I. I THINK THAT I’M KOBE
3 and a half weeks ago: the DG show ends it’s almost Saturday, moon full-red-hanging-over-the-road but that was before i lost it now, now covered in sweat Coming Down off K1, Worlds Worlds Worlds still all dreamy — go outside, smoke a cigarette, meet people, talk to people, text people, look for people, look for myself, still emerging from outside myself, or rather returning to within myself, or away from anything but the immediate present… when we find where we’re Supposed To Be2, we’re waiting for the next uber, i’m sitting down on the floor with the others, finally open twitter – the same thing all over my feed – the first tweet i saw:
anditsthefirsttimebacksince:
kobe just died, pop smoke just died, ***** just died, death was everywhere during the show, i passed a funeral home and a cemetery while walking there, thinking about ain't gonna happen and how chief keef has lived a life full of loss3 that few can fathom which gave me a sense of strength – then when fivio came out and did big drip, the way everyone started moving sturdy ballerina, there really was this great sense of Joy before
– (Video Description. Written 03.14.22)
There were so many more posts like it. The algorithm knew, it was all it was showing. There’s a certain unreality to death when it’s of a life that’s only mediated to you through a screen, of a reality that’d otherwise be invisible to you, a reality that’s invisible to everyone else around you. It feels all the more unreal when you’re at an Event4 that is culturally predicated on that process of making the visible invisible, of eliding violence — listen to Save That Shit, then Inside Out, and finally the remix to understand the process. There can’t be Thaiboy Digital drill without Kay Flock (allegedly) up-ing it in Fashion or Dthang Gz yelling ‘even my abuela know that!’ while flipping Love Sosa into BX Drill with the snares and 808s (the most recent track from either are a series of acapella jailphone disses at each other while both teenagers are incarcerated at Rikers, held on gun possession and murder charges respectively).
The last song Goonew released before his death was 81 Shots, a homage to Kobe, with frequent collaborator Lil Dude (see Homicide Boyz and Homicide Boyz 2). Goonew raps: “81 shots and I feel like I’m Kobe // Them n***** be talking but really don’t know me // I’m smoking on Runtz man your cousin is potent // I’m totin’ that 50, don’t look like I’m totin’” in his signature flow which has become near-ubiquitous across rap. Rather than rapping to the beat of the drums, Goonew structured his bars around the rhythm of the underlying melody – it was something innate, seen on one of his earliest songs 80’s – creating a flow that first spread through the internet of his native DMV area, with streaming services like Spinrilla hosting early songs and mixtapes, and local Youtube channels like DMV Hoodz Nd Newz Media providing news, updates, and archives of IG Lives that documented the scene. Goonew’s flow would go on to define DMV rap and be one of the biggest influences on how popular music Sounds today5. He died at age 24, victim of a homicide.
“I'm Goonew I was born on the pavement… // I run down and spin em again // I hit at his men and I hit em again // Junkies they come and they spinnin' a bin // I'm servin' my auntie she gave me a ten” — Goonew. 80s. 2017.
“There is no everyday activity which does not aspire to be photographed, filmed, video-taped… All events are nowadays aimed at [the screen]…” — Flusser. Towards a Philosophy of Photography. 1983.
Axiom 1: a Reality where X is a constant phenomenon will continually produce Visualizations of X
Axiom 2: Visualizations of Realities are not Realities.
I remember where I was when Kobe died. I remember where I was when Pop Smoke died. I remember where I was when Goonew died. Like I remember What Happened To Virgil (Fast)6.
II. A Beautiful Pantomime
“There are no wings to the screen. There could not be without destroying its specific illusion, which is to make of a revolver or of a face the very center of the universe.” – André Bazin. What Is Cinema? Vol. 1. 1967
“…when you think you’ve peeled back the true story, they write another story line that incorporates reality. Donald Trump has been Stone Cold Stunner-ed bro, Donald Trump has been in wrestling, he’s a big part of WWE, they’re all really connected, it’s all the same shit – America, wrestling, hip-hop, Trump – all a beautiful pantomime.” – Dean Blunt. Crack Magazine. 2017.
A Set of Arguments:
Hip-Hop functions not as a reality-producing machine but as a machine that produces images, sound-images, and moving images of the Reality and material conditions that generate them.
Hip-Hop, which previously functioned as an Internet within cities, once migrated to the Digital Internet became a machine that subsumed and reconstituted said realities, and whose description became best tied to the Internet Geographies occupied
These Geographies which have (see angelicism01’s SoundCloud Infinite Niches: Axioms on SoundCloud Rap) and have not yet been theorized fluctuate but are generally bound by platform. Soundcloud Music is and is not Spinrilla7 Music, which in turn is and is not Youtube Music, etc.8
Images Could Never Have Existed In Reality
All of this is not to say that geographic boundaries are restricting, but rather operate as fluid boundaries. This functions in opposition to our physical and political borders:
“Borders. Everything begins with them, and all paths lead back to them. They are no longer merely a line of demarcation… they are the name used to describe the organized violence that underpins… our world order… an image of humanity on the road to ruin.” – Achille Mbembe
Making Revolvers and Faces The Center Of The Universe
Take the case of Drill Rap / Street Rap – music whose lyrical content centers towards doing drills (murders), selling drugs, and other organized crime activities – which has cultural pockets centered around Youtube — see the rapid rise of Pop Smoke through a handful of videos, the Chicago Drill wave of the early 2010s with its iconic videos shot through the lens of DJ Kenn, Dgainz, Azae Productions, and Seuss Leroy to name a few, or the current Bronx Drill movement, which now has Cardi B hopping on a Kay Flock track despite his current incarceration.
The content of “Youtube Drill Rap” differs from “Soundcloud Rap”, referring here not to the entirety of the platform, but termed in such a way to note the inversion – where instead of the artists being drug dealers, they’re often users, rapping about their struggles with addiction, relationships, opioids, or even just veering deep into lyrical abstraction. What the sound-images of their respective lyrics bring forward are Images of Realities that are nascent, developing, whose post-historical nature we are only just beginning to reconcile with.
The tragedy of what emerges is that the proximity that these artists have to these realities leaves them susceptible to it. Lil Dude and Goonew were able to make Homicide Boyz and Homicide Boyz 2, historic regional tapes, both in terms of the internet geographies and the physical region, with far-reaching impacts and influences but a homicide foreclosed the future possibility of a Homicide Boyz 3/4/5/infinty that we’ve seen through Gunna’s Drip Season 1/2/3/4Ever.
On the side of Soundcloud, there’s the case of DIAMONDSONMYDICK & Lil Kawaii’s XANMAN. The video, now deleted from (the artist formerly known as) Diamondsonmydick’s (know known as Bloody Mary, changing their name after a number of allegations ranging from scamming to sexual assault) Youtube channel (which used to be the Reptilian Club Boyz youtube channel) now titled Vampstar Records, archive channel Karma Archives has preserved what is easily one of the best (Re-)Presentations of the now-near-present underbelly of Los Angeles, like the feature films of eons past, though here it’s compressed into two face-tattooed twenty years rapping next to a pool on a DTLA rooftop, with visuals shot and effects added by Dutch Soundcloud Artist Demo2k. When Lil Kawaii raps “I got my bitch off a pop and a fent-xan” it’s something that couldn’t have existed even 10 years ago – the fentanly flex, the teetering on the edge of death and extinction, and less than a year later Lil Kawaii himself would tragically die of a fentanyl overdose, the harrowing details of which were chronicled in an Instagram Live by fellow Soundcloud artist David Shawty who, despite his traumatized state having borne witness to the death, was forced to fight to dismiss rumors he had given fent-percs to Kawaii.
Remember CHXPO did alchemy when he turned Cleveland to houstanlantavegas – the rust belt transmutated to a BB Simons by saying 'i got faces i got faces i got faces'. The music makes Death the face of the universe, makes images of death, the faces behind the faces behind the faces.
III. The Real Grave Digger
“A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face”. – Jorge Luis Borges. The Maker. 1960.
“Goonrich, bitch, I'm a real gravedigger
Baow, baow, baow, n****s pullin' them triggers”
– Goonew. Real Steppers. 2020
There’s an image of death in those six syllables: I’m a real gravedigger. In Mati Diop’s Atlantique (2019), a group of young men leave the Senegal on a raft, hoping to sail to Spain in search of work. They’ve been forced to leave after months of laboring without pay on a new building, an unfinished skyscraper elevating above its Sub-Saharan surroundings, forced to leave after months of empty promises, which are only a fraction of the lives of broken promises. Forced to leave because of borders and the world order.
The young men are killed by the ocean on the journey. Their spirits return to Senegal, possessing the young women they left behind at night, seeking revenge for the scars of lost lives, and lost loves. One of these men, Souleiman, takes the body of a police detective to set fire to the wedding bed of Ada, the girl he loved and who loved him, and her arranged husband. Souleiman retakes control of the detective’s body each night, searching to get close to Ada once again.
The possessed women and their spirit counterparts eventually find the businessman who never paid them, after setting a number of fires across the city. They get the money owed to them then force the businessman to dig his own grave, laughing at how he can’t dig in the process. He knows not how to kill, but use the world to kill for him, his hands unskilled, uncalloused.
Yet it still feels like there can be no true retribution or reparations for the injustices built into the world, and in drawing this world, Mati Diop sketched out her relationship between the cinema world and her ancestral home, giving outline to her face in the process. Goonew etched the world directly into his. In his interviews, he was often asked about his face tats, and gave numbed responses to the questions, but emphasized that they were there for The Pain, that he put the pain of his life into art on his body and art on his face. A tattoo in memory of his cousin, who Goobew saw shot and killed when he was 10. A tattoo below the eye to cover up a gunshot wound to the face he suffered when he was 18. Countless other tributes to the hardships of a life in the streets from an early age. In the end, Goonew went up the block to give a birthday gift to his sister like Souleimane set out to sea. Their physical bodies died, and they moved into a spiritual life, awaiting momentary resurrections into living bodies.
IV. What I’d Thought Was A Mountain Was A Wave
There’s a Moment in Atlantique where Ada’s arranged husband, a wealthy man gifts her an iPhone. They’re next to a pool, overlooking the ocean, which he then goes swimming in. Notes:
He gets (her) an iPhone; angels (and tells) Her it will change her life
The water of the pool is not the water of the world
the ocean of atlantique and the ocean of peleschian’s la nature
invisible vs. visible
There’s a statue in front of the sun
Despite being the cause of Death in the film, every image of the ocean shows it calm and tranquil, gazing into its eternity from the shores of Senegal. When Souleimane tells Ada, through the voice and body of the police detective, “I saw you in the enormous wave which consumed us. All I saw was your eyes and your tears. I felt your weeping dragging me to the shore. Your eyes never left me. They were there within me. Pouring their light into the depths.” it is accompanied by a shot of a gorgeous ocean gleaming with the orange hues of sunset.
The representation of water stands in direct opposition to Pelechian’s La Nature, a film composed of found footage, graded into black-and-white, that communicates strictly through montage, image, and instrumental music. The signification of human language never enters the form, speaking instead through its technics. Shots in the film range from tornadoes and volcanic eruptions to resplendent shots of mountaintops. The film makes the viewer aware that despite every advance in technics that made it possible, we remain powerless against nature, that our very existence is a dance with the world that cannot be encompassed by language.
NAV’s 2020 release Emergency Tsunami and it’s youtube visualizers captured this impossibility of speaking, of Saying Something, cutting across disaster footage of Real People getting swept underneath and away by water while he monotonously drones and croons about drugs and designer clothing — about Emptiness. All it can do is Reflect, there is No Ground.
V. The Final Show
“Back from Hell, I died twice
I'm with my n****s wrong or right
Go get that gun, bitch, fuck a knife
Like Chiraq, we put sticks in pipes”
– Goonew. Back From Hell. 2020.“I should only believe in a God who knew how to dance.” – Nietzsche. Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
“The screen is not a frame like that of a picture but a mask which allows a part of the action to be seen. When a [person] moves off-screen, we accept the fact that he is out of sight, but he continues to exist in his own capacity at some other place in the décor which is hidden from us.” – André Bazin. What Is Cinema? Vol. 1. 1967.
“the Egyptian mastabas, the Etruscan tombs, the Aztec structures… shed new light on what ‘contemporary’ has come to mean… a place where he buries himself to subsist… the crypt that prefigures the resurrection.” – Paul Virilio. Bunker Archeology. 1975.
“Long live the homies man you know what the fuck going on Long Live Wick, Wick ain’t dead he living thru Sayso and the rest of the homies… know how we coming behind that. Free 'em man… 'bout to drop this secret society mixtape because we living in a secret society… if you know Sayso then you know… y’all living in a fake movie world… I ain’t even speaking on nothin' on nothin' on nothin'.” – Lil Dude (aka Lil Dude Lucianio aka Big Sayso). LIL DUDE ON IG LIVE FRESH OUT, SPEAKS ON GOONEW’S PASSING, UNRELEASED MUSIC + MORE. 2022.
Just as the spirit of Souleimane was resurrected for a final dance, set to Fatima Al-Qadiri’s Body Double during the climax of Atlantique, so was Goonew’s in a ritual that created a moment of shock online before dissipating into the inundation of content to most. Goonew’s corpse was propped up on-stage at a DMV club, his music was played, his friends, family, and artists rapped along. Years back he had performed there with G Herbo. Now his spirit, and the spirit of his sounds were being transferred to those around him, with Lil Dude wearing the same Amiris, rapping Goonew’s words as though they were his own.
A few years back, Shawty Lo’s family brought his body to his favorite Atlanta strip club for one last time. Years before that 2Chainz rapped “When I die, bury me inside the Gucci store”. And Kanye, featured on that same song, recently discussed an art piece he’s working on in a conversation with Tino Seghal: a rehearsal of his funeral. The crypt prefigured the resurrection. And Goonew’s voice is resurrected every day, as is his image. His final dance like that of Souleimane’s resurrected dead bodies into a different form – that of a digital afterlife, and being alive through others.
When DMV rapper Baby Ahk was shot and killed in 2018, Lil Dude worked with Drain Gang / Sad Boys producers whitearmor and Güd to make ‘Magic’. The tracks combination of Swedish synthy production that emphasizes atmosphere over drums with the American vocals serves as an significant precursor to Rx Papi & Gud’s Foreign Exchange, but also faces the violence that the DG/SBE tracks of whitearmor & Gud elide. Lil Dude croons about Love for drugs, for the streets, for his fallen brothers. His last words:
Lot of n****s disappeared, I’m real familiar with Magic – Lil Dude. Magic. 2018
Reach for my chain you gon die with that bitch
Got drakes AP’s tryna slide w/ that shit
Pop-pop-pop, n****s diving and shit
And i just came home and I’m Back Inna Mix
– Goonew. Back Inna Mix. 2022
“Drugs are a medium for overcoming cultural mediation in order to reach immediate experience. Drugs are the mediation of the immediate. The inebriated man reaches, thanks to alcohol, hashish, and LSD, the concrete experience of the immediate, which is veiled for the sober man by the barrier of culture. He reaches, thanks to such media, the “unio mystica,” through which he dissolves into the concrete. He dives, thanks to such artifices, into the ineffable… Drugs, as the result of the tension between man and his culture, mirror the specific culture that they provide an escape from. Opiates from the Far East mirror the religious experience of those cultures: they seek to provide a negative “enlightenment.” Alcohol mirrors in some way our own culture, and hashish the Islamic cultures, and this could explain why Islam forbids alcohol but tolerates hashish, as the opposite of what happens to us” – Vilém Flusser, Post-History
“Ketamine can have a profound effect on the sense of time, which often slows dramatically before vanishing completely. Awareness may then appear to enter a state of eternity. Eons of evolutionary events can seem to take place before a sense of real time is regained.” – Karl Jansen. Ketamine Dreams and Realities. 2004.
internet as a gestation place: there are locations in new york & other cities that serve as hubs for people of a specific online culture/disposition to come together etc [ to be expanded l8r]
footnote about Bitch Where voice memo – Camera Lucida / Audio Lucida and death of a voice / Futura Free / Chief Keef Granny. Just as Barthes said every image is a recording of death, every audio recording of voice contains an imminent death. we hear the dead in Frank Ocean’s brother at the end of Futura Free, in Chief Keef’s granny at the end of Bitch Where, in every song by the deceased
Drain Gain Concert as an extinction ritual – all things happening as though they are the last things happening before the end of the world. all rituals being extinction rituals
See Yeat The Second Coming
DMV Spinrilla culture
Other platforms may include but are not limited to Soulseek, Datpiff, Mega Folders, TIDAL, Spotify, Audiomack