some special cutoffs. They’re really short shorts. They’re very short. 
Lelah: I have, like, 20 bathing suits. I love bathing suits. I don’t know why. I wear them, like, two months out of the year. I love them. I also have this really amazing Bongo brand, denim, floral crop top. I’m always feel like I’m pushing it just a little with that one. Maybe I’ll just wear it on the Fourth of July. 
Emily: Summer for me is sandals—Saltwater sandals—and toenail art. I have really, really good toenails, because I have really bad fingernails. I take good care of my feet and get pedicures. I really like to show off those babies in the sun—the one month out of the year when you get to show off those beauties.
Lelah: Emily does have beautiful feet.
Bree: I don’t really change that much in summer, but I wear black boots all the time, so I’ll end up wearing a lighter boot. And I call them summer boots. So that’s about it. 

What are some essential summer jams for you? 
Bree: I like this band, the Deadbeat Beat. We met on tour. I’ve been listening to them for summer jams. I also like All Girls Summer Fun Band.  
Eric: I listen to the Beach Boys consistently year-round, but it feels better during the summer. 
Lelah: Every single summer, I’ve known Eric—at least for the past five years—he’s at some point put on the Screeching Weasel on the first day of summer.
Emily: Last summer, I started a Sun playlist that had all different songs with the word sun in the title. It started with the Sun Rays they’re a band that sound exactly like the Beach Boys. They’re, uh, maybe not as important as the Beach Boys, but, a lot of fun about sun… There was also “Walking on the Sun” on that mix. You know, that sort of thing. 

Was there a festival in your hometown every summer that everyone went out to?
Eric: Lelah and I are from Longview, it wasn’t like a festival, every Fourth of July there’s a really trashy flea market that was, like, mandated.
Lelah: Go Fourth!
Eric: Yeah. Go Fourth Festival.
Lelah: It was the three, four days surrounding the Fourth of July.
Eric: That’s where you get like your racist bumper stickers, or any other horrible, trashy thing you can imagine. 
Lelah:  Pro-gun bumper stickers, Cat in the Hat hats…
Eric: A cool knife. 
Lelah:  An elephant ear. 
Emily: I’m from the same town that Evel Knievel is from. So every year there is the best-slash-worst festival you’ve ever seen in your life called Evel Knievel Days. A bunch of people get wasted outdoors, and Evel Knievel’s little sidekick—Spanky Spangler—usually jumps out of the tallest building in Butte, which is not that tall, but still vaguely impressive.
Bree: Southern California has nothing on these festivals.

Have any of you ever entered a competitive eating contest? Did you win? If you haven’t entered one, have you attended one?
Eric: We’ve played at PizzaFest in Seattle a couple of times. I don’t think any of us have ever entered, but I’ve thought about it. I think I could win. I think I’m gonna win it this year. 
Emily: The first girl won last year. She was amazing. She was visiting from England, and I can’t remember what her name was. Do you remember her name, Bree?
Bree: No. 
EMILY: But she was incredible! She whacked everybody. 
BREE: She was really impressive. 
EMILY: Didn’t we work at an egg-rolling competition? I know I was working. I had to work coat check at an egg-rolling competition.
BREE: The lady at PizzaFest that won last year was amazing. She was talking a lot of shit all night. She had a British accent and was like, “You know, that pizza-eating contest? I’m gonna fucking win it!” She didn’t even know people, and she was saying that. It was awesome. She was incredible.

@TacocaTs

@Irrelevant_view

A weird phenomenon about being locked up in prison that many people probably fail to realize is how many people you meet in the clink-clink. They’re not all bad either. About a year ago, I wrote about one of my friends who got out and has turned into somewhat of a success story, holding down a self-sustaining job as an artist. Last May, a buddy named SunBlaze got out the damn slam can up in Riverview where we were at for a little spell. I only got to know SunBlaze for the last three or four months of my bid, but since we were neighbors we got to know each other pretty well and learned we had similar tastes in music.

A lotta dudes in prison are rappers, but I don’t pay them much mind. I don’t even pay myself much mind, but with the case of Blaze I had a feeling that he was serious bizness—the way he kept to himself, quietly writing and not talking a lotta shit like lotsa dudes do. Anyhow, he got out last May, and has been doing very well, holding down a job, following the rules, and putting out new music. So I decided to interview him.

VICE: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
SunBlaze: I was born and raised in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn… Growing up in a household that was musically diverse, I learned to appreciate all kinds of good music, but there was something about hip-hop that kept my ears open. I listened to Wu Tang, Mobb Deep, Gangstarr, and pretty much anything that the stations were playing. My neighbors and cousins were bumping the hip-hop hits at all times.

When did you realize that you wanted to pursue music professionally?
I was always rappin’ in ciphers just for fun, but I started getting serious once I realized that I could rap, and was actually doper than most the people around me. In 2004, I put out my first mixtape, The Shining, so I’ve been doing it for a while now.

You obviously had a setback getting locked up. You getting bitter at all that time you’ve spent grinding and not getting the recognition you deserve?
Not really. At this point in the game I choose to go underground. The rap shit on corporate radio doesn’t seem real to me. Of course, I’d like to have more people exposed to my music, but that’s why I’m working on my next project now. I’ve got five or six albums and mixtapes floating around and a few more coming out this year.

What’d you get locked up for, if you don’t mind me asking?
Man, some dumb shit I’ve been kicking myself in the ass for. Everything was cool, I had a good job, music was going well, and me and some friends decided to rob someone for cash with a stun gun back in ’08. In ’09, I copped out to three and a half years and did three.

Stick-up kid look what you done did! Got sent up for a three and a half bid…
Prison sucks, it really does, but I took it as an experience and always keep in mind those thoughts of being locked up before I go out and do something stupid. I was young and ignorant, but when you’re out in the streets playing with fire, sooner or later that fire is gonna get back at you and burn hard. I don't regret it, it made me wise and it made me the man that I am today. I no longer look for crime as a form of amusement, I have a good job, and I focus on my truest passion—hip-hop.

I can say overall that prison time has been a huge waste for me, but all the hours I spent writing definitely developed something in me, and I imagine the same happened with you spending all that time with your pen and your pad.
Definitely. A three-year stretch gave me a lot to think about and goals to lock down. Since I’ve been home, I’ve released two mixtapes, done plenty of shows and open mics, been on a few radio shows, and I’m working on future projects as well. I’m focused to just do the right thing and move forward with this music thing and main thing of all... stayin’ outta prison!

SunBlaze and I are currently in the studio working on a track called “Un Bicho Gordo.” Stay Tuned. Check out his music here and here. He is a lyrical monster with a very original New York street sound.

Bert Burykill is the pseudonym of our prison correspondent, who has spent time in a number of prisons in New York State. He tweets here.

Previously: Addiction Isn’t a Disease, I’m Just a Dick

Photo by Dimitri Coats.

For the first couple years of their existence, Black Flag couldn’t even get anyone to book them a show and the shows they did get were invariably shut down by Los Angeles Police Department riot cops, who battled the band’s teenage punk-rock fans in now legendary clashes remembered as "the Riot at Baces Hall" and "the Riot on the Sunset Strip." This summer, by contrast, two rival lineups of the band that broke up in 1986 have reformed for highly anticipated reunion tours, and each version of the band will take the stage at large music festivals in Europe and the United States. While longtime fans debate which of the two reunions—if either—are closest to the true Black Flag in spirit, or which will rock the hardest, it is clear that the band is at the height of its popularity.

The return of Black Flag to the stage began in 2011 around the time of the 30th anniversary of the band’s classic first LP, Damaged, the record often credited with inventing American hardcore. Original vocalist, Keith Morris, and bass player, Chuck Dukowski, took the stage with the LA-based band No Age to jam on some old Black Flag songs at an outdoor gig at MacArthur Park. That December, “Black Flag” was the surprise guest at the 30th-anniversary Goldenvoice show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Former Black Flag drummer Bill Stevenson’s longtime band, Descendents, were the headliners. Morris and Dukowski joined Stevenson and Descendents guitar player, Stephen Egerton, in playing the classic Black Flag first record, Nervous Breakdown, in its entirety. This lineup announced in January of this year that they would form under the name FLAG to play songs from the band’s entire catalog at several large festival shows this year. Soon after, Black Flag’s third singer and one-time rhythm-guitar player, Dez Cadena—currently playing with the Misfits —joined up to complete Flag’s all-star lineup.

Meanwhile, Black Flag’s founding member, guitarist and principal songwriter, Greg Ginn, announced in January that he, too, would be reforming the band, and would tour heavily across the US and Europe this year as Black Flag in support of a new record. Ginn’s lineup features the band’s second vocalist, Ron Reyes, who left the group in 1979, and a newly recruited rhythm section who had not previously been in the band. The two lineups present two differing takes on the band’s legacy. While Ginn characteristically pushes forward into new territory that may or may not connect with longtime fans, FLAG promises a joyous and passionate delivery of some of the most classic punk songs ever, played by the legendary musicians who helped make them so special.

In February, I hitchhiked to Ginn’s home base of Taylor, Texas, to try out for bass player of the new Black Flag. Along the way, I also talked to the members of FLAG on the phone and via email about their upcoming shows and plans.

VICE: It seems that Black Flag is now, almost 27 years after breakup, at the height of its popularity. Why do you think that is?
Chuck Dukowski: We made music that was truthful and that expressed a deep commitment. I think when you look at the best music that came out of hardcore, it was music that was heavy and truthful. To me, songs like “My War,” “Rise Above,” and “What I See” have stood the test of time more than say, “TV Party,” because they give voice to the feelings of disaffection and anger that most of us have. Music is uniquely great at expressing emotion. It creates bonds between people. That’s why the police restrict live music so much—it’s too powerful.  

Dez Cadena: Black Flag was the first serious band that wanted to do everything on its own.  It was a different kind of lifestyle. Like the band sleeping under the desks in the office of the studio we recorded in. That kind of thing.

Keith Morris: They’re great songs, amazing songs. They transcend the genre. Maybe we just struck a chord with all the nerds, all the people who never got invited to the party!  It was really hard work getting gigs back then. When we got one, we’d be ecstatic, just out of our heads with excitement. Now we might be playing a festival where there could be from five to 50,000 people. But when we started, we didn’t even have monitors.  

It seems to me that the legacy of Black Flag has partially gained mystique because of the band's absence. Until now, Black Flag has avoided the reunion tours that many classic punk bands have been on since the 90s. Do you feel there is extra pressure to live up to the band's legendary past?
Chuck: Black Flag has always had a lot of mystique because of the way we lived and toured, because of Raymond Pettibon’s art, and Henry Rollins’s book Get In The Van. I think Henry doesn’t get enough credit for the continued popularity of Black Flag. He is so talented and has always worked so hard. I feel pressure from myself to play the music with the honor, commitment, and energy that the legacy deserves—but it’s a good kind of pressure like an athlete that loves his game. 

Keith: Is there any pressure? Yes, and no. There’s a lot of physicality in this brew. Most people can’t really do it. We don’t want to just go through the motions the way many bands do it. There are a lot of doubters out there, a lot of haters. Sure. We get the “It's not Black Flag without Henry” thing. We get “It's not Black Flag without Greg.” But the fact of the matter is the four of us put in our time and helped make those songs what they are. I was one of the founding members. I had to put up with a couple different drummers, the first three bass players who weren’t really bass players. We didn’t really become a band… or a “machine” as Henry would say… until Chuck “the Duke” Dukowski joined the band and word got out that we were practicing three to six hours a night.

Dez: We [Black Flag] really ground those songs into the ground back then with all of our practicing, but it actually seems easier to pick them up and do them again now for some reason.

Dez, you already have some experience playing in a classic punk band’s reunion with the Misfits. How are the experiences of playing in these reunions different or similar?
Dez: In a way, it’s more personal for me with FLAG. Black Flag taught me how to be in a band. When I first played with the Misfits, it was just for one show for the 25th anniversary of the band. I did some Black Flag songs with them, and it went well, so I stayed on the tour. Then, Doyle quit the band, and I became the guitarist. I’ve been in the new Misfits going on 12 years now, which makes me the longest running guitar player the band ever had. People might laugh because I’m wearing makeup or face paint or whatever. But we do it our own way and we have fun. 

I’ve been asked for many years at Misfits shows to play Black Flag songs, so sometimes I’d do “Rise Above” or a couple others in a set, and people have always been very appreciative. 

I’m wondering about what its like to perform these punk anthems at a different stage in life. The band members have all reached middle age. Some of you guys now have children yourselves. Has your relationship to Black Flag’s lyrics changed in any way or taken on any new nuances?
Chuck: I feel the same way now! It wasn’t just a phase!

Dez: Black Flag songs are about inner angst and emotion more than other punk bands’ songs, and I think those subjects are timeless. I still feel that way. Like “Clocked In.” I still feel that. No one wants to work for the Man. And nothing against the bands that were singing “The hell with Reagan” or whatever, which was happening a lot at the time, but that stuff is not so timeless. Black Flag dealt with feelings. People throughout life might have those feelings. They want “Revenge.” They might be feeling like they’re going to have a “Nervous Breakdown.”

Keith: When we played those songs early on, we were whole-heartedly living all of that. When you get older, your perspective changes, sure. But we still live in a hectic society and it’s not hard to relate to those lyrics. Its not like I’m at the beach, meditating on a fucking blanket with my legs crossed, or doing tai chi and staring at the sunset and going, “Oh, I’m so at peace with the world!” I live right off Sunset Boulevard at one of the busiest intersections in LA. Right now, Friday night is coming up, so I guarantee I will be hearing people yelling and arguing out there. There will be brakes screeching. And there will be the guy who gets out of his car to punch the other guy. Or the guy will unload his fucking gun into the other guy. That’s happened out there twice. So things are still hectic for me. 

What do you most hope to achieve with FLAG?
Chuck: I want to have a great time with my friends and I want the audience to have a great time. I want the audience to come out of our shows sweating and thinking “That was righteous!”

Dez: I just want to play the music the way I feel it. I want to pay it respect. Black Flag’s music is a little different than straightforward punk. It has other qualities that other bands don’t have. Like in the rhythms—there will be little hesitations between the next note or the next bar. Like in “Slip It In.” Those breaks aren’t in perfect time and that’s intentional. Many Black Flag songs had these characteristics that other punk didn’t have. I want to keep that integrity and do it the best I can. That music was a big part of my life.

There are now two Black Flag reunions. Do you feel any sense of competition, friendly or otherwise, with Ginn's version of Black Flag?
Chuck: It was unexpected and strange that it happened this way. Keith and I had already done two shows together playing Black Flag songs, for free, for fun. One was with the band No Age at McArthur Park and the other was at the Goldenvoice 30th-anniversary show. People liked those shows so much we thought we would do some more—it was never our intention to have some stupid pissing contest. I don’t know what Greg’s motivation is. 

Dez: I’d heard all kinds of things. You hear stuff online, and until I talked to Chuck, I didn’t know what was up. I’d heard Greg was doing something with Ron. But being that I like to just keep respect for the music, I just try to do that. I don’t think there’s any competition.  Maybe in the past, like when Keith left Black Flag and formed Circle Jerks, you could say there was some competition. But even back then I never dwelled on that stuff.

I haven’t really talked to Greg in a couple years, but I wish everybody the best. I don’t think there’s any problem between us, though.

Keith: People ask me about what Greg and Ron are doing. They say, “Well, why aren’t you a part of that?” They’re supposed to be making a new record. Well, we’ll see how that turns out.

Chuck, do you remember when and where your last show with original Black Flag was? Did you know at the time you were leaving the band?
Chuck: I’m not sure when it was. 1983? We did a tour up the West Coast, the Meat Puppets were with us. I didn’t see the end coming, really. The song “My War” is about my feelings at the time. After Greg asked me to leave I went to my grandparent’s house in Germany for a while. I continued to write songs for Black Flag after I left the band. 

Would you have played with Ginn again today if he approached you?
Chuck: No.

If anyone’s interested in what the new Black Flag might be like, they can always go on YouTube and see the clips of Greg playing with Ron at his 50th birthday party. I guess that’s what sparked this whole thing (Ginn’s Black Flag reunion). Now, I recommend that those people then also go to YouTube and check out our set at the Goldenvoice anniversary party, too, and see how the crowd reacted when wecame out. That’s the kind of show we will be doing.

But that Goldenvoice show was billed as Black Flag. Do you really think that’s accurate?
Keith: Well, unfortunately, they billed us as Black Flag, and I wish they hadn’t done that. Because it’s not really exactly Black Flag, no. But they were trying to make as big a splash as possible and that was the way to do it. 

But, we’ve done nothing wrong. We were all a part of it! Greg Ginn can’t play guitar, bass, and drums all at the same time. He’s a horrible vocalist, that’s for sure. He needed us to make these songs what they are. People want to say Stephen (Egerton) is trying to pose as Greg Ginn or something. But who the fuck wants to pose as Greg Ginn? Greg can pose himself as Greg Ginn! The fact is, to borrow a title from one of Black Flag’s many fine records, there will be a process of weeding out! All will be revealed!

Don’t you think the best way to silence any doubts about the reunion’s legitimacy, though, would be to record some great new music together? After all, Ginn is making a record…
Keith: [after a full ten-second pause] Well, maybe. Maybe that’s true. But it’s difficult enough to get together to play at all because we’re all in five other bands.

Black Flag started out unable to find venues who would book you gigs and facing police oppression. Now both BF reunions will be playing fairly enormous festival gigs this year to great anticipation. Does this represent to you a triumph of the band's vision?
Chuck: I feel like it’s a triumph! We worked so hard. We changed the business of music. We spearheaded changes that are still working through our culture today. We created the DIY movement by successfully booking our own tours and releasing our own records. We shared that knowledge with other bands and labels, like Minor Threat and Dischord, who ended up doing a better job than we did! Musically, we brought a stylistic progression to musical language and culture that ended up having a very deep impact. The music was composed and performed with a deep and intense passion that gave it lasting meaning.  

The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is actually quite controversial in some circles. Some decry its lack of actual jazz as false advertising, since its namesake genre cowers under the shadow of headliners like Dave Matthews, Jimmy Buffet, and Bon Jovi. The Shell Oil logo that’s been embedded in the fest’s name since 2006 also disturbs Louisiana natives (it's sort of like a San Francisco heritage festival being sponsored by earthquakes). And of course observant locals remain suspicious of how few rap acts grace a festival purporting to represent New Orleans culture.

While you may have to hunt to find jazz in the city, and zydeco music can seem nearly extinct outside of French Quarter bead shops, it is rap, often locally produced rap, that blasts from car stereos, block parties, even kids’ birthday bouncy castles. But for many years now, the number of hip-hop performances at Jazz Fest has hovered closer to zero than ten, and usually the rappers who are invited are artists whose hype could not be ignored, not even by those prone to ignoring hip-hop hype. The fest has previously invited gay bounce rappers Big Freedia, Sissy Nobby, and Katey Red to share a single time slot. In 2012, not long after getting out of jail, New Orleans’s greatest MC ever, Mystikal, performed at the fest before heading right back into prison (he’s now free and signed to YMCMB, and I wish him the world because he truly is New Orleans’s finest). Former Baton Rouge schoolteacher Dee-1’s curse-free act has been invited back for 2013. This Saturday the Jazz Fest crams a record eight more-or-less unrelated hip-hop artists into one 12:45 PM time slot.

One of them is the remarkable 26-year-old female rapper 3D Na’Tee of New Orleans’s Third Ward, who definitely deserves her own showcase. “I am from the same neighborhood as Soulja Slim and all them,” says Na’Tee. “I remember being 12 years old when KLC the Drum Major was with No Limit [Records], he would come and visit his family in the neighborhood and I would purposely walk past that way to go to the store, and I’d just be rapping. Someone from the neighborhood would be like, ‘That girl right there she know howta rap! Stop her!’ So I would stop and rap for KLC. I didn’t know he really gave a fuck about it.” Na’Tee began appearing as a guest on neighborhood rappers’ tracks in 1999, and released her own first mixtape, 3's Company Vol.1: The Rapper, The Hustler, the Diva, in 2006 followed by Volume 2 in 2007. Her career started to really crack open last summer with her mixtape The Coronation. “For the last year I’ll be in the beauty salon and girls be lookin at me. Now it’s ‘What’s up Na’Tee!’ and ‘I wish you the best!’” Na’Tee says. “At this past NOLA Hip-Hop Awards where I won five, they honored KLC, and he got on stage and was like, ‘Yeah I remember Na’Tee!’”

Rap godfather Chuck D has said that he never likes to watch anyone on stage and think to himself, I could do that. When 3D Na’Tee takes the mic, no one thinks that. Her words are so plentiful they often crowd out any hope for a chorus, and her quick lyrical twists and turns would leave Big Boi carsick. While Na’Tee does not sound “old school,” her beats are hi-hat-heavy like Mannie Fresh-era Cash Money, and her concept-driven raps harken back to the years when Yo! MTV Raps was like a contest to see who could sound the smartest. A lyrical girl growing up in a bounce-rap world, Na’Tee preferred Biggie and Nas when her whole city was lapping up Juvenile and DJ Jubilee. “I like to shake my ass,” Na’Tee chuckles, “but I never loved bounce. I stayed with the more lyrical side because people saw it as a challenge: ‘A girl? A girl can’t do that.’”

In response, Na’Tee sat down and wrote pages and pages of verses, even during the years when freestyling everything was in vogue. “People thought it was so cool not to write, and they were making songs that had no concept,” she says. “I can freestyle, but I’d rather make sure I say exactly what I mean. I am also big on concept. I just think that it’s necessary.” Na’Tee’s “Lil Kim” is a Slick Rick-esque narration both complex and clear, the story of a fatherless young girl suffering from a daddy syndrome with a clever ghetto-mystery-novel ending.

Her work recently earned her a call from a lyrical female legend. “I spoke with MC Lyte on the phone a few months ago,” Na’Tee says. “That was the craziest shit ever. Eric Sermon told her about me, and she called and told me, ‘You gotta keep goin', 'cause this is what they need. You have to continue because the industry is lacking this.’”

After Na’Tee came out with the video for “Switch,” which stitched together several Timbaland instrumentals, on top of which Na’Tee hosted a battle between her three personas: the gangsta, the sex kitten, and the business-minded boss. Within 24 hours of uploading the self-directed video, Na’Tee received a call from Timbaland himself, who began arranging flights. The duo traveled together for some months, dabbling in the studio. But when time came to sign a contract, Na’Tee balked. “It can be a touchy thing,” she says to preface her explanation. “The contract wasn’t just between me, Timbaland, and his production company—they also wanted to manage me too. Some things in the contract weren’t really beneficial.” Na’Tee went on to supposedly also turn down a contract from Def Jam. “I don’t want anyone to think I haven’t signed a deal because of money. I’m not worried about the money,” she claims. “Creatively, I just want to make sure I continue to represent what I stand for. I’m sticking by this. I am not going to water my shit down.” Or as she puts it on The Coronation’s closing track, “Hi Industry”:

CEOs at the table meeting/ sayin one day I could play the beacon
Of light / Hand her the mic/ told me to paint pictures of life
Though add a few bars about ice/ take out a few bars about life
Talk about how to take pipe/ Then a few more bars about ice
Take out the last few bars about life/ Cool, that seems about right

Looking at Na’Tee, one would assume record companies might try to remake her as some rap Kardashian. I have tried to put this information as far down into this article as possible, but eventually it must be said: Na’Tee is a smoking-hot physical specimen. Bodacious, even. You might at first expect Foxy Brown, and be surprised to get something closer to Nas. “People are used to seeing Lil Kim, with her titty out and shit, but they’ve never seen an attractive woman [rapper] that didn’t talk about her pussy all day,” says Na’Tee. “I’m not going to dress like Da Brat or like a fuckin’ lesbian just because I need you to focus solely on my music. It gets people to look at me and then when they hear my music, I think that adds to the wow factor. Plus, I am a woman from New Orleans,” she adds, “the place where men are so forward just like, ‘Hey c’mere! C’mere! Let me talk to you!’ So whether I rap or not, it’s gonna happen. It’s been happening all my life.”

In many ways, she’s the quintessential up-and-coming rapper, but she’s in no hurry to sign with the labels who've thus far shown interest. “I been through a lot of shit,” she says, running down a litany of issues she’s thoroughly dissected in her songs: “From getting in trouble, to having parents who were in drugs, and daddy committed suicide. All these things, and I am the happiest I’ve ever been in my life, period. I am so happy and excited. And I am not going to fuck this up over some money, and be forced to be somebody I don’t want to be.” Or as the closing lines of “Hi Industry” state, “I’m young and I’m black, smarter than you niggas thought/ Just because I come from poverty, does not mean that I can be bought (bitch).”

As she waits patiently for the right situation, Na’Tee makes money off her app, which sends fans a constant stream of her new music and videos, and a clothing brand called BMB (Business Minded Bosses). Like everyone else in the music industry, she showed up at South By Southwest in Austin this March, where she ended up freestyling with Kendrick Lamar during her second appearance on MTV’s Sway in the Morning. And there’s plenty of further adventure lined up in her future. “The D.O.C. saw me on Dear Father and he called me and he was pouring his heart out, telling me how dope he thought the song was. He wants me to ghostwrite some things for other artists. He’s gonna have his surgery to get his voice back, but D.O.C. can still write his ass off—and I’m not just saying that because I fuck with him.” Stars she once dreamed might some day help her sound good are now calling her hoping she’ll make them sound good. “A while back there was a producer named KE on the Track—who did You the Boss for Rick Ross and Nicky Manaj, he did Swag Surfin', he did Magic, he did a lot of stuff for Wayne—and I hit him up on Twitter to see if we could work together. He said he liked my music, and said it would be $2,000 per beat. Fast-forward to a few days ago,  he just sent me like 150 beats and was like, ‘Use whatever you want, do whatever you want and we can put out something.’ Then a week and a half ago I sat down with Steve Rifkind [who helped launch the careers of Wu-Tang Clan, among others] and they’re talking some great things. The past few big meetings I’ve had, people are talking the way I want them to talk.”

All that and she’s even caught the ear of the people in charge of Jazz Fest—which is really saying something. “I just want to prove that there is a lyrical female out here,” she says, “and that there are lyrical artists in New Orleans and in the South. The record companies force-feed people [music] now so people say all the time, 'Please bring real rap back.' I want to be a part of bringing it back. I believe it will be back. I believe it will.”

Michael Patrick Welch is a New Orleans musician, journalist, and author of books including The Donkey Show and New Orleans: the Underground Guide. His work has appeared at McSweeney's, Oxford American, Newsweek, Salon, and many other publications. Follow him on Twitter here.  

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Hip-hop is having a renaissance right now in the city of New York, where it seems like every other day a new MC rises up out of the five boroughs with an even more unique style and approach to the music than what we thought was possible before. Motley crews like the A$AP Mob, the Beast Coast, and World's Fair have given us a reason to love rhymes again. We've written a lot about this stuff, but sometimes words don't do it justice. So, we've linked up with scene insider Verena Stefanie Grotto to document the new New York movement as it happens in real time, with intimate shots of rappers, scenesters, artists, and fashion fiends. Check back every week or so for more photos. 

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Photographer Verena Stefanie was born and bred in Bassano del Grappa, Italy. The small town is not known for hip-hop, but they do make a very tasty grape-based pomace brandy there called grappa. Stefanie left Bassano del Grappa at the age of 17 to go and live the wild skateboarding life in Barcelona, Spain, where she worked as the Fashion Coordinator for VICE Spain. Tired of guiding photographers to catch the best shots, she eventually grabbed the camera herself and is now devoted to documenting artists, rappers, style-heads, and more. She recently directed a renowned documentary about the Grime scene in UK and has had photo features in GQ, Cosmopolitan, VICE, and many more. Check out her website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram @VerenaStefanie.

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Saturn Dogs are an improvisational performance group, or perhaps they are sound sculpture, or maybe even a noise band. Eschewing labels and categorization, their shows might just as easily involve music, on the spot psychedelic mural painting, or the eating of elaborately prepared food.           

The duo formed in Brooklyn in 2012, when Sto Len, an artist/musician and co-founder of the Cinders gallery, met Manon Parent, a classically trained violinist and dancer from Paris, then living in New York on a Fulbright scholarship. “I saw her perform a dance piece at a DIY music space, where they never have stuff like that,” Sto recalls. “It was completely different, it blew everybody away.” Manon saw Sto perform soon after, in his experimental project Stolen Temple Pileup, which involved playing an amplified shopping cart–“I was doing weird noise music with costumes,” he says. They decided to collaborate, and eventually relocated to Berlin.

A recent show I attended was billed as a “record release and sushi dinner.” I arrived at Sameheads, a cafe art-space in Neuköln, to find tables laid out with plates of homemade sushi. The rice had been dyed deep neon blue, giving the rolls an eerie look, as if they were dissected rounds of alien tentacle. It was impressive, and the small crowd that gathered for the event was unsure whether to begin eating or appreciate the sight as an installation. I can’t resist free food, so I led the charge. The sushi was quite good, and even these small morsels were examples of odd cuisine cross-pollination: a Mexican sushi roll with beans and salsa, a desert sushi with nutella and banana.

The two members of Saturn Dogs appeared from behind a curtain, dressed in glittery costumes somewhere between superhero and prom night, to seat themselves in the center of the room at a table set with wine glasses, cutlery, dishes and kitchen utensils. A candle was lit, and the performance began, in the emphatic slow motion body language of modern dance. Contact mics on gloved hands provided a horror movie soundtrack, amplifying the scraping of cutlery and clinking of wine glasses into jittery screams of tension, transforming the grating of a carrot into something like the churning howl of a factory. At times the beating and banging on the table became rhythmic enough to suddenly settle into a beat, a percussive groove that would then dissolve back into abstract, atonal sound. Though the performance seemed mostly improvisational, like one lucky try after another, I wondered afterwards how much of it was planned in advance. The climactic moment, with amplified wine glasses cupped over mouths during a screamed and blubbered back and forth, seemed too well staged to have ended up there by chance.

When the dinner ended, the Dogs, rather than exiting as dramatically as they entered, slump into a relaxed posture and broke character. “OK, let’s hang out!” said Sto, smiling shyly, in a gesture which seems less art gallery and more reminiscent of a basement punk show.

The merch table also reminded me of a DIY show, with its wall full of handcrafted merchandise, including necklaces, individually made T-shirts, and the new release they’d advertised, a CD-R entitled Blu Pu. Again it was difficult to say whether this was a true merch table or functional sculpture, like the food. Was the record the end product, or just a side product? And why dye the rice such an unappetizing shade of blue?  As it turned out, the final sculpture was yet to come: “We want to make you poo blue,” explained Sto, simply.

This multi-level approach fits well in Berlin, where the idea of a band already drifted away from traditional musical and instrumental concepts years ago, and where the art scene has been forced into adapting the scrappy attitudes and strategies of musicians out of economic necessity. The breadth of activity that Saturn Dogs manage to fit into one conceptual package is impressive, as is the amount of sheer work that went into the production of this evening: the food, the costumes, the sonic and theatrical elements of the performance, the construction and packaging of the merchandise. It represented a crazy effort for two people, in no specific medium. That seems to be the idea. “It doesn’t need to be something,” Manon said. “It’s the first time I’ve just let everything be, without trying to understand it.” On that note, dessert was served: chocolate cake with bright blue frosting.

Saturn Dogs next performance will be on May 8 at L’Atelier Kunstspielraum in Berlin. 

Big K.R.I.T. is on a roll right now. The 2011 XXL Freshman Class alum just dropped his tenth mixtape, King Remembered in Time, which boasts some of the hardest tracks to come out so far this year. His highly anticipated collaborative album with Yelawolf, reportedly titled Country Cousins, is slated to drop this year as well. And he’s making that commercial money soundtracking some new whiskey ads that star ex-basketball player Julius “Dr. J” Erving. That last one threw me for a loop, too. But it made perfect sense when I visited the Meridian, Mississippi, MC at Def Jam’s midtown offices—K.R.I.T.'s cup runneth over with the brown spirit.

Once K.R.I.T. was settled in with some whiskey and Coke on ice, I chatted with him quickly about his upcoming West Coast tour with Smoke DZA. Then I hit him with some rapid-fire "weird-ass questions" culled from VICE's Question of the Day column. He laughed a whole lot and ended up telling me about hypothetically drinking pee in the desert, the relationship advice book he might pitch to Oprah, and the playlist he’d make for an orgy.

VICE: Let's start off with an easy question. What was the first record you bought?
Big K.R.I.T.: The first record I bought was Silkk the Shocker's Charge It 2 da Game. Yup, he had the cover with the big-ass credit card on it.

How old were you when you bought it?
I must have been like 12 or 13. I was a super-duper No Limit Records fan, and his album had just dropped. And I had the money to get it.

What do you miss most about being young?
Not having bills. That was fun. Bills are real, man. I’m thinking about them right now.

But doesn’t being on a major label make you immune to that?
There’s no exception to bills. And you get more of them depending on the situation you’re in. Then other people make bills, and they need you to help pay them. Then you have a lot of bills. [laughs]

Who was your teenage crush back when you were a kid?
Oh, I can’t put her out there like that. Her name was mad awkward though, so even if I don’t say her last name she’s gonna know exactly who I’m talking about.

Tell me about her.
I’ll tell you about her. She was bad, early. You know, you’ve got that whole summer break when you're in school. And when you’re young, you can change in just three months. I remember, it was the transition form junior high to high school, she came back as a totally different person. And I was like, “I love her.” She hit me on Facebook recently, but she didn’t pay me any attention back in the day. 

Did she know you liked her?
She says she did. I don’t know, I don’t like to say the rap music helped her hit me up. I like to think it’s my personality. I like to think she wants to rekindle what we had, but didn’t really have.  

What’s the secret to successful dating?
I’m the wrong person for that kind of shit. But I'll tell you one thing, you have to be honest. There’s a lack of honesty in relationships. You know how, just to keep from arguing, you’ll be like, “I really like that dress you got on,” but you actually don’t like it? I think you have to start early and be like, “Your hair looks crazy right now.” Because once you build that foundation, you’re really building each other’s confidence. Honesty’s the best policy. I have it figured out on a relationship level; hopefully Oprah will pick my book up. I’ll make it real artsy and shit.

What’s the worst lie you told as a teenager?
The worst lie? “This is my car.” “These are my rims, these are my wheels.” “I just got this.” I was probably 17 and I wanted a shorty. So I told her it was all me. [laughs] She believed me until I had to give the car back. We were chilling in the parking lot at a high school football game, and my partner called me because he needed his car back. At that point, what are you gonna do? I told her she had to get out of that whip.

What sort of person wants to bone you?
Someone who wants to be pleased.

What else does she like?
She wants to have an amazing orgasmic experience. Earwise, via the music, and bodywise. And soulwise, because I’m all about feeding the soul of a female. 

So in that multisensory vein, what music should you play at an orgy?
An orgy? See I ain’t never…

Let’s say you were DJing one. What would you play?
I’m DJing an orgy? You mean I am at the party?

Sure, you’re in the room.
I’m not sure if I’m down for all that. Let’s say I made a mixtape and I sold it to somebody that played it. Let me think about this: “Late Night” by Three 6 Mafia, “T-Shirt and Panties” by Adina Howard, and “Purple Rain” by Prince. That’s some nasty shit. Oh, and “Private Dancer” and “Turn This into Something” by me.

Let’s switch it up a little. What’s the most pain you’ve ever been in?
The most pain? Damn, that’s hard to say. Probably when my grandma passed after shooting the video for “Hometown Hero.” That was fucked up and weird, because I felt like I wasted too much time trying to get into the music game, and I wanted her to see me get in… Breaking my collarbone in 1995 was also a real pain, too.

When is it OK to pee in a jar?
I’ve watched some of those survival television shows. And apparently, if you’re in the desert and there’s nothing to drink, and that’s the only liquid you’ve got, then you’ve got to use that to keep yourself cool. So if I’m on safari and I’m lost, that might be a good time. But I don’t know how you’d get an old school mason jar on safari.  

What’s the sexiest fruit?
Strawberries. That's classic. Or a female eating a banana, maybe.

How old would you go? Have you ever thought about your age limits?
I’ve thought about them. How old is Angela Bassett? She’s still bad. She can get it. I can’t name anybody else, because the other one’s an R&B singer who I want to work with. 

Finally, how long do we have before global warming kills us all?
Man, what the fuck? I don’t know! First the Mayans thought shit was going to be over, then we had the 1999 scare and nothing happened. The sun could burp tomorrow, and we’d all get burnt up. I can’t speak on it, I just try to stay prayed up. I put my religion in my music, to stay prayed up.

Thanks, K.R.I.T.!

@NeuThings

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