The Raptism of Ripley Snell
Portland’s Adam Murray talks EYRST performance, JOINTSY, and the future of his music
It’s nearing one o’clock in the morning and the EYRST one-year anniversary show is beginning to wrap up. Most of the three to four hundred concertgoers in attendance have made their way to their respective Ubers or Lyfts. Others are huddled around the bar, finishing off IPAs and lagers. Others yack it up on the sidewalk outside The Evergreen, deciding whether or not to extend an hour or two longer this particular Friday night, which has already waxed into Saturday morning.
Inside the venue, the remaining congregation of twenty or thirty people loosely clusters around the stage, still unsure just what the night’s final act, Ripley Snell, has in store.
Adorned with numerous pieces of blank canvas, cream-colored silk sheets, and a coffeepot filled with flowers, the stage has been set for what, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, will be Ripley Snell’s final performance.
Earlier in the evening, I had approached Ripley in the crowd and foolishly asked if he would be performing the track “Point God,” knowing his set would also include fellow Portland emcee and time traveler Old Grape God. “This is the crowd for, ‘Point God,’” I said, noting the few hundred people in attendance.
Though “Point God” is more so attributed as a Grape God track, appearing on Grape’s 2014 album Out of Body, the track, a collaboration between the two, and often the last played when the duo performs as Wine & Coffee, is a personal favorite. It’s a hype track, a track that always brings the wild out in those in attendance.
Ripley just nods and smiles, “I’ve got something special for tonight,” he tells me somberly.
With producer, label mate, and frequent collaborator Neill Von Tally controlling the music, the set begins as Ripley, in all black, leads his girlfriend out onto the stage, covering her from head to toe with one of the pieces of silk. Grape God is beginning to drizzle various colors of paint on the canvas, letting each drop spill where it spills.
What conspires is a piece of performance art like nothing I, nor Portland hip hop has ever seen, nor will probably ever see again. Somewhere between an exorcism and a baptism, for the next thirty-five minutes, Ripley Snell alternates between rapping and singing as Grape God trounces around the stage, yelling repetitive phrases and painting on canvas and himself. Both appear out of body and out of mind.
Straddling his covered girlfriend, Ripley kneels besides her, rubbing his hands over her body in an intimate and searching manner. She reaches through the sheet, her essence protruding through the veil. At the performance’s climax, Ripley lays lifeless by her side, Grape God shouts, thrusting a paintbrush into Ripley’s chest, before jumping off the front of stage, landing still and lifeless himself in the center of the audience.
As the music concludes, Ripley’s limp body is drug from the stage.
The crowd is in dismay. Confused. Overwhelmed. Speechless. And in awe.
Ripley, born Adam Murray, and I sit down for a couple of cold brewed coffees in Belmont on a hot Saturday afternoon the following week. “Secretly, I was saying goodbye to that character, I was saying goodbye to Ripley Snell,” he tells me about the EYRST one-year performance. “I initially was using the form of a baptism liturgy as a format going into it, but I think it ended up becoming more like an exorcism. I actually exorcised this character that I had been for ten years.”
For Adam, the character Ripley Snell is literary and scholarly, much like Adam himself. At the same time, Ripley Snell acts as a vessel, a sound-door for Adam’s passion for writing. The etymology of Ripley Snell comes from a minor character in the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel The Great Gatsby. “I used this character to talk about my life,” he says, “I never wanted to be the type of artist that was for everybody, I want some people to reject my shit so hard, that for the people that really feel it, they feel like it’s for them.”
Released under the Ripley Snell moniker are two full-length projects, 2013’s Fall Denim and 2014’s 6 Natural Flavors, along with a couple of mixtapes — Rip City and Cruel Summer. Earlier this summer Ripley released a one track EP entitled Underworld Series, a teaser, as Adam refers to it, foreshadowing the death of Ripley Snell.
Released in the form of a short film/music video, Underworld Series incorporates clips from the video game Grand Theft Auto along with additional animation from Ruff Mercy, and some backing vocals from label mate The Last Artful, Dodgr. The seven-minute video is a glitchy, tripped out, mindfuck with Ripley’s hypnotic mix of singing and rapping acting as guide, shepherding the listener though the distilled dystopian virtual landscape.
Underworld Series is the first Ripley Snell project released through EYRST, a local label co-founded by former NBA player Martell Webster and Portland producer Neill Von Tally for which Adam is responsible for the label’s namesake. Derived from “Cædmon’s Hymn,” an Old English poem Adam had been required to memorize in school, EYRST, phonetically altered from aeirst as it appears in the Old English, was an old graffiti moniker of his from a formative time in Adam’s own personal relationship with hip hop culture.
Organizationally, EYRST represents a community of people and fellow artists vital to the development of Adam’s music. Along with Neill Von Tally, Justin Longerbeam, EYRST’s in-house mixing and engineering master, have been along with Adam for each of his releases to date. “EYRST is a label in the post-label age,” Adam says, “In Portland especially, in a DIY society like this, that’s lacking an industry in the first place, we need a label, or consortium, or a consolidated group of professionals that are working to give these releases a proper attention.”
Despite the raptism and the killing off of the Ripley Snell character, Adam assures me, “this is just the beginning.” Slated are a couple projects of Ripley’s yet to drop, including a Wine & Coffee album with frequent collaborator Grape God, and an album co-produced by Neill Von Tally and Justin Longerbeam to be released via EYRST in the near future. Adam is quick to note however, that he will no longer be performing as Ripley Snell, instead he will be assuming the moniker and character of JOINTSY.
JOINTSY will showcase a different side of Adam’s musical tone and lyricism. This frantic, fanatical persona will be keen to talk about very mundane things in a new and an honest way. JOINTSY is a character that takes things at face value, a much different contrast to that of the Ripley Snell persona, and one that explores honesty, vulnerability and the superego. “JOINTSY came from hanging out with Tron (Grape God),” Adam says, “the name was just something I felt.”
The character JOINTSY has already appeared on a couple Grape God tracks including “Finally,” a track that also features Living Legends member Luckyiam, off Grape God’s album Still Alive!, released earlier this year, and although credited as Ripley Snell, Adam says his verse on “Point God” is essentially the first appearance of JOINTSY, though he was unaware of this at the time.
No matter what persona or character Adam chooses to embody, however, I’m pretty sure that coffee will remain a constant. If you’ve ever seen a Ripley Snell performance in the past, you know how important the role coffee often plays in his sets, as, throughout the duration of his performance, he typically brews a pot, sharing it with audience. Coffee isn’t only a defining characteristic of a Ripley Snell show, it’s a defining characteristic of Adam’s life. For Adam, coffee is a medium for sharing energy, a timepiece that is static, yet mobile — a constant. “It’s my way of reaching into people’s hearts and their brains and establishing a memory. I’m here designing memories, I’m not tying to show you how good at rapping I am, that shit’s bullshit. I want to leave a mark on you.”
As we finish our cold brews, and step back out in the summer heat, Adam and I share a cigarette before going our separate ways. I can’t help but think about Adam’s philosophy towards music and his art, about designing and establishing memories. The raptism of Ripley Snell will stick with me for a long time. “As, I die, as I lay this character to rest, this is me addressing this lifecycle,” Adam says, “With every death there comes a rebirth.” This may be the end of Ripley Snell, but it certainly isn’t the end of Adam Murray. And who knows, maybe we’ll see Ripley Snell again, maybe not. Either way his music has accomplished what it set out to — leave a mark.
