HUCK Magazine The Nas Issue by TCOLondon

analogclothing.com

Analog’s ‘Permanent Light Archive’ showcases and catalogs the artwork of our global community of team riders, artists and friends. The very principles of the creative process and many artistic mediums are analog in nature, thus the PLA refers both to light that enables us to experience visual arts, and also to the permanent impact that these images have on our lives and culture.

The skills Arto Saari honed on the granite ledges and stairs of the marketplace in his hometown of Seinajoki, Finland would be the foundation of a fearless skate career, which has taken him around the world and back more than a few times. Throughout his travels, Arto fell in love with photography. He is inspired by Sturt, Atiba, Grant, Swift, Burnett and Skin, as well as, the likes of James Nachtwey, Don McCullin and Richard Avedon. The most he ever spent in one swoop was probably seventeen thousand dollars on Hassleblad gear that would end up stolen from Uni benches in Barcelona. Arto now lives in Los Angeles, CA and these are his photos.

BROOKS. UNQUESTIONABLE BRITISH TRADITION.

www.brooksengland.com

ENJOY EVERY MILE

LINK-UPS

8 HUCK

TOP PRETTY SWEET S K AT E F L I C K S BCN GUIDE #ANYWHEREROAD THE INDIGNADOS PA R I S I I S K AT E

14 15 16 19 20 22

BOTTOM TERRY CALLIER BALDY LONGHAIR RECORDS JOHN WITZIG > CALIFORNIA HARDCORE

14 16 19 20

THE BIG STORIES

> NAS D AV E C A R N I E V S . T W I T T E R NYOIL MUSICAL WEAPONS SIMONNE JONES THE N WORD STEPH GILMORE JUKE & FOOTWORK GUY MARIANO THE BOTS JONI STERNBACH M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E CYCLOCROSS

24 36 40 42 48 50 54 60 64 66 70 74 76

ENDNOTES

> TA K E T H E S TA G E JOEY PROLAPSE THE LAST SKEPTIK ASPECTS MELANIN 9 KINGDOM OF FEAR STONES THROW

83 86 88 90 92 94 96

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R ANDR EA KU RLAND EDIT AND OR PRO Y TW EDD JEC L T AS E AN SIS NA TAN -L I T SE NIO SE D UN RD BIN N ES D IGN BR I KA ER AN D S UFM AN TR MA DA AT N NA NN EG Y I G S DE T ING M AN DIR ILLE R EC FA TO UL R KN ER

MADE BY ALEX CA PE S

S RDT WORD ERBE D AMIN BENJ D D FOR PAR BOB N IP D ON NAR NAM CIN LEO N IE STA RN UN CRI CA AD VE ILL DA NZ GO AO GO AN DR M R HI LE OIC KE DU ICE O K T N N BR O FA T HA RU ERC M N IA

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FIE LD ER W S OL TS F KE PT IK

S EW R DR DITO N E A E T ED CIAT IOT SO LL NER E AS L SIG E AN EV NIOR D HT E NIG S D-K IGNER Y LO R DES EL TA EV JUNIO FES ZIO IGNER I R FAB DES ONI EDR NO C DITOR IA L GIU MERICA E A LATIN DY OGHDA H EL-B A N NT N TA A IS S H SHING AS PUBLI

HI-FEN.COM TRANSLATIONS

JAMIE BRISICK

IMAGES

GLOBAL EDITOR

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MATT B

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BY GREG FUNNELL

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JO NI RD STE LIZ AN RN SE SC BA MA C A X H BRO WAR H MU AM OK TZ ST I LT AF PA AH ON UL AB W ILL RA DU NK OU IN GH LAZIZ TIM BY SM YTH

ADAM HAYES PHERSON ANGUS MAC WICZ ŁOSZKIE O H Z BARTOS LEN BEN CO A BALL N DER BRYA ARD N O E TA L H CRIS LINC NY C N A N D TO WIL Y RKE DAN MA LL D I NE DAV UN F IN EG GR MART ES L Y U WA N G LY E L RE S HO E G RTE K U C JA ZIG FF WIT E J HN JO

DISTRIBUTED WORLDWIDE BY COMAG | PRINTED BY BUXTON PRESS | THIS PUBLICATION IS PRINTED ON PAPER FROM SUSTAINABLE SOURCES | HUCK MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED SIX TIMES A YEAR. THE ARTICLES APPEARING WITHIN THIS PUBLICATION REFLECT THE OPINIONS OF THEIR RESPECTIVE AUTHORS AND NOT NECESSARILY THOSE OF THE PUBLISHERS OR EDITORIAL TEAM. © TCOLONDON 2012. PUBLISHED BY THE CHURCH OF LONDON | 71A LEONARD STREET | LONDON | EC2A 4QS | +44 (0) 207-729-3675 | INFO@THECHURCHOFLONDON.COM

10 HUCK

12 HUCK

Hear the digital version at: huckm.ag/nas

LINK-UPS: CONNECTING THE DOTS BETWEEN THE NEWS 1

have_board_will_go_01

PRETTY SWEET A TASTE OF GIRL AND The opening scene. A close-up on

CHOCOLATE SKATEBOARDS’

Rick McCrank’s face turns into a

STORIES OF SKATEBOARDING, AND THE CITIES WHERE THEY ROLL.

H AV E B O A R D , WILL GO

SUGARY NEW FILM

choreographed festive sequence of The skateboarding world has been on

skateboarding and fireworks in a SoCal

tenterhooks all year, waiting for the

school playground – shot in one take

release of uber-hyped skate vid Pretty

with a heli cam. It’s this sort of cinematic

INSTAGRAM TALES FROM

Sweet. So it’s a damn good thing that

ambition that sets the films by Spike Jonze

THE FILMING OF PRETTY

it was worth the wait. With killer parts

and Ty Evans apart, bringing a touch of

SWEET.

shot around the globe – from Barcelona’s

gourmet to the skate-smorgasbord-of-

famed Paralelo and the white-marbled

tricks format. Name credits get a dose

The Girl and Chocolate teams may look

plazas of Shenzhen, China, to a mega-

of FX wizardry – Alex Olson boomerangs

super-slick in slo mo, but what really

van road trip that rolled through Las

a skateboard into his own head, costume

went down beyond the steadicam’s

Vegas, Montana and Detroit – the Girl

changes unfold on 50:50 grinds, and

gaze? These are some of the stories that

and Chocolate teams (you know, Rick

suspect road traffic accidents unfurl –

unfolded behind the scenes, snapped

Howard, Kenny Anderson, Mike Mo

while loud-mouthed A-listers Jack Black

and shared through a filtered phone lens.

Capaldi et al.) have proven once again

and Will Arnett get cameos. Oh, and some

that the best spots are sometimes a plane

kids named Raven Tershy and Stevie Perez

ride away. For those of you who have yet to

rip. Now watch it for yourself and fill in the

queue outside your local skate den to get

deets

ED ANDREWS

your hands on a DVD, here’s a supershort snapshot of what to expect. (Oh,

prettysweetvideo.com

and there’s a Guy Mariano interview on page 64, too. Just sayin’.)

retro_culture_01

TERRY CALLIER 1945 – 2012 A QUIET TRIBUTE TO THE FOLK-INFUSED JAZZ.

HISTORY HAS A FUNNY WAY OF COMING BACK AROUND THE BEND.

RETRO CU LT U R E

UNASSUMING FATHER OF

In the mid sixties, Terry Callier stopped by the Village Vanguard on Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue. John Coltrane, famed Saxophonist and progenitor of free jazz, happened to be there in the middle of one of his epoch-making residences. Terry’s visit that night was the flutter of a butterfly’s wings – but it created a seismic shift. “When I saw John Coltrane that night I just knew he was doing things that I could never do, with a commitment that I could never muster,” Terry told me over a bowl of soup in a cold Clerkenwell tavern in 1997. He had just completed a session with folkrooted, dance-crossover darling-of-thehour Beth Orton, and was in the middle

14 HUCK

We had him for two or three days and

R AV E N T ERSH Y @BIG COUCH

were so in love with the chicken. It was so cool. We would come home every day

F R AC TUR E D

and kick it with the chicken but it got too

Blake Johnston is a kid from San Diego

cold and it passed away. It needs to be

who came to every screening last

under heat lamps but we just had it in a

year, and then made this video called

box and one day we left the air-con on

Fractured – about cracking bones – as

in the apartment and it was barely alive

a school project. Whether you like the

when we came back. I took it into the

subject matter or not, that’s not the

OTH E R S K AT E F L IC K S YOU WILL MOST D E F I N I T E LY D I G

shower, steamed up the bathroom and tried to make him all warm but he passed away. We made a grave and buried him on Paralelo and had a funeral. Stevie read

point. The point is he did a great job in the editing suite, asked all the right questions and played with the audience’s emotions. Kid’s been studying Stacy Peralta, for sure!

a eulogy and we took off our hats.” FABRICE LE MAO, FOUNDER “This was in a train station in Milan. Stevie

OF THE INTERNATIONAL SKATE

F E E DBACK TO THE F UT U RE

[Perez] was smoking a joint and these

FILM FESTIVAL LOS ANGELES,

Sébastien Abes isn’t a newbie. It shows

cops came up. If you zoom in on it, the

CALLS OUT SOME LESSER-

right away when you watch this almost

cop’s got a lit spliff in his hand. Stevie just

KNOWN GEMS.

four-minute long short. Feedback to

handed it to him when he was lit. Handed

Future is like a memory shot. You travel

a cop a burning spliff! It was amazing!

in space and time from burgeoning VHS

We didn’t get in trouble. They just took

days up to the HD orgy that is today. The

the spliff and left.”

effect is immediate: nostalgia and a lust for present-day life collide with rare

"We bought a chicken in Barcelona

emotion. Very pleasant.

and Stevie named it Duncan. We got it on La Rambla street. It would just post up on your shoulder when you came home from skating. It would just sit right there.

Records and then for Cadet – never sold appropriately. By the end of the nineties he had been dropped by his label. “I was happy to spend time back at Coltrane’s hard-charging bebop, Callier

home,” he told me. “I had commitments,

channelled his Chicago Blues roots and

I had a daughter to raise. I knew music

created poetic, beautifully harmonised

would always be part of me, that I would

of one of many visits to London where

ballads that sat comfortably, uniquely,

allow myself to be a conduit of the music

he would play to a small but dedicated

between folk and jazz. There were soul-

whether or not anyone was listening.”

coterie of devotees. Blending together

infused, gospel-tainted stompers too, like

It took the crate-digging tenacity

jazz and folk, the Chicago-born musician

‘Ordinary Joe’ and ‘I Don't Wanna See

of London’s Acid Jazz founder Eddie

was experiencing his renaissance, the

Myself’, which by the end of the eighties

Piller to track Terry down in Chicago

re-ignition of a fire that had lain dormant

had turned British dancefloors inside out.

and drag him back to his soul-literate

since the late seventies.

Any contemporary consumer of hip hop

British audience. What followed was an

Coltrane defined the high-soaring

meanwhile, will recognise the classic bass

all-too brief comeback - on this side of the

STUFF THAT MAY NEVER HAVE

extremities of black music in the sixties.

line of ‘You Goin’ Miss Your Candy Man’.

pond, at least. There were other albums

HAPPENED WITHOUT TERRY

Unassumingly, meanwhile, Terry Callier

Though Callier represented an

(1998’s Timepeace remains a highlight)

AND HIS BUDS.

simply picked up his guitar. A shape-

authentic folk-tinged branch of the

but it was always the live performances

shifting acoustic counterpoint to

jazz family tree (where Curtis Mayfield

that defined Terry Callier’s music. There

defined the funk and Gil Scott-Heron

was a magic to these performances, a

pushed forward toward hip hop) the

soaring expansiveness that validated the

albums he produced – first for Chess

transcendent beauty of good music

THE NEVERENDING LEGACY OF TERRY CALLIER AND CO.

MICHAEL FORDHAM

Terry Callier died, aged 67, on October 28, 2012.

have_board_will_go_02

E JKE I & MISIL ES DE RAC IMO

These two Puerto Rican films were made by different guys for different

GREY STREET/SATAN’S COFFEE CORNER

reasons. Ejkei documents forty years of

C AL L E PEU DE L A C R EU, 25, 12530

skateboarding, while Misiles de Racimo is a clean snapshot of the present scene.

M ACBA

There's definitely something magic in

PL AÇ A DEL S ÀNGE L S , 1, 080 01

BCN BREAKDOWN

the Puerto Rican way of seeing the world. Sitting somewhere between American and South American culture, the folks

A MINI TRAVEL GUIDE.

there live by their own interpretation of what skateboarding is and should be. You

The world’s eye may be on Catalonia as

can definitely feel the passion.

it fights fiercely for independence from QUIK

Spain, but in the heart of Barcelona the

Barcelona’s coffee connoisseurs waited

Definitely not obscure but making

chill, bohemian life still rules supreme.

long and hard for a proper place to

waves beyond its original purpose is

Just ask the Pretty Sweet crew, who

drink proper coffee. Luckily ‘Satan’, aka

Colin Kennedy’s Quik. Take a good

descended on the city’s skate-friendly

owner Marcos, answered our prayers and

The area around the Barcelona Museum

hipster song, throw in a fantastic skater

streets to film en masse. Here’s a guide

opened up his very own java den in the

of Contemporary Art (MACBA) is a skate

like Austyn Gillette and you’ve got

to the best bits.

corner of Amy’s trinket shop, Grey Street,

Mecca. It’s good for people watching,

yourself a twenty-first century version

which is a little Aladdin’s cave of photos,

drinking street beers and sitting in the

of the not-so-basic skating-in-the-street

tea, vintage threads, wrapping paper,

sun on long autumn afternoons.

that Lance Mountain pioneered in The

magazines, mini animals and more. Now

Bones Brigade Video Show. The result

you can peruse the shop with coffee in

is something that just can’t stop playing

hand. Genius.

on your computer

macba.cat

FABRICE LE MAO

facebook.com/SatansCoffeeCorner intlskateboardfilmfestival.com retro_culture_02

THEN: CURTIS MAYF IELD NOW: PEOPLE GE T RE A DY

Digital this, digital that. In an age where

thesepeoplegetready.com

tangible music formats are becoming

Creator of the myth of the urban black

increasingly overshadowed – or altogether

aesthetic, Curtis Mayfield lent the

pissed on – by single-click, high-speed

name of his defining tune – albeit,

downloads, it takes a plucky soul to

posthumously – to the guitar-driven

do something to buck the trend. Todd

popsters from Brooklyn, NY, who in turn

Wolenski, owner and operator of Baldy

TH E N : GIL SCOT T- HE RON

created a kooky throughline to filmmaker

Longhair Records – a two-year-old punk

NOW: ANGEL H A ZE

Miranda July when they collaborated on

label that specialises in releasing its bands’

whenitraeens.com

the score of her indie film, The Future.

Terry Callier’s clench-fisted compañero

Something in the melodic shrillness of

Gil Scott-Heron is remembered as the

Curtis and PGR chimes across popular

politicised progenitor of hip hop and

musical boundaries into the world of

spoken word. Check Angel Haze’s

performance art.

music solely on cassette tapes (though

C A SS ET T E -TA PE COMEBACK

they do come with digital download codes) – is one such soul. Todd reminisces about walking into a

NEW JERSEY’S BALDY

record shop with his friends and each of

LONGHAIR RECORDS

them buying different albums to dub for

the archive and referencing GSH not

THEN: ACID JAZ Z

IS BREATHING LIFE INTO

each other when they got home. “Within

just in her choice of samples but in the

NOW: THE JANICE GRAHA M BAN D

AN OLD FORMAT.

a week we’d end up with five times the

scan and meter of her rhymes.

acidjazz.co.uk

music we could afford on our own,” says

Eddie Piller’s London label Acid Jazz,

the thirty-four-year-old, who holds down

which sat at the heart of the Rare Groove

a day job as a film and TV accountant.

scene in the eighties, was a precursor to

“File sharing has taken this to the nth

the explosion of house music and all its

degree, but I think something is lost in the

derivatives. Newbie signings The Janice

translation. You’re not going anywhere are

Graham Band still carry the flame of

you? There’s no real human interaction.

free-flowing brass ‘n’ bass tropical ska

There’s no dialogue about the music. It’s

from their Manchester home. History,

just you sitting at your computer alone.”

media-sussed flow, reaching back into

as always, repeats itself 6

16 HUCK

have_board_will_go_03

F ORUM A BOUT A RIA N N E

PA SS E IG TAU L AT, 278, 08019

C A L L E E SQUIR OL , 5, 080 03

EL MUNDI AL TAPA S BAR

FANTA S TIK

PLAZ A SANT AGUS TI

JOAQUIN COS TA , 62, 080 01

VE LL , 1, 080 03

Music enthusiasts will recognise Forum as the home of Primavera Sound, the

Arianne has single-handedly revolution-

annual music festival held in Barcelona

This Mexican and Indian ‘stuff’ shop sells

brand About Arianne. All her unique

Also situated in the El Born district,

to celebrate an eclectic mix of music and

all kinds of treasures from postcards,

designs are made in southern Spain,

Mundial has an edge on all the other

the excessive consumption of alcohol.

‘Day of the Dead’ skulls, rugs, chairs and

and now she’s opened this adorable lit-

tapas places in Barcelona. Always

However, Forum is without a doubt my

magazine racks to masks, bright pink

tle shop on Calle Esquirol, or ‘Squirrel

packed full of locals, the food is good

favourite place to be when Barcelona

plastic plates, glittery match boxes, Indian

Street’ in English.

quality and it’s pretty cheap. The decor

gets too hot in the summer. It’s practically

tea pots, vintage Chinese pin-up posters

is a mix of old boxing pictures, tapas

deserted so you can swim in the sea

and much more. It’s amazing.

and old lamps.

unaccompanied by the usual throng of

ised hip feet in BCN with her leather shoe

aboutarianne.com

tourists. Plus, it’s a really nice bike ride

fantastik.es

from the centre of town.

retro_culture_03

HOSE HE AD R ECOR DS hoseheadrecords.bigcartel.com

These guys have been putting out some

CASSETTE CON NOISS EU RS

Aside from the financial benefits – tapes are relatively inexpensive to produce and leave only a small dent in

F UCK E D U P

really killer punk cassettes up in the Great

matadorrecords.com

White North. They have also used Bob

Canadian hardcore punkers or indie

and Doug McKenzie for their logo, which

darlings, you decide. But what is not

was enough to make me a fan. Take off!

to be contested is the amazing series

the consumers’ wallet – Todd is also an

TODD WOLENSKI SINGLES OUT

of mixtapes they’ve self-released over

TA ANG! R ECOR DS

advocate of the sound a tape recording

SOME OTHER NOTABLE TAPE

the years.

taang.com

produces. “There’s more depth to it,”

REVIVALISTS.

he says passionately. “While a cassette

When I was last in San Diego, I stopped WAR DA NCE R ECOR DS

in at TAANG! and picked up a ton of their

probably won’t be as engaging a listen as

DINOSAUR JR.

wardancerecords.com

releases on cassette for ninety-nine cents

a 180 gram record it’ll still be better, in

dinosaurjr.com

Run by my man Freddy Alva, in 1989 this

each! Getting anything by The Freeze

my opinion, than digital. Tape hiss adds

I couldn’t be happier to see this band

label put out what some would regard as

or Poison Idea for less than a dollar and

character. You can get back in touch

back together with the original lineup

the penultimate NYHC Cassette comp,

still having money left for beer is the best

with analog in the way some people

putting out new tunes. I’m also extremely

New Breed. They recently re-issued it as a

bargain you will ever get anywhere.

go camping to get back in touch with

stoked that they’ve been reissuing a lot of

double 12” LP. Freddy is still heavily into

nature,” he says. “iTunes and Pandora

their classics on cassette. I can’t tell you

tapes and even curated an art show this

GR AV E MIS TA K E R ECOR DS

will never be as enriching an experience. I

the feeling I get hitting play on my tape

past summer called Demolition, which

gravemistakerecords.com

can promise you that.”

deck and listening to Bug.

featured every demo cassette from the

Great label out of Virginia. While they

eighties and nineties that was ever worth

don’t put out cassettes of their own, their

a damn.

distro is well stocked with the best punk/

OLIVER PELLING

HC cassettes from all around. Check them out, Alex over there knows his music TODD WOLENSKI

18 HUCK

# A N Y W H E R E R OA D TO O K M E H E R E … A KEROUAC-INSPIRED CALL TO ARMS.

HOTEL PENINSU LAR S T E R EO BA R

SANT PAU, 34, 080 01

NOU DE LA R A MBLA , 119, 080 04

C A F E AN D GA LLE RY COSMO E N RIC GRANADOS, 3, 080 07

Anyone who’s ever rolled around for a spell will know that there’s so much more to skateboarding than, well… skateboarding. There’re the people you meet, the places you end up, the trips that take on a life of their own. This October, HUCK brought together eight female skateboarders for the first instalment of Anywhere Road, a photography exhibition that celebrates the real stories – the bruises, bail-outs

Hotel Peninsular is more of a hostel Skaters rule the city, and this is one of

hotel, but it’s cheap, basic and right in the

This cafe-cum-gallery showcases the best

and ultimate highs – that sit at the core

the best skater-owned bars in Barcelona.

centre of the city in the El Raval quarter.

of Barcelona’s artistic talent. Next door

of the skateboarding life. We also sent out

Beers are cheap and super mega

The rooms open out onto verandas that

they have their own print shop where you

a call to arms, inviting readers to submit

delicious.

look onto a beautiful interior patio, which

can print on a plotter at really reasonable

photos of their own #AnywhereRoad

is full of plants and tiled in classic black-

prices

journeys – those moments that only ever

facebook.com/stereobarbcn

CRISTA LEONARD

and-white checks. It’s absolutely amazing.

seem to unfold when you hit the road with galeriacosmo.com

no set plans and find yourself, blissfully, in the unknown. As Jack Kerouac said: “It’s

hotelpeninsular.net/en

an anywhere road for anybody, any how.” Flip the page for our favourite snaps...

In the sixties and seventies, the tectonic plates of culture were shifting. It’s a truism whose mainstream

A GOLDEN AGE

manifestations have time and again been documented. Politics, music, art, science and society as a whole were

JOHN WITZIG’S NEW

characterised by tremors that set new

PHOTOBOOK DOCUMENTS

definitions, new standards upon which

SURFING’S SHIFTING SANDS.

the future would be built. Surf culture – often mistakenly characterised as a backwater – was shot through with more than its share of era-defining creativity. It’s about time that story was told in a mainstream context.

have_board_will_go_04

HUCK NOTES: THE INDIGNADOS MOVEMENT @ W IL L BR EM RIDGE

WHEN SPAIN STARTED

@VERIT YROBERT S

RATTLING WITH FINANCIAL

often they brought out the riot gear, the

DESPAIR, INDIGNANT

protesters regrouped behind hashtags

PROTESTORS TOOK TO

like #plazatomada (taken plaza) and

THE STREETS ARMED WITH

#madridsinmiedo (Madrid without

HASHTAGS AND A COLLECTIVE

fear) – a practice they continue to this day.

BATTLE CRY. W HY ? W H AT HAPPE N E D ?

Spain was one of the worst hit countries

On May 15, 2011, a planned protest

in Europe by the global financial crisis.

against the Spanish government by

The public and private sectors have

Democracía Real Ya (Real Democracy

suffered huge cuts made worse by no

Now) in Madrid turned into a show of

small incidence of corruption. This has

force for over 4,000 people buoyed by

produced a feeling among many in the

a viral Twitter campaign (see: #15M).

middle and working classes, that they

The road never ends! Tweet or Instagram your

Their message was simple: “We are not

are living in a decadent, and quickly

#AnywhereRoad moment @huckmagazine

goods in the hands of politicians and

degrading society whose horizons

and keep the spirit of wanderlust rolling on

bankers,” they cried. When it was over,

are rapidly shrinking behind debt,

a few of them decided that it wasn’t over

joblessness, and the ravages of the global

at all and headed to the Plaza del Sol

neo-liberal economic order.

@ WILTONAT KINSON

in the city centre to occupy it. Just like that, #15M turned into #acampadasol (camping out in Sol). The police and the media cracked down but no matter how retro_culture_04

“I think that we really believed that a

In 1981, a young Californian punk

better world would result,” Witzig told me

called Dave Markey turned his teenage

back in 2008 of his early surfing days,

bedroom into a self-publishing HQ.

“and well, I can’t say that seems to have

Beneath the watchful eye of Black Flag

happened. We were full of naïve optimism,

posters, and surrounded by flyers for

Enter Australian writer and

which is admirable in its way, but seldom

new-fangled band Suicidal Tendencies,

photographer John Witzig, who was at

seems to actually result in the big changes

he set to work with best friend Jordan

the centre of one of the most dynamic

in society that we hoped for. For me, some

Schwartz and started the methodical

pockets of energy that would redefine

things did stick; a fundamental scepticism

process of cutting and pasting Xeroxed

the look, feel and flow of surf culture in

of authority is one, and feeling that I can

snapshots of the people and places that

subsequent decades. Witzig lived and

play out my life doing essentially what I

defined his world. Hardcore had taken

surfed in Northern New South Wales

want is another.”

California by the balls and every punk-

with a small coterie of game-changing

With editorial assists from fellow

leaning kid in every suburban garage

surfers. There was pugnacious pioneer of

writers Drew Kampion, Nick Carroll

spewed across the state was feeling the

the v-bottom shortboard Bob McTavish

and others, the Australian lensmen’s

burn. Dave and Jordan’s homemade

and era-defining 1966 World Champ

new book, A Golden Age: Surfing’s

Nat Young. There was free-flowing

Revolutionary 1960s & 1970s, ranges

Californian genius George Greenough

from the country-living lifestyle of the mid

and mysto-grom Wayne Lynch. Witzig

1960s to the hard-charging attitude of

CALIFORNIAN HARDCORE

was able to document the evolution in

the generation that arose in its wake.

SPRINGS BACK TO LIFE

style, philosophy and technique that

Combining Witzig’s acerbic chops with an

AS AN EPIC NEW TOME.

these individuals created up close and

intimate lens, it throws light on an era for

as it happened.

too long lost in the shadows of mainstream culture

MICHAEL FORDH AM

A Golden Age: Surfing’s Revolutionary 1960s and 1970s, published by Rizzoli, is available April 2013.

20 HUCK

WE GOT P OWER!

’zine – epically titled We Got Power! – was just the document they needed to realise something potent was going down.

ATHLETE: MIKE BASICH | CAPTURED BY: MIKE BASICH

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have_board_will_go_05

PA R I SII , C ’ E S T COMME ÇA! everywhere. Hence Parisii – named after

WHO AR E TH E Y ?

NEW SKATE VIDEO PROJECT

the Celtic tribe that gave the city its name

EXPLORES THE FRENCH

– a video project that will develop over

CAPITAL'S HIDDEN SPOTS.

the next year and a half, with a new part

The Indignados (translation: the

dropping every month. Each episode,

indignant) are neither a single group, nor

Where most skateboard videos adopt

instead of focusing on an individual

a unified protest movement, but rather

a ‘this is how it is, deal with it’ formula

or group, will explore a different

an informal army of guerrilla protesters

– labouring over clips for most likely

arrondissement – or local district – with

across a ranges of ages, organisations

years then spending months editing

XVIIth being the first to get the Parisii

political beliefs and walks of life who

a pristine final version – new project

treatment.

coalesce and disband as quickly as

Parisii wants you to feel a part of the

“We try to push the feeling that

they can pass information on Twitter.

process. Its two directors, Greg Dezecot

you’ve missed out on good times, that

As Wikileaks is doing with journalism,

and Olivier Fanchon, have spent years

you should have come out and explored

they are taking the first tentative steps

producing skateboard videos that adhere

the area with us,” says Olivier. And that’s

to reinventing social movements in the

to the tried-and-tested model. Having

the main point: Parisii has all the energy

twenty-first century

captured the French scene with two full-

of a regular skateboarding video, only it

length projects – Skate Pistols for Sam

focuses on the city - and all it has to offer

REQUIRED RE ADING: Time For Outrage!

Partaix’s now defunct skateshop and

– through a skateboarder’s eye. “Paris,

is a call to arms by the French writer Stephán

Frame By Frame, an independent video

and all its neighborhoods, is the star – not

Hessel that was adopted by the Spanish and

hailed as the nation’s Tour de France of

the skaters,” concludes Greg. “And this

you can read it in English, too.

skateboarding – the duo became bored

is what everybody works together on.”

with the same old format.

BENJAMIN DEBERDT

TETSUHIKO END O

Now based around Paris, they started toying with the idea of presenting the

liveskateboardmedia.com

city they love through a different lens, focusing on the idea that there are spots retro_culture_05

Twenty-five years on, and Dave and Jordan have just emerged from an epic

time and perspective helped make this

editing process that saw them digging

book special. Having it be so personal

through their teen-hood archives and

– having it be images from my teenage

whittling down 1,600 images into an

bedroom and from all the people who

era-defining photobook named after

worked on the magazine with us – you

their beloved ’zine. Featuring essays

get all these reminders of your life back

by scene stalwarts Henry Rollins, Keith Morris, Dez Cadena and more, We Got Power! is more than just another snapshot of a scene; it’s a personal memory-box of unseen moments that take on a little more meaning with every passing year. As Dave explains: “It’s all stuff that

was just a part of my everyday life that may not have seemed really special back then, but somehow I felt the importance to do a fanzine, to make a doc film, to push these bands with really no money or resources. I knew this music was worthy

then and its quite an experience… We

of documentation. And looking back on it

had a gallery show that lots of familiar

so many years on has been really good;

faces turned up to, and it was quite emotional. I’m the sort of person that wouldn’t go to a high-school reunion but this was sort of our high school, our way.”

22 HUCK

ANDRE A KURLAND

In His Own Wo r d s

Text Sh elley J o nes Photo g raphy Gre g F u nnell Arc hiv e I mag es D Daa nny Clinch (C ou r tes y of S on y Mu M u sic E n t e rt ain m e n t )

It’s a drizzly October night in Shoreditch, East London, and hordes of people are gathering outside XOYO, a sunken club down a dingy side street that connects Old Street station to the beating heart of hipsterville. New Era caps, Nike Airs and Supreme hoodies traipse through the heavy-duty doors towards the bar, where coats are swapped for Mai Tais and Mojitos. Soon, down in the brick-walled basement, one of the greatest hip hop artists of all time will play an intimate show for his “real fans” and an air of anticipation, intermingled with weed, hangs like a cloud under the ventilation pipes. Tonight is a no-frills affair and when DJ Green Lantern steps out to take the decks he takes us

Nas eases through the set with the relaxed swagger of

straight back to the early nineties of Queensbridge, New York.

someone who’s been doing this their whole life and when

He drops Biggie and 2Pac – “Say hell yeah!” “Say fuck yeah!”

he spits ‘One Mic’ for the finale – ‘All I need is one mic, that’s

“Say B.I.G. Rest in peace!” – and the crowd is hyped. iPhones

all I ever needed in this world, fuck cash / All I need is one mic,

and trigger fingers summon the street poet, as Nas – aka

fuck the cars, the jewellery / All I need is one mic, to spread my

Kid Wave, Nasty, Escobar, Nastradamus – steps out to ‘No

voice to the whole world’ – the rhetoric is self-evident. No

Introduction’, the crowd-pleasing opener to his new album,

stadium hype, just the ghetto storyteller from Queens who

Life Is Good. Everyone here knows every word.

took rap to a new plateau, through rap slow; a prodigy hailed

“Life is good,” he laughs, low, with a Big Apple accent. “I

as the ‘next Rakim’ who’s still the ‘rapper’s rapper’ despite

think I forgot that at some point, I woke up one day and realised

significant mainstream success; and one of hip hop’s finest

I needed to get back to this. I need to play shows like this, it’s

watchdogs – a man who raises consciousness in one breath

just about the music down here, no bullshit.” The next hour

and proclaims ‘Hip Hop is Dead’ in the next.

or so blends the past and present, with songs pulled from Nas’

Show done, managers, publicists and minders usher

epic archive; between his eleven albums, he’s shifted 13 million

Nas off stage, where groupies and diehards lurk to get

copies in the US alone, and seen eight full-length records go

close. We’re pulled through the throng and thrust into a

platinum and multi-platinum worldwide.

small side room lit up by green neon like a late-night gas

In a hoodie, trademark Timberlands and an ‘NY’ hat – a

station. The Nas in here is even more low-key, switched

get-up he’s been rocking his whole thirty-nine years – age

down in a plain white tee. There are cans of Red Bull in a

can’t catch Nas. Under his hoodie he reps a Run-DMC tee,

tiny fridge and some sandwiches on the table. Despite the

paying homage to the old school that paved the way for him.

plane rides, hotel rooms, press junkets and parties that come

Under his tee a ‘God’s Son’ tattoo arches over his belly and a

with playing three intimate shows in three nights – a series

bespectacled Malcolm X is inked onto his ribs. His forearm

of hype-builders ahead of a stadium show at London’s O2

bears a pin-up girl’s body with a lion’s head – he had the face

Arena in March 2013 – the father of two is courteous and

of his ex-wife, Kelis, covered after their painful public split

composed. Eyes half closed, he takes in questions with

in 2010 – and a crucifix on his upper arm is reflected in the

a thoughtful pause and constructs answers like rhymes,

twinkling pendant around his neck.

without missing a beat.

26 HUCK

XOYO London, October 2012.

“ I ’m n e v e r i n t h e s t u d i o . I ’m t o o b u s y e n j o y i n g t h e l e s s o n s o u t h e r e i n l i f e .”

How does a Nas show today compare to a Nas show twenty

Nasir ‘Nas’ bin Olu Dara Jones

years ago? Twenty years ago I didn’t like the audience, I thought

was born September 14, 1973, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn,

that they were invading my privacy. I didn’t respect this thing

New York, to Olu Dara, a jazz and blues musician from

as much as I do now because I thought it was fleeting. I didn’t

Mississippi, and Fannie Ann Jones, a Postal Service worker

believe in this industry at all. Now I know more of the ins and

from North Carolina.

outs than I used to. So today I appreciate it more. I understand

The family, made four by Nas’ younger brother Jabari

it more, so I can have more fun with it. I don’t look at the crowd

Fret (aka Jungle), soon moved from Brooklyn – where a pre-

like, ‘What are you looking at?’ like when I was from the streets.

nursery Nas apparently played trumpet on his stoop – to the

Today I’m a performer.

Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City, Queens, where he befriended neighbour and deejay Willy ‘Ill Will’ Graham. With

What do you think people want from a Nas show? They don’t

Ill Will he listened to records and radio stations, got stoked

think, they feel. And when you go with feeling, the bullshit

on late-eighties hip hop, started making comics – “I was a big

leave, and the real ones stay. I’m blessed to have real ones still

Family [Circus] and DC Comics fan, so I used to copy and

come and see me.

draw” – and wrote rhymes. It was here, too, in the largest housing project in North

Did you have a listener in mind

America, that Nas began

when you wrote this album? Or

learning about his African

was it just stuff you needed to

roots and different religions –

say? Both. It was for people from

educating himself through the

my era, early nineties, and it was

Qur’an, Bible and Five Percent

also stuff I needed to get out.

Nation (a Harlem-born offshoot

The reason I made this specific

of the Nation of Islam). Black

album for the nineties is because

oppression became a theme

I feel like there is nothing else

through much of his later work

like it out in the marketplace,

and he’s never shied away from

in the rap game, in the world.

controversy to that end; in

[...] The other albums won’t be

2008 he took on Fox News and

like this. But for this one it was

their coverage of presidential

important to sound like that.

candidate Barack Obama for what he and campaign group

The album definitely speaks

ColorOfChange saw as a “long

back to your 1994 debut,

racist smear campaign”. For

Illmatic. But are you driven in

a young Nas, though, books

the same way as you were back

and ideas were simply a way

then? It’s definitely coming

to rise above a difficult reality.

from a different place now.

Olu Dara Sr. left home in 1985

Every time I do new music

and things got pretty hand-to-

it’s for a different reason. The

mouth for the family. Barely

motivation is different.

a teenager, Nas was forced to grow up fast and make fast

So how do you stay immune to

money, dropping out of school

hype and trends and produce

and working ‘the corner’ to

an album like Life Is Good that

help make ends meet.

feels retro and contemporary at the same time? I think it’s a Queens, New York, thing and I

Do you remember the first rhyme you wrote? Sometimes

think it’s just me being a real avid fan of eighties hip hop and

I think I do and other times I realise there are things I

early-nineties hip hop – my launch period into the rap game.

don’t remember. I can remember one of my earliest, yeah,

I appreciate that period of time and it’s really my template for

I think I do. Right now I’d rather not [say] but I said it in

what I do moving forward. Even if I do something that sounds

an interview before. It’s somewhere out there man – you

very un-nineties, that period of time is always my template.

can find it. How does the writing process happen? It comes to me

‘The city never sleeps, full of villains and creeps,

way too easy. I don’t take down notes for rap, I take down

That’s where I learned to do my hustle had to scuffle with freaks,

notes for myself. Maybe an idea will end up in the rap,

I’m an addict for sneakers, twenties of buddha and bitches with beepers,

but usually it doesn’t. I just take down notes. I don’t think

In the streets I can greet ya, about blunts I teach ya,

about it till I get [to the studio] and I hear the track, and

Inhale deep like the words of my breath,

then it just comes.

I never sleep, ’cause sleep is the cousin of death, I lay puzzle as I backtrack to earlier times,

Are you curious about other people? Yes, I’m a people

Nothing’s equivalent to the New York state of mind.’

watcher! I’m only ever in the studio if I’m working on an album project. When I start to work again I’m upset because

– ‘N.Y. State of Mind’, Illmatic, 1994 –

28 HUCK

I’m enjoying life too much and I have to drag myself in

there and get into the routine of recording and then it

a trivial dispute that also left a few bullet holes in Nas’ brother

comes easy. For the most part I’m never in the studio. I’m

– the New York rapper’s future looked bleak. But it was exactly

too busy enjoying the lessons out here in life.

that toxic mix that he distilled into Illmatic, which he finally released in 1994, aged just twenty, and a dad for the first time

What kinds of people interest you? I like great thinkers. Great

to daughter Destiny. It’s hard to overstate Illmatic’s impact

thinkers have always been the people I’ve been drawn to.

on hip hop. As producer DJ Semtex put it to us, “Illmatic is an exemplary album of perfection that forced the evolution

Do you remember the first time you heard rap? I don’t

of lyricism and production values within hip hop. Eighteen

remember the exact time but it had to be... y’know I was

years later it remains omnipotent. Although few have been

basically a kid when it was starting so I heard it on the radios

compared to Nas, they have yet to make ten albums and their

of the neighbourhood. That was just the music of the day. It

Illmatic. Nas is one of the greatest lyricists of our time.”

was impossible not to hear it; it was everywhere. [...] I just

Featuring legendary producers Large Professor, Pete Rock,

knew it was good. I knew it felt right, it sounded right. It was

Q-Tip, L.E.S. and DJ Premier, the album was a sonic poem

the most exciting thing I’d ever heard.

of Nas’ native Queens and the creative high point of the East Coast renaissance – a counter movement to the gangsta rap

Were other kids writing

emerging on the West Coast,

rhymes? I mean everybody was

sparked by N.W.A and ‘Straight

just working on their vocabu-

Outta Compton’ in the eighties

lary, so I guess it’s possible. As

and brought to the mainstream

soon as I heard it, I was just

by Tupac Shakur and Dr Dre in

perpetually trying to do it. […]

the nineties. Although a coastal

It was all about [telling] stories.

rap war between East and West would follow – centred

What was it like in the projects

around New York-based Bad

when you launched into the

Boy Records, headed up by

rap game? Those were the

Sean ‘Puff Daddy’ Combs, and

teenage years; I was just being

LA-based Death Row Records

a teenager. And everything that

led by Suge Knight and Dr

teenagers in the United States

Dre – Nas, often referred to as

get into, I was getting into. It

‘introverted’, stayed outside the

was just fun. I was starting to

beef. By 1996, the two kingpins

think a little bit about what

for each side – The Notorious

I wanted to do. But I knew I

B.I.G. on the East Coast and

had a few years before I had

Tupac Shakur on the West

to make a decision. I didn’t let

– had both been shot dead.

that get in the way of having

New York needed a new king

fun. Because of that, school

and everyone looked to Nas

saw me less and the streets saw

to step up.

me more and that was my life. You lived through a crazy time But you were always ambi-

in hip hop with the East-West

tious? Somewhat, somewhat.

feud. If you could live through

If I really had ambition I

that time again, would you

would have finished school.

do anything differently? No.

I guess I did have ambition;

Not at all.

it was just tough at the time. I was just living, y’know. Just living. Kinda lazy, impatient about school.

Has the memory of the people lost back then – Biggie, 2Pac, Ill Will – changed over time? Life changes. I change. Different

Nas’ story is synonymous with

things enter my life. I have a better understanding of life and death. That’s it.

the story of hip hop itself. He grew up during the ‘Golden Age’ of hip hop (1986-1994), which produced legendary artists like

Do you think the rivalry that existed in hip hop back then

Run-DMC, Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, De La Soul, Wu-Tang

has faded? When I saw [1983 hip hop film] Wild Style I

Clan and A Tribe Called Quest, but when he launched into

saw competitiveness and it made me really understand

the rap game in 1991 on Main Source’s ‘Live at the Barbeque’

Busy Bee and Kool Moe Dee and it made me understand

track – ‘Verbal assassin, my architect pleases / When I was twelve,

that this thing was about reigning supreme. So from Cold

I went to hell for snuffing Jesus’ – it was a tipping point for the

Crush Brothers, Busy Bee, Force MDs and that era – which

art form. Hip hop was mainstreaming and industry cats began

people don’t give a fuck about now, which is a shame – to

to cut the scene into sellable chunks. Not everyone would

now, the competitiveness makes battles inevitable. So you

make it out alive.

gonna battle! That happens with rappers, I’ve watched

Between the cannibalising of the industry and the harsh reality of life on the streets – Ill Will was shot dead in 1992 after

that happen. But the thing about it is, where is it going? It’s stagnant now in a lot of ways.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Mitt Romney is an asshole from the nineteenth century and that day is long gone. And when that section of the world realises that world is long gone, they can join us moving forward.â&#x20AC;?

30 HUCK

Are hip hop artists more united today? The community was

of all time but Nas lacked the entrepreneurial spirit of his once

overwhelmingly supportive when Frank Ocean came out as

rival – who in 2006 made peace by signing Nas to Def Jam

bisexual recently... I think hip hop artists realise that there are a

when he was president at the label – and instead continued

lot of things against us and showing some kind of brotherhood

to focus on his art, putting out his seventh album, God’s Son,

is very positive. It’s good to see.

at the end of 2002. It was his most personal record to date and featured singer-songwriter Kelis – who he would marry in 2005.

In the beginning hip hop really gave a voice to the

Three more albums followed; Street’s Disciple, a much

disenfranchised. Illmatic was part of that. Now, twenty years

more political record that saw Nas reconnect with his father

on, when you hear about things like the disproportionate

on the track ‘Bridging The Gap’; Hip Hop Is Dead, a scathing

amount of young black males incarcerated in the US prison

look at the hyper-commodification of hip hop in 2006; and

system, how does it make you feel? I learned that statistic a long

Untitled, a record that Nas wanted to call Nigger but was

time ago. And I realised my beef wasn’t with another crew, or

forced to self-censor following threats that state funding to

with my neighbour, my beef was with a system designed to

Universal would be pulled. He released a statement at the

destroy black men. That was one of the things that kept me

time: “I want my fans to know that creatively and lyrically,

out of jail early on.

they can expect the same content and the same messages. The people will always know what the real title of this album

How do you feel about the current situation? Do you think it’s

is and what to call it... Everybody is trying to stop the title. It’s

getting better or worse? Neither, it just exists. It’s all about

just people being scared of what’s real. Somebody is trying to

population control and it’s also all about survival of the fittest.

open up dialogue for people to talk. People that [are] high up,

It’s a rough world. I’ve been realising that people in my position

[who aren’t] really understanding what I'm doing, are scared.”

need to go back to their communities to fight harder to save

In 2009, when Kelis was seven months pregnant with a baby

young lives. I should be back more. People in my position

boy the couple would later name Knight, she filed for divorce

should be back more. We gotta try something, y’know?

citing ‘irreconcilable differences’. After a messy, public and expensive break-up, the artists were officially separated in 2010.

Is that something you wanna do in the future? That’s one thing

Nas’ new album, Life Is Good, is an honest love letter to their

I hope I’m able to do. I’m not quite as good at that. It’s not

relationship and its demise. On the cover, the rapper holds

done as easy as said. [...] I’m very concerned about America, the country I was born in. I’m concerned about kids here. Are you gonna vote? Yeah. I think Mitt Romney is an asshole from the nineteenth century and that day is long gone. And when that section of the world realises that world is long gone, they can join us moving forward. Barack has caught up to the rest of the world. The world is always evolving so Barack is not as on time and in-sync as it moves – no one is. If you are, it only lasts fifteen minutes. I’ll vote to support the power of the people.

After Biggie’s death, Roc-A-Fella rapper Jay-Z, was also ready to take the New York throne and this led to a major feud between him and Nas. Diss tracks were shot back and forth – from Jigga’s ‘Takeover’ to Nasty’s ‘Ether’ – but Nas retreated from the drama to care for his mother, who died of breast cancer in 2002. Jay-Z would go on to become one of the richest and most successful hip hop artists

32 HUCK

Do you think rap is still subversive? Errrr, I guess. It’ll always be that. Kids and their parents, it starts there. Some parents don’t understand what their kids are getting into and hip hop sounds really dangerous to them, so I guess in that sense and a couple of other ways it does challenge authority. I guess it’s still that way. In Ice-T’s new film The Art of Rap you say “disrupting those stiff motherfuckers” is what it’s all about... Yeah man, it gives you another thing to look at. You grow up one way and you look at life in one way, because you’re only taught one way, and that way is kinda protective, and that way is very ignorant to other culture. There’s a place that hip hop comes and shocks you, and changes everything. In ‘Reach Out’ on the new album there’s a lyric: ‘When you’re too hood to be in them Hollywood circles / And you’re too rich to be in that hood that birthed you.’ Where do you fit in now? I feel like I have a fresh start, I have a fresh lane. All the other lanes that are open have been done and overdone. My lane is a lane that I’ve helped open and that I continue to keep open. So I’m good. You’ve been in the news recently because of an outstanding $6,000,000 tax bill. Do you wish you’d been more businessa part of Kelis’ green wedding dress – “the only thing she left

minded in your career? No, I don’t have any regrets. The way

behind” – and in the songs he is brutally honest but lovingly

we live is no regrets. Everything is a learning experience and

respectful. He may have dropped a whole lotta ‘bitches’ and

your mistakes, when you go back to look at them, are just

‘ratchets’ over the years, but degrading women was never

moments of being human. Those are my reference points.

high on Nas’ rap agenda. When I ask him if he cares what

So I go back to those points. And I love those points when I

people think of him a week after his XOYO show, down a

didn’t do well because that meant I was just a human.

crackly phone connection to his home in New York, he says, “Oh, of course, when it comes to etiquette, table manners,

How do you keep things fresh? Why do you keep making music?

class – those are the things my mom had, so that’s in me too.

It’s like anything else. Like that Woody Allen film [Whatever

Believe it or not.” In fact, he’s always supported female artists

Works]. Just let life be life. I don’t care about the extra shit.

and he’s donating a percentage of profits from his O2 Arena

The extra shit going on has nothing to do with me. I’m doing

show next year to the Amy Winehouse Foundation – a former

something I was a part of since my young age and something

friend whose song ‘Me and Mr Jones’ was written with him in

that is fresh and new to the world. Like Grandmaster Caz

mind. At the time of writing, Nas’ Twitter profile pic is one of

said, “Hip hop didn’t invent anything. Hip hop re-invented

Malala Yousafzai – the Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head

everything.” So I’m in that movement of re-inventing what

by the Taliban for her education activism. His status reads:

has already been done. That’s what hip hop is, sampling life

“If Malala’s your hero, please make her photo your profile

and adding on. I’m just enjoying life. Life is good.

picture and share her story.” Faith Newman, the Sony Music A&R representative who signed Illmatic to Columbia, makes a valid observation

What does New York mean to you? New York is the greatest city in the world. The greatest city in the world.

in Michael Eric Dyson’s book, Born To Use Mics: ‘I have never, in all the fifteen years that I’ve been listening to rap, ever heard anybody express something so vividly and

These days, despite releasing

perfectly as Nas. He doesn’t have to shout to be heard. It’s

a new record and touring it around the world, Nas is keeping a

so effortless. You listen to his music, you get this mental

low profile. “My home has been the road for a couple of years,”

picture of where he’s coming from. It’s not gratuitously

he says over the phone from New York. “So I try and spend

violent or sexist, it’s just real. It’s touching, too.’

as much chill time as possible here now to watch my son and daughter grow up, because that’s everything to me... I grew up

What do you find exciting in hip hop now? I like Azealia Banks,

in a single-parent home. I saw my mom work really hard to take

I like Nicki [Minaj]. Those are the girls that are currently in

care of two boys – I want to be in a real family situation, y’know?”

the game. I like A$ap Rocky, Big Sean.

After twenty years in the game, Nas likes to live pretty chill. He’s not crazy about the gym, he doesn’t really care

Is it women’s time in hip hop? It is women’s time but women

about sport, but he reads a lot – “I read books about things

are under the illusion that they’re being blocked, so women

I’m familiar with. Musicians, entertainers. The last good

have to stop playing man’s game when it comes to the artistic

thing I read was a book about Hattie McDaniel, she’s an

shit. They have to just go and do it. Stop worrying about where

actress from Gone with the Wind” – and he listens to a wide

you fit in. Just go and do it.

range of music from old jazz greats like Duke Ellington and

them just didn’t have any heart. [They] wind up on drugs, or become bitter and just talk about people all day. They had no heart. And they make excuses for it. You have pretty diverse influences. Is there a thread that runs through all the things that inspire you? I respect intellectuals that had an education from a time before I was born. They were smarter. Today we all have a microwave education. Internet technology is fastforwarding our education. I respect the guys who had to really read and learn, the guys from the generation before me, because of course, those guys had to pave the way. At the same time, my generation today has something fresh to offer and that’s what I am. What are your plans for the future? Continue to build, continue to grow. Watch my kids grow. Create. Create. Keep changing up things. Come up with ideas that inspire people. Keep playing people some good music. Yeah, that. What does success look like to you? Clean, smart children. Clean, smart, healthy children. What would you do if you couldn’t make music any more? I love art. I love being legendary songwriters like Bob Dylan, John Lennon and

creative. So I’d probably still be creative

Bruce Springsteen to a bunch of contemporary rap stuff, too.

in some way. I’d probably find that other talent that I didn’t

Does he still get to party? “I don’t know what that is.” Party!

know I had because I’ve been concentrating on music too

“Hockey?” No, party! Go to the club? “Oh parrrty, parrrty! Yeah,

much. Who knows?

yeah, it’s all a part of what I do.” But he’s matured with style, rocking less Carhartt and more Cavalli these days. “If you don’t

How would you like to be remembered? Oh no, I can’t answer

look the part, how can you talk the part?” he says after a long

that! I don’t care that much about how people think about me.

pause. “Stylin’ on people is what it’s all about. Who’s the freshest,

While I’m here, a lot matters. When I’m gone, I’m gone. I don’t

who’s the flyest? That’s a key element to hip hop, absolutely.”

know, I’d be cheating myself if I told you that; I’d probably

In a world where lyricism takes a backseat to celebrity, Nas

downplay myself, there’s probably someone that thinks of

has always been a bit of an anomaly. Thanks to cheap, user-

me more than I can. That should be outside of me. I probably

friendly technology there are more recording artists now than

don’t even know what it is that people think of me, really. So

ever, but somehow the Queens rapper remains relevant. In July

whatever it is, let it be.

2012, hip hop bible The Source magazine published their ‘Top 50 Lyricists’ list and Nas ranked second. Out of the top five –

You’ve been in the game for so long. Is there anything you feel

Rakim, Nas, The Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, 2Pac – Nas and Jay-Z

you have left to do? I haven’t even started in a lot of ways. I’ve

are the only two still making music. He doesn’t crave the fame,

done a lot of things, but it’s funny – I read an interview where

he doesn’t need the money; if he so wished, Nas need never

Duke Ellington said something similar, like he never even

write another song. But the desire to create possesses him with

started. The fucked-up thing was he was old as dirt when he

the same intensity it did when he was just a kid trying to make

said it. God bless him, he’s a genius – I love him. I don’t wanna

sense of a crazy life. Nas watches the world, he takes notes, and

be an old guy saying I haven’t started but the reality of it is, as

when he gets to the mic, it just all flows out.

you get older, you still feel young. You’re only as old as you feel. So I now understand what Duke Ellington was talking about.

What’s your greatest fear? To be scared. To achieve the things

I’m nothing compared to him; I’m only expressing the way I

that I’ve achieved, fear had something to do with it, but it’s really

feel about what he said years later as I grew some wisdom.

not fear at the end of the day. KRS-One said years ago, ‘Here’s

You’re never too old to learn something new and you should

where the problem starts, no heart | Because of that a lot of groups

always feel like you can offer something different. With me, it

fell apart.’ [...] The ones that came up and were just so talented

is what it is. I go with the flow. The pain is love and you gotta

that you didn’t understand what happened to them – a lot of

just keep pushing

34 HUCK

ONE STYLE . TWO SIZES.

www.dragonalliance.com

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO

A rant about Twitter and other annoying things, by Dave Carnie. IL LU S T R AT ION A D A M H AY ES

I have been fired only once in my life. I was working the help desk for telecom giant MFS in San Francisco in the early nineties. I had access to the newly invented internet and a lot of spare time on my hands. And then Olga got me fired. I remember her name because that’s how I accidentally stumbled upon her site: I was doing a search for the On-Line Guitar Archive. (“By the way, I play guitar.” – River’s Edge.) “Olga, huh?” I thought, when I saw her search result. “I’ll check her out.” I probably thought I was going to see some Russian boobs or something. No, quite the opposite. Olga was a boring housewife with no intention of showing her boobs or turning into a slutty housewife and getting her mouth buttfucked by a pizza guy. Her website was simply her very own Wikipedia page about her boring self. She included a few pictures and wrote a couple sentences about what she enjoyed doing. “I enjoy making awesome food for my husband and rollerblading with our dog, Harley,” she wrote on her site. At least that’s what I think she wrote. I don’t remember what the dog’s name was either, but it was probably Harley because Harley is one of the most popular, yet unimaginative dog names in America. “You know, because I like Harley Davidson! USA! USA! USA!” Her site invited me to visit her husband’s page and even Harley’s page. “Haha! That’s hilarious! Did you see Olga’s dog has its own website! Her DOG! Haha!” Olga’s husband’s site mirrored his wife’s: he enjoys eating her awesome food and rollerblading with Harley. How fascinating. These nitwits bothered me. The banality irked me. A lot. I was incensed. I may have been alone in my view, but to me it was something akin to digital pollution and I was offended that these assholes were taking up space

and shitting all over the shiny new internet with their drivel. At the bottom of their websites they invited me to write them. “Write us!” Okay. Someone needs to let them know they’re being stupid, I thought. “Dear Olga and Olga’s husband,” I wrote. “How much would it cost someone, not necessarily me, to stick their penis into your dog’s fundament? Love, Dave.” It was a couple months before I heard back from Olga and her husband, but their response was not delivered in the manner I expected. I had put in my two weeks notice at MFS because Big Brother magazine had been bought by Larry Flynt and I had been offered a salaried staff position in LA. I was practically on my way out the door when Brenda, my supervisor, said, “David. What have you done? An executive from corporate headquarters is here and he wants to talk to you.” Brenda and I sat across the table from a little man in a suit, the executive from corporate headquarters. “Are you Dave Carnie?” he asked. I said that I was. He pushed a piece of paper at me. “Did you write this?” When I started reading my email to Olga, I recognised it as my writing, but I couldn’t place what it was in regards to. Two months had passed. At the time, I had been in the habit of sending my mother pranks and nasty letters via email. This new technology shit was fun. So my first thought when I read the letter about fucking somebody’s dog was, “Why are you reading my mom’s email?” This raised the executive’s eyebrows. He fucks his mother’s dogs? And then it occurred to me: Olga! I started laughing. Which of course raised his eyebrows even more, which, in turn, made me laugh even harder. When I calmed down, I explained the whole story to him. “So it’s because they’re idiots and they have these stupid websites and so I just wrote that. Funny, no?” Funny, no. Fired, yes. Apparently Olga and her husband were so offended by my letter that they contacted the Federal Communications Commission and the FCC contacted corporate headquarters. I was given to understand that bestiality is not part of MFS’s company policy. Fine with me because I had already put in my two weeks and thus I was actually certified to utter that fantastic thing you’ve always wanted to yell, “You can’t fire me! I quit!” I did not say that, though, because in America you cannot collect unemployment if you quit. So I moved to LA and worked for Big Brother. And then Big Brother died in 2004. One of the losses most lamented was the quotes section. Even if someone didn’t particularly care for our magazine, they liked the quotes. Everyone liked the quotes. “oh my god! it’s normal size!” —a stripper, regarding wee man’s wiener

“it will be better than your whole life.” —salman agah to a police officer who had just ticketed him and told him to have a good day

“the next time we go to disneyland with slayer, i’m not going to get so hammered.” —marc mckee

It’s difficult to describe what makes a good quote, just as it’s difficult to try and explain what makes good art. As with porn, ‘you know it when you see it.’ There was only one rule we had: you can’t quote yourself. Because you have no idea what you’re talking about. You can quote yourself about as well as you can tickle yourself. Face it, we’re idiots. We shouldn’t be allowed to go rambling on about ourselves. “Never miss a chance to keep your mouth shut,” I say. Which is an odd thing to say when I’m trying to keep my mouth shut? Anyway, we were very strict about this rule. But apparently we are the only people on the planet who abide by this rule because if you look at the internet today, and in particular Twitter, it’s nothing but a bunch of people quoting themselves. @totaldouchebag: Haha, I am so very clever! #masturbatingtomyself Go. Fuck. Yourself. Oh. You already are. The hubris. The arrogance. How did this happen? When did it become okay – nay! normal – to shit with the door open and comment on everything under the sun? I don’t care what you’re doing, and I certainly don’t give a fuck what you think about it. @KittyBug29: Ann Curry was the only one I liked on the today show... what a terrible mistake. #nbc I just went to Twitter to find a random example. KittyBug29 was the fi rst to catch my eye. Poor KittyBug. Apparently Ann Curry, whoever the fuck that is, got fired from Today (a morning news show) and KittyBug29 feels that this was a mistake. I think it was a mistake for KittyBug to post her opinion on the subject because now I’m going to go through all her shit and read her twits. This feels sort of scandalous, but then again she’s the one that pranced it all out there in public. Oh, I just learned that KittyBug was recently married to a fellow named Sam in Knoxville, Tennessee. Congratulations! Their first anniversary will be April 12, 2013. I know because there’s a photo of a couple of beer koozies that read ‘Kitty & Sam 04.12.2012 Knoxville, Tennessee’. How cute. I’m going to put a reminder on my calendar to send them a creepy congratulations on April 12, 2013 from a complete stranger. “Hi. I’m following you.” @KittyBug29: Just bought my first Christmas gift!!! Feels good to get started early! #lovemynephews Wow. I just punched myself in the face because someone needs to get punched in the face and I’m the only one here. Besides this being nonsense that could surely go without mention, it was posted at the end of October. Rub it in our faces, bloody do-gooder. @KittyBug29: It’s Friday!!!! Happy Friday to my besties!!!! @mkbarking @crissy4851 @KBabbles @Courtass @GravyMom57 @sammyravez

Finally, some useful information: the day of the week! It’s Friday? And as I wade through her incessant jibber jabber it appears she does this every Friday. Don’t laugh, it’s an important service she’s providing because at least one of her besties, KBabbles, doesn’t know it’s Friday yet. @KBabbles: Is it Friday yet? #readyfortheweekend Thank god for KittyBug29. What would KBabbles do without her? I think KBabbles should retweet KittyBug’s Friday post just to reinforce the fact that it is indeed Friday. If she did that, I’d get a Twitter account just so I could retweet KBabbles’ retwat of KittyBug29’s twit. I’d also mark it as a ‘Favourite’. Which is an odd feature I didn’t know about before. What’s that do? Fuck it, I just signed up and I retwittered it, made it my favourite, and now I’m following her. And I’m assuming KittyBug29 will be notified that David Carnie just retwanked her twat? All this twat reminds me of the time my boss had to call me and give me a warning. “Human Resources has informed me I have to give you a formal warning,” my boss said. “Do not use the word twankunt anymore.” I’m still not sure which of the three ladies on the email that contained the aforementioned word narked on me. I thought they were cool. All I said was, “That reminds of a British slang word I learned once: twankunt. A twankunt is someone who’s not only a twat but a wanker and a cunt to boot.” My wife told me that the word cunt was probably the offending party. Anyway, I’m forbidden from using the word twankunt in the workplace from now on. Duly noted. KittyBug29 is evidence why people should be required to get a license to write anything on the internet. And, like a driver’s license, they should be tested to ensure they won’t say anything stupid, or at least not too many stupid things. And they have to pay for the license. And then they have to pay for every word. Kind of like that Chris Rock joke about gun control: “You don’t need no gun control, we need some bullet control. I think all bullets should cost five thousand dollars. ’Cause if a bullet cost five thousand dollars there won’t be no more innocent bystanders.” Let’s see how much KittyBug feels about her besties when every one of those 140 characters costs $140 each. “Buy your own calendar to find out what day it is, bestie bitches!” @KittyBug29: So ready for the weekend!!!!!! Hurry up Friday afternoon!!!!! So ready for you to shut-up. I wonder how much it would cost someone, not necessarily me, to stick their penis in KittyBug29’s dog’s twankunt? I should send that twat a tweet and ask her. #soreadyfortheend #theend #waitonemorething #kittybugisnotatwat #iwasjustkiddinganditjustsoundedfunny #andalso #nevermind #okaythisisreallytheend Dave Carnie is the former editor of Big Brother magazine. He now works as a consultant to the dairy industry.

TEXT BOB FORD PHOTOGRAPHY B R YA N DER B A L L A

In the aftermath of Hurricane S and y, New Yor k r apper N Y OIL found a way to help rebuild his borough. But why didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; t more musicians take a stand?

40 HUCK

When Sandy became a certainty, New York authorities urged residents to get off the island. But running, Sharpton says, just wasn’t an option for Staten Islanders. “Before the storm, [the government told us], ‘You need to get out!’” he says. “You need to do what? Leave? And go where – my vacation home? [The government] told everyone to get provisions, but I don’t get paid ’til Friday! The storm is happening now!” Working first in his neighbourhood of New Brighton, and later on the east shore’s Midland Beach area, Sharpton got to work. Through his day job in the New York school system, he enlisted the help of several teenagers he mentors. He got in touch with community leaders to ask what was most needed. He helped shovel thousands of kilos of dry ice, brought in by Con Edison so that people could stop their food from spoiling. He helped organise cookouts so that both workers and residents could eat. But he also did something rather clever. On the filing cabinet next to Sharpton’s computer lie a trio of cameras. Sharpton used them to not only document his work, but also to interview local residents about what was needed, and where. “I thought, let me get out, bring a camera, create awareness,” he says. “It needs assessment... I can’t help people get power. But I can help get the word out.” Sharpton has over 2,000 YouTube followers. The videos he posted received hundreds of views in a matter of days. There’ll never be any way of knowing how many of those viewers chipped in to help. Sharpton says he was one

The house on the corner

the south shore, where the homes are mostly old-

of many people helping clear up – and he’s

has been knocked off its foundations. Like god

fashioned wooden-houses, you can look out onto

quick to say that he believes local authorities

put a hand on the wall and just pushed.

the Atlantic. It’s a nice view. At least it was, until

responded as well as could be expected – but

It lies there, lopsided, its formerly white

Hurricane Sandy came screaming up the eastern

it was still a smart move.

walls splattered with mud. A man stands in the

seaboard. As the Wall Street Journal put it, it left

The question his videos raised, however,

backyard, despair written on his face. “Get outta

“millions without power, and […] an estimated

doesn’t have anything to do with power cables

here,” he says when he spots us. “There’s nothing

$20 billion or more of property damage.”

or water supply or even how to get gas back into

But the storm wasn’t without its little bits of

Ali Guzman’s pumps. If New York is the home

The block the house is on is a mess. It’s

good news. It’s snowing outside – nature’s final

of hip hop, a music built on social change, then

been nearly a week since Hurricane Sandy

middle finger to the people of Staten Island – but

where was everyone else? Certainly, no member

slammed into Staten Island, but rubbish still lies

it’s toasty inside the seventh-floor apartment

of the Wu-Tang Clan stepped up.

everywhere in huge piles. The trash is personal:

we’re sitting in. Kim Sharpton sits in front of his

Perhaps it’s unfair to ask that rappers be

sodden mattresses, mantelpieces, picture frames.

computer and pulls up a custom Google map. It’s

involved simply because they have a platform

to see here.”

Up the street, Ali Guzman is working the

flagged with pins, most of which are clustered

to speak from, but Sharpton scoffs at this. “A

around the south shore. “We made this map to let

lotta cats call themselves conscious rappers,

still dry, but he managed to clean up the aisles

people know where they were needed,” he says.

but I never see them do anything. You make

and his shop is busy with locals stocking up on

“It’s not just enough to want to help – you gotta

music. That’s all you do. Them motherfuckers

supplies. “It’s going to be a few days before this

know how to help. This map was cross-referenced

are not for real. All of ’em screaming they

place is up and running,” he says.

with [power provider] Con Edison’s map, so we

from the hood – why aren’t you in the hood

Staten is New York’s afterthought. Tourists

could let people know where the power was out.”

doing something?”

board the ferry at the southern tip of Manhattan,

Sharpton is better known as the rapper NYOIL

It’s a fair question. When music and musicians

taking pictures as the Statue of Liberty whizzes

(it’s pronounced En-Why-Oil). He’s a Staten

have so much potential to reach people, the fact

by. When the ferry docks at the St George’s ferry

local, and while the Wu-Tang Clan might be the

that NYOIL was one of the few to respond is

terminal on the island’s northern tip, they get

island’s most famous export, he’s arguably the

surprising. Rap can’t put that home back on

right back on the next ferry home.

most enduring; a local figure as renowned for

its foundations, but NYOIL proved that it can

But this place is more than just a tourist pit-

his activism as he is for his music. And almost

help bring the tools that might

stop. For starters, over 400,000 people call it

uniquely among New York City’s rappers, he

home: mostly blue-collar New Yorkers. From

mucked-in to help.

myspace.com/nyoil

TEXT

ED ANDREWS

The niche sport of musical forms may look comic at times, but the people who do it arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t playing games.

PHOTOGRAPHY

GREG FUNNELL

42 HUCK

Joe Hallett.

“I was a kid like anyone else, watching Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Jackie Chan, and from then on I just wanted to do martial arts,” explains twenty-one-year-old Joe Hallett from the jig-sawed matting of the Infinity Martial Arts centre, a dōjō he helped set up in the West Country town of Yeovil, England. “When I was eight years old, I saw a video of Bruce Lee’s nunchaku routine. Seeing him playing with this cool weapon made me really want to have a go!”

“I was a kid like anyone else, watching Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Jackie Chan, and from then on I just wanted to do martial arts."

Just after Joe recounts the path that brought him here, he launches into an acrobatic routine set to a soundtrack of frantic dance tunes blasting

choreographed displays known as kata in

from the gym’s sound

traditional Japanese martial arts, or ‘forms’ in

system. He busts out

non-Japanese disciplines. It can be performed

a few off-axis flips,

with or without martial arts implements, like bō

inexplicably launched

staffs, nanchaku and swords, in which case it’s

from what appears to

referred to as ‘musical weapons’.

Back in Joe’s trophy-lined dōjō – the martial

be a quick flick of the

In the early eighties, innovators such as

arts centre he founded with his older sister

feet. Next, sparkly blue

American taekwondo master Jhoon Rhee and

Ruth Hallett in 2007 – the lesson gets underway

and silver nunchakus

Montreal-based karate expert Jean Frenette

as a dozen boys ranging from the ages of ten

are spinning, twirling,

started putting some of the first forms to music,

to sixteen temporarily ditch their youthful

darting around his hands,

and began experimenting with acrobatic tricks.

unruliness and start warming up. Students are

arms and body before no-

These ‘musical forms’ grew in popularity at

encouraged to do their own thing but shuttle

handed cartwheels flash

shows and competitions thanks to their crowd-

runs, cartwheels and explosive press-ups feature

his purple sprig of hair.

pleasing appeal.

heavily, along with stretches that would make

The performance continues

As is inevitable with any burgeoning sport, the

with lofty flying kicks that

next generation began the competitive claiming of

A fourteen-year-old student called Connor

involve a samurai sword and

‘firsts’ and in the spirit of one-upmanship things

Green (but known as CJ) begins a weapons-free

the average athlete wince.

devastating aerial and floor

progressed at a rapid pace. A landmark moment

forms routine to a soundtrack of pumping plastic

strikes with a six-foot bamboo

came in 1994, when five-times international

pop – but only after Joe instructs him to take

staff, all powered out with

forms champion and Jhoon Rhee student

his bright spotted socks off. He mixes in a fluid

effortless precision and poise

Carmichael Simon landed the first 720 hook kick

combo of punches, kicks, flips and lightning-fast

from his stocky, compact frame.

in a routine. Another big pioneer was Hollywood-

chops known as knifehand strikes, delivering an

These acrobatic tricks are

based martial artist, stuntman and one-time Blue

aggressive ‘Hah!’ with every strike. “First is the

just a small part of Joe’s chosen

Power Ranger Michael Chaturantabut who in

introduction with slow hand combinations that

discipline of musical forms, a

2002 developed the Xtreme Martial Arts (XMA)

build up,” Joe explains. “That’s usually ten to

niche sport of competitive martial

brand – a training programme that focuses on

fifteen seconds of the routine. Then you work in

arts demonstrations that attracts a

acrobatic ‘tricking’ to music, and today boasts

the opening high-energy trick or flip. Then you get

small but truly dedicated following.

over 1,300 XMA-licensed schools worldwide.

faster for the next thirty seconds, then the finale,

“It’s entertainment. It’s all about

Nowadays, competitions like the North

the biggest trick, and finish on a high. That’s why

what looks good and not what will

American Sport Karate Association’s US Open and

people use dance music for their routines because

work in a fight,” says Joe, the sweat

the CIMAC and ISKA Championships in Europe

it’s fast and full of build-ups.”

beading on his forehead.

feature musical forms and musical weapon forms

As we talk, another student, sixteen-year-

Musical forms, as an activity and

contests – and it’s a surreal sight. Competitors

old Matt Lightfoot, takes to the sprung floor –

sport, harks back to highly technical,

perform a jaw-dropping minute-long acrobatic

a trampoline-style area giving students extra

routine avec their choice of sparkly bō staffs, tonfas,

air time to learn their tricks – and practices a

kamas, swords and nunchaku to a soundtrack of

routine that involves a spinning-hook-kick-to-

heavy, helium-voiced trance and dressed in outfits

cartwheel-to-flashkick (a stylish backflip with

ranging from traditional karate suits to something

one leg extended and the other tucked in), before

straight out of a Manga cartoon – all performed

throwing in another backflip while grabbing both

with the upmost deadpan determination in search

sets of toes in a semi-pike position.

of a winning score from the judges. As you’d expect, mainstream it is not. In the UK, multiple British, European and World Musical Forms Champion Joe Hallett is just one of five musical forms instructors in the country, and has students travelling from across the UK to train with him.

“I was gobsmacked by some of the moves I saw when I first got here,” remarks Richard McHugh, a thirty-one-year-old air engineer in the Royal Navy who helps instruct the more traditional parts of the forms routines and, as a 3rd Dan Black Belt, boasts years of experience. “I’d seen some of it before, but Joe’s lot here are very, very good at it. They train hard and they work hard on their routines and that’s the essence of martial arts: self-discipline and trying your best.” This dedicated, work-hard ethos is pivotal. Students put in up to ten hours a week at the dōjō, learning the more traditional moves by rote and doing plyometric drills to build up the explosive muscle power required for the acrobatic moves – with the sort of flips Matt demonstrates taking years of training to even attempt. This is on top of other

The way in which

fitness training every day and, of course, tireless

musical forms, and martial

drilling of their routines at home, in the garden,

arts in general, can help kids navigate

playground, wherever.

the awkwardness of adolescence is certainly not

Joe’s focus on the sport is at the tunnel-vision

lost on one of Joe’s students, sixteen-year-old

end of the spectrum. “There is not a day I don’t

Connor Allen. “The reason I started martial arts

think about it,” he admits. “If I’m not training,

was because I was being bullied,” explains the

I’m watching musical forms on YouTube, and if I

softly spoken Connor, cutting the air in a surgical

As our afternoon

am not doing that, I’m watching movies like The

yet ferocious manner with a bō staff and then a

visit goes on, it becomes clear that Joe’s biggest

Matrix, trying to get new ideas for choreography.

(blunted) katana blade – his specialist weapons

motivation is promoting musical forms to the

You have to sleep, eat and breathe musical forms

of choice. “It has shown me that you can stand

wider world. He explains the finer points of tricks

to be the best, but it’s all worth it after you walk

up for yourself and you don’t have to walk on

and judging criteria with brimming enthusiasm;

off the matted area and hear the roar from the

eggshells around everyone.”

urges his students to go big for the camera; and

crowd. Nothing ever comes close to that buzz.”

“People often associate musical forms with

keenly offers the photographer Greg tips on how

Despite the obvious physical benefits of a

things like The Karate Kid, you know the crane

to get the best action shots. As part of this PR

fit and healthy lifestyle, some may be alarmed

kick and stuff,” he adds, acknowledging that

mission, he’s founded his own exhibition stunt

by the sight of a child wielding a potentially

his hobby is often misunderstood. “But musical

team, Team Resurrection, who perform for public

deadly weapon as a hobby. Have they ever

forms is more artistic and creative [than other

shows, films and music videos.

faced criticism? “It’s the complete opposite of

martial arts] and there’s not necessarily any right

“Musical forms and weapons need someone at

that stereotype that you don’t enrol your kid

or wrong way to do something. It’s quite hard to

the front trying to push it into the media and show

into martial arts because they just learn to beat

explain that to people, though, so the best thing

these guys off,” he says. “It’s amazing and should

people up,” remarks Joe, never straying from

to do is show them a video. And they usually say,

be getting the recognition it deserves. Many

promoting the benefits of the sport he so clearly

‘Wow, that’s cool. I’d love to be able to do that!’”

martial arts tournaments don’t give much respect

loves. “Parents are willing to enrol them because

to forms and we’re always second best to the

they learn respect, discipline and self-confidence

fighters. They need to give a good performance

– I have parents phone me up for classes because

area, a good sound system and get good, qualified

their kids are being bullied. And when it comes

judges in. But from outside of martial arts, all

to weapons, you learn the basics blocks and

we’ve had are great comments from the public

strikes, but it’s about learning a creative style –

and surprise that they haven’t seen it more often.

the stuff you see in comic books and the movies

Some even ask why it’s not in the Olympics like

these days. And anyone who ever gets a weapon

rhythmic gymnastics. I could speak for hours

put in their hands gets rules: never use this on

about that, but all I’ll say is ‘politics’.”

anyone and you never get it out [outside the dōjō] and show off.”

46 HUCK

Jon Kooley Bob Plumb photography / coalheadwear.com

It’s 1am and a sequin-clad figure has just taken the stage at the Flamingo Club in Berlin. She may look like a supermodel but she howls like PJ Harvey. And, flitting effortlessly from keyboard to guitar, she’s got the crowd in a trance. At twenty-five, singer-songwriter Simonne Jones has sauntered down more paths than most people will in a lifetime. She moved from Hollywood to Berlin two years ago to pursue music, spent her teen years modelling, and also boasts a visual arts and biomedical research degree. In the university lab she researched HIV/Aids; in the art studio she indulged her love of painting. And this year she’s found a way to weave activism into the mix. “I got a text message from [electro-clash musician] Peaches and she was like, ‘Do you want to write a ‘Free Pussy Riot’ song?’ Of course, I was like, ‘Yes!’ so I started working on it that night. I wrote a page of lyrics, Peaches wrote a page of lyrics and we came together and combined them,” says Simonne. Two days later they created a Facebook event and invited a bunch of friends to shoot a video for the song. Four hundred people showed up (alongside the media and police) ready to show their support

bridging

for the three members of the Russian punk feminist collective serving time in prison for ‘hooliganism’ after participating in a protest against the Catholic Church. Featuring a montage of flash-mob-style protests – with ‘rioters’ clad in Pussy Riot-esque neon balaclavas – the video boasts notable contributions from the likes of Lykke Li, JD Samson of Le Tigre, comedian Margaret Cho and Nick Zinner from

The experimental sound of Simonne Jones is creating

the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. By bringing together a diverse roster of artists, Simonne wanted to let Pussy Riot know they are not alone. “I’m doing this because I’m inspired for action,” she told Rolling Stone from behind a pink balaclava at a demo

t he

in August. “I want Russia to know that what’s happening there is not okay. […] There are people all around the world, musicians, that stand for human rights and will continue to stand for human rights until we’re heard.” Today, in the Berlin basement she rehearses in – surrounded by keyboards, guitars, pedal boards, loop stations and cables – Simonne goes even further: “I was born in a country where I have certain liberties,

a through-line between science, activism and ar t.

and they were born in a country where they don’t. I can’t imagine what that’s like as an artist, not being able to say what you want and be fully expressive. The whole thing really saddens me, but I think it’s important

gap

to realise that that kind of thinking could happen anywhere. It’s not just an isolated event in Russia.” In addition to the video clip, Simonne and Peaches started an online petition at Change.org where they collected over 145,000 signatures protesting the imprisonment of Pussy Riot. For Simonne, her political consciousness spills into her passion for science, which she sees as another outlet for creativity and activism. When she says she’s “in-love with medicine” she means it. “In my lab we

text Cinnamon Nippar d photography Mustafah Abdulaziz

48 HUCK

would try and detect different structures within HIV, all with the intention of trying to regulate genome packaging – the way that HIV packages its

genome and replicates and infects new cells – to try and stop replication,” explains Simonne. Not content to stay inside the lab, she set up a programme in Ghana to raise awareness about the disease in schools. “Before I taught them anything I conducted a survey to see if they knew how HIV is spread,” says Simonne, who found that sixty-five per cent of students believed HIV could be cured by having sex with a virgin. Shocked at this kind of misinformation, Simonne tried to reach as many young people as possible and in the end 155 students passed through her programme. Fighting HIV on the frontlines is one thing; making music in Berlin is quite another. But Simonne – like her hero Leonardo Da Vinci – believes art and science share common ground. “Science is really similar to writing music in the sense that you’re problem-solving, being creative and inventing different experiments,” she says. “Sometimes when I’m writing, it’s almost like solving a math problem. It sounds kind of strange, but the more advanced you get in studying math, or science, the more visual it becomes. Even finger dexterity, practice and repetition – training yourself to play an instrument is similar to training yourself to study sciences. You use the same thought processes.” And it’s not just inside the lab that Simonne’s experiments unfold. Her sound has been described as everything from electro-punk to baroque-pop. She loves old blues and rock ‘n’ roll like Howlin’ Wolf, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Chuck Berry. But she also digs the finger-picking slap-and-tap style of Michael Hedges and Preston Reed. Her acoustic guitar is a bit of a cyborg: fitted with three pads that connect to her laptop, it lets her trigger any sound – “a screaming monkey, anything I want” – with a single tap. Throw in the three keyboards she surrounds herself with and Simonne Jones is a onewoman machine. “I wanted to have this large sound where it was just me and an acoustic guitar, but still people would be dancing,” she explains. While her experiments are turning heads (she was recently accepted into the next Red Bull Music Academy, one of thirty artists out of 10,000 applicants), Simonne is far from a laptop junky. In keeping with her musical roots (her grandfather played bass for BB King and James Brown), Simonne is something of a self-taught perfectionist; she learned to play piano by ear and insists on practicing guitar for five hours every day. “I really wanted to distinguish myself as an actual musician,” she explains. “Not just somebody that wrote songs, not just a singer, but somebody that could actually really play their instrument well.” And that’s the thing about artists like Simonne Jones; music, it seems, is in their DNA. “It’s almost like a holistic thing in a way that if I’m really happy, I have to make music. And if I’m really sad, I have to make music. As long I’m making music, then I’ll be whole in some sort of way.” Join Simonne Jones and Peaches in the fight to free Pussy Riot at change.org/freepussyriot.

“Science is r e all y similar to w r i t ing music in t he sense t hat y ou’r e pr oblemsol v ing , being cr e at i ve and invent ing dif fer ent experiments.”

50 HUCK

N. I .G.G. E . R . ((T T H E S LAV E & T H E M A ST E R )

Language is power. It is a manifestation of

Manichaeism. That’s what the scholars call

knowledge, and knowledge cannot be separated

this. White and Black, Good and Bad, Master

from the P-word. That’s Foucault again. Scary

and Slave: a relationship that sets one thing as

isn’t he? Words can never harm you, they say, but

the opposite and antagonist of the other.

what about the concepts behind them? Nigger,

The Manichaeism of race was not simply

the word, is just six letters derived from Latin

established, it was etched into the very

for the color black that has only lived as a slur

framework of history by people who should

for two hundred years. But nigger the concept;

have known better: Immanuel Kant, Voltaire,

now, that’s a weapon of mass destruction, the

Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, Rudyard

shorthand for a field of knowledge that, for over

Kipling, Joseph Conrad, Ralph Waldo Emerson,

500 years, across every continent, has dedicated

Henry Morton Stanley… and those are just the

itself to the elevation of the light skinned and the

names you might recognise. Beneath them lurks

denigration of the dark skinned. It is the crudest,

a dark legion of learned men with crisp suits and

Those six letters, arranged in vulgar order and

but in some ways most honest example of what

white beards whose studies, measurements,

spoken in our minds as we would not dare to

used to be called ‘race theory’, but what we now

theories, stories, fictions and human taxonomies

speak them from our mouths, have brought us

might call ‘scientific racism’ in what should be

created and maintained that perverse archive

into the etymological valley of the shadow of

a more enlightened, liberal age.

of knowledge-power1 which formed the basis

UNC OMFORTABL E, ISN’ T IT ? A BRIEF HISTORY OF TH E WO RL D’ S GREAT EST TAB O O, BY TETSUHIKO END O.

Nigger. There it is in print.

death. We stand as tourists before this word, neck

Race is a figment of the modern imagination.

for a machine of oppression that was and

deep in the darkness of its history, choking on the

In Antiquity, as Nell Irvin Painter tells us in

continues to be one of the widest ranging and

stench of its legacy, so that we might understand

The History of White People, mankind believed

most systematic in human history. Millions

it a bit better, the last great taboo in the English

in Celts, Saxons, Visigoths, Gauls, Scythians,

upon millions of dark-skinned people murdered,

language. Even if it is rarely spoken now, it still

Circassians and many others, but did not believe

enslaved, and tortured to death and all of it

wields terrible power.

in Whites, Blacks, Arabs, Latinos or Asians.

done in good conscious, based on solid facts.

We tread a well-worn path. Many a critical eye

It wasn’t until the Enlightenment, when the

From the genocide of Aborigines in Australia

has been cast on this word for over a century. Most

European powers began mixing science and

to South African Apartheid, to the slave ports

recently and bombastically, it has become the

empire, that they ‘discovered’ the supremacy

of Lisbon and Liverpool, The Middle Passage,

property of rap artists, who employ it in the most

of light skin and inferiority of dark. This union

the mines of Minas Gerais, the Three Fifths

nuanced of ways, like Nas’ Untitled album – which

brought race into the world – constructed it, you

compromise – the rationalisation, indeed, the

he wanted to simply call Nigger. It is difficult to

might say, like Shelley’s monsters, from euro-

empirical necessity, for all of it is printed neatly

remain un-piqued by such a provocative term,

centric assumptions and theories based on flawed

inside tome after dusty tome sitting quietly in

and at times it seems that there are few people in

experiments and corrupt hypotheses.

the archives of the world’s libraries: hundreds

the public sphere who have not added their two

Inequality and oppression needed a rationale

cents to the ongoing debate over its use. But that’s

and it found it in race. ‘Innate qualities (related

Harry Truman used that word. So did Lyndon

not where this is going. No, we are going to reach

to race) are needed to prove the justice – the

B. Johnson. Richard Nixon used it as well as

back, behind the word and before the word to

naturalness and inalterability – of the status

Flannery O’Connor and Ernest Hemingway.

examine its history, its complicated connotations,

quo,’ writes Painter. ‘Again and again, racial

It was sung in songs, and included in nursery

and the libraries of racist discourse upon which

hierarchies set the poor and powerless at the

rhymes, most famously as the thing you were

it is based.

bottom and the rich and powerful at the top.’

supposed to catch by its toe in ‘Eeny Meeny

of thousands of pages that define the nigger.

So, let’s start with its power. Power, wrote

White was deemed beautiful in the eighteenth

Miney Mo’. Though not considered polite, it

Michel Foucault, our Virgil for this little journey,

century by Johann Joachim Winckelman, the

remained an ‘acceptable’ insult among white

is ‘exercised rather than possessed’. Although it

father of European art history, and a guy with

people till well into the twentieth century and

requires a medium, its existence is metaphysical;

a fetish for the Mediterranean facial features

became the calling card of Jim Crow in the

it exists everywhere, and pervades everything.

of white marble Roman sculptures. Black,

Southern United States. In fact, it has existed

‘It is not the ‘privilege,’ acquired or preserved,

meanwhile, became the natural antithesis of

for much longer as an acceptable insult than it

of the dominant class, but the overall effect of its

beauty. White was given a scientific name and a

has as a taboo.

strategic positions, an effect that is manifested

historical lineage in 1795 when another Johann

But remember your Foucault; power is

and sometimes extended by the position of

(Friedrich Blumenbach) called it ‘Caucasian’.

ambivalent, and can be co-opted by those who

those who are dominated. Furthermore, this

Black was denominated ‘Negro’ (literally: black),

it oppresses. “The power of the N-word comes

power is not exercised simply as an obligation

unworthy of either history or lineage. White

not only from its historical usage but from black

or a prohibition on those who ‘do not have it’; it

was made superior by the eighteenth century

folk reclaiming the word and trying to divest it

invests them, is transmitted by them and through

anthropologists who collected human skulls and

of its racialised power and reinvest it with black

them; it exerts pressure on them, just as they

made charts comparing facial angles and features,

vernacular power,” says James Braxton Peterson,

themselves, in their struggle against it, resist the

with African skulls placed on one side, near the

the Director of Africana Studies and Associate

grip it has on them.’

monkeys, and European skulls safely on the other.

Professor of English at Lehigh University. “The

52 HUCK

premise that you would use language directed

Sartre, of course, wasn’t talking about rappers,

the rest. “When Nas wanted to release an album

against you and turn it around and use it for

but the black, French colonial poets – men like

with the N-word as the title, he was censored

yourself is a very powerful and subversive tool.”

Aimé Césaire, Léon Gontran Damas, Léopold

by people in the black community. People also

Peterson advocates the free use of the word

and Sédar Senghor – who made up the Negritude

complained about Randall Kennedy’s book

in private conversations among black people,

movement in the 1930s. The black poet, he said,

that used the same title. The fundamental

but insists that it needs to be addressed with

was the only true revolutionary poet of the age,

problem with censorship is that by the time it

caution in the public sphere. “The way black

because ‘he must oblige those who have vainly

catches up with what is happening it ends up

folks use the N-word in our own private speech

tried throughout the centuries to reduce him

censoring those texts and those people that

communities, it is very easily divorced from

to the status of a beast, to recognise him as a

actually provide us with the complex critiques

its negative past. But once it enters the public

man… Thus he has his back up against the wall of

(of the N-word) we need.”

sphere – once you tell a joke or record it onto a

authenticity: having been insulted and formerly

Kennedy’s book doesn’t address his personal

rap record – you can’t fool yourself into thinking

enslaved, he picks up the word ‘nigger’ which was

feelings on non-blacks using the N-word but

it doesn’t attach itself to its white supremacist

thrown at him like a stone, he draws himself erect

Peterson says he would prefer them to avoid it

history,” he says. “The kind of power we are

and proudly proclaims himself a black man, face

out of a certain respect for history and for the

talking about is like nuclear power. It needs to be

to face with white men.’

ongoing struggle of the black community in

managed very closely because, when unleashed, it can be very detrimental to the public.” He cites the chorus from the song ‘Audubon Ballroom’ by the rapper Lupe Fiasco: ‘Now White people, you can’t say nigga Sorry gotta take it back Now Black people, we’re not niggas Cuz God made us better than that.’ Note that Fiasco insists both in reclaiming the word in his vernacular while simultaneously claiming that it’s not an apt description. It’s this ambiguity, writes Randall Kennedy in his book Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, and the willingness to embrace it that

dealing with it. “It was used so systematically,

”Once it enter s the public spher e – once you tell a joke or r ecor d it onto a r ap r ecor d – you can’ t fool your self into thinking it doesn’ t at tach itself to its white supr emacist histor y.”

makes artists like Fiasco so attractive.

so overtly for so long throughout history, it’s important to understand how, when black folks use it, they were and still are engaged in a very complex socio-linguistic process of reclamation,” he says. “And I don’t see an endgame for this process. I don’t see a ‘post-race’ America happening in our lifetime, nor do I think that should be the goal. I think the goal is an equitable celebration of various cultures: cultural competency. We are not going to be living in a colour-blind, post-race world; it’s going to be a multiracial world.” That brings us back to power: to a world where the myth of ‘whiteness’ is weakening;

“(Their) attitude (is) effectively expressed

Césaire, Senghor and the rest had their

where Asia is ascending; where the president

by the remark, ‘I don’t give a fuck,’” he writes.

own word to reclaim, the French ‘negre’. How

of the US is of African descent; but where

“They don’t care whether whites find nigger

successful they were is a matter of debate, but

black men still fill America’s jails; where black

upsetting. They don’t care whether whites are

Sartre’s definition of the person of letters, the

children still starve in Somalia and live on the

confused by blacks’ use of the term. And they

Black Revolutionary (nearly one and the same),

streets of Rio De Janeiro; where Africa is a

don’t care whether whites who hear blacks using

remains with us in modern day rappers, poets,

synonym for poverty. This is a world where

the N-word think that African Americans lack

writers, and black artists of every persuasion.

nigger the word no longer readily spews from

self-respect. The black comedians and rappers

He calls them ‘Orphic’ after the Greek legend

mouths, but nigger the concept still lurks in the

who use and enjoy nigger care principally,

of Orpheus who descended into Hades to

dark corners of minds.

perhaps exclusively, about what they themselves

search for his lover Eurydice. In a similar way,

Power develops, adapts, reorganises,

think, desire, and enjoy… They eschew boring

according to Sartre, black artists must descend

evolves. The type that oppresses has learned

conventions, including the one that maintains,

into themselves, armed only with the words

that if it wants to survive it must launder

despite massive evidence to the contrary, that

that oppression has foisted on them in an

itself, put on a suit, clean up its language

nigger can only mean one thing.”

unending search to re-define blackness: ‘Since

and mold neatly to the arbitrary demands of

‘When you removed the gag that was keeping

the oppressor is present in the very language

political correctness. Power does not know

these black mouths shut, what were you hoping

that they speak, they will speak this language

the word ‘slum’, only ‘informal city’; it has

for? That they would sing your praises?’ writes

in order to destroy it.’

never ‘invaded’, only ‘occupied’. If the citizen

Jean Paul Sartre in his essay, Black Orpheus. ‘Did

Of course, no one is arguing that Soulja Boy

of Peterson’s multiracial world has but one

you think that when they raised themselves up

or Waka Flocka Flame are speaking truth to

responsibility with regards to nigger it is to

again, you would read adoration in the eyes of

power. Peterson, among others, critiques the

recognise when it is being invoked by those

these heads that our fathers had forced to bend

casual, sometimes ugly, use of the N-word by rap

who would use it to do harm, even when they

down to the very ground? Here are black men

artists or comedians. The important thing, he

do not utter a sound

standing, looking at us, and I hope that you – like

says, is recognising who is using the N-word in

me – will feel the shock of being seen.’

a productive way, and not lumping them in with

FOUCAULT’S TERM, NOT MINE.

Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been cr o w ned t he Wor ld C hampion o f sur f ing a s t agger ing f i ve t ime s, bu t a t t w ent y-f our Stephanie Gilmor e is s t ill pick ing up p ace. No w, as t he face of a mega-br and , her public per sona is abou t to ex plode. HUCK hangs out with the ambassador of surf and catches a g l i m p s e o f h e r l i f e a w a y f r o m t h e w a t e r â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s e d g e .

54 HUCK

I t ’s t he end of Sep tember and in the southwest corner of France the summer season has shifted to let in an autumn chill. We’re following Stephanie Gilmore’s black 4x4 rental car around the outskirts of Hossegor, heading to a concert in nearby Bayonne. Having only met the five-times World Champion that morning, I’m still trying to work out how far into her inner-circle we’ve really been let in. It was decided, by Steph, that we’d take two cars. She says she likes to know she can leave a place when she wants. I can’t help but think we’ve been gently placed at arms-length; we don’t even know where the concert is. “Don’t worry, you can follow me,” Steph chirps, plugging her iPhone into the car stereo. When we lose her over a roundabout, it looks as though the night could end sooner than we’d planned. But there she is, pulled to the side of the road, hazard lights flashing. And when she slips off our radar again, sure enough there’s her car, awkwardly balanced on the curb and causing traffic chaos. By the time we make it to the centre of Bayonne, the crowds have beaten us. People have abandoned their cars on every empty patch of grass, but Steph keeps circling and circling, until she finds a place where we can park together. Inside the Arènes de Bayonne, where the concert is taking place, Steph seems relaxed. It’s the first time she’s been back to France since winning her fifth world title at the Roxy Pro in Biarritz in July, and she looks at ease in the coastal town. We climb to the top of the staggered theatre seating and look down as a mass of teenagers gather at the stage. Despite being the face of female surfing, she walks past the crowd without being recognised; only those in the VIP area realise who is in their midst. At the makeshift bar she orders a red wine and coke mix – a calimocho – laughing that she’d rather stick to something “local”. In between the acts, giant screens on either side of the stage repeatedly play the same Quiksilver promo, a montage of the brand’s ambassadors doing their thing around the world. The first voice to be heard reverberating around the stadium is Stephanie’s, and for a moment she seems slightly put-off, staring at the screen as though analysing it. I ask if it feels strange to hear her own voice, and without turning her head she says with slight concern, “I sound like I’m pronouncing my words waaay too much,” shortly followed by, “do I really sound that Australian?”

Stephanie Gilmore is the most medalled female surfer on the ASP World Tour. With twentyone victories at elite events and five World Tour Champion titles already under her belt, she has the potential to become the greatest champ of all time. Now twenty-four, Steph won her first world title in her rookie year – a feat unmatched by any pro surfer, male or female. In 2010, she was named Laureus World Action Sportsperson of the Year, and Female Action Sportsperson of the Year at ESPN’s ESPY awards (Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly) the following year. Her role as an ‘ambassador’ for Quiksliver – a position she took on shortly before her twenty-third birthday – has only added to the speed of her upward trajectory. Add to that her undeniable archetypal-surfer good looks and lively public persona, and it’s not hard to see why her profile is rapidly rising, both within the surfing world and beyond.

On our second day with Steph we head over to where she’s staying – a modern, designer house nestled in the sand dunes, complete with an outdoor pool and jacuzzi. When we arrive she’s already been for a surf, and is pottering around the kitchen with clear honey smeared over her face (“It’s a great natural face mask,” she says). Although Steph spends most of her time on the road, her home in Australia is clearly never far from her thoughts, and she speaks of her family frequently and with warmth. She was born in Murwillumbah, New South Wales, the youngest of three girls. Now she has her own apartment in Tweed Heads, a coastal town right on the New South Wales/Queensland border. “I see a lot of Dad in myself, which is really creepy,”

I wish I had more of a, you know… more balls to do some craziness,” she says.

This year we’ve seen a lot more of Stephanie Gilmore in mainstream media, culminating in June with an article in US Vogue. The two-page feature is dominated by a photograph of Steph in a pair of DKNY bikini bottoms and a sun shirt, standing in an open-top car with a board in the backseat, one hand touching her loose blonde hair. As the Quiksilver blog happily exclaimed, the piece ‘shines light into her personal style and lifestyle.’ It certainly succeeds in putting her right under the high-fashion spotlight. The style pages of The New York Times have also opened their pages to Steph. After winning her fifth world title in Biarritz, they ran an interview that quizzed the pro on the beauty products she uses, her diet and fashion sense. “I love that surfing is what has taken me to these places,” she says. “From winning world titles, to ending up in Vogue; it’s kind of a strange dynamic, but at the same time it’s totally fitting. I think it’s cool that I can try and find a medium to take surfing into those different worlds; I enjoy being able to try and link the two together, the lifestyle of what we do and the competitive professionalism of it as a sport.” In 2011 Steph was featured in ESPN’s annual ‘Body Issue,’ posing nude for a feature that celebrates the physique of some of the world’s top athletes. Whether she’s posing in a bikini or a pair of hot pants and vest – like she did for a recent cover of Monster Children magazine – Steph insists she has an instinct for what she feels is setting the right tone.

she laughs. “Dad was probably more of a party animal, he travelled a lot when he was young.” She describes her mum as “cool,” but also “quite conservative,” adding, “she’s probably never even been in a nightclub all her life.” Like a lot of the Quik entourage – her marketing manager and a handful of team riders staying at the house – Steph frequently checks in on Instagram, saying she’s “fascinated” by Rihanna and the way the singer uses the App: “I love that she’s just so herself – that there’s no filter, and she's just exactly the way she is. I mean, you see the people who absolutely hate her for it and the people who just cherish her for it, because she’s just purely being herself.” I ask her if she admires that about Rihanna. “I do admire that. Sometimes

56 HUCK

“That’s when you need the right people to come in and the

Later that afternoon, a makeup

right people to work with – to market you and your brand

artist and hairdresser arrive to prepare Steph for a photoshoot

the way that suits you,” she says.

for next season’s Quiksilver women’s range. She’s at ease

Steph may have a handle on how she wants to be

with being made-up at the kitchen table; even with everyone

portrayed, but in a world where a female’s professional

hovering around, she chats away as if nothing is happening.

credentials can all too easily be brushed aside (her Monster

When they’re done, she heads off with the photographer over

Children cover was accompanied by a blurb that read, ‘God,

the dunes, alone, keeping the new collection under wraps.

she’s a gorgeous specimen, and she’s minted, too. Why

As a professional athlete at the top of her game, Steph’s

didn’t we ask if she had a boyfriend?’) some may argue

role at this kind of event is interesting to observe. She isn’t

that the world’s best female surfer should be celebrated as

here to compete, but still has to work. On our last day, we

the world’s best female surfer. Unfortunately, says Steph,

watch from afar as she’s escorted by her marketing manager

image still matters a great deal. “I know a lot of young

up and down the beach, giving back-to-back interviews with

female surfers who have had potential to be great surfers,

TV crews and reporters – and although she doesn’t say it, she’s

but maybe they didn’t have the stereotypical beach look,

tired by the end of the afternoon and retreats to the house to

so they weren’t given the opportunities by companies to

rest alone by the pool. Her next stop after France is the US,

lead that lifestyle. It’s a hard one, but at the end of the day,

where she’ll spend a few months travelling around – visiting

that's the way the world works [she slips into a quiet, ironic

New York and heading to a music festival in Texas. “I’ll still

tone], ‘in a sick, twisted way.’”

be doing photoshoots and things along the way,” she says.

She continues: “One of the biggest things right now is

Alongside a strong work ethic, Steph seems acutely aware

everyone is so bummed that female surfing is only portrayed

of what’s going on around her and where she’s heading to

in this sexy light, and that the only way they’re going to take

next. You don’t become a five-times World Champion without

it to the masses is with sex. I actually think, to put a positive

real drive, but her ambition seems to stretch beyond the

spin on it, what we need to do is embrace this, because it’s

water. “There’s a lot of people who have come through and

an advantage for girls that we have this, to use as a powerful

won events and won world titles, but they haven’t really

tool to take us to whole new worlds. And it’s just a matter of

wanted to work harder on this part of the job,” she explains.

using that sexiness but using it in a classy way.”

“Some guys and girls think, ‘Oh, it’s just surfing and that’s

“When I was a tomboy and young, I didn‘t care what was going on. I just wanted to surf and that was it.” it,’ but there’s so much more to it when you want to create a brand and have that longevity in your career. I learn more about my brand and what I want my brand to be associated with – how I want it to be portrayed, which magazine I believe will portray the image of me in the best way or the right way.” She continues: “When I was a tomboy and young, I didn’t care what was going on. I just wanted to surf and that was it. And then moving with more of a vision of a brand that can be appreciated, or appeals to a much more broad market then the niche of surfing, I love that, I embrace that. I loved that it meant being more of a woman and bringing some glamour into surfing. And just being a more multidimensional personality… I think that’s so valuable, for any athlete to have. I think companies see the value of that too, and it’s something they grab on to.” Over a glass of wine on our last evening, talk turns to

58 HUCK

surfing. She speaks about issues that impact both male and

fight to get equal prize money and they did, which is pretty

female pros, mentioning events lost from the tour in the last

inspiring. I see a lot of the girls on tour who struggle. There

couple of years. And there’s also the issue of money and

are so many talented girls who don’t have sponsors and they

funding. A recent commentary piece for ESPN looked at the

can barely even make it to the next event because the actual

WCT’s payout structure. It noted the obvious differences

costs of travelling to get to the events is pretty difficult. So

that result in less money for the women; the men’s tour

I’m in quite a special situation, where I don’t have to worry

is longer, with double the number of competitors, and so

about that stuff, and I’m sure that’s also a factor in helping

a larger pot is shared between more people in the draw.

me to achieve the results I can achieve.”

But at this year’s Billabong Rio Pro, men’s champ John

When I ask if anything more could be done to help

John Florence still walked away with $100,000, where the

support the women’s tour, she fires back: “Oh so much more

women’s winner, Sally Fitzgibbons, received $25,000.

could be done, so much more. Even the men’s tour, there’s

It’s an issue Steph speaks about with passion: “[We need]

so much more that could be done. I think right now what

more prize money for the women. I saw the females in tennis

we’re seeing with a lot of the industry companies, they’re

starting to hurt financially. I mean, they created this world

building. During our time together, she often jokes that

of professional surfing, and it’s turned into a monster; now

she’s “spoilt” or “lucky,” but ultimately she’s working hard

it needs more and more and more to take it where it needs

and has earned every one of her five world titles – all at the

to go, to support it to be where it needs to be. And they

age of twenty-four. Layne Beachley, another female surfing

can’t really keep up. I don’t know, it’s a really interesting

great, didn’t win her first World Championship until she

time right now.”

was twenty-six, and has openly said she thinks Steph will

She’s happy with the number of girls on the tour (currently

smash the record she currently holds of seven world titles.

seventeen) but adds: “We just need to be in really high-

As for balancing her role in the water with her respon-

performance waves, that’s something that we’re missing

sibilities on the ground – as a world-class athlete and the

right now. […] We just need to have that stage where we

face of a brand – Steph seems unfazed by the challenge.

can perform and put on a good show.”

“There’s definitely a level of responsibility that comes with

Steph’s open about what she’s trying to accomplish,

that stuff. I feel like I’ve always been aware of how I’m

both as a professional surfer and with the ‘brand’ she’s

presenting myself, and how I’m treating people, and it’s just natural for me to be honest and genuine. With the morals we’ve been taught when we were kids, it’s just quite natural for me to feel quite comfortable to be in that role model sort of position, and being okay with it and not freaking out and going off the rails.” She takes a sip of her wine, smiles and looks down. “I don’t know about being on tour when I’m forty, I change my mind all the time,” she says. “Sometimes I see myself getting drawn in other directions as well, doing different things. I’m not exactly sure what they are, but they could involve being behind the scenes more, like in a company or, I don’t know, being more involved in music. But then at the same time these are all things that I can do while competing anyway. So yeah, it’s a hard one. But I don’t really like to look too far into the future – I’m pretty bad with that.”

60 HUCK

House music has just jumped way of f the hook , thanks to the madcap rhy thms of foot work and juke. From the roughand-tough projects of Chicago to the pristine streets of Tok yo, foot working dance bat tles are suddenly where it ’s at. Just ask DJ Fulltono – the sub-genre’s number-one Japanese fan.

Te x t Koichi Furutono aka DJ Fulltono Photography Bartosz Hołoszkiewicz

espite being a deejay born and bred in Japan, I’ve been following Chicago house music for almost twenty years – since the pre-juke era of ghetto house, which was born in the projects of Chicago’s West Side. Rougher and tougher than old-school house, ghetto house music had a unique, almost freaky sound. Over the decades, ghetto house gave rise to juke and footwork, two dance music sub-genres that have flourished below the radar in a stillunderground scene. The roots of juke trace back to 1997, when Chicago’s DJ Puncho released the now seminal track ‘Juke It’. Fifteen years on, juke and later footwork have broken out of the ghetto house shell and became new styles all of their own. But what is juke? Tunes typically boast a BPM (Beats Per Minute) of 160. Regular house music is 120-135 BPM, so it’s considerably faster, for one. But it’s not just fast. Unlike regular dance music, juke’s changing tones, complex polyrhythm and other audio tricks are woven together in a way that has shifted dance music at its very core. Footwork, meanwhile, takes that frenetic energy to a whole new level. It’s so experimental, in terms of rhythm and structure, that most people find it hard to dance to. Enter footworking – an intense, ultra-fast style of dance pioneered by small groups of kids who would gather for dance battles in the community centres, deserted warehouses and corner spots of Chicago’s South and West Side. Until recently, the footworking scene was barely known outside of Chicago, but thanks to videos on YouTube it soon spread around the world. I heard my first footwork beat in 2009, courtesy of DJ Rashad’s ‘Jukeworkz’ EP. Around the same time, Traxman released a ten-

62 HUCK

Koichi Furutono, aka DJ Fulltono, plays an unnamed, underground club in Osaka.

minute DJ mix on Myspace. Both had a revolutionary sound – as

of themselves rehearsing to YouTube that was eventually seen by

if they were shaking up the entire history of Chicago house and

the Chicago crew Tribe National, who responded with a ‘how-to’

ghetto house. It was a totally new world, one that I had never

instruction video especially for the Japanese fans. They even played

experienced before. At first the musical evolution was too much

one of my tunes! Tribe National want their Chicago culture to be

for me to grasp, but it was clear something new had emerged.

recognised worldwide, and we, the Japanese fans, are also hoping

I soon tried sharing my experience with Japanese deejays and

the seeds of that dream blossom over time.

listeners: by starting a blog, deejaying and practicing footworking

You may wonder why I, a Japanese man, am so into all things

by imitating the movements I saw online (some of my efforts were

Chicago. Even I wonder, is it because we romanticise a culture

more successful than others).

that feels so far removed from our own? I admit that’s one part

Nowadays in Japan, especially in Tokyo, juke and footwork is

of it. But to be honest, it’s the sound, the melody, the tone, the

played in clubs and draws the attention of all kinds of music fans.

rhythm, the style – it’s everything. Well, not just the music, but

The scene seems to be evolving at a startling pace. The number

the lifestyle too, and everything that it’s created. In a sense, you

of juke producers increases each year, and a variety of new tracks

could say I’m addicted. To me, there’s no substitute for Chicago.

that adopt a Juke sensibility are often played. The new producers

Beyond this, I don’t want juke in Japan to be some short-lived

hail from diverse backgrounds: some come from hip hop, some

craze. As a deejay, I feel we’re responsible for establishing a

from UK drum ‘n’ bass, some from electronica, while others are

definitive Japanese juke style and have to keep getting it out into

young kids with no prior interest in music. They all meet in the

the world. Not just imitations, but original Japanese juke tunes.

same field, draw on each other’s influences and create new sounds.

As far as creating music is concerned, what does ‘original’

That’s what happens in the Japanese scene, and what makes it

really mean? To me, it’s not necessarily something no one else

different from the rest of the world.

has done, but rather the result of having focused on one thing,

The Japanese scene isn’t just about the music – we’ve adopted

single-mindedly, purely because you love it. That’s what I admire

footwork on the dance floor, too. We practice on the streets, and

the most about the Chicago juke producers, not to mention the

I’ve heard some dance schools have started footworking courses

music and their approach and attitude. They just keep creating

taught by professional dancers. Of course, our style is still far

their music, every day, as naturally as breathing

from the original Chicago footworking. But by dancing, we can feel that juke and footwork is not simply music for the ears – it’s

With thanks to Paweł ‘Paide’ Dunajko, Ishibashi Idzumi, Furutono Koichi,

for the whole body. And that, little by little, is starting to soak in.

Nakano Kaoru, Igarashi Taiki and Masuda Tatsuya.

We often practice footworking while watching YouTube videos from Chicago. One time, a Japanese group uploaded a recording

bootytune.com

Guy Mariano gets chased by a wheelchair-bound, camera-wielding Ty Evans – pushed by Rick Howard, somewhere in the Los Angeles area – for Pretty Sweet.

surviving the times TEXT OLIVER PELLING PHOTOGRAPHY BEN COLEN 64 HUCK

that does that, that’s gnarly man,” he says in admiration of their patience. “It’s so good to work with a filmer that you’re compatible and comfortable with. You have to build those bonds because a lot of the time when you’re skateboarding there can be a lot of pressure on you.”

He’s got the blockbuster ender in much-hyped skate flick Pretty Sweet, but Guy Mariano concedes it wasn’t easily won.

The line-up for Pretty Sweet is a colourful one. You’ve got the OG generation, like Mike Carroll, Gino Lannucci, Rick McCrank, Brian Anderson, Eric Koston, Marc Johnson, Chico Brenes and Mariano himself. But then you’ve got the new kids - from the lightfooted, smooth-as-butter likes of Cory Kennedy and Sean Malto, to gnarly chargers Raven Tershy, Elijah Berle, Vincent Alvarez et al. Guy struggled with figuring out where he could fit in among all this talent, but eventually decided that in order to stand out, “technical as fuck” was the only way forward. “If I’m going to be the dude that just has some never-been-dones, then that’s the part I’ll play and I’ll be comfortable with that,” he offers. “Once I figured that out, it got a lot easier for me.” Being a thirty-six-year-old professional skateboarder who’s arguably still at the top of his game is no doddle. To get through five years of intense filming for Pretty Sweet, as well as switching up his diet, Guy regularly sought ice baths, massage therapy and chiropractic adjustments. “When I was thirty I was killing it; I could go on five sessions a day. But when you get around thirty-six, reality sets in that your body is getting older and it doesn’t recover as it used

ight years ago, Guy Mariano

to,” he explains. “Anything you can do to reduce that [recovery time]

stepped out of relative, drug habit-

is the best way to go.”

induced obscurity to work on his

A year after Guy’s legendary part in Girl’s Mouse video (1998),

part for Lakai Footwear’s Fully

his incessant partying took a more sinister turn. After developing

Flared – the explosive skateboard

something of an alcohol and weed problem, he gradually moved

video co-directed by Spike Jonze,

on to hard narcotics and almost destroyed his career. For Guy, his

Ty Evans and Cory Weincheque.

memories of the late nineties and early noughties aren’t as they

His section – a culmination of

should have been. With the support of his friends and family, he

intense training, re-learning old

started on the road to recovery in October 2004.

tricks, conjuring up nimble-footed

Clearly, despite success since that off-board period, Guy’s still

new ones and battling demons –

living with regret. “Sometimes I get stressed out because of all the

became one of the finest video parts

years I missed skateboarding,” he laments. “I’m always thinking about

of the decade. Guy stunned and

what it could have been, so it’s hard for me to be in the moment and

inspired skateboarders across the world with Fully Flared. Now,

just enjoy what’s happening right now. I wish I could’ve been more

having earned himself the ender in Girl and Chocolate Skateboards’

motivated in my prime, I feel like I missed it.”

Pretty Sweet, Mr Mariano has stylishly cemented what is arguably one of the finest comebacks in skateboarding history.

Despite being as excited and positive about the video as is humanly possible, Guy lets on that his career, and this video part in particular,

Guy’s latest part, however, wasn’t always so… sweet. “I was in

haven’t come without their downsides. “I made a lot of sacrifices – I

a montage,” he chuckles over the phone from Los Angeles, the day

missed my mom’s birthdays, my girlfriend’s birthdays, Thanksgiving,

before the LA premiere. “Ty [Evans, co-director] was like, ‘Yeah,

Christmas, because I was on skate trips,” he offers. “I have to put a

you’re in a montage. Maybe you should do some solo trips and focus

lot of my life on hold to be a skateboarder at this age. A lot of people

more on your stuff,’ and that’s what I ended up doing. I got really

are moving on in life and having babies and families, but I’m still not

lucky at the end and I got on a good run.” These solo trips came in

around every weekend. It can get a little old for the people around

the form of multiple jaunts to China, a haven of marble plazas where

you in your life, you know?”

Guy got some of his best work done.

As of right now, the day before the Pretty Sweet premiere, Guy

With the video boasting a new generation of highly talented

hasn’t even seen the finished product. In the buildup to the date,

skaters wielding impressive sections of their own, Guy wasn’t entirely

there’s been one four-letter word in particular that’s caused him

sure why he’d been granted the hotly contested last spot. “I had to

some angst. “I think that’s the thing that gets me nervous the most:

ask Ty if he was just giving me the ender to pay homage to me,” he

the hype,” he says. “Sometimes I don’t understand hype, it’s like,

says humbly. “He just said, ‘Nah man, you earned that spot. You

what are they expecting? Are they expecting this crazy part or are

went out for it and the part’s amazing.’ I’m honoured. My comeback

they just happy to see me? I get so wrapped up in that and I don’t

for Fully Flared was like a Cinderella story, but now people are like,

think I’ll be able to take the video in and enjoy it until I get home at

‘Okay, what has he got now?’ I just hope people enjoy it.”

night and watch it by myself.”

It wasn’t just Guy who put in the hours for his part, he says, and

It’s little surprise then that Guy is looking forward to a bit of

he praises the commitment of the Pretty Sweet film crew for keeping

normality once the hype subsides. “I need some balance back in my

him motivated. His longest battles and toughest tricks were captured

life,” he laughs. “I just need to fucking chill out. I hate getting caught

by Roger Bagley. Some of these skirmishes could go on for four hours

up in some of the stuff I do sometimes, you forget about having fun

a day, for four or five days a week. “You gotta give it up for someone

when you’ve got your head immersed in the industry.”

The Bots may be fresherf a c e d t h a n y o u r li t t le b r o , b u t t h e y â&#x20AC;&#x2122;r e f a r f r o m b a bie s in t h e w o r ld o f p u n k .

66 HUCK

me of their nerves before they took to the stage, this dynamic duo show no signs of anxiety as they quip back and forth and feverishly exhibit their brand of youthful, punk-inspired rock ‘n’ roll. The venue is packed wall-to-wall and, despite their relatively small stature, The Bots are putting on a fully-grown show. Mikaiah and his guitar are tearing around the stage, still managing to come together on every riff, lick and chug, while Anaiah is a whirlwind behind the drumkit – dressed in a dinosaur costume for Halloween no less – wildly smashing his snare and toms with all the force he can muster, looking like a punk-rock Questlove in the process. The Bots, it would seem, have arrived. The brothers, from Glendale, California, have been hailed as the ‘future of punk’, which – oxymoronic as it may sound – isn’t a bad appraisal for a couple of kids that started out playing music for visiting relatives. “It would be like: ‘Boys, bust out the instruments, it’s time for a show!’” laughs Mikaiah, perched

TEXT OLIVER PELLING PHOTOGRAPHY D A N W I LT O N

They’re not old enough to buy a beer in their

next to his brother on a raggedy sofa in their

home country, but Californian brothers Anaiah

Barfly dressing room before their gig. “Then

and Mikaiah Lei are making a markedly mature

it became less of that and more of us actually

racket as The Bots.

becoming truly fascinated and passionate about

“Who here thinks I’m a girl?” jokes afrowielding Anaiah into the microphone hovering

composition and whatnot, so we took it upon ourselves to make music we wanna play.”

above his drumkit. The crowd gathered at the

The Bots produced their first record, Self-

Camden Barfly chuckle at the fifteen-year-

Titled Album, in 2009, when Mikaiah was fifteen

old’s jibe before erupting into laughter when

and Anaiah was just twelve. Since then, they’ve

Mikaiah, nineteen, retorts: “Yeah, you look like

released three EPs and are currently working on

Beyonce in Austin Powers!” Despite informing

their sophomore album. They oscillate from

sounding like furious, filthy garage-punk played

stage presence. “I’m quite homebound. I just

by two youngsters who know what they’re doing

try and find inspiration for music. I paint, I

(see: ‘Northern Lights’) to sweet, melancholy

draw and I create… I kind of miss that a lot

folk music played by two youngsters who

actually, talking about it now. It’s been really

know what they’re doing (see: ‘Naked’). Point

nice touring, I’m doing what I love out here,

is: whatever genre they draw from, The Bots

but I kind of can’t wait to get back home and

seem to know what they’re doing.

just keep to myself.”

“It’s experimental, it’s indie, it’s just rock

The Bots’ creative streak was captured

music,” offers Mikaiah contemplatively. “We

recently in a ’zine, put together by close friend

just take influence from great bands, and

and photographer Dan Wilton as a visual diary

whatever we can do with our two-person

of last summer’s tour of Europe. As good an insight into the character of the pair as you’re likely to find, STOB EHT documents the brothers skateboarding and mischief-making across the old continent, and they even tie-dyed slipcases for each limited-edition ’zine by hand. Despite their parents having separated, family has played a big part in The Bots’ swelling success story. Their mother, Akosua Lei, travels with them and acts as management, and they credit their father, Alex Lei, for introducing them to music, buying their first instruments and supporting them since day one. “He’s very intense about our passion,” says Mikaiah sincerely. “He understands music, he gets it just like us.” Anaiah pipes up, adding: “He understands how hard it is and helps us with behind-the-scenes things. He’s our all-round goto guy, and he was the jumpstart for everything.” As the topic of conversation turns to their first gig, Anaiah, tired from a day of doing the press rounds, rests his head on his brother’s shoulder. “If this was on video it would be really awkward,” he says. Mikaiah laughs, then talks about the minor disaster that was their first

capabilities, however big we can make that

show – in a church, to a crowd of ten people.

sound, or how small at times… we just want it

They played three songs, screwed up a White

to be dynamic, that’s what it’s about.”

Stripes cover, then played the first three songs

Mikaiah speaks with an eloquence and self-

again. “From then to this point on we’ve become

assurance that hammers home just how firmly

somewhat better,” says the guitarist with a grin.

he’s got his head screwed on. He talks of waking

“I do the best I can within my capabilities and

up at 8am, practicing yoga, drinking lots of tea

Anaiah is a fantastic drummer.” “Ah, thank

and generally looking after himself – not your

you,” replies Anaiah. “I give my brother credit

typical nineteen-year-old’s routine. “It kind of

for everything, we just try and do what we do.

sounds like I’m quite lazy, I don’t do much,” he

This band is just our feelings, our awkward

says, offering a stark contrast to his hyperactive

feelings on a record.”

68 HUCK

T h i s w i t h

o r T h e

t h a t B o t s

Shirt and tie or tie-dye? ANAIAH:

We’ve been doing shirt

and tie forever in our videos and stuff. I think I wanna say tie-dye. MIKAIAH:

Tie-dye… I’ve got

a really sick tie-dye shirt my girlfriend made. It’s blue. It’s good for something different to wear. Black Flag or White Stripes? MIKAIAH: ANAIAH:

White Stripes for me.

I love both bands. I’m

just going to have to go with both. Grey Stripey Flag? Arcade Fire or arcade games? BOTH:

ARCADE FIRE!

Crowd surfing or skateboarding? ANAIAH:

There may be a fair amount of brotherly

I love both!

MIKAIAH:

love floating around today, but the Lei bros –

ANAIAH:

Skateboard crowdsurf?

Yeah, skateboard

thankfully – are no clean-cut cliché. Like any

crowdsurf, how about that?

normal siblings, they squabble and bicker;

MIKAIAH:

our first interview had to be rescheduled

skateboard, ollie, ditch the board

How about getting on a

after a fall-out that left the boys refusing to

in mid air and aim for the crowd?

talk to each other for an entire afternoon.

ANAIAH:

But in lots of ways that’s where regular teen

before the crowd, because if you

life begins and ends.

Hopefully you ditch it

don’t it’s just going to slam them.

Having already toured with the likes of

MIKAIAH:

Refused, Bad Brains, the Warped Tour, Damon

that one.

Albarn’s Africa Express and Tenacious D, the

ANAIAH:

That was good, I like

I love both!

boys have some pretty serious credentials on their fledgling CVs (they’ve met Paul

Facebook or real books?

McCartney, too). They’ve been away from

BOTH:

home for the best part of a year now, living in

MIKAIAH:

Real books. I hate Facebook.

London while their tour schedule snowballed, and they’ve picked up some pointers from

Jack Black or Jack White?

other more experienced musicians along the

MIKAIAH:

way. Most notably from Bad Brains frontman

Jack Black!

HR, who also happens to be a family friend.

ANAIAH:

“He was quite sagacious and just basically

White, because I don’t know him

told us to keep calm, stay level-headed

Aaaah come on! I know

I wanna meet Jack

and because he’s a rock god. MIKAIAH:

You can’t compare an

and peaceful,” says Mikaiah, with an air of

actor to a… oh no Jack White

wisdom about him. “It’s what most bands

does acting, nevermind.

should do. A lot of people lose their heads in

ANAIAH:

this situation, get carried away and become

has been in a couple of films,

Yeah, Jack White

someone else. But it’s good to stay the way

to be fair.

we are, and we’re having fun doing it.”

MIKAIAH:

Just Jack Black. I’ll say

Jack Black. So you say Jack Black?

To get your hands on a copy of STOB EHT, a limited-

ANAIAH:

edition ’zine by Dan Wilton, visit danwilton.co.uk.

Hi Jack… but I’ll say Jack White. MIKAIAH:

thebotsband.com

ANAIAH:

Yo Jack!

I hope he never reads this.

Joni Ster nbach â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s primordial portraits c apt ur e sur f ingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lost tribe.

70 HUCK

Te x t Te t s u h i k o E n d o Photography Joni Sternbach

In 1893,

72 HUCK

the colonial governor and

looking for the lost tribe of surfing. I emerge from

lauded amateur anthropologist Everard im Thurn

the undergrowth and come upon these people who

presented his famous paper on the photographing

seem fresh and raw and passionate and courageous,

of indigenous peoples to the Royal Anthropological

like they just evolved straight out of the sea from

Institute in London. “My special concern,” he said,

their fish state.”

“is as to the use of the camera for the accurate

Sternbach conjures her images through the

record… of these folk regarded as living beings.”

collodion process, which she describes as “the

Im Thurn and his ilk’s main concern was

Polaroid of yesteryear… one part photography,

familiarising the exotic, finding a way for the rigid

one part performance art, and one part three-ring

European imagination to come to terms with a

circus.” Invented in England in the 1850s, it is a

being that was, on the surface, wholly different

complicated procedure that involves immersing a

from them. One hundred and twenty years later,

metal or glass plate in subsequent baths of noxious

in an age of media saturation, photographers are

chemicals in order to produce certain reactions

faced with an inverse problem: everything feels

that coalesce in a scant ten to fifteen minutes

familiar. From distant, un-contacted natives of

into an image that is almost palpable. No pixels

the Amazon, to the most deviant sex acts – all

here, kids.

kinds of images can be accessed at the click of a

“Digital is super sharp, in a way that’s kind of

mouse. Paradoxically, photographing people as

irritating,” says Sternbach. “Collodion is hand-

living beings is as hard as ever.

poured onto the plate, so it has a skin. In some

New York-bred photographer Joni Sternbach

photos you can see where the wind has blown

has, in a series of portraits of surfers entitled

on the plate as it was drying and the skin is

Surfland, found a way of addressing this problem:

visible. The image colour and quality is creamy

by combining a modern eye for the anthropological

– a gorgeous, one-of-a-kind object. If you hold it

with technology of im Thurn’s age. “In a fantastical

in your hand, you can see there is depth in the

way, it’s almost as if I was a photographer in 1850

surface, so in that sense holding the object gives

who has gone through the bush for two weeks

you a sense of time and place and history. When I

look at a digital print, I see something different, it

sign from above that I was following a tradition that I

might be gorgeous and smooth, but it’s on a piece

didn’t really have a concept of, but I was going in the

of paper and is one of many.”

right direction nonetheless. To this day, I consider

That surfers came to be the subjects of this

that photograph a big influence on this project.”

project was a happy accident. Sternbach is not

Just as im Thurn insisted on shooting his subjects

a surfer, and was only vaguely aware of surfing

in their quotidian surroundings, Sternbach captures

photography before she began a project in the

her surfers on the beach, with their boards, often

late nineties to photograph ocean-scapes. “Try

just as they have left the water. They are a mélange

to imagine this,” she recalls. “I’m on the bluff at

of amateurs and professionals (famed surfing

Montauk [New York] with the ocean right below

brothers the Malloys have been captured by

my feet. It turns out I’m at a surf break, although I

Sternbach’s lens) but even dedicated surfing buffs

didn’t realise it at the time. I would go out to shoot

often have to look twice to discern who is who.

in all types of weather and sometimes there were

Thanks to Sternbach’s outsider gaze – influenced

people surfing. The funny thing was that I spent a

by Robert Frank’s take on American culture and

couple of years whistling at them to get them out

August Sander’s photographs of German society

of the photos. Of course they didn’t move.”

– the surfing industry has found its way back to

Slowly, Sternbach began to incorporate the

the source. In 2011, Sternbach was invited to

surfers into her shots. “The surfers appear rather

immortalise O’Neill’s most iconic surfers – from

small in the frame at first, but as I got more

Jordy Smith to John John Florence – for a sixtieth

comfortable with them, I started to move in closer.”

anniversary campaign that carried a distinctly

It wasn’t until two years into the project that she was

primordial tone. “There really is an exoticism to

leafing through a photography book and stumbled

surfers as they travel to all these incredible places

upon the canonical photo of an unnamed Hawaiian

in search of waves,” she says. “It’s one of the best

surfer at Diamond Head, circa 1890 – an image many

subcultures to ever happen to the world.”

deem to be the first photo of a surfer ever taken. “I couldn’t believe it,” she says, laughing. “It was like a

jonisternbach.com

M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E : C O N N E C T I N G T H E D O T S B E T W E E N THE ST UFF YOU BU Y A ND THE LIFEST Y LE YOU CONSUME.

HARRINGTON JACKET -

text Michael For dham illustration Holly Wales

The term Harrington was coined by London menswear retailer John Simons to refer to the type of cotton windcheater worn by Ryan O’Neal’s character in sixties American soap Peyton Place. His check-lined blouson jacket

We know. Marketing sucks.

with a two-button collar and zip exemplified the Ivy League

Enough already. But beneath the weight of advertising and

of style for everyone from skins and indie kids to a panoply

bullshit, there exists a truism: stuff matters. The things people

of hip hop stylists. Ubiquitous faux-retro brand Baracuta

wear and the products they consume are a vital part of the culture

created the Harrington as a contemporary staple, and

they create. In fact, they are the concrete elements of the culture

streetwear stalwarts Carharrt make our favourite version.

look. The Harrington has now become an essential piece

itself. But true culture emerges from below; it is never imposed by marketeers – no matter how big or glossy their billboards

SNAPSHOT: 1975-1980s, UK. With post-war austerity starting to ebb,

get. How a product is consumed and reinterpreted by punters

working-class British modernists ape Brahmin Americana to transcend

is impossible to predict. What follows are three lyrical sojourns

their dull surroundings.

into the cultural history of some of our most beloved products. It may just be a load of ‘stuff ’, but it’s the stuff of stories – the

Deep in the heartlands of multicultural Britain, an exchange

way in which we connect across geography and time. Thing is,

was taking place. Black kids led the rank and file in the style

in 2012, there is chaos, electronically motivated chaos. It was

stakes. They raided their parents’ record collections and

always unpredictable, but now, cultural influence is as randomly

reignited two-stepping ska for a new generation. If Prince

improvised as how you decide which part of your screen to click

Buster and Desmond Dekker defined West Indian UK culture

your mouse. The fact that you can share the stuff you dig over

for their parents, The Specials, The Selecter and The Beat

huge space and time can remove the human element – unless

refreshed the rude boy aesthetic during the early eighties.

you know your history, that is.

This was a time when the clothes you wore reflected the music you listened to and the place in which you grew up.

[NOTE: NO MONEY OR PRODUCTS WERE EXCHANGED IN

Material culture was intertwined deeply with your identity

THE MAKING OF THIS ARTICLE. HONEST.]

– as it is today. The Harrington in its Ivy references – filtered through Jamaica to the streets of Britain – was an arcane but powerful statement of working-class steeze.

74 HUCK

ADIDAS SUPERSTAR -

WINDANSEA T-SHIRT

Popularised on court by the lanky, ’froed NBA

legend that was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar throughout the 1970s, the iconic pro-model shoe transcended the basketball courts

Windansea is the original countercultural surf club

of Harlem. By the early eighties Run-DMC aped con style by

based in the heavily localised beach breaks of La Jolla. Round here,

wearing them without laces and with the tongue flapping out.

you had to earn your T-shirt. In the fifties and sixties, Windansea

Shell toes thus became part of the b-boy staple, and have been

was a byword for that jockishly aggro attitude that characterised

worn by skaters the world over, making a big comeback in the

Californian surf culture before everyone started tuning in, turning

nineties with emo metal-heads and fans of Korn – you know

on and dropping out. Today the club retains its rep – albeit for an

who you are.

age when the whole idea of a surf club seems a tad twee.

SNAPSHOT: 1980, UK. Thatcher’s government one year in takes on the

SNAPSHOT: 1945-65. The American ‘Boom Time’ dresses down. The GI Bill

unions and other undesirables. The Special Patrol Group (the tooled-up,

frees up a generation to explore their imaginations and has-beens obsess over

testosterone-fuelled police storm-trooper squad) provoke kids on the streets of

the old version of the American Dream.

Britain, helping to articulate the National Front and the British Movement’s hateful invocation of white, working-class fear.

The Second World War created the T-shirt as a ubiquitous item of cheap, comfortable apparel. Army surplus cotton tees were avail-

At the end of the seventies when the Sugarhill Gang launched the

able en masse for the first time in the post-war years, and as the

full-length, fifteen-minute version of Rapper’s Delight, it wasn’t

buttoned-up forties gave way to the rock ‘n’ roll fifties, youth culture

long until Britain’s high streets were prowled by adolescents

adopted them as standard-issue. When Marlon Brando draped

with rolled-up linoleum and heavyweight Hitachis on their

himself over his motorcycle in a white tee in The Wild One, and

shoulders. Electronica inherent in the beat of the earliest hip

then James Dean emoted his generation’s angst in Rebel Without

hop begat a keyboard focused way of being in the world. Kids

a Cause, the humble T-shirt’s image was sealed. Surf culture took

all over the suburbs – white, brown, yellow and pasty – would

the T-shirt to another level of cool when, some time in the late

meet up at huge nightclubs whose lager-stained parquet would

fifties, surfboard-shaping entrepreneurs came up with the idea of

host a revolution more akin to the post-industrial wastelands

screen-printing surfboard logos onto T-shirts for their hottest riders.

of Detroit or Philly’s downtown discos. Zero 6 and The Lacy

It may have been Californian legends Larry Gordon and Flloyd

Lady in the Essex hinterland hosted huge soul nights that laid

Smith – founders of the eponymous Pacific Beach surf shop – or

the groundwork for the entry of house music into the lexicon

longboard era Dewey Weber who fully popularised the idea, but

of British youth culture. You may have been from Basildon or

either way it worked. The hottest riders not only got a surfboard,

Heaton, son, but the aesthetic that had superimposed itself on

but branded T-shirts to boot, and soon a cult of aspiration was

your way of looking at the world was all about the Northern

created around the look of Mexican-made huarache sandals, jeans

end of the Mississippi.

or surf shorts and branded tees. The surfer became the cleaner-cut equivalent of the grease-ridden hot-rodder. They were cool, they were stoked, and they were wearing the right tees. You read it here first: surf culture predates rock ‘n’ roll

(Clockwise) Last-minute prep as the two-minute warning sounds. Nobeyama, Japan. Second day course reroute: tape patrol was busy last night. USGP#1, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Mud victim: another derailleur falls foul of the Nobeyama slop. Nobeyama, Japan. Puddle jumper Tina Brubaker on the Oregon Coast. Speedvagen training camp on the beach.

You Canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Stop Us Now 76 HUCK

This is what matters: wheels on the ground and pedal to the metal. USGP#1, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.

T he y pedal, push and scr amble t heir w ay t hr ough mounds o f mud and s tor ms o f dus t . Welcome to t he me s sy w or ld o f c yclocr o s s. Te x t J e r e m y D u n n Photography Jeff Curtes

Rally on the hairpin: bird’s eye view of a post-race freeriding session. Laura Winberry, Nobeyama, Japan.

hen we drive into Marymoor Park just outside of Seattle, a foggy mist is starting to settle over the velodrome up ahead. Something about the scene doesn’t feel right. The Pacific Northwest has been hit by a drought all summer long: surely fog can’t settle in temperatures like this? But as we near the racers speeding around the track – as dirt-encrusted eyes and mouths come into focus – it soon becomes clear that what we’re dealing with here is not fog but dust. A storm-load of the stuff. The blazing sun and throngs of cyclocross riders snaking and looping their way through the city park have combined to kick up a dust storm of epic proportions, one that moves and sways with the riders themselves. Cyclocross has taken hold in the US with a grip that’s not about to let go. Until the late sixties, this rugged off-road strand of cycling was most prevalent in Belgium, where muddy, frozen races, usually held in early winter, were used as a training ground for competitive road racers. It quickly gathered a following, with thousands coming out to cheer on their countrymen while scoffing down sausages and pints of Belgian beer. And it’s easy to see why. With one-hour races broken up into short, fast laps, cyclocross is a great spectator sport. But here at Starcrossed, the emphasis is on participation

78 HUCK

(Top to bottom) The Speedvagen team’s armoured truck, fresh off the set of Transformers, is ready to roll. Portland, Oregon. Speedvagen team riders Daisuke Yano and Jeff Curtes eat dust at Starcrossed’s nighttime extravaganza. Seattle, Washington.

“I love ever y t hing abou t cr o s s: t he sexine s s o f t he m ac hine s, t he shi t w e at her and t er r ain, and t he ever y-m anf or-him sel f d y n amic o f ho w t he r ac e s play ou t .” – best exemplified during the ‘kiddie cross’, a real crowd-pleaser

the home of the season’s pinnacle event, the Cyclocross World

that sees parents wheeling their children out, complete with

Championship, which takes place in January.

crooked helmets and tiny bikes, and pushing them off gently to navigate a short course on their own. So, what is it that makes cyclocross unique? Unlike their tarmac-trained counterparts, riders cover a mix of on- and off-

Starcrossed lies somewhere between the big races and the smaller, local events. Aside from a great atmosphere, it boasts two unique features: the course includes a velodrome, and the whole thing takes place at night.

road terrain – hence the need for a steed that marries a road bike

It’s 6pm and the beginners are blasting around the track.

frame with sturdy tyres that could rip a mountain to shreds. The

The race kicked-off in a parking lot, then wound its way through

courses themselves vary in length but tend to stick to a pretty

the park, making rough, large loops around the exterior of the

small footprint, usually around venues like school grounds, city

velodrome before dipping down its banked sides and heading into

parks and possibly a state fair or two. Obstacles may be placed

the grassy infield. Next up is a sharp turn in front of the beer tent,

in the racers’ way, ranging from 40cm-high wooden barriers to

then a quick dismount and scramble over some wooden barriers

run-ups so steep that riders are forced to dismount, sling their

– all before heading out of the velodrome and onto the next lap.

bikes on their shoulders and scramble up the route.

As the sun sets at Starcrossed, the bright halogen bulbs of

Events tend to vary from place to place. Typically, the East

the velodrome pop on to guide the Elite Field – a line-up of semi-

Coast takes things a little more seriously than the West, where

professional competitors who constitute the fastest racers of

men racing in drag is a common sight. Some are confined to

the day. Some riders make a living out of cyclocross, like Rapha-

a small region, like the Verge New England Cyclocross Series.

FOCUS rider Jeremy Powers and Tim Johnson who rides for

The US Gran Prix of Cyclocross (USGP), on the other hand, is

Cannondale/Cyclocrossworld.com. Others make a living elsewhere

a series of eight races scattered across the country in places like

and attend races alongside their nine-to-five. The Speedvagen

Fort Collins, Colorado and Louisville, Kentucky – the latter being

team, based out of Portland, is a mix of serious racers and go-fast

Vanilla/Speedvagen’s Sacha White lends a helping hand in the Speedvagen-sponsored Kid Cross. Nobeyama, Japan.

near-professionals. Their newly converted armoured van-cum-

shit weather and terrain, and the every-man-for-himself dynamic

team vehicle speaks of their general ethos; as a team, they value

of how the races play out. You don’t need a team to be on top.”

humour and good times above actual race results.

80 HUCK

At Starcrossed, the final race has come to a close. Hacking

Daisuke Yano owns the Yatsugatake Bicycle Studio in Japan,

coughs hang in the air as the racers stand around hugging and

but often travels with Speedvagen to races around the globe.

clapping each other on the back. Dirt and dust has caked itself

“Japan used to follow the way Europe did cyclocross, aiming

into their smiles and in between their teeth. They drift over to the

for high-level racing and not necessarily growing the sport,”

start area to claim the water bottles they left behind when the gun

explains Daisuke. “Today, Japan references the US’ style of

went off. Jeff Curtes lets out a primordial scream as he drags his

cyclocross races; amateur racers are encouraged and races

bike across the line – something malfunctioned and he was forced

have a high entertainment value. The venue atmosphere is

to ride the last few laps with only one gear instead of the usual

similar to that in the US."

ten. His voice bounces off the banked sides of the velodrome as

Jeff Curtes also rocks Speedvagen’s blue and green skinsuit

he yells, “That was awesome!” Nothing, not even a broken bike

with pride. As a seasoned photographer with deep roots in the

can quell the rush of adrenaline that comes from having just

snowboarding world, he had his own reasons for entering the

pedalled, sprinted, jumped, crashed, turned, smashed, bumped,

cyclocross world. “After a long winter of watching pro snowboarders

grabbed and raced your way through another cyclocross course.

do their thing, cycling has always been my time to get in there – my

Next stop: the USGP in Louisville, Kentucky. With the World

fifteen minutes, so to speak,” he explains. “And growing up the

Championships right around the bend, the racers will check out

middle of three brothers, the competitiveness made racing almost

the course (and their competitors) in what will be the most heated

inevitable. All it took was one Cross Crusade – Portland’s huge

contest of the season. There will be battles in Belgium and France,

local series – which I went to as an observer, and I knew it was on.

but for the first time, the final decider will take place on US soil.

I love everything about cross: the sexiness of the machines, the

And everyone is hyped

First st in in SURFING S SU URFING NEWS NEWS First

www.surfersvillage.com Rider: Tim Boal / Photo: Agustin Munoz/Red Bull Photofiles / Design: ID

Tim

Bo al

EINE STREETWEAR, S K AT E B O A R D I N G UND SNEAKER MESSE IN BERLIN J A N UA RY 16 — J A N UA RY 18 2 013

NEW HORIZONS ALTE MÜNZE, BERLIN / MITTE B R I G H T T R A D E S H O W. C O M

XVI

ENDNOTES: PERSONAL STORIES STRAIGHT FROM THE SOURCE

An editorial takeover, curated by Ed Andrews.

TOP ROW: Nathan ‘Flutebox’ Lee, Stig of the Dump, Skitz. MIDDLE ROW: Dr Syntax, DJ Woody, Scroobius Pip. BOTTOM ROW: Sarah Love, Chemo, Fatlip.

84 HUCK PHOTOGRAPHY by ANGUS MACPHERSON

PHOTOGRAPHY by PAUL WILLOUGHBY

PHOTOGRAPHY by ED ANDREWS

PHOTOGRAPHY by LIZ SEABROOK

PHOTOGRAPHY by TIM SMYTH

PHOTOGRAPHY by LIZ SEABROOK

PHOTOGRAPHY by ED ANDREWS

PHOTOGRAPHY by LIZ SEABROOK

PHOTOGRAPHY by MAX HAMILTON

PRINT IS DEAD

As the print publishing model continues to throw up a shitstorm of obstacles, and media big-wigs decry that ‘Print Is Dead’, determined self-publishers are finding ever-more inventive ways to get their stories out into the world. In the summer of 2011, a new digital magazine devoted to hip hop came blasting out of obscurity with a focus on the human narratives threaded throughout the world of rap. Founded by Ed Andrews – writer, photographer, AV-dabbler – Take The Stage: Stories of Hip Hop was a refreshingly honest conduit for everyday tales that deserve to be told. And it still is. Now in its fifth incarnation, and with a video element newly launched, Take The Stage will likely find a way to muster on, because its publisher is prepared to work while others moan.

At first, I wanted to release it as a thick, hardback book – like the ones you see sold in trendy clothing stores like Urban Outfitters and record shops like Phonica in London’s Soho. It made sense in my head to create a beautiful coffeetable object that trendy hip hop heads would skin up on. The big problem, however, was money. I got quotes from printers and quickly realised that, to fund a modest run of my dream book, I would probably have to sell my kidneys on the black market. People suggested crowd-funding sites like Kickstarter, but it just didn’t seem likely that I would get enough people willing to part with a good chunk of money for a tome devoted to mostly obscure artists. So instead I turned to Issuu – a free website where you

Take The Stage: Stories of Hip Hop is a pretty simple

can upload styled-up PDFs to be read as a digital magazine

concept really. It’s a collection of profiles of hip hop emcees,

– and decided to try and get the stories out there in bite-

producers, deejays, beatboxers, promoters, record label

sized volumes, slowly build an audience and maybe one

owners – anyone stepping up to articulate a love of beats

day attract a sponsor who would be willing to cough up the

and rhymes – published in the form of a digital magazine

cash for the print bill. Nearly five volumes deep and it still

and now video, too.

hasn’t happened... yet. But I have received a few kind emails

One thing I didn’t ever want it to be was an arbiter of

and tweets from people telling me they like it, had some

cool. All too often, self-appointed spokesmen draw lines in

very talented photographers and writers volunteering their

the sand, claim ownership and spurt clichés about what and

services, had thousands of people reading each volume and

who hip hop is. ‘Keeping it real’, ‘the elements’, ‘knowledge

I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to try something other than

of self’, ‘taking it back’ – people preaching and bickering

writing for a change – learning a little about shooting photos

over these sorts of things makes me want to run screaming

and video, and hosting a film screening for readers, too.

from the room. True, conversations like this usually stem from

I can’t complain but really the project isn’t about me. It’s

a love of hip hop, but you could spend a lifetime arguing

simply about publishing stories about quality independent hip

over the intricacies and interpretations of the form and get

hop and giving exposure to some great artists moonlighting

nowhere. Life is too short to bicker over such trivialities. All

as zookeepers, boxing coaches, PhD students, financial

I can suggest is that people take from hip hop what they

magazine editors, direct marketing executives and swimming

want; see the dopeness, not the wackness.

instructors, as well as those struggling to make ends meet

Anyway, I released the first volume in July 2011. This

with music as a full-time hobby.

was after a year or so of inaction due to general laziness. I

Hip hop may be awash with hype, bravado, misconceptions,

finally pulled my finger out and did it because I got bored

egos, idiocy and some just plain embarrassing shit, but I’d

hearing myself telling people that I was thinking of doing

like to think Take The Stage is showing that there's another

it. You can ‘think of doing’ pretty much anything you want

side to it: people united by a simple, honest love of music.

in the world, but it’s all just self-aggrandising bullshit until

E D ANDRE WS

you get your head down, give up days off and nights out to hunch over your laptop and actually do it.

facebook.com/storiesofhiphop

LONG LIVE RAP!

Hailing from the small fishing town of Ramsgate, experimental UK rapper/producer Joey Prolapse is known in the provincial Kent hip hop scene as a core member of The Brewdem crew. Formerly going by the name of Yosh, the full-time PhD student changed his moniker to something that “wouldn’t get lost in a Google search”. As a rapper, he’s lent vocals to albums from producers Mr Boss,Vee Kay and Mr Loop, and as a producer disappeared off into weirder sounds for his recent mixtape, Unexpected Item in Bagging Area, alongside a selection of mash-ups of classic acapellas and samples from eighties kids TV shows. Here, he tells us why he’s all about dreaming small and living large.

that’s a generational thing and people who aren’t even that

I came into rhyming from making beats, because I wanted

using exactly what you’ve got to make some sort of sound

vocals on them. I'm not deliberately experimental; it’s

and not caring too much about what ‘people who know

probably because I'm tone deaf or something.

about music’ think about you.

nerdy are making music that sounds like video game music. But I also try and bring a bit of folk into my music as I like the idea that hip hop should really sound like it’s from a specific place. If you are from Ramsgate in England, you shouldn’t be making hip hop using the same soul samples as Kanye West. A lot of people, especially in the UK, have quite a nostalgic view of hip hop where they see it as a certain sound, but for me it’s not really a genre of music; it’s a method for making music. When you don’t have access to musical instruments, it’s a contemporary version of skiffle –

Hip hop-wise, the first person who came to my attention

I live in Ramsgate and for a lot of people living somewhere

was Roots Manuva, so when I started rhyming I had this

like this, it’s really just boredom that makes you want to

really dodgy fake patois that made me sound like some

make music. If you live in a city where there’s loads of

fifty-year-old West Indian geezer. I got cussed for it and I

music going on, it's more of a competitive thing with other

suppose I’m only really finding my own voice now.

people. In terms of ambitions, I don't have massive ones.

Growing up in my house, it was always about reggae,

You do the recordings so you can do gigs because gigs are

punk and grunge so the reason hip hop stuck with me

fun. I’d never really aim to not have a normal job. It would

was because it was the music I found on my own. I like hip

be nice but I’m quite realistic about it. If you can get away

hop that’s a bit dark: sci-fi nerdy influenced stuff. At the

with playing a few festivals a year and not have to pay to

moment I'm really loving El-P, Busdriver and Open Mike

get in, that’s pretty good.

Eagle. Outside of hip hop, the things that have an influence on my sound are comic books and video games but I think

86 HUCK

soundcloud.com/joeyprolapse

JOEY PROLAPSE

London-based deejay, producer and occasional rapper The Last Skeptik is constantly grinding to make a living as a professional musician. With eclecticism being key to this mission, he’s shared stages with Damon Albarn, Flea and Danny Brown, produced for the likes of The King Blues, Kate Nash and Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly, and recorded albums with rappers like Rewd Adams, Verb T and Sway. Come 2013, he’s set to release his long-awaited solo instrumental album, something that he calls his “magna opus”, on the prestigious BBE Records. Here, he digs out some of the vinyl that’s made him who he is today.

INDO JAZZ FUSIONS 2 J O E H A R R I O T T & J O H N M AY E R

My dad gave me this record when I was too young to really understand what a fusion of anything really was. The mix of jazz and Indian instruments blew my mind, in the same way I’m sure this record blew his way back when it was released. I sampled the shit out of it, obviously. SHUT ’EM DOWN (REMIX) PUBLIC ENEMY

Those horns! Those Pete Rock adlibs! This shit right here changed the whole game. It’s one of, if not the best remix

BABYLON – (OST)

of ANYTHING. For the simplicity, the swing of the drums

VA R I O U S

and Flav’s adlibs. I spent years copying the filtered bass

Jeez! This has to be one of the best reggae-related

line and horn decay.

soundtracks ever made. The Dennis Bovell original score tracks are so unbelievable I’ve lost weeks listening to them.

S I N AT R A AT T H E S A N D S

Serious dubbed-out madness. I sampled it on my first-ever

F R A N K S I N AT R A

release when I was sixteen, which surely was about fifty

If you don’t like Sinatra, you’re a dick. This guy has to be the

years ago now. I forget.

most listened-to dude on my iTunes. I listen whatever mood I’m in and this album in particular has got me through a lot.

R E S P I R AT I O N

Quincey Jones produced it. Count Basie plays on it. And

B L A C K S TA R

Frank has more swag than any rapper out today. Big band ftw.

This is one of those songs I never know whether to cry or punch someone to. There is more emotion in this one

SUICIDE

song than any human can comprehend. The production is

S T R AY

galactically incredible.

Stray were a little-known seventies prog rock band that my dad was really into, so I inherited these quite rare copies

WORDSEARCH

of the records (ha, and you won’t get ’em back now!). The

THE LAST SKEPTIK

Suicide album is perfect in every way. Completely bonkers

Well, this was my first-ever release on vinyl. I was at university

and each song switches eight billion times within itself. When

at the time, and had thought my entire life that my biggest

I heard this, in some weird way it taught me never to settle

dream was to have a song on wax. I got it. I ran to the uni

on one loop. Always make all your songs textured, layered

radio station, and the moment the needle touched the record

and constantly changing.

I knew I had to try and set myself bigger dreams. Moral of the story: don’t have dreams.

88 HUCK

THELASTSKEPTIK.COM

THE LAST SKEPTIK

PHOTOGRAPHY by ED ANDREWS

Formed in 1996, Bristolian hip hop crew Aspects – the core comprising of emcees El Eye, Probe Mantis and Bubber Loui – have greatly contributed to the city’s acclaimed musical pedigree, alongside the likes of Massive Attack and Roni Size. Through their fiercely original beats, rhymes and subject matter – and refusal to tone down their regional accents – the crew earned the respect of many, from Radio 1 deejays John Peel and Steve Lamacq through to core UK hip hop artists like Task Force. Their debut album, Correct English (2001), met with mainstreampress applause.Follow-up album Mystery Theatre expanded on their determination to not stick t o t h e b e a t s - a n d - r hy m e s formula and instead craft an eclectic array of hip hop songs. Soon after, however, they split, having fallen out of love with the music industry – and each other. But in 2011, the three emcees, along with beatboxer Monkey Moo, reunited; older, wiser and determined to recapture the vibe from the early days when the simple pleasure of making music together triumphed over everything else. Here, El Eye (Ian Merchant) talks us through their creepy new track, ‘Trouble in Town’.

song, written under the threat of dusk and the smell of fires. I've got to thank Dan Jones who showed me the poem Full Moon by Simon Armitage, which was the cell-division moment for the song’s birth. The song is from the perspective of my seven-year-old self, during an era of playing in the dirt and riding my Raleigh Tomahawk around the estate. When you were too scared to get your ball from crazy Jack Hawker’s house (yes, he’s real) because you heard he murdered one of the Jones twins who foolishly entered his overgrown g a rd e n .

Another

share with producer Memotone – who we collaborated with on this song. We’re both rural horror film buffs; flicks like The Wicker Man, Kill List, Blood on Satan’s Claw and Witch Finder General. We really wanted to capture that tone, where countryside is a wild and dangerous place; isolated towns, closed communities, secret places and buried bones. It’s all part of the Aspects pledge to preserve lyrical freshness; to say new things and engage new subjects. There’s a whole universe of ideas and events out there to play with – why retread heavily walked paths? The new Aspects album is a walk into the unknown!

‘Trouble In Town’ was originally penned last Halloween, I couldn’t have written it in spring or summer, it’s an autumn

90 HUCK

m a s s i ve

influence was an obsession I

soundcloud.com/aspects

EL EYE

TROUBLE IN TOWN WRITTEN AND PRODUCED BY ASPECTS & MEMOTONE ( I . M E R C H A N T & W . YA T E S )

Spring was round the corner, The dead bodies dance in a summer like a sauna, So old Jack Hawker's half daughter caused quite the stink when she surfaced from the water, Now Jack was feeling nervous and he oughta, Cos she remember every single lesson that he taught her, He was found swinging like an apple in the autumn They were buried miles apart because it seemed important, To the great and the good something strange is afoot, They’d chisel their names off their graves if they could, You can hear the children playing games in the wood Ring-a-Rosie round the hollow where the apple tree stood. It rained for like nine days straight Disturbing the forgotten on the bottom of the lake How many met their fate, well nobody really knows But they dug up Jack anyway and left him for the crows. There's Trouble in town, there's Trouble in town At the old Casino they're doubling down they're doubling down, they're doubling down, There's a witch in the wood and a bubbling sound A bubbling sound? A bubbling sound? That girl’s disappeared and they're covering ground they're covering ground? they're covering ground? There's trouble in town... It was a quarter past autumn When my friend killed himself and they still haven't caught him, He sent me a text his way of a warning We won't have to wait for dawn to see mourning So you can ask the bones on the riverbed If instead of accidental death it was deliberate If old mad Lily was really a witch And if it’s true what they say about the digger of her ditch Yo, they sniggered at the snitch Didn't care about his ghost when they pushed him off the bridge But as we know rumours are a virus Airborn and there for they arrest Silas Now he sits in silence and waits for the hour he’s devoured by the violence. Did you hear about the house on the hill? The cat burglar found a skull in the kiln, A hand in the well and a man who demanded we tell the police he was under the command of a spell Now he's remanded in hell cos his candid account didn't even amount to a cell It was a half past summer A thumb was a strange find even for a plumber I guess they wished they never climbed under The porch on the corpse was carved a prime number And I wonder Why the old clock tower’s midnight strike signifies an extra hour You can hear the truth if you close your eyes and listen And also see the truth if you use your inner vision Lose your inhibitions and choose to be inquisitive Isn’t that the house where the clock tower killer lived He had a pair of scissors with an appetite for little kids Never seen again were those who visited...

Having risen to prominence under the guidance of UK hip hop legends Terra Firma, North London-based emcee Melanin 9 combines intricate, hard-edged flows with intelligent wordplay. He’s opened for the likes of Immortal Technique and Wu-Tang, and is being tipped for greatness by the chattering musical classes thanks to a collaboration with Roc Marciano on his new album Magna Carta. Here, he explores the rhymes that drew him towards the mic.

I’ve got that Eve’s Bayou sense of touch So I fought, to touch every hand of a fan to read their thoughts Battered wives, molested children Roaches on the floor, rats in the ceiling Cats walk around New York with two fillins One is in their mouth the other does the killin’’ This has to be one of the greatest verses ever written. As a writer myself,

ARTIST: NAS

what I respect the most about Vast Aire is his ability to make you think

S O N G : ‘ TA K E I N B L O O D ’

that what he’s saying is so obvious and simple because of the clarity

A L B U M : I T WA S W R I T T E N

in his deliverance, yet that could never be so far from the truth. As for comparing life to the rules of mathematics? Unbelievable. There are

‘Just the killer in me, slash drug-dealer MC Ex-slug filler, semi mug peeler Demi, bottles of Mo', yo simply follow me flow Put poetry inside a crack pot and blow’

countless mind-blowing metaphors from this man on this album. Please do yourself a favour and go check out this album. ARTIST: JEHST SONG: ‘ESP (EXTRA SENSORY PERFECTION)’

When you’re looking for deep imagery, multi-layered metaphors, an

A L B U M : FA L L I N G D OW N

immaculate flow and deliverance, I personally think this has to be the greatest verse Nas has ever written. To compare poetry to a crack stone you put in a bottle and smoke like a fiend is incredible. That line changed my life when it came to understanding how to use metaphors. ARTIST: RAS KASS SONG: ‘REELISHYMN’ ALBUM: SOUL ON ICE

‘Life’s a bitch named monogamy - you only get one I'm trapped in this path of pathology’ Even though I’m still unsure if this is my favourite track on the album, because it’s so hard to choose, this verse stood out and to this day every time I hear it something explodes inside me and I start to sweat a little – no joke. Personally, I feel Ras is one of the most underrated emcees in the history of hip hop. His ability to execute some of the most intelligent metaphors while so accurately addressing his thoughts on worldly agendas seems to be as easy as tying his shoes. ARTIST: THE ROOTS SONG: ‘NO ALIBI’ ALBUM: ILLADELPH HALFLIFE

‘While you not possibly escaping what I'm meditating My shackle of thought tackle you while I'm educating Your dome's resonating from inhalation of darkness While I spark the smart shit from what you waiting’ Black Thought is one of my top-ten lyricists of all time. This particular track was my favourite from what I thought was their greatest album. These particular lines along with many others show Black Thought’s knowledge of how to carefully place the right phonetics to make such an incredible verse that little bit more appealing to the listener.

‘A brick-house built with porcelain features A fragile creature grief stricken apparent in alopecia The peacekeeper, the key to life beyond us I love her beyond lust My trust placed in her Illustrious face with a great figure Forbidden fruit of youth in the fingers of the grave digger Manipulated my late-night sanctum The lone catalyst of my tantrum Her tender touch turns to talons In her tempers clutch I bleed burgundy gallons Her crimson lips lick my wounds Her tongue tastes the claret My pain is vintage, her comfort is twenty-four carat In a golden moment of havoc my heart beats haphazard My brain bleeds black ballads that embarrass the author My favourite torture I drown in the depths of my mermaid's water At war with the storms’ daughter The tornado’s sister, she’s twisting my aura I’m caught in her barbed wire Burning up in her heart’s fire Bathed in the flames of my fury She wears me out like jewellery The duel-edged tool of her tomfoolery cuts my character A quick-witted challenger to any bachelor Bad-attitude chick, intellectual calendar bitch Baby-faced battleaxe make a man switch My lip-licking sex sandwich the grand dish My delicious delicacy, my delicate enemy Our friendship connects with a sexual chemistry My opposite energy the cause of my pain and the remedy I need her readily available Making dreams seem attainable’

A R T I ST: C A N N I B A L OX SONG: ‘IRON GALAXY’

This song inspired me to write many songs in my rap career, absolutely

ALBUM: THE COLD VEIN

flawless poetry and imagery from the UK wordsmith.

‘I rest my head on 115 But miracles only happen on 34th, so I guess life is mean And death is the median and purgatory is the mode that we settle in

92 HUCK

MELANIN 9

Melanin 9’s new album, Magna Carta, is out now on Red Snow Records. melanin9.com

PHOTOGRAPHY by ED ANDREWS

Drawing on the life, works and indulgences of Hunter S. Thompson, rapper Kashmere The Iguana Man and rapper/ producer Jehst went down the rabbit hole in an East London studio to create a new body of work. They emerged as Duke Rango and Dr Gonzilla, Son of The Samoan, a hedonistic duo bent on channelling the spirit of Rolling Stone’s most wayward reporter and indulging lyrically, metaphorically and quite literally in the proclivities of the legendary author himself. The result is new album Kingdom of Fear, a psychedelic slice of Gonzo hip hop that takes the listener around the bends. As for how Duke Rango and Dr Gonzilla, Son of The Samoan met? Prepare to be weirded out.

I OD’d or something to be honest. Amazingly, this bit is a true story. There was a cocktail of substances… That’s pretty much all I'm gonna say on that. I've been advised not to talk about that stuff directly. But not E45 cream. Fucking useless. Good for moisturising skin but terrible for recording an album. I wouldn’t advise it. DR GONZILLA, SON OF THE SAMOAN I met Duke Rango when

he was trying to buy drugs from Oscar The Grouch. In his own words, he’s “a drug-taking freak-a-zoid!” We decided to make an album together through our mutual fear of V-like reptilian life forms dominating the earth. That, and a

I met Dr

shared interest in the life and

Gonzilla at a motivational

work of James Brian Hellwig.

DUKE

RANGO

speaking engagement. Lis-

You want specific dates,

tening to James Brian Hell-

times and locations? Do you

wig speak just helped me in

work for the authorities? Or

a way the shrinks couldn’t. […]

are you simply hoping we

Who’s James Brian Hellwig?

reveal our secret formula

I don't think he needs much

for making uber-def-super-

introduction. If you don't know

stupid-fresh hip hop hits that

who The Ultimate Warrior is

will rock any roller-skating rink

then this interview is over. But

in the known universe? Is that

if you mean who’s Dr Gonzil-

your game?

la, I’d say he’s a complicated

For the most part, I was just

man… like Shaft. I think he even

lost in a marijuana-induced

went to Africa once.

trance, rocking back and forth

You ask why [make an

and banging the pads of the

album together]. We ask, ‘Why

MPC repeatedly with little

not?’ There's a lot of money to

or no awareness of Rango’s

be lost and we want to make

physical presence whatsoever.

sure we lose money with as much flair as possible.

If I’d thought about it at the time I probably would have opted to bring out the ‘cute

[The atmosphere] was very tense man. I was always

and cuddly’ aspects of his personality – the traits that make

pretty much ready to leave. Dude kinda freaks me out. You

him so endearing to women and children. He’s actually a

just never know what’s going to happen. The man pulled

very sensitive guy, in touch with his feminine side. Sadly,

a gun on me in a few of the sessions. Another time I was

we just got all the foul-mouthed, chest-beating, gun-toting,

kinda stuck on lyrics and he suggested a game of Russian

drug-shovelling chauvinism and bravado of his would-be

roulette. I flatly refused but he just went ahead and played

alpha-male side on this record.

on his own. That was a pretty dark session.

I didn’t want to get on the mic, but most of the time my

I had a particularly fucked-up experience on DMT.

client would just pass out cold on the floor of the studio

Safe to say I won’t be fuckin’ with that shit anytime

mid-session and there would be no other option for me

soon. But it did unlock something. It was like being

than to finish his work. If you want a job done properly…

unexpectedly thrust into an intense chaos dimension that kept getting more consuming by the second. I think

94 HUCK

Kingdom of Fear is out now on YnR Productions.

NO STARS “A HORRIBLE ALBUM THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO LISTEN TO. AND I MEAN THAT. I DON’T HAVE EARS. PUT ME BACK IN THE DIRT.” – AN EARTHWORM

ENJOYED BY ALL LIVING THINGS WITH EARS. Introducing 1% For The Planet: The Music Vol. 1, featuring Jack Johnson, Mason Jennings, Jackson Browne, and more. All proceeds benefit 1%’s continued efforts to make the planet a more beautiful place. Visit music.onepercentfortheplanet.org to listen to exclusive tracks.

96 HUCK

PHOTOGRAPHY by JAKE GREEN

Founded in 1996 by deejay Peanut Butter Wolf, Los Angeles-based record label Stones Throw has become synonymous with quality independent hip hop. It’s been home to a roster of critically acclaimed artists including the late J Dilla, Doom, producer Madlib and Guilty Simpson. But building on hip hop’s fundamental eclecticism, the label now reaches far beyond its original genre with artists like The Stepkids, Mayer Hawthorne and Aloe Blacc. Ahead of a new documentary about the Stones Throw story, Peanut Butter Wolf (who opened for Nas and The Pharcyde when he and Chazma were a duo) gives us a quick rundown on how the label has stayed afloat for the last sixteen years.

only thing they have in common is that I believe in them and they believe in me. That’s it. B R A N C H I N G O U T The first ‘non-hip hop’ record

was El Captain Funkaho in 1999, I think. The name was a take on E-40’s song ‘Captain Save A Hoe’, but it was basically a cross between Black Sabbath and the [early funk/hip hop] Jonzun Crew. Most people hated me for releasing it, like they do every time I release something new that strays too far from hip hop. S U C C E S S My idea of success is cultural impact.

Every time I see someone on a larger level doing something we were doing five years ago,

G E T T I N G I N I’ve always kinda surrounded myself

it reminds me that we’re still on track. […] We

with ‘music people’ since I was in high school. My

make a lot of collectable merchandise. Every

friends were deejays, rappers, musicians. My first

time we do that, we’re trying to have fun and do

time flirting with the idea of being a deejay was

something different. Mayer Hawthorne wanted his

in 1983 when I was twelve. By around 1985-86, I

record to be a red heart-shaped vinyl and I didn’t

was making my own beats for rappers and playing

even really wanna do it because I thought it was

electric bass in bands. After getting signed and

too gimmicky, but we did it to keep Mayer happy

dropped by a major label and losing my twenty-

and the public loved it. I have mixed feelings

year-old friend and music collaborator Charizma,

about the marketing thing though. I got a degree

who was murdered in 1993, I eventually decided

in marketing and basically did the opposite of

to start my own label in 1996. That’s kinda the

everything I learned in school.

short version. S T AY I N G I N The main way [the music industry] S I G N I N G A R T I S T S I just try to find things that

has changed is that there are no record stores

sound as good as the best of my 100,000 or so

and nobody buys records anymore. Other than

records in my personal collection. As my taste in

that, it’s the same. […] I probably wouldn’t start

music got broader, so did the music I was putting

a record label if I knew the industry would

out, but even in the eighties I was into a lot of

eventually collapse. There was no record industry

different things: goth, punk, new wave, reggae,

100 years ago, so why should I have assumed it

hip hop, soul, funk, electro, house. Sounds so ugly

would last. Shoulda just been a psychologist.

when you mention them all in one sentence. […] The

PEANUT BUTTER WOLF

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

T W E LV E

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

SOURCES

F I V E . New releases don’t get much more badass than Bronx IV from

E L E V E N . In 2010, we hooked up with Deftones for a special cover

Inspirations & things we dig.

The Bronx. thebronxxx.com

story after their four-year hiatus. Two years on and they’re already back

O N E . Indulge your inner yankophile with these fly Stars & Stripes

S I X . In October 2012, HUCK teamed up with DC, Nikita and COPSON ST.

tights from Happy Socks. happysocks.com

to create Anywhere Road – a photography exhibition by girls who skate.

T W E LV E . STOB EHT is a rad new ’zine by photographer Dan Wilton,

These postcards feature images by the eight rolling photogs who took part

capturing LA-based band The Bots on tour. danwilton.co.uk

with Koi No Yokan. Brand-new album, trusty-old sound. deftones.com

T W O . TCOLondon - publishers of HUCK - teamed up with Media

in the show. vimeo.com/52675555/ T H I R T E E N . Bell Hooks, who studies how race, capitalism and

Reform for a series of film screenings ahead of the release of the Leveson report on press abuses. Page One is the definitive documentary about the

S E V E N . In Born To Use Mics, Michael Eric Dyson and Sohail Daulatzai

gender perpetuate systems of oppression, explores new ideas of gangsta

internet’s deadly impact on the press, as seen through the eyes of The New

invite hip hop big-shots to explore American culture through the lens of

rap and feminism in Outlaw Culture. routledge.com

York Times. mediareform.org.uk

Nas’ first album Illmatic, one of the greatest records in rap history.

T H R E E . What do you get if you cross a HUCK letraset with a

E I G H T. Tighty whiteys just got rad. dadaunderwear.com

F O U R T E E N . The Gonz popped round to check out our gallery

space, 71a Leonard St. in November. Within a week we were pasting up his work for Mark Gonzales: One Week, One Show. This ’zine is a little

customised HUCK x Field Notes notebook? Only the greatest Xmas subscription gift ever! While stocks last. shop.huckmagazine.com

N I N E . Beanie badness from the folks at Element. elementbrand.com

F O U R . Dave Carnie is a demented genius. And Boob – a collection of

T E N . HUCK contributor Monisha Rajesh’s debut novel, Around India in

A N D F I N A L LY. Last issue, HUCK ran a photography

his ramblings from legendary skate rag Big Brother – is a total toilet bowl

80 Trains, is a beautiful, personal tale of India as seen from the country’s

competition with Indigo Hotels, inviting readers to submit their favourite

of lols from start to finish. kingshitmag.com

hyperconnected railway system. 80trains.com

travel snaps. Apologies to Wendy Dixon for the mix-up with her credit.

98 HUCK

something he left behind. Watch this space for more. vimeo.com/52705115

Check out Danny in

, out now.

photos by Adam Moran

D A N N Y D AV I S

design unlikely futures / analogclothing.com