VIVEK MENEZES an Indian-American Rapper and His Crew Are Making Serious Waves in the Hip Hop World

REPORTAGE mic check COURTESY VIVEK MENEZES An Indian-American rapper and his crew are making serious waves in the hip hop world. Is Das Racist’s Himanshu Suri for real? VIVEK MENEZES 50 | THE CARAVAN | OCTOBER 2011 REPORTAGE he first time Das Racist ever performed ‘Mi- turned around to get a better look at what was happening chael Jackson’, the first single from their much- across the vast audience. anticipated debut album Relax, was at Columbia There in front of me was a pulsating vision of American University’s Bacchanal Spring Concert on 30 multiculturalism in the 21st century. Blacks and whites and April earlier this year. The picturesque, grassy all shades in-between heaving together rapturously. Right Tquadrangle in the centre of campus was packed with thou- next to me was a short Japanese man dancing with a lanky sands of students and walk-in concertgoers from the grit- girl in a hijab. Pressed up against the fence on the other side tier neighbourhoods beyond the university’s walls, and the was a young Indian woman with an audible desi accent. I Brooklyn-based trio was notching another step on their im- watched her listen quietly for a bit, then hitch up her flow- probable journey toward rap credibility: opening up for the ing skirt to dance, grinding against the broad black man west coast rap legend Snoop Dogg. behind her, who kept his hands on her hips the entire time. I was standing stagefront when Das Racist’s Himanshu Suri (aka ‘Heems’) announced the song; a distinct hush of Hakuna matata Pumba anticipation fell over the crowd. Within moments, the band Por que esta es la rumba exploded across the stage, frenetically yelling the song’s Yeah, I’m fucking great at rapping catchphrase into their mics: “Michael Jackson! One Mil- —Das Racist, ‘Michael Jackson’ lion Dollars! You feel me? Holler!” Just one scant minute later, the audience had taken up the refrain, and the call- terling reviews of Relax—their first com- back spread all the way to the back of the crowd, hundreds mercial album following on the heels of Shut Up, of yards from where I stood—a few thousand people holler- Dude and Sit Down, Man, two highly acclaimed ing, and I was doing the same. mixtapes released for free over the Internet in But before they had even begun to captivate the audience S2010—began to pile up long before the official release on with their music, and make us dance uncontrollably at their 13 September. Rolling Stone hyped it up, an unusual occur- feet, Das Racist had first made sure to ruffle the feathers of rence for a debut on a brand-new independent label. And the elite crowd that stood before them, filling the air with The New York Times, Maxim, Elle and many others chimed palpably awkward and uncertain murmurs. “This is the in with approval. A full fortnight before its release, Spin most collegiate shit I ever seen,” Heems said when he had magazine’s influential critics had already awarded Relax first walked onto the stage. With an expression that made eight out of 10 stars, a phenomenal score. But such accolades it seem as if he was smelling something putrid, he contin- are no longer particularly surprising. It has been apparent ued: “You look like a Tommy Hilfiger ad.” He proceeded to for more than a year now that things have been going very greet the Ivy Leaguers with a “shout-out” to Queens College right for Himanshu Suri, Victor Vasquez and Ashok Kond- and Stony Brook University, both decidedly public institu- abolu, close friends who formed an unlikely rap group just tions. The audience was thoroughly confused, and it only three years ago. got worse. A couple of minutes later, Heems tried to lead the Suri and Vasquez first met at Wesleyan University, an elite liberal arts college in Middletown, Connecticut, where they The Brooklyn-based trio was had seen their classmates, Benjamin Goldwasser and An- drew VanWyngarden, put together the rock band MGMT notching another step on their and become global chart toppers straight after graduation. improbable journey toward rap Inspired by the success story, they decided to try making it as musicians as well in 2008, when Suri reached out to credibility: opening up for the west Kondabolu, his best friend from high school, to serve as the coast rap legend Snoop Dogg. group’s “hypeman” (although he doesn’t record, Kondabolu performs at concerts). From the beginning, Das Racist went at the music busi- students in a chant of “I will drop out of this demon univer- ness with terrific brio. The band didn’t try to get signed by sity”. I looked around and noticed several furious faces. a major label; instead, Suri started his own. He also man- But when they started to perform their music, the crowd ages the band, and, via his Greedhead Entertainment, the progressively loosened up and jumped right in, shedding young rapper now also handles the business-end of things any sense of discomfort that might have lingered. The fact is for several other aspiring bands, all of whom seem to be that Das Racist is a deceptively hard-working band—they’re friends. And so in some ways, Das Racist comes across as a aggressively ironic and ostentatiously sloppy, all of which is collective—with Suri, Vasquez and Kondabolu at the centre a front for heart-pumping effort and a great deal of commit- of a large and growing constellation of artists, filmmakers, ment. At Columbia that warm spring afternoon, the three designers and producers. This culture of nonstop collabo- young rappers criss-crossed the stage metronomically and ration has defined Das Racist’s ouevre; Relax alone features leaned into their vocals with tremendous gusto. Their en- guest-rappers Danny Brown, Lakutis, Despot and El-P, as ergy was infectious, and as the dancing began in earnest, I well as tracks recorded with members of indie bands like OCTOBER 2011 | THE CARAVAN | 51 REPORTAGE From the beginning, Das Racist went at the music business with terrific brio. The band didn’t try to get signed by a major label; instead, Suri started his own. Vampire Weekend and Yeasayer, and the neo-bhangra But there were no glimmers of anything like that happen- heartthrob Bikram Singh. ing until two soul music producers, Sylvia and Joey Rob- Das Racist came soaring onto the radar of music critics inson, decided to take a chance in late 1979 and record an at the end of 2008 with the release of ‘Combination Pizza unwieldy 15 minutes of friendly banter and stories rapped Hut and Taco Bell’, a mind-numbingly catchy and repetitive by the Sugarhill Gang over an irresistible bass-heavy hook track (“I’m at the Pizza Hut / I’m at the Taco Bell / I’m at from Chic’s ‘Good Times’, a big hit earlier that summer the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell”) that soon became from the African-American disco and R&B band. The song a viral hit on the Internet and galvanised critics: ‘Combina- that materialised, ‘Rapper’s Delight’, emerged from the hip tion’ “passes from grating to absurd to hilarious to poignant hop scene to quickly scale the black music charts, and then to transcendent”, wrote the Village Voice. When Sasha Frere- went on to huge global success, selling millions of copies Jones, the New Yorker’s widely respected pop music critic, worldwide. At a time when the American music scene was wrote about Das Racist in 2010, he dismissed ‘Combination’ still extremely segregated, ‘Rapper’s Delight’ broke down as “dumb fun”, but he grouped them with Odd Future (aka several walls and allowed hip hop to climb out of the ghetto. Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, or OFWGKTA), the It is the highest-selling 12-inch single in history, and still a foul-mouthed, teenage Californian crew that occupies the major musical influence. A few years ago, four Spanish sis- cutting-edge of rap music: “both are hip-hop acts as unset- ters calling themselves Las Ketchup released what would tling as they are entertaining”. Looking back, that signalled become another massive global hit based entirely on their the moment Das Racist first started edging away from its ini- cutesy rendition of the opening lines of ‘Rapper’s Delight’. tial reputation as hipster clowns. Now, they’re treated with But even with the introduction of major commercial considerable respect: earlier this year, the San Francisco stakes, the idea that hip hop would go global—that Spanish Chronicle voiced an emerging consensus when it called the teenyboppers would eventually recite its lyrics—was utter- group “formidable, dead-serious rappers who could end up ly preposterous in the early 1980s. When the first American turning hip-hop on its head”. rappers toured Europe in 1983, audiences reacted with con- fusion, and occasionally anger. “I remember looking at the Hip-hop got turned into hit pop, people and they would just sort of be looking at each other The second a record hit number one on the Pop charts. trying to figure out whether they should like it or not. They —3rd Bass, ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ (1991) didn’t know how to react. It was so new,” recalled David Hershkowitz of the New York Daily News. p until 1980, rap and hip hop (technically not But cultural awakenings are unpredictable. By the end the same, but effectively interchangeable) con- of the same decade, American rap crews like Public Enemy stituted a subculture confined mostly to the would sell out huge arenas on tours across Europe, playing South Bronx, a notoriously poor, crime-ridden to audiences who would turn up at their concerts dressed Uand overwhelmingly black neighborhood in New York City.

Load more