Nasir Thato Marumo and Alfred “Freddie” Kimani host The Rap Scholars podcast, an audio collage out of Western Massachusetts that seeks to facilitate “a new generation of rap criticism,” using “podcast as pedagogy.” As you can tell by the podcast title and tagline, both Marumo and Kimani are academically-minded when talking about hip hop and rap music. However, their approach to criticism and podcasting in general is quite inclusive. The Rap Scholars feels more like a conversation between learned friends rather than an elitist cacophony of buzzwords and academic jargon. Their scholarship and deep knowledge of hip hop and rap music is real, but never isolating.

The Rap Scholars podcast covers a broad range of topics and artists, analyzing everything from the current Jamaican trend in rap to the emotional side of trap. Soon, they’ll have even more voices on the podcast with a new feature called Reason Battles where the hosts and guests face off about pertinent topics in rap and divisive artists within the genre.

We chatted with Marumo and Kimani about their contemporary approach to rap music criticism, misconceptions about the genre, and the true origins of hip hop. This Q & A has been edited for brevity and content.

Podcasting as pedagogy: please explain.

NTM: For me, this means that we want to use the framework of a podcast and the casualness, tangentiality, and conversational quality of [podcasting] as a way to teach. I had a mentor who basically showed me that the way that I existed was already a form of study. I think black kids are always taught that we don’t know anything and that the knowledge we do have is not legitimate. So podcast as pedagogy is trying to legitimize a conversational study of hip hop culture that is accessible and not elitist, and prioritizes conversation.

Especially when talking about rap music and hip hop in academia, there’s certain ways you’re supposed to talk and certain kinds of things you’re supposed to say. To me, those are the least interesting things that are happening in rap. I learn the most about rap from the people who are actually creating this music, which is young black kids in high school and middle school even. Like 21 Savage—he’s basically a baby.

AFM: I love the diasporic aspect of the podcast. Tying all these conversations back to its roots either from an African Diaspora or Jamaican Diaspora. I think when people get to see where these roots and diasporic vibrations are coming from, it can maybe lead to a more interesting conversation.

Why use podcasting as a primary medium for your message?

AFM: I firmly believe that hip hop is mainly an audio format. I didn’t see any video format being able to highlight hip hop as well as a podcast. Also, podcasting gives us the option to throw in music, dedicating time to the entire audio of a song and being able to speak on that. Listeners can enjoy the song and listen to the narrative we’re building around it. [Podcasting] just seemed to be the clearest way to present these topics.

NTM: I want to be a rap critic and a cultural critic. Podcasting, to me, is the most contemporary way to engage in that kind of analysis. It’s really important to me that we play the entire song we’re talking about and that we bring in other voices, and podcasting allows us to do that.

Once I realized performing was more a way for me to think about and understand what rappers are doing, rather than my personal career path, I immediately jumped to podcasting. For me, it was the next logical step after realizing I didn’t want to be a rapper, because I had the skills to do it. Also, I was having so many in-depth and inspiring conversations with scholars around me who think about rap. There’s not a lot of millennial rap critics; it feels like there’s a hole in the criticism. For example, most of the people talking about trap music in media are shitting on it, calling it “mumble rap,” and saying it’s meaningless.

What are the biggest misconceptions about hip hop and rap music that have prevailed since the beginning of hip hop? Also, what new misconceptions are starting to grow that you have to battle when talking about hip hop and rap music?

AFM: Right off the jump, throughout the decades there’s been this misconception, [spun] by a lot of media outlets, that hip hop leads to violence. It’s pitched as a clear correlation by so many representatives and so many leaders. It’s wrongly become this harmful visual and that misconception itself can cause harm. If you’re a person who truly loves this music and sees yourself identifying with a lot of the verbiage behind it, then it’s hard to see yourself fitting into a society that sees this thing you love, and so many do love, as leading to violence. That’s something that’s a constant struggle and has been perpetuated throughout the decades from rap groups like N.W.A. and films like Boyz in the Hood, to rappers now like Kendrick Lamar.

NTM: I feel like there’s so many misconceptions. For me, every time we talk about the origins of hip hop, it starts with DJ Kool Herc who was Jamaican, but that’s where the story always begins and ends, which to me is so false. Hip hop and more generally Black American music and Jamaican music have been in this really interesting cultural conversation since at least the 1940s. Part of my mission is to do a little bit of a revisionist history of hip hop to give credit to Jamaica where it’s due, which is all throughout the entire culture and especially in the history of rap.

In terms of new misconceptions, rap is still a pretty young genre and is made up of so many sub genres. Every five or six years there’s a new kind of rap being made. A new misconception is that the priorities of hip hop are always going to be the same or that the things that make you a good rapper are always going to be the same. But those things are changing as our culture is changing, as new young people are innovating in our culture. There’s a disconnect between what critics expect rappers to do and what their priorities actually are. With the podcast, we want to usher in the new generation of rap criticism that meets contemporary rap music on its own terms.

Want to hear what Nasir and Freddie are listening to? Head to our Take A Listen Spotify channel for a curated playlist from Nasir and Freddie.

Nasir Thato Marumo, Alfred “Freddie” Kimani, co-founders, The Rap Scholars
Massachusetts
Website
Facebook
Instagram

Top image illustration of Marumo and Kimani by Madda Illustrations

The post Rapping with the Rap Scholars appeared first on Take Magazine.

“I’m 19,” says Dylan Rhode, one of the three frontmen of Flower Shop, a music and arts collective based in Portland, Maine. Dylan drifted around New England, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey through his upbringing, finally settling down in the Greater Portland area he now calls home. “It all kind of happened organically,” says Rhode, who goes by the moniker Monk, of the advent of Flower Shop. “We didn’t have anything else to do except get in trouble and do stupid shit, so turning this common interest into a business seemed like the most productive use of our passion.” In nine months, that passion has flourished into a hip-hop collective, studded with rappers, vocal artists, producers, videographers, beat-smiths, and musical magicians—most of them under 21—who are pushing out unique content by the day. A quick visit to their Soundcloud gives a sense of their musical range.

Mhon Griot & Monk | Photo by Justin Hardesty

Passion doesn’t always express itself in a pleasant way. “It’s different up here,” Monk explains. “It’s cold, everyone has seasonal depression, and the summer is fleeting. The summer is almost like a feeling as opposed to a time. It’s a different culture—everyone is collectively sad. We’re trying to bring the essence of that culture to our music.” Since August of last year, Monk and the other two frontmen, Trevor Tucker (THT) and Mhondoro Richards (Mhon Griot), have been pushing out masterful products of visionary talent steeped in sadness. However, this tripod of hip-hop wunderkinds couldn’t stand without a thriving community of audiovisual colleagues to lift them out of the perpetual sludge. The most powerful manifestation of that is their first music video for their track, FACES, which features the work of many talented collaborators.

The concept for the music video was dreamt of and engineered by Flower Shop visual artists, Dillan Hodak and Charlie ‘Buckets’ Mayforth. The Champlain College senior and SCAD graduate, respectively, pursued futures in visual media and connected with the collective through Flower Shop’s multi-talented booking manager and graphic designer, Tim Dubois. “They really liked the song and we wanted to do a project together,” says Monk. “They have all the equipment and happen to be incredibly nice at what they do.”

The Flower Shop crew whipped up an audiovisual gem in a single day. “One of our sets was in Tim’s little Burlington apartment. We had so many kids jumping up and down in the room with all this heavy equipment, the downstairs neighbors came up and said their ceiling was flexing in. They said, ‘The song’s really cool, but we’re afraid you’re going to collapse our ceiling!'” says Monk. While they claim the video was “thrown together,” the polished outcome can only be credited to expert work. Note the spray-paint jumpsuits that make appearances throughout the video, created late night on a whim by Mayforth. Talk about whacking it out of the park on your first try.

THT | Photo by Justin Hardesty

The Flower Shop members are not without pleasure nor plight. “Living in Maine has shaped my art because people think that a rapper has to come from a hard place and a crooked, dangerous city,” THT says, “and when people hear about rappers from Maine, they think the worst. They call us soft, but it doesn’t mean a thing—we all have been through a lot. But ah well, that’s just another person we have to prove wrong.”

FACES | Still shot by Dillan Hodak

Flower Shop – Music and Arts Collective
Portland, Maine
Website
Soundcloud
Instagram

Monk
Soundcloud
Instagram
Twitter

THT
Soundcloud
Instagram
Twitter

Mhon Griot
Soundcloud
Instagram

The post Maine’s Hip Hop Flower Shop appeared first on Take Magazine.

Jason Cornell, aka BRZOWSKI, has been a fixture of the New England rap scene for almost two decades, traveling all over the country and parts of Europe to perform his specific brand of thoughtful, progressive rap. BRZOWSKI and his labelmates at Milled Pavement create work that challenges industry norms related to genre, song length, and style, which they believe will be particularly in demand given our current political climate.

Cornell’s career as a rapper started in the Providence and Boston scene, when he found a way to parlay the skills he developed while earning his BFA in Painting to the craft of producing rap music. “I was attracted to the single, solitary creative figure, alone in the studio, who goes to teach college during the day to make a few bucks then goes back to the womb and creative isolation of a solo artist,” explains Cornell. “Rap provided that same womb-like, self-determination, studio environment.”

Though painting is still among Cornell’s creative practices, it is not his primary mode of creative expression. He prefers the thrill of live performance, and the way in which rap connects the audience and performer. “I think I shifted focus because it’s really hard to get 200 people to show up, drink beer, and yell at a painting on a Tuesday night in Missoula, Montana,” he quips. “But rap music can do that.”

32French had a very successful year with Milled Pavement | Photo courtesy Milled Pavement website

Instead of moving to Philadelphia, New York City, Los Angeles, or farther south to Atlanta, all places with historically vibrant rap scenes, Cornell chose to move to Portland, Maine to continue his rap career. For Cornell, this move made sense for a lot of reasons. “It was sort of a natural choice to gravitate towards a scene that was young, fertile, progressive, and was big enough to have everything in a city that you would want,” he says. “Like I could get a vegan pizza at one in the morning.” In addition to a lower cost of living, vibrant scene, and dairy-free, late-night za, living in New England is great for Cornell and other rappers due to the region’s many urban centers; adjacency to New York City and Philly makes touring fairly easy to plan.

Cornell’s rap as BRZOWSKI differs in a few key ways from most of the rap you’re likely to hear on the radio. BRZOWSKI as an individual isn’t a sleekly designed product of a multi million dollar record label like Drake or Action Bronson, though the production value is top notch. His raps are dense with meaning, intensely political, and more poetic than lyrical. Think Nas or Aesop Rock, telling stories while sharing a specific worldview that seems dim, yet realistic. His raps are cathartic and revealing, inviting listeners to face his demons alongside him. Some of his songs do have catchy moments and choruses, but most of his raps urgently fly fast past listeners and are always worth a read-along while listening.

Vinyl Cape’s 2016 release | Photo courtesy Milled Pavement website

BRZOWSKI’s label Milled Pavement features all kinds of artists who are challenging our notions of genre and song structure, while also looking to respond to our current political climate. “We range from people that could probably be called ‘commies’ all the way to center right,” says Cornell “There’s a lot of people all over the spectrum; but generally, the reaction [to the election results] was horror. Collectively the people who lean right feel like we failed a national IQ test, and a lot of our overseas friends have sent us messages and emails of condolences.”

Though Cornell and several of his labelmates share in the collective fear that many artists have about the upcoming administration, he remains confident in his ability, and the ability of other artists, to challenge the status quo and hold a mirror up to our sometimes sordid society. “It’s our duty as artists, with our creative mouthpiece, to speak truth to power whenever possible,” he says. “That’s why artists have always been considered subversive and dangerous: we’re always ready to tell the inconvenient truth.”

Jason Cornell is a painter and rapper living in Portland, Maine. Listen to one of his newest EPs here, follow him on Facebook and Twitter, and be on the lookout for a new album from BRZOWSKI this summer to be released through Milled Pavement.

Top photo Jason Cornell in Vienna, Austria | Photo by David Višnjić

The post Now, More than Ever appeared first on Take Magazine.