Digital Refrain

Illustration by @maddisonbond

After the release of his most recent album “Life Is Good”, I did something groundbreaking: I played Nas’s discography from the end back to the start. And than a question came to me: how does an artist’s career unfold when his debut is regarded (almost) unanimously as the best album of all time in your genre?

It’s a question that after nearly 20 years is still hard to tackle, if only because it’s still hard for most to let go of the fact that Illmatic was an achievement that should be viewed isolated from the rest of Nas’s catalog, which is underrated if only because it is upheld against him as a benchmark to his debut.

It’s the cruel punishment of peaking too soon, or just simply for being the best.

This whole analysis of Nas’s career means a lot to me, if only because mid to late 1990s East Coast hip hop was my introduction into the genre — and it’s something I still hang onto today. I could care less about keeping up with new music, or knowing the lyrics to your favorite club song. It seems people just keep up with music now to be relevant in some ways. I don’t want to veer too far off and sound anti-establishment or what not — I already went through that phase when I thought swearing by Rawkus Records was some sort of declaration — I’m simply anti-poor quality.

That particular era is difficult to define, but whether it’s Pun’s “Capital Punishment”, all of Cappadonna’s guest verses on Ghostface’s debut album, those violins at the start of John Blaze, Nature spitting natural disaster rap at the start of “Banned From TV”, or that Made Men collaboration with The LOX from the Belly Soundtrack, that’s my daily rotation on the iPod.

You have to hold onto something I suppose.

The most fascinating rapper from that era for me has to be Nas.

I didn’t first hear about him from “Live At The BBQ”, I don’t think I was even in North America at that age. It was about the time when The Firm came out that I was exposed to him, and his Queensbridge counterparts whom he would later destroy and rebuild.

But seriously, I was more fascinating by “Five Minutes To Flush” than anything Nas did on that album.

I don’t have to hold onto that thought I suppose.

But once I got more familiar with Nas’s body of work, I realized that this genre of music, which was still a blank canvas to me, could be so much more. Listening to “New York State Of Mind” for the first time, I didn’t need no message board thread to tell me that I was listening to the apex of hip hop. He was going to work, painting all our canvas full, raising the bar for what music should be about.

Turns out he raised it a bit too high.

A year or so after, Nas was coming off “It Was Written” — heavily criticized because it wasn’t Illmatic (a recurring theme in Nas’s career, especially the first decade after his debut), and was planning a double album titled “I Am…Nastradamus”.

I still remember when a version of it leaked really early, the one with a handful of tracks that ended up on Lost Tapes.

If we thought “Street Dreams” and “If I Ruled The World” signaled a change in Nas’s music, this bootleg set off all alarms.

Eventually, the project was split into two albums, more profitably or what not. Think Kill Bill split into two. Same reasons.

“I Am…” was an uneven output from Nas, although when he decides to just dial it back and make a “Nas Is Like” (also, “New York State Of Mind Part. II is so underrated, especially that first verse, the end of that first verse), it makes him that much more polarizing.

Why doesn’t he just make 12 of those and call it a day? Why does he insist on working with Ginuwine, Timbaland and do songs like Dr. Knockboots (experimenting has never really served Nas right, remember “Who Killed It?”) ?

We projected all our expectations, however unrealistic and rigid onto Nas, all very unfairly I might add.

I only realize it now, but I fell into that crowd that concluded that Nas was going in the wrong direction with his music. But who as listeners are we to hold back someone from growing, from experimenting, from shifting their subject matter and persona? It was a crime for Nas to be a rapper in transition. The only crime I think he was guilty of was not being very good crossing over.

Or I just read one too many message board threads.

Of course, no discussion about Nas’s career is complete without the mention of Jay-Z, and Biggie to some extent (it’s a requirement I think).

If BIG was the street rapper who crossed over and became a huge star (Jay did the same over a larger platform subsequent), Jay came in the game, brought his own street edge and bravado with Reasonable Doubt and grew beyond just a rapper (see: businessman vs. business, man) into an entity, a brand so large that you forget he probably has as many flawed albums as Nas (Jay: I can divide too).

To summarize, BIG was what Nas could never be. Jay is who Nas wanted to be.

But Nas as himself is probably better than the two.

If so, than why does Nas’s career seems so underwhelming in retrospect. Why is he in so many ways considered a failure, a letdown?

He’s only been rapping for almost 20 years and still few rappers can stand next to him lyrically.

We might not have a fully formed view on this until he’s gone, it’s how things work. Appreciation comes after, criticism is all that exists in the present.

But we can make educated guesses.

His beef with Jay-Z was the perfect scenario in that it allowed Nas to regain his “street cred” from his fanbase. The rapper who outgrew the genre was getting took by the rapper who we always knew was the best.

Understatement: Ether was the most important record of Nas’s career.

And with his epic intro on Stillmatic, this was a sort of a Second Coming (great song by the way, one of his many from his “unreleased” catalog) for Nas. The album name (and cover) was a bold choice. Here was Nas, almost recognizing and mocking a desire to return to his Illmatic roots.

But in putting out such a competent, mostly street record in a completely different era separate from Illmatic, Nas changed the conversation and introduced this possibility: maybe there just won’t ever be another Illmatic.

It was as if this was a thought that we never ventured to entertain before this. That he must deliver a replication of his debut at least once more.

But with this change in mindset, I felt that Nas (and myself, and many fans) were finally able to or allow themselves to distance their assessment of Nas from just his debut. He was allowed to carve out another phase to his career that could work in conjunction.

His subsequent work were all above average to great. I felt both a return to his original sound and a realization of how to adapt and change as a rapper without going to extremes and making records that seemed downright uncomfortable or uninspiring (usually both).

And there’s this: trace a musician’s career through albums, and you’re bound to find criticism that overshadows their brilliance. Is this not why blogs exist? We function to point out what we don’t like, the opposite just seems to mean we’re falling in line with some mundane belief.

But in all fairness, you’re going to have to talk about Deja Vu, Silent Murder, The Foulness and all of Nas’s b-sides and unreleased records if you want to start matching discographys.

Only rappers recently brought back in hologram form can hold a candle to Nas when it comes to quantity.

Quality wise? You act like he ain’t got a belt in two classes.

All of this brings me to the release of “Life Is Good”. 20 years ago, he was a child. 10 years ago, he wore an orange valor suit with his hat cocked to the side. Today, he sits with his ex-wife’s wedding gown on his couch. If you want checkpoints, those three album cover images is a pretty simple way to get a synopsis.

This is a rapper that’s still rhyming with the same vigor and visceral precision like when he first entered.

You mean “Locomotive” isn’t a lost track from the Illmatic sessions?

At the end of the track, Nas dedicates the song to “my trapped in the 90s n*ggas”.

That’s me.

That’s us.

It’s a homage to the old days.

It’s something I still hang onto, and something that Nas is still well aware of.

And he’s still making music that reminds us of those times.

It’s not too late to appreciate him for that, and everything else he’s done for two decades.

Illustration by @maddisonbond

If Digital Refrain is where pop culture meets genius, then we’re going to need to talk about Ai Weiwei.

The controversial Chinese artist and activist is many things, but there’s one quality that binds all of his interests and his passion: he is a creator.

To the mainstream, he is best known for his help in designing the Beijing National Stadium, better known as The Bird’s Nest that was the hub of the 2008 Summer Olympics. But where most people would consider a world renowned stadium to be the highest of accomplishments, it likely wouldn’t even rank too high on Weiwei’s list if you consider his artistic side to be a medium where he best expresses his creativity and provides a message all at once.

The more introspective, and conversation-generating pieces include a series of photographs of him dropping a Han Dynasty urn or the companion to that: painting logos on them. There’s his Sunflower Seeds installation at Tate Modern in London in 2010. Simplistic in its presentation, the one hundred million sunflower seeds were in fact all painted in a small town in China by over 1,500 artisans. To those that appreciate art, it is a massive project. Look a little deeper, it’s Weiwei’s way of communicating his long standing views on consumerism, famine, elitism and the dangers of tradition and unwillingness to change.

Ask any person who’s appreciated and interpreted Weiwei’s work, their opinions will differ; not a dispute over his genius, but rather the message that it sends. But it’s clear: his art stimulates and creates conversation. They’re not conclusive, but they inspire you to want to understand how that conclusion may have come about.

The need to create and the need to provoke change might’ve started at an early age for Weiwei. His father Ai Qing was a famous Chinese poet, but was denounced by the government in the 1950s during the Anti-Rightist movement and exiled for 20 years as a farm laborer.

Weiwei also spent sometime in the 1980s in New York, his photographs during his stint have been collected by the Asia Society Museum in New York.

He once said, “The New York I knew no longer exists. Looking back in the past, I can see that these photographs are facts, but not necessarily true. The present always surpasses the past, and the future will not care about today.”

Can a phrase be art? Can a man’s words carry more meaning that it’s meant to?

Read about Weiwei long enough, you start to question these things too.

Filmmaker Alyson Klayman sought out these answers in a wonderful documentary released earlier this year titled “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry”. The moments we as viewers get to spend with Weiwei in his secluded home and art studio gives us a glimpse into a man that seems, in a surprising twist, vulnerable.

His art and his views are surely not shy. He never even used a computer before 2005, but since doing so, became one of the most read bloggers in the world, and cultivated a large following on Twitter (his pronunciation of the social network’s name in the movie is a hidden gem) which he’s used to continue to exert his influence and spread his message.

But when he discusses his art, he claims that “I’m not sure I’m good at it, but I find an escape in it. This is one way you can release yourself.”

He doesn’t consider himself brave, but he communicates and makes himself available and accessible so that people are always aware of where he is. Because that matters when you develop your own unique voice in China, you can only go rogue for so long until they bring you in.

And Weiwei was no exception. His Shanghai art studio was demolished by the government, and he disappeared for 81 days during a jail stint for some unpaid taxes, or so the story goes.

This is where the movie leaves off. He returns, but can he still be the same? You can be strong, you can inspire, you can be the creator of art, of conversation, of change, of everything; but if all of that is suppressed within, where’s the escape for Weiwei? Where will he find his release?

This is just a small portrait of who Weiwei is. I could go on about his other projects, specifically his work with the Sichuan earthquake disaster, to illustrate the point. But all of what he does and what he believes in are consistently represented in all of his creations.

And so perhaps the one thing we owe him is to create something ourselves: the awareness of Weiwei’s story, and an appreciation for a man who claims to fear, yet acts with only purpose, and no regard for the circumstances that he is bound to face.

“My Friend Dahmer” is a graphic novel project that was released earlier this year, written and illustrated by Derf Backderf. It chronicles the high school years of notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Backderf is the appropriate commentator for this narrative, because he actually went to high school with Dahmer, and was part of the reclusive social group that he belonged to.

The book is not an in-depth psychological study on how Dahmer became the monster that he was, and you can say that even the circumstances he faced as a child — in a small town, neglected by parents who were too busy with themselves, with drugs, with their divorce — are any different than how most people struggle their way through their normal lives. But that’s the whole point of it. How normal this story feels, without the backdrop of knowing where Dahmer’s story ends, it’s just a high school tale a socially awkward kid with disturbing tendencies towards studying animals and human parts.

It’s how thin the line between his story and any other kid’s story that makes this such an interesting read. There are frightening moments, functioning as a foreshadow for what Dahmer would become. But there are the light hearted ones too, just a kid with a sense of humor who was not afraid to entertain his friends even if it embarrassed himself.

Backderf makes it clear at the end of the story that even though this graphic novel does in some ways humanize Dahmer and portrays him not necessarily in a better light, but one with a widen lens, that he in no way condones or forgives Dahmer for what he became.

In the epilogue, Backderf and his high school friends reunite and wonder what happened to Dahmer, who they had lost touch with after graduating. One of them commented, “He’s probably a serial killer now” and they break into laughter.

Once you get through the details in this book and get to that point, you’ll find that ending to be harrowing. It’ll stick with you for a bit.

Illustration by @maddisonbond on Twitter

The best part about following a television show every week: engaging yourself in an overload of information and analysis after the fact. The best shows reward audiences in that way. That hour spent in front of the TV is actually a non life threatening gateway drug to a whole other world, a whole other many hours.

It’s in this way that I’ve consumed most of my favorite shows. And Mad Men lends to this qualities, because of its meticulous character study, the often quieter moments lending to conversations about the larger themes, and from knowledge inducing standpoint: a great introduction or retrospect depending on your age on a period that seems so foreign today.

Something changed in the fifth season, a series of episodes that focused on decay. The fall of characters, some in one big swoop, some just tragically falling down a rabbit hole of no return. But nonetheless, they all fell.

But in trying to provide some perspective on this season — as a singular television entity aside from its previous fifty two episodes, and as a continuing narrative that’s forms the larger story — I struggled with locating the actual area of decay.

Was it the characters themselves that was driving this monotonous feel to what was once a vibrant show – and if so, than the show can be praised for its ability to transfer that emotional feel to the audience. Or possible that the show itself was in decay — moving from the less is more approach to an overbearing need to speak explicitly on its themes.

I draw the line at when you have to give your main character a toothache in the finale, and have his dead brother show up to tell him it’s not his tooth that’s decaying. This is after letting go the fact that Don had to stay inside because the pollution outside enveloped him in a toxic environment, and Glen the little kid exclaimed at the end of the episode that nothing ever goes the way we want it.

Another thought rising out of this internal dialogue is that perhaps the show perfectly juxtaposed the unwillingness of characters to make or embrace change, with the show’s own ability to do just that. But that seems a rationalizing of opposite thoughts and creating an explanation to answer two questions at once.

The more obvious conclusion is for me to accept that the show took a risk and in my opinion, fell short of the quality it once delivered. I may be in the minority here, but I always thought the strengths of the show was at the workplace, and specifically when they focused on the marketing ideas, and exploring the creative process behind that. But the pitches, the clients have become more an accessory to tell the character’s stories, and perhaps always has been. Similar to how you can’t call The Wire a cop show, you can’t call Mad Men an ad show.

Nevertheless, these are thoughts I’m tossing at the dartboard, and it brings me back to the original point about how consuming television is now more than just watching, consuming, waiting for the next episode. Everyone watches shows with a critic’s eye now, and that attitude means that we watch these shows with all this built up predisposed expectations.

I never used to know the difference between the A story and the C story on a script, now you recognize, and you may even find yourself lamenting how the central story is actually not so interesting in a particular episode. I’ve come to expect the second last episode of the season on most shows to be the pay off, where long winding story arcs meet they’re end. When it does happen, I’m usually disappointed because I expected more and because it fulfilled something I already expected. When it doesn’t, I’m equally upset because it’s another episode wasted on exposition and the build up.

It’s with these expectations that I viewed this season of Mad Men: expectations of how quality television is suppose to function layered on top of expectations of the show itself.

I’ve always thought that the first of everything was the best. The first seasons of all the great shows usually standalone better from the rest, because beginning is harder than ending, and it’s way easier to carry a show without the baggage of past episodes. It’s the same way with movies, even music.

The characters are decaying. The show itself? It’s still delivering at a high quality. It’s just I’m so immersed in the television experience that it’s starting to become difficult to enjoy anything without such thoughts.