The interview was conducted in Spanish. An English translation follows.

Summer Thursdays 2018 celebró músicos famosos que viven y trabajan en la ciudad de Nueva York. El programa organizado en colaboración con PopRally, que presentó una variedad de sonidos que exploran el amplio panorama musical de la ciudad.

El 26 de julio, Combo Chimbita trajo al MoMA una mezcla de rock psicodélico afro-futurista, formando canciones épicas con un coro de nueve. Aquí la colaboradora de PopRally, Leticia Gutiérrez, habla con la banda sobre sus diferentes estilos musicales e inspiración en Nueva York.

Leticia Gutierrez: Quisiera empezar por preguntarles, ¿por qué querían hacer la entrevista en español?

Carolina Olivero: Porque nosotros hablamos español. Es nuestra lengua nativa.

Niño Lento: Entre nosotros hablamos en español.

Dimelomastronaunta: En Spanglish.

Niño Lento: Y la música también es en español toda. Nosotros no cantamos en inglés, entonces, tiene sentido para mí.

¿Alguna una vez habían estado en MoMA?

Carolina Olivero: Sí, pero no tocando, pero sí.

Prince of Queens: Claro. Claro, muchas veces.

¿Cuál es su obra favorita?

Dimelomastronaunta: ¡El helicóptero!

Carolina Olivero: La última vez que vine fue a ver a Yoyo Abbott, una cantante que se presentó aquí en el teatro. Muy buena.

Prince of Queens: Yo vine a ver a Kraftwerk. Uf, un conciertazo.

Han hablado de que ustedes viven en el futuro, ¿qué significa para ustedes vivir en el futuro?

Dimelomastronaunta: Yo vivo en otra galaxia, pero no en el futuro.

Niño Lento: En algún momento hablamos de un futurismo tropical porque así tratamos de inventarnos, recrearnos, imaginarnos un futuro a través de la música. Eso es prácticamente lo que hacemos: crear un futuro basado en nuestras experiencias, en nuestra cultura.

¿Cómo se conocieron?

Prince of Queens: Todos nos conocimos acá en Nueva York. Todos somos colombianos, pero nos conocimos acá.

Prince of Queens: Por la música, tocando. Yo conocí a Niño Lento hace como 10 años en un taller de tambores colombianos y después empezamos a tocar con Dimelomastronaunta que también vivía en Boston y se vino a Nueva York, luego Carolina vino a Nueva York. Por la misma música nos fuimos conectando y fueron energías las que nos atrajeron. En ese sentido fue una amistad muy musical.

Carolina Olivero: Sí, básicamente la música nos conectó. Hay una cultura muy fuerte que creo que ha estado en la experiencia musical de todos, como lo son el vinilo, los discos antiguos y los sonidos viejos, las cumbias, la salsa, la música tropical, la música del Caribe.

¿Y por qué Nueva York? ¿Por qué se mudaron aquí?

Prince of Queens: Creo que todos nosotros somos parte de una generación que después de una crisis en Colombia hubo una migración a muchos países. Todos venimos de esa época a finales de los 90.

¿Cómo perciben la escena latinoamericana en Nueva York?

Dimelomastronaunta: Es complejo porque hay muchas escenas: la escena del latin jazz, la escena de los colombianos que hacen música, hay la rumba cubana. Hay muchas opciones, muchas culturas.

¿Es una escena más visible que en otras ciudades o países?

Dimelomastronaunta: Yo creo que es más marcada que en otras ciudades, sí, definitivamente.

¿Por qué quieren seguir viviendo y creando música en Nueva York?

Prince of Queens: Pues la verdad es que yo pienso que no escogimos llegar a Nueva York, sino que fue que la vida y el destino nos puso acá.

Prince of Queens: Yo llevo más de la mitad de mi vida viviendo acá. Siento que Nueva York es mi casa pero lo interesante, con respecto a la música y a la escena musical latina acá, es que hay tanta diversidad y tantos distintos grupos y tipos de escena, que se da un ambiente que realmente es muy difícil se pueda dar en otro lugar del mundo. Tú puedes encontrar grupos tradicionales dominicanos, cubanos, banda indie pop uruguaya, etc. Así se llame latino o no latino, toda esa combinación de tantas cosas hace que Nueva York realmente sea un lugar especial para crear y para inspirarse también.

Niño Lento: Nueva York tiene una tradición musical fortísima. Es una tradición musical inmigrante muy viva, vital y que realmente le ha dado forma la ciudad.

Carolina Olivero: Básicamente como estar en una biblioteca grandísima de música.

¿Cómo ha influido esta diversidad de la música en su trabajo?

Prince of Queens: Para mí ha sido clave en mi desarrollo musical: el estar y crecer en Nueva York. Si me hubiera quedado en Colombia yo no tendría el conocimiento musical que tengo ahorita. Es precisamente el aporte musical de tantas comunidades migrantes que hay en esta ciudad. Y no solamente migrantes de otros países sino también migrantes del mismo país, dentro de ese país. La gente viene a Nueva York como con un espíritu de hacerla, y es interesante cómo la música viaja. Digamos, yo en Colombia crecí escuchando punk y rock, y lo que me gustaba era el punk en Colombia pero la música colombiana no me gustaba la verdad. Acá viviendo en Queens aprecié la música colombiana y la música latina de otra manera, estando de afuera. Yo tal vez estando en Colombia no hubiera podido tener la misma apreciación de la música colombiana.

Me encanta el tecno, el house y así son las rumbas acá en Nueva York. Nueva York house music está en la calle. Se escucha en Brooklyn, en Queens, y la gente está poniendo y vendiendo CDs de house, de bootleg en la calle y se escucha también la música haitiana, yo no conocía la música haitiana. Fue acá en Nueva York que, viendo tiendas de discos, cantidades de discos que hay que se han hecho de música haitiana que la conocí. Así también hay música puertorriqueña, latina, caribeña. Nueva York es una meca de la música, no solamente global, pero diría, me atrevería a decir que es una mezcla de música tropical, acá el Caribe, hay música de todos lados.

Dimelomastronaunta: Aquí en Nueva York hay una cultura de la música en vivo. Puedes ir a ver bandas muy buenas, de buen nivel, gratis.

Carolina Oliveros: Sí, o vas a un bar y de repente hay una banda y te sorprende y no tienes idea de quiénes son

¿En qué barrio viven, ensayan y dónde pasan su tiempo?

Carolina Oliveros: Yo ahorita vivo en Washington Heights, que es la diáspora dominicana más grande de la ciudad yo creo.Y ensayamos en Brooklyn.

Prince of Queens: Ahí en Ridgewood, en la frontera entre Bushwick y Ridgewood y tenemos el estudio, ahí yo tengo mi estudio. Yo vivo en Bushwick y ensayo ahí en Ridgewood y voy bastante a Queens también.

Niño Lento: A mí me ha definido mucho el vivir en Queens, en Jackson Heights, es lo que represento. Jackson Heights es como para mí es un lugar especial.

¿Dónde encuentran inspiración en Nueva York? Por ejemplo, sabemos que su música es una mezcla de punk, cumbia, ¿dónde más, fuera de esos géneros, encuentran inspiración?

Prince of Queens: Yo personalmente en la fiesta. Yo busco la fiesta de cumbia, fiesta de tecno, a mí me gusta la escena de la fiesta en Nueva York. Se me hace que la gente sale a exhibirse, a mostrar los verdaderos colores de la gente. Y, aunque la fiesta en Nueva York cambia mucho dependiendo del barrio, el club, el género, toda la vaina, todavía se encuentran experiencias de fiesta en Nueva York que son especiales.

Ultima pregunta, si su música fuese un plato de comida, ¿qué estaría en el plato?

Dimelomastronaunta: Frijoles, arroz, aguacate.

Prince of Queens: Yo creo que más que todo vegetariano.

Niño Lento: ¡Picante! Nuestra música es para gente que esté lista para comer picante.

Dimelomastronaunta: Garbanzo.

Niño Lento: Picante.

Prince of Queens: Aguacate, yo creo que un aguacate bacano.

Carolina Oliveros: Un marisco, un marisco también.

Niño Lento: Picante.

Dimelomastronaunta: Garbanzo hindú, fríjoles dominicanos.

Carolina Oliveros: Mira, tiene que haber: arroz de coco, patacón, pescado, guacamole, frijoles, chicharrón, picante.

Niño Lento: Picante, yo creo que para mí sería re picante.

Dimelomastronaunta: Samosas.

Carolina Oliveros: Samosas.

Prince of Queens: Uy sí, una samosa.

Carolina Oliveros: Guacamole, pico de gallo.

Prince of Queens: Y un taco.

Carolina Oliveros: Un taco y cerveza.

Prince of Queens: Y lengua.

Carolina Oliveros: Y un café con pan.

Prince of Queens: Sí, eso.

Summer Thursdays 2018 celebrated musicians living and working in New York City. Organized in collaboration with PopRally, the series hosts a variety of sounds that explore the City’s expansive musical landscape.

On July 26, Combo Chimbita brought to MoMA a mash-up of tropical, Afro-futurist psychedelic rock featuring epic songs with a chorus of nine! Here PopRally member Leticia Gutierrez speaks with the band about their different musical styles and inspiration in New York.

Leticia Gutierrez: I wanted to start by asking all of you: why did you want to do the interview in Spanish?

Carolina Olivero: Because we speak Spanish. It is our native language.

Niño Lento: We speak in Spanish among ourselves.

Dimelomastronaunta: In Spanglish.

Niño Lento: And all the music is in Spanish. We don’t sing in English, and, therefore, it makes sense to me.

Have you ever been to MoMA before?

Carolina Olivero: Yes. Not to perform, but yes.

Prince of Queens: Of course, of course, many times.

What is your favorite work of art?

Dimelomastronaunta: The helicopter!

Carolina Olivero: The last time that I came was to see Yoyo Abbott, a singer who performed here in the theater. It was very good.

Prince of Queens: I came to see Kraftwerk. Ah, such a great concert.

You have talked about how you all live in the future. What does living in the future mean to you?

Dimelomastronaunta: I live in another galaxy, but not in the future.

Niño Lento: At one point, we talked about a tropical futurism, because we try to invent, recreate and imagine a future through music. That is practically what we do: create a future based on our experiences, our culture.

How did you meet each other?

Prince of Queens: We all met each other here, in New York. We are all Colombian, but we met here.

Prince of Queens: Because of music, playing music. I met Niño Lento about 10 years ago at a Colombian drums workshop, after which we started playing with Dimelomastronaunta, who also lived in Boston and then came to New York. Then, Carolina came to New York. We connected over the music itself and the energy brought us together. It was a very musical friendship in that sense.

Carolina Olivero: Yes, basically the music connected us. There is a strong culture that I believe has been present in everyone’s musical experience, like vinyl, old disks and old sounds, the cumbias, the salsa, the tropical music, Caribbean music.

And why New York? Why did all of you move here?

Prince of Queens: I think that all of us are part of a generation who, after a crisis in Colombia, migrated to other countries. We all came from that era, at the end of the 90s.

What do you think about the Latin American scene in New York?

Dimelomastronaunta: This is complicated, because there are many scenes: the Latin jazz scene, the Colombian musician scene, there is the rumba cubana… There are so many options, lots of cultures.

Is it a scene that is more visible than in other cities or countries?

Dimelomastronaunta: I definitely think that it is much stronger here than in other cities, yes.

Why do you all want to continue living and making music in New York?

Prince of Queens: Well, the truth is that I think we did not choose to come to New York, but rather that life and fate have brought us here.

Prince of Queens: I have spent more than half of my life living here. New York feels like my home, but the interesting part is that, in regard to music and the Latin music scene here, there is so much diversity, and there are so many different groups and scenes, that all of this has created an environment that is very difficult to find in other parts of the world. You can find traditional Dominican or Cuban groups here, Uruguayan indie pop bands, etc. Call it Latin or not, but this whole combination of so many things is what really makes New York a special place to create music and also to be inspired.

Niño Lento: New York has a very strong musical tradition. It is an immigrant musical tradition that is very alive, vital, and one that has truly shaped the city.

Carolina Olivero: It is like being in a huge music library, basically.

How has this musical diversity influenced your work?

Prince of Queens: For me, living here and growing up in New York has been key to my musical development. If I had stayed in Colombia, I would not have the musical knowledge that I have now. It is exactly the musical contributions from so many immigrant communities that this city has. And they’re not all immigrants from other countries, but also immigrants from the same country, within that country. People come to New York with a can-do attitude, and it is interesting how music travels. Let’s say that I grew up in Colombia listening to punk and rock, and liked what was punk in Colombia, when I didn’t actually like Colombian music. Here, living in Queens, I appreciated Colombian music and Latin music in a different way, being abroad. Perhaps if I had stayed in Colombia, I would not have had the same appreciation for Colombian music.

I love techno, house, and that is where the parties are here in New York. New York house music is in the streets. You can hear it in Brooklyn, Queens, and people are making and selling house CDs, bootleg versions, in the street. You also hear Haitian music. I didn’t know about Haitian music before. Here, in New York, I found music shops that have so many Haitian music discs. Here you also have Puerto Rican music, Latin music, Caribbean music. New York is a mecca for music, not just internationally, but I would dare to say that it is a mixture of tropical music, here, the Caribbean; there is music from everywhere.

Dimelomastronaunta: Here in New York there is a live music culture. You can go see really good bands, high quality, for free.

Carolina Oliveros: Yes, or you go to a bar, and suddenly there is a band and you’re surprised, and you don’t have any idea who they are.

In which neighborhood(s) do you live, practice music, and spend your time?

Carolina Oliveros: I live in Washington Heights now, where the largest Dominican diaspora in the entire city is found, I believe. And we practice in Brooklyn.

Prince of Queens: At the border between Bushwick and Ridgewood, we have our studio in Ridgewood, which is where I have my studio. I live in Bushwick and practice in Ridgewood, and I also go to Queens a lot, too.

Niño Lento: For me, living in Jackson Heights, Queens has defined me a lot, it is what I represent. Jackson Heights is a special place for me.

Where do you find inspiration in New York? For instance, we know that your music is a mix of punk, cumbia. Where else, outside of those genres, do you find inspiration?

Prince of Queens: I personally find [inspiration] in the party scene. I look for cumbia parties, techno parties; I like the party scene in New York. It seems like people go out to show off, reveal their true selves. And, even though the party scene in New York changes a lot depending on the neighborhood, the club, the genre, the whole thing, you still can find party experiences in New York that are special.

Last question: if your music were a plate of food, what would be on that plate?

Dimelomastronaunta: Beans, rice, avocado.

Prince of Queens: I think that it would be vegetarian.

Niño Lento: Spicy! Our music is for people who are ready to eat something spicy.

Dimelomastronaunta: Garbanzo.

Niño Lento: Spicy.

Prince of Queens: Avocado. I think [our music] would be an awesome avocado.

Carolina Oliveros: Seafood, seafood as well.

Niño Lento: Spicy.

Dimelomastronaunta: Garbanzo beans, Dominican beans.

Carolina Oliveros: Look, it has to have: coconut rice, fried plantains, fish, guacamole, beans, and pork cracklings, spicy.

Niño Lento: Spicy. I think for me, it would be very spicy.

Dimelomastronaunta: Samosas.

Carolina Oliveros: Samosas.

Prince of Queens: Ah yes, a samosa.

Carolina Oliveros: Guacamole, pico de gallo.

Prince of Queens: And a taco.

Carolina Oliveros: A taco and beer.

Prince of Queens: And tongue.

Carolina Oliveros: And coffee with bread.

Prince of Queens: Yeah, that.

Summer Thursdays with Combo Chimbita was originally published in Creative New York on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Summer Thursdays 2018 celebrated musicians living and working in New York City. Organized in collaboration with PopRally, the series hosts a variety of sounds that explore the City’s expansive musical landscape.

On August 9, Xenia Rubinos brought a New York punk-funk abandon to a live set that pulled from R&B, hip-hop, and jazz influences in an electrifying performance. PopRally member Linnea West spoke with the artist about finding unity amid diversity, her local haunts in Greenpoint, and how she is learning to embrace songwriting, among other things.

Linnea West: In this interview series, we speak with creatives who live and work in New York. One of the great things that we love about New York is its diversity. Does the diversity of New York influence your approach to music, and if so, how?

Xenia Rubinos: I was born in Hartford, [Conneticut], not too far away, but New York feels like my home. I’ve been here for more than a decade. It is such a diverse place. When I go away to tour or when I’m traveling, it always feels really good to come back here.

I really love that I feel welcome, and that it’s not strange to hear someone who maybe has an accent, or see people who look different from you, or who eat different foods that you may or may not know about. Those things always feel really good to come home to.

I think that diversity must find its way into my music, although my own culture and where I come from — my Cuban, Puerto Rican, and American experience — is what most seeps into my music. If anything, I’m usually looking for more unifying points than diverse points in my music. I naturally have a lot of different textures, sound textures and influences, that you might not think match together. In my music, I feel like I’m always unifying those things.

You mentioned food. If your music was food, what would be on your plate?

If music was food, what would be on my plate…. Some guava paste, cheese, maybe a soup dumpling, and arroz con gandules, like rice and pigeon peas. Roast pork.

This is a hearty meal. [laughs]

It is a lot. There’s a lot going on on this plate. I’m getting so hungry thinking about that. Plantains, baby, sweet plantains.

Oh, yeah. All of that sounds good.

[laughter]

Thinking more about New York as a place, could you walk us through a day in your life. What neighborhood do you live in? Where do you rehearse, and where do you go for everything in between?

I live in Greenpoint. I’ve lived there for eight years. My rehearsal space — I’m very lucky — is in my home. That’s where I rehearse, and that’s where I write most of the time.

Manhattan Avenue is the main drag in Greenpoint, and we have a saying: “If you need something, you can definitely find it on Manhattan Avenue.” Whatever you need, you can get it. If you need to buy insurance, you can get that there. If you need a pasta strainer, you can get it. Whatever it is that you need to acquire, that you’re looking for during the course of your day — Emergency 911, just run outside. Go to Manhattan Avenue, and you will find it. There will be literally anything you need, so that’s really cool.

The neighborhood is changing a lot, but there’s still a lot of family-owned businesses and mom-and-pop shops. There’s this cafe called Cafe Riviera that has incredible Polish pastries. They’re so good, and I always get any-occasion cakes. Those are my cakes. I get coffee from them and cake. There’s Peter Pan Donuts. I never go there as much as I should, because I feel like you’ve got to go there really early in the morning. I’m not as much with the morning.

Where do I go in between? I go to see shows in Bushwick, Williamsburg, and Manhattan, usually Lower Manhattan. I usually don’t get up this far into Manhattan [near The Museum of Modern Art], but I do sometimes. The studio where I made Black Terry Cat, my second record, is in Hell’s Kitchen. I spent a long time there. I spent a couple months there working 14-hour and 16-hour days. I spent a lot of time in the studio, but I also got to know the restaurants around that area, which is really fun, and I like to go to the museums a lot.

Black Terry Cat includes your song “Mexican Chef,” which recently was listed as one of the 200 greatest songs written by 21st-century women on NPR. That is amazing — congratulations!

Thank you.

Why do you think that song resonated so much? Did you expect that to be the song that grabbed people or got this kind of attention?

I didn’t. I didn’t even think I was going to put it on the record. I thought it was a joke when I first wrote it. But then my drummer, Marco, who produced the record with me, was like, “This is great. We should record this.”

As soon as we actually started working on it and making the record, both Marco and the engineer were like, “This is going to be really big. This is going to really resonate with people.” I was like, “You guys think so?” It was a complete surprise.

I think it was very off-the-cuff and genuine. I was poking fun at a reality. I was really sincere. No, I didn’t expect it to resonate the way that it did, and I couldn’t really imagine how people would react, or if they would — if anybody would even hear it.

I was pleasantly surprised with how it resonated with people. Also, those topics were more in the news and on people’s minds than usual when it came out, which was during the election, so I think that was part of it.

Which is not something you plan for, but it happens.

Yeah, it happens, but I think those themes will never go out of style, because unfortunately it’s like… [laughs].

They haven’t been fixed yet, right. When you’re choosing to sing in English or Spanish, what guides that? Is it an organic kind of feeling?

Yeah. Sometimes I think it’s just whatever sounds my mouth is making. I try to make them into words afterwards. “Mexican Chef” was the first time I ever wrote lyrics first for a song. Usually it’s the last thing that I do, but I’ve been challenging myself to try to be more regimented about doing things that I don’t want to do. I think I’ve been afraid of it. For a really long time I used to say I was in a fight with words, and I’m starting to reconcile with that.

Picking what language I’m speaking in or what language I’m singing in is just a result of: What is that sound I’m making sound more like? Sometimes I may be playing something that feels like, “Oh, I have an idea for a story,” and I imagine that story in Spanish, or I can tell that I can be that character better in Spanish.

My voice changes when I speak English or I speak Spanish. I have a different tonality of my voice. All of these things. It’s like another instrument. Your language is another tool or another color.

When you sing these songs, do you think of yourself inhabiting a character?

I do, yeah. I do think that, more so now than I did before, more so now in some new things that I’m working on. I’m thinking more and more about performance. So it’s different pieces of me, or it’s people I’ve never met, or it’s like some other thing, that I don’t know what it is.

Final question: What’s next? Are you working on a new album? Are you performing more?

I’m actually performing less, because I’m working on new music. But I will be performing again in New York in October at the BRIC Jazz Festival, opening for Meshell Ndegeocello, which I’m so excited about. I love her. I’m going to be playing a couple shows here and there, in L.A. and Texas, but not touring as much.

Awesome. Thank you!

Thanks for the interview!

About the photography

To share the diverse nature of performers participating in Summer Thursdays this year, PopRally invited a group of talented photographers to capture the concerts. Xenia’s performance is seen through the lens of the New York–based photographer Edwina Hay.

About Creative New York and acknowledgements

Creative New York is a digital project from MoMA’s PopRally program. Through original words and visuals, we share the unique perspectives of the countless artists, musicians, and creatives that animate New York City’s vibrant cultural landscape.

The musical component of Summer Thursdays 2018, organized in collaboration with PopRally, hosts a variety of sounds that explore the City’s expansive musical landscape. Each evening, unique sonic flavors fill the Sculpture Garden with a range of blended genres such as dream punk, Afrofuturist soul, funk fusion, hip-hop, experimental, and lo-fi baroque pop.

Special thanks to Hillary Reeves, Melanie Monios, and the entire Summer Thursdays team.

Summer Thursdays with Xenia Rubinos was originally published in Creative New York on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Summer Thursdays 2018 celebrated musicians living and working in New York City. Organized in collaboration with PopRally, the series hosts a variety of sounds that explore the City’s expansive musical landscape.

On August 16, Kemba sat down with Fotini Lane to talk about his roots in the Bronx, his latest project, and the worst advice you can give a performer.

We are here tonight in advance of your performance in the Sculpture Garden for Summer Thursdays. This year we are celebrating artists who live and work in New York, so in that vein, can you tell me a little about yourself and the neighborhood you came from?

My name is Kemba. I’m from the Bronx. I was raised in Hunts Point. It’s an interesting community. It’s very closed off. There’s probably six ways in and six ways out so everyone you see over the years, you’ve seen and you know, and you know people’s family. Even if you don’t talk to them, you’ve seen them grow up and so there’s an interesting sense of community there…for better or for worse…and hip-hop is super prevalent there. Whether it was people rapping at the park, or music being played loudly at all times of the day. My first studio was in Hunts Point, my first show was at a community center in Hunts Point, so it has a lot to do with the person that I became and am becoming still.

How would you say that growing up in the Bronx has influenced your music?

There’s just such a focus on hip-hop and traditionalism, at least when I was growing up, because I was around a lot of older folks. And so they made me listen to everybody that came before me.

Is that what you mean by traditionalism?

Yeah, they wanted me to learn about the root and the beginnings of hip-hop, all the way to when I was trying to take it seriously at like 15, and so I think being in the Bronx instilled that into them and it kind of trickled down. So that definitely influenced the music that I’m making. Plus it’s just where hip-hop started. It’s the predominant culture.

How would you say the hip-hop scene is different in New York compared to elsewhere?

I’m not sure…because I don’t get to spend a lot of time in the cities that I go to perform. But you can tell that hip-hop is like ingrained in people in New York.

How do you mean?

It’s just in the way we dress and the way we talk. There’s no off switch. We’re just listening to rap music, you know? All the references we all know. You could have a conversation—in the Bronx at least—you could have a conversation with really anybody because there’s common ground automatically just through hip-hop culture. In other cities, especially small ones, it seems more it’s just like music that they listen to…just entertainment.

Yeah, that makes sense. Can you tell me a little bit about what you’re working on now?

I’m almost done with this album that I’m naming after my mom, Gilda, who passed a year and a half ago, and it all kind of came together after that. It’s a loose concept but I want it to feel how that felt to me. Looking back on it, I felt like everything before her passing was…any problems in retrospect were not that significant. Everything was easier, everything was just simpler. And I kind of take people through the feeling of losing somebody that’s really important to you and then the stages afterwards of grief, denial, and pushing people away, and ultimately finding your footing again. That’s the feeling of it.

How would you say you’ve changed as an artist as you’ve progressed, as you keep making albums?

I learned that what you’re saying is more important than how you’re saying it. They’re both important, but growing up in the Bronx, the thing that the people that showed me the ropes were most impressed by were the art of lyricism, saying clever things. Punchlines and stuff. Which is amazing but then you grow up and learn that speaking your own experience and your own emotions, and being relatable, and giving people something that will make their day better and show that they’re not alone, that’s more important. And so I’ve had to slowly learn that over the years. I think that’s how I’ve changed most.

What is the best career advice you’ve ever been given?

I’ve been given some terrible advice.

Oh no!

Yeah…just some not useful advice.

What’s the most un-useful advice you’ve ever been given?

I think the most common advice, and the least useful, is the pleasantries that don’t really mean anything, like keep going or keep doing what you’re doing or be patient…which is fine but it doesn’t really help me. It doesn’t really help anyone. Of course, they’re going to keep doing what they’re doing. I think that’s the worst advice you could give somebody. It’s not tangible.

Is there anything super meaningful that someone has given you as advice, or something that you think about that has helped you grow or that sort of advice?

I don’t know if its advice, but my friend James showed me the ropes on marketing, and with my friend Tyrone we go back and forth and try to figure out, like, new, better ways to be more efficient with marketing when it comes to ads. Just really tangible advice.

Really practical advice.

Really practical advice and ways to take the power out of somebody else’s hands and put it into your own. Most of us were taught that you make music, and then you pay a ton of money to a publicist and hope that they like it, and then hope that they get other people to like it, and hope that they can get websites or publications to like it…rather than learning about marketing on your own and saying these are the people that I think will like it. I’m going to get it directly to them. Learning about that was some of the most valuable stuff.

I love that—putting the power into your own hands to be your own everything. So what does the next year look like for you?

The next year looks amazing! I’m going to put out this album and it’s going to be the biggest thing I’ve ever done, 100%. With the people that’s involved, like just having features with people that I’m really a fan of and having production from people I’m really a fan of…and I can’t really say who it is yet, but it’s definitely going to be the biggest thing that I’ve ever done and I have a team now which is incredible. Like every other thing I’ve ever done completely by myself. And so I’m just looking forward to finishing this music and sharing it with the world.

Summer Thursdays with Kemba was originally published in Creative New York on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Summer Thursdays 2018 celebrated musicians living and working in New York City. Organized in collaboration with PopRally, the series hosts a variety of sounds that explore the City’s expansive musical landscape.

OSHUN, named for the Nigerian Yoruba goddess of fresh water, pleasure, and love, is an independent hip-hop/soul duo and the sonic manifestation of Afrofuturism. Preceding their August 2 performance in MoMA’s Sculpture Garden for Summer Thursdays, Niambi and Thandi of OSHUN sat down with Creative New York contributor Margot Yale to discuss life after college in New York, activism, and finding inspiration in the city.

Margot: Can you introduce yourselves first?

Thandi: We’re OSHUN. I’m Thandi.

Niambi: I’m Niambi.

You went to college in New York and have since graduated. Moving from artists and full-time students to now full-time artists, has your relationship with the city changed along with your music?

Niambi: When we first came to New York, we had a lot more freedom to really experience the city. We were able to be inspired. We were able to just explore and go out and have fun, just hang out in the park.

Thandi: Network.

Niambi: Yeah, network, go to events, and things like that. It’s been difficult to find that balance this year out of school because like you said, we are full-time artists. We’re probably not here unless we’re here to work. We have a different relationship with the city where we come here a lot now for meetings, and shows, and things like that, which we did before, but not to this extent. We still love it. This is still our home base for sure.

What brings you back to New York, now that you have this geographic mobility that is afforded you?

Niambi: We’re still based here. We operate out of Brooklyn. That’s probably our foundation. We’re both from Maryland. It just doesn’t really make sense to go back to Maryland when the majority of the opportunities are here in New York. This is where we’ve spent five years now: really developing, creating relationships, and things like that. Our consensus was just that we really needed to stay for now until we get to a point where it doesn’t really matter where we are, and we can just…

Thandi: Fly on our private jet or our spaceship.

Speaking of jet-setting, I understand OSHUN has gone on tour this year?

Thandi: Yes. This year has been the most jam‑packed in terms of touring. When we were in college, it was hard because we had class on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, internship on Thursday, a lot of just responsibilities that required us to be, not stagnant, but in the same place. We did travel a little bit here on the weekends.

Since graduation, we’ve toured Brazil. We’ve toured Europe. We’ve toured the Midwest. We’ve toured parts of the South.

Niambi: Canada.

Thandi: We went to Africa.

Thandi: Yeah. It’s really been nonstop. We’re on the road then we’re home for a few weeks preparing to get back on the road.

Between all of your meetings and shows, do you have a place in New York that you go to when you have a creative block?

Thandi: Yeah. I know for me I have two spots. One is Washington Square Park, mainly because of the NYU campus. We all spent a lot of time there. There’s just constant music—jazz, hip-hop, drums, keys—just the sound of people walking, the birds chirping. There are so many sounds that are super inspirational for me.

And then any space in New York that has water like a lake, or a river, or the beach.

Niambi: I agree. Definitely near water and a park, somewhere in nature where I can just plant myself and take my shoes off. I’d also say home. I like to go to my mom’s house. Being around my family, being with my parents or my grandparents, I feel myself very inspired when I’m in a space that is just a straight up reminder of who I am and why I am where I am. Things that I came here with, it’s very affirming to be around that as well.

I’m curious about your approach to activism, or what you’ve coined “artivism.” What does this “artivism” look like?

Niambi: A lot of what we do as far as our “artivism,” our activism, besides having dialogues or trying to put ourselves in spaces where we really are processing through situations and information, our main form of resistance is our existence.

Our music, our art form, how we present ourselves, how we show up into spaces, how we take up space is that resistance — it’s showing us, it’s us existing fearlessly, it’s us speaking about our experiences fearlessly and without censoring anything, it’s us really illustrating, expressing our true experience and letting people know that it’s okay to do that.

It’s also letting people know that they’re not alone. That the identity of being a black girl in the United States is not one-dimensional, and that you don’t have to just subscribe to this one image of what it looks like, what our experience looks like.

Us just being ourselves, and really being dedicated to being the best versions of ourselves possible, and allowing people to be a part of that journey with us, that’s our main form of activism.

Thandi: I would add to that in us being fearless in our existence, in us being ourselves without the fear, the insecurity, and all of those things that come with the challenges of our identity, we also preach self-love. It’s not just existing and being brave about it but being like, I love the fact that I am who I am, and I’m brave about it.

That’s also a good source of unity. We have so many different fans from all walks of life, and it’s because, yes, we have particular songs like “Not My President” where we have a specific agenda, but really, ultimately, in all our songs, we’re saying we love ourselves, and we want you to love yourself as well. We find that if we can all learn to love ourselves, we can love each other.

Has New York shaped or inspired your approach to activism or “artivism”?

Thandi: I would say New York is definitely unique because of the forms of activism we have been exposed to in these five years. You know we said we’re from Maryland. We’re from the part of Maryland that’s bordering DC, so we spent a lot of time in DC. Obviously, that being the center of government, and lobbying, and social justice, we were exposed to a lot of activism already.

In New York, just from the years that we’ve been here, we’ve seen issues such as police brutality come to light. It didn’t come to play in the past five years, but these recent accounts have been major stories in our country, and with the presidency, with a lot of things that we’ve witnessed, we’ve seen so many unique types of people being involved with activism in different forms. We’ve seen marching and having signs. We’ve seen grant funding and nonprofits. We’ve seen various forms of activism that I feel like we might not have seen had we been somewhere else where activism is voting, or activism is being a kindergarten teacher.

Niambi: Being in school, it opens up dialogue as activism. It’s beyond marching or signs or however you incorporate it at your day job. It’s also how you talk to people. Do you have actual conversations with people about what’s going on? Do you talk to somebody who may not have the same viewpoint as you? Are you forced to interact with people, as you would in a college setting, that you probably would just look past on any other day? Going to NYU really forced us to be in spaces with people that we probably wouldn’t be in spaces with otherwise. It really exposed us to just the breadth of what’s going on.

If your music was food, what would be on the plate?

Thandi: A lot of greens.

Niambi: Avocado. Maybe we should answer separately.

Thandi: Go ahead.

Niambi: …go ahead because you said a lot of greens. I feel like what I was going to way wouldn’t really taste good with greens.

Thandi: I’m still thinking. If you have already have…

It can be a two-course meal.

Niambi: Okay, two‑course meal. One of the courses would have a lot of greens, avocado, beans, maybe a burrito or something like that, or tacos, definitely some tacos, but with pizzazz.

All the toppings?

Niambi: Yeah, but some tacos with something crazy like maybe barbecue sauce. I don’t know. Maybe not barbecue sauce but something that would just taste really good that you wouldn’t think would go on a taco.

I think the second plate would just be hella fruit like mangoes on mangoes, pineapples, some bananas, and coconut, maybe some strawberries, some melons, watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew.

Thandi: First plate would have a lot of greens. I’m talking like kale, spinach, even arugula, just a lot of different greens, also something maybe like chickpeas or some type of vegan thing that’s spicy.

Niambi: Black-eyed peas.

Thandi: Black-eyed peas because we’re fire sign, so we come with that little spice. There would definitely, we have some spice in there.

As dessert, it would be a caramel sundae with honey dripped on it.

About the photography

To share the diverse nature of performers participating in Summer Thursdays this year, PopRally invited a group of talented photographers to capture the concerts. OSHUN’s performance is seen through the lens of the New York–based photographer Leif Huron. He shares his impressions below:

“ OSHUN is blessed with a charismatic ease; I think they’re gonna be huge. 🙌”

About Creative New York and Acknowledgements

Creative New York is a digital project from MoMA’s PopRally program. Through original words and visuals, we share the unique perspectives of the countless artists, musicians, and creatives that animate New York City’s vibrant cultural landscape.

The musical component of Summer Thursdays 2018, organized in collaboration with PopRally, hosts a variety of sounds that explore the City’s expansive musical landscape. Each evening, unique sonic flavors fill the Sculpture Garden with a range of blended genres such as dream punk, Afrofuturist soul, funk fusion, hip-hop, experimental, and lo-fi baroque pop.

Special thanks to Hillary Reeves, Melanie Monios, and the entire Summer Thursdays team.

Summer Thursdays with OSHUN was originally published in Creative New York on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Summer Thursdays 2018 celebrated musicians living and working in New York City. Organized in collaboration with PopRally, the series hosted a variety of sounds exploring the City’s expansive musical landscape.

On August 30, PopRally welcomed Mutual Benefit, the sprawling chamber folk project of songwriter Jordan Lee (@mutebenny). For nearly a decade, he has crafted highly collaborative pop experiments that blend orchestral instrumentation and ambient electronic sounds. Mutual Benefit’s Summer Thursdays performance included Jordan Lee, vocals and guitar; Johanne Swanson, vocals; Michael Clifford, guitar; Eva Goodman, violin; Noah Klein, bass; and Gabriel Birnbaum, saxophone. PopRally member Erin Holland (@erineliseholland) spoke with Jordan Lee on an East Village rooftop.

A lot of interviews have focused on your vagabond life. Previously you lived in a lot of different places, and your music was influenced by locales all over the US. Now that you’ve been a New Yorker for several years, have you found ways to shift your perspective while staying static?

Yeah, absolutely. It’s the first town where I’ve been able to feel like I’m in a different country once a week. [laughs] I had to make a playlist recently for someone, and I decided to theme it around music that I’ve heard by accident around town. There was a Colombian pop singer that I heard in a bodega next to my house, and music from Bangladesh that I heard in a taxi. It’s just really great to have all sorts of different cultures and music around to be exposed to.

I also read that you have used a field recorder in the past. Is that something you’re still doing? I’m curious to know what you’ve picked up in New York.

That’s a case where technology has made things easier, but then, because it’s easier, it’s less special or something. Before, I had a literal field recorder in my pocket all the time because phones weren’t that powerful yet. I ditched it because my phone now has a good stereo field recorder with a huge amount of space — way better than this thing I had spent a bunch of money on. But I don’t know. I pick up my phone and all of a sudden I’m checking my Instagram feed instead of recording some birds or something.

Where in New York do you go if you have a creative block?

If I have too much in my brain and I can’t sort it out, walking the Williamsburg Bridge is my favorite thing. On the Manhattan side, there’s a bodega called Punjabi Deli that is one of my favorite places to get Indian food. I really like that walk. It’s just long enough that when you get to the other side of it, you’re like, “Okay, I know what I’m doing now.”

Have you picked up any interesting sounds on the bridge?

You are convincing me that I need to do more of that again.

I thought that was one of the most interesting parts of interviews I’d read, because I do it too. I’ve been in the habit of sending audio recordings to friends. Instead of taking a video or sending a text message, I’ll just send some audio of whatever’s going on that day.

That’s such a good idea.

It’s a special thing that New York affords us. Such a crazy mix of sound.

There’s a tiny dog park that I walk through a lot, and there’s some kind of xylophone thing that sometimes the kids will be playing. I really want to get a good recording of it. I could imagine getting that into the computer and writing a composition around what a kid is playing randomly. That could be a really cool thing.

What neighborhood do you live in? Rehearse in? And where do you do everything in between?

I live in Bed-Stuy. I’ve been there for three years now. Before then, I lived at a community art space called Silent Barn. We had shows in our apartment a couple times a week, and then there were shows in the performance space every day. That definitely got to be too much for me. When I moved to Bed-Stuy, it seemed like a lot of families, and really quiet, and lots of cute dogs, and stuff like that, beautiful houses. On a Sunday morning you can walk around and the churches just sound beautiful, almost like punk rock or something.

What do you hear from the churches?

There’s one a couple blocks away that I make a point to walk by. I probably should just go in, but culturally I don’t know, maybe they could detect my devilish energy.

[laughs] They would love you. You’re a musician. So are they.

Maybe if I get exorcised or something.

[laughs]

I used to play in a church band, actually, when I was younger. I really love this moment that happens where if everyone in the room is really into it, then the song will go on longer, like maybe the spirit moves someone to continue. I love when it seems like that’s happening. The whole room is just filled with everyone completely on the same page.

Do you feel like that’s still a part of you now? Do you have moments when you’re recording or playing live that you feel something else happens?

Yeah. That’s my goal for sure. It’s definitely affected by our playing, and it’s affected by the attitude that people have when they come in.

I’ve also noticed it’s really affected by space. I have had spiritually charged shows at dive bars, but it’s rare. When we tour in Europe, we usually play in older spaces that have hundreds of years of history. I’ve noticed it’s a lot easier for everyone to get into the zone there.

How do you think the space of New York has affected your recording and live shows?

Hmm, interesting. Two opposite things have happened. One is, especially when I first moved here, I’d be playing a show in a neighborhood and think, “Man, Bob Dylan played here.” It’s hard for me to shake the feeling of how deep the history is in certain neighborhoods and venues. It’s easy for me to get carried away with that.

The opposite thing happens, too, where almost more than half the spaces I played when I first moved here are closed down now. Things move really quickly. There’s an overwhelming sense of history and newness at the same time.

What New York music era inspires you the most?

A really powerful album that I found was No New York. That was from 1978, and it was these four No Wave bands. This was curated by Brian Eno, so there’s some melody, but it’s also it’s very sporadic and . . . skronky . . . I guess would be a word.

[laughs]

There’s another era that’s fascinating to me. There was this archivist — I think he called himself an amateur anthropologist — named Harry Smith. He put together the Anthology of American Folk Music. It was all these out-of-print 78s that were thought to be useless. He realized that this was really powerful music. That’s what influenced Bob Dylan, and even Patti Smith became friends with him later.

When I think about the spirit that I’m drawn to in this town, it would be this sense of seeing value in something that other people don’t, and then fusing it into what you’re doing. That’s a really powerful spirit to me.

This is a funny question, but I’m interested: If your music was food, what would be on the plate?

At one of my concerts, a friend was in the audience. She said that there was this person in front of her who was just like, “I’d like to make him a bowl of soup.”

[laughter]

As a musician, you want people to like you or whatever, but it’s like . . . I don’t know what that feeling is.

[laughter]

Did you feel positive? Did you feel weird? I guess all you can do is just accept the bowl. Accept it.

[laughter] It’s very uncool.

I was thinking that at various points of tours, a person in the band would be getting sick, as they do on tour. We have a very special soup that we make with lots of garlic, and lots of ginger, and whole sprigs of thyme, and sage, and stuff like that. I feel spiritually connected to that soup. It’s tasty, but it’s meant to heal.

What experience do people have when they hear your music? Do you have a sense? Offering you soup is a pretty good indication there’s something healing going on.

Every couple years I have a question or an experience that I can’t solve just by thinking about it. I focus on it really hard, and I bring my friends and collaborators into it. By the end of it — takes usually two years for me to make a record — I feel like I can release something, like, release it out of me. That’s what I’m trying to do.

Sometimes people will pick up on that and say, “That helped me through something.” If it works that way, great. If other people just enjoy a pop song, that’s fine, too.

Listen

Find Mutual Benefit’s latest release, Thunder Follows the Light, on Bandcamp, Apple Music, and Spotify.

About the photography

To share the diverse nature of performers participating in Summer Thursdays this year, PopRally invited a group of talented photographers to capture the concerts. Mutual Benefit is seen through the lens of photographer Amitai Halberstam (@halberstam). He shares his impressions below:

“Photographing a musical performance is a somewhat paradoxical task, trying to convey with images what is essentially a matter of sound. And it was clear as soon as they started playing that Jordan and his band were about sound — beautiful, ethereal, melodic sound — above all. Their joyful devotion to music-making enveloped the Sculpture Garden. It was a pleasure to see — and to hear.”

About Creative New York and acknowledgements

Creative New York is a digital project from MoMA’s PopRally program. Through original words and visuals, we share the unique perspectives of the countless artists, musicians, and creatives that animate New York City’s vibrant cultural landscape.

Special thanks to Hillary Reeves, Melanie Monios, Anna Luisa Vallifuoco, and the entire Summer Thursdays team.

Summer Thursdays with Mutual Benefit was originally published in Creative New York on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Summer Thursdays 2018 celebrated musicians living and working in New York City. Organized in collaboration with PopRally, the series hosted a variety of sounds exploring the City’s expansive musical landscape.

On July 12, PopRally welcomed a joyous celebration of music and global culture with Nkumu Katalay & The “Life Long Project” Band. Unbeknownst to him, Katalay shared many life experiences with Congolese artist Bodys Isek Kingelez, whose colorful utopian works were showcased in the MoMA galleries. In advance of his performance, PopRally sat down with Katalay to talk about this unexpected connection, Congolese pride, and the crucial role that ancestors and heritage play in art and life, no matter where you go.

How does the diversity of New York influence your approach to music?

First, it removes the fear of being, because once you see almost everything, then you recognize that you are part of a bigger picture. New York allows you to see the relationship between so many things, just because of the insane melting pot of people. This really reflects in the vision for my music, which is to highlight the contributions of Congolese culture in world history. I see the Congo through African American stories, but also through Caribbean and Latin American stories. New York allows you to be a witness to how all these things come to be because people live next to each other. Therefore, it tells you that they can coexist, and that’s a beautiful thing.

I know that you live and perform a lot in Harlem. Are there some spots in Harlem that inspire you or move you to create?

Harlem itself is incredibly historic. I live right next to Marcus Garvey Park, and I return to that space a lot to think about music and rehearse. If I have time I’ll sit around the Harriet Tubman statue — it’s super inspiring.

I feel like Harlem is a place where I can witness the struggle that my people went through in a real, tangible sense. A lot of the time we are desensitized from it. We all come from different systems. I came from a system where people were colonized, and my people were enslaved here.

As a youngster today, I didn’t get up and fight like others did before me, so having the opportunity to see things of this nature allows me to still connect with the struggle and with what it meant.

I’ve previously heard you refer to yourself as a global citizen, and your music is a mixture of music from both Kinshasa and New York, but I’m wondering where you find points of inspiration globally.

I come from the African diaspora, so I think of all the places I wish to go one day that reflect the history of my people.

I will tell you, based on how I’ve come to read and recognize the story of my people, I haven’t been to Havana, Cuba, but every time I see anything Cuban, it’s very, very inspiring to me. I have not been in the poor parts of Haiti, but something about the way the Haiti keeps African culture growing is very inspiring to me. I would like to go to New Orleans—just to hear the name of it creates pictures. I would like to go to Bahia, Brazil. I see the influence of my people inside all of these places, and it’s inspiring to me.

But Kinshasa will always be my ultimate portal and inspiration.

I think it’s interesting you say that because I see so many parallels with the artist Bodys Isek Kingelez, who was just profiled in a retrospective here at MoMA. He stayed in Kinshasa almost his entire life. It was, of course, the impetus for his work, but he definitely looked globally for inspiration and to make his work. You weren’t familiar with Kingelez’s work before the MoMA exhibition. What were your initial reactions and did you see a connection between his work and your own practice?

It’s funny because even though I didn’t know of him before the exhibition at MoMA, when I saw his work it felt totally familiar. Growing up in Kinshasa, it was normal for me to see just regular people on the street making things with their hands, like Kingelez did, but just for passion. Seeing these things unfolding in front of me as a kid — people making something beautiful from nothing — was incredibly powerful.

So when I saw Kingelez, I immediately connected his work to my experience growing up. It was actually really beautiful and inspiring to see such a high level of craftsmanship coming from my home country. I feel like his art exemplifies what our imaginations look like inside.

What do you think about his vision of cities and urbanization?

I also very much relate to his vision of utopia. Many of us have to create some kind of utopia in our brain, because we have to go through a lot growing up early on. The different struggles, the three or four days of hunger sometimes, these things will make you imagine a lot. If you see someone imagining in that way, you know where all of that’s coming from.

It’s interesting to think of art as a way to see past what you’re struggling with. I know that Kingelez believed that infrastructure, beauty, and art were integral to creating a healthy city.

In which ways do you think music contributes to the health of a city like New York and to a more global context?

To me, it has a lot to do with the idea of justice. Art in general—and in the case of Kingelez, the visual arts—become a way to express what you think of as just. It becomes the physical manifestation of our perception of justice and fairness.

I feel like music plays a similar role for me. My art has helped me process and express a lot of things in New York. I’ve seen and experienced all sorts of things — including gangs and violence — but I always had music to help me filter and share these experiences, ones that not everyone understands.

The last question I’ll ask you is, I know that you work with a bigger band [The “Life Long Project” Band] and that community engagement is very important for you, as it was for Kingelez. I’m wondering how community engagement plays a role in your music-making and your broader practice, and how you initially came to find community when you first arrived in New York.

A sense of community has come in different ways for me, but the role of the church also has helped a lot. For me, when you gather as a community, everybody offers all that they have and plays a part in building something bigger and better. Some people, they think. Some people, they write. Some people, they play music or they dance. We gather all these different skills to build our community.

Music has allowed me to combine different communities. Especially being an immigrant and being far from home. Banding together has become a safety tool in so many ways. Music has always been all that I’ve ever had. Besides, music is a real mobilizer. It’s about somebody trying to put together thoughts for others, and also for us as a people to understand what is at stake in wider society and the world. I think of myself as a social activist in a way.

Summer Thursdays with Nkumu Katalay was originally published in Creative New York on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Saidiya Hartman asks, “How does one listen for the groans and cries, the undecipherable songs, and the shouts of victory, and then assign words to all of it?” Rachel’s work is instructive in this regard; she imagines and enacts the archive we never had, laboring in the tradition of Professor Hartman and others who narrate “a counter-history of the human as the practice of freedom.” We hope you’ll join us this Sunday evening, April 29, for Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah: A Woman’s Work, an incredible program of performances, readings, and short film screenings she has put together at The Museum of Modern Art. — Chloe Wayne Sultan

Chloe Wayne Sultan: I love that we are having this conversation almost a year after you sorta-kinda turned down my interview request. Amazing. So let’s start with that. Why no interviews?

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah: My instinct, I have realized as I work on my book, is to sort of deflect the self through an outward eye. I find the world around me more interesting than I find myself. I genuinely think the stories that my eye can land on are more interesting than the story of myself. When I write, I have the opportunity to say almost everything that’s on my mind, and if I’ve done an effective job as a writer, then perhaps there’s nothing else to say. So I do interviews, but the goal is to not do too many. Because they are not the work. They can become a distraction from the work.

I hear that. I also love that we are having this conversation, coincidentally, the week after you won a Pulitzer Prize. Wow. When I heard the news, I was in a crowded café and literally lost all sense of decorum. That was also, perhaps not coincidentally, the day after Mercury retrograde ended. [Laughs]

And just last month, you received a National Magazine Award; both awards were for your piece “A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof.” Can you talk about what it means for your work, and for this piece specifically, to be recognized in this way?

Thank you. Earlier in my career, I was more engaged with the idea of [winning] writing awards. Over the last two or three years, that recognition became less important to me. By the time I had gone to Charleston and talked to the families of the victims of the shooting at Mother Emanuel, I already felt the immense honor of having people trust me to get this story right, and everything else after that has been secondary. When the piece came out, when they reached out to me and said, “Thank you for the work” — to me, there was no bigger award than that. It wasn’t something I was sure I could do, or should do, or had the skills to do. But when you get an award like that, it’s a good reminder that people think you’re on the right path.

The Pulitzer, I’ll admit, felt thrilling for a couple of different reasons. One, I was just overwhelmed by how excited it made other people! I was reminded that folks will show up for you like the Dancing Dolls, the cheer squad at Southern University, my mother’s alma mater. I was so grateful for that level of support. But my sister-in-law pointed out a more lasting effect, that it ensures that more people will read about this horrific act of white domestic terrorism and understand it as I did. That is what matters most. Also, I love that you noticed the astrological timing. I did too.

I want to ask you a bit about your upbringing. You’re a Philly kid, but you also have roots in the South, in London, in Ghana. One of my favorite pieces of yours is the one about your maternal grandparents; it’s set in the South, then follows their migration narrative through America, and then comes full circle back to Philly, in that its title is a Sonia Sanchez reference. Do you think of Philly as home?

I do feel like Philly is home. My mom is a professor there. I moved there when I was eight or nine from the cornfields of Indiana. I can’t think of two more bifurcated experiences — moving to a black cultural and intellectual capital from Indiana and western Pennsylvania. There’s a sense in which Philadelphia became a black beacon for me. It taught me to love black people so intimately. And it contains such a range of black people. We have everything from the Boule to the Black Mafia in Philly. What is remarkable about it though is that with real devotion, black Philadelphia operates almost internally. It has a private way of being, it is full of autonomy, and it is its own universe.

Now that I live in Brooklyn, I understand Philadelphia through the images I recall from my childhood: the Mount Airy BBQs that introduced me to the sonic ecstasy of Maurice White, the black cowboys riding past row homes in North Philadelphia, the MOVE members, seeing Ramona Africa, the survivor, around town, my mother laughing with her professor girlfriends in the ’90s, all of them wearing red and natural haircuts. My mother brought Sonia Sanchez to my 7th grade class to teach us about haikus. [laughs] And I grew up with my mother’s best friends, a lesbian Jewish couple, inviting us to their house for Hanukkah or to their other best friend’s Kwanzaa dinner. So I come from that sort of community. I come from these interesting women coming together to create a pretty radical world for their children.

And then, my grandmother also moved from Louisiana to help my mom raise us, so inside the house, psychologically, it was like living in the Deep South. Nam June Paik once said that the culture that’s going to survive in the future is the culture you can carry around in your head. That was truly my grandmother’s reality. So there were two real splintered sensibilities: inside, we would be watching Matlock or In the Heat of the Night, but then we would go outside, and kids would be like, “You don’t know what Salt-N-Pepa is?? You don’t listen to LL Cool J ‘Jingling Baby’?”

I think at times my sister and I feel like outsiders. Because when she was younger, my mother was a part of this pan-Africanist moment of independence — she had been in West Africa during the great unmooring of global black revolution as an academic. She arrived in Ghana during the Rawlings era as a black American Southerner and felt at home. And my father is both Fanti and Ga, but his mother moved to London in the 1920s. My father can’t imagine not living in Ghana, and he is shocked to have this American daughter. The title of the piece you mentioned, “We A Baddd People,” is actually something that my grandfather used to say because he fought the man who tried to lynch him. So all of that is always up and spinning for me, and I think that’s reflected in the piece. There are no periods — there is no punctuation in it.

Right, it’s sort of this Faulknerian cinematic long-take.

Yes, and that’s because I don’t feel like I know where I begin and where I end. When I was writing it, I was reading Gabriel García Márquez’s Autumn of the Patriarch, I was reading Faulkner. What I was trying to do in that piece is say, “This could go on forever. It doesn’t end until it’s over,” which I think is the story of blackness in America. We know how to repair the rupture of waking up and being an alien in this strange place.

You’ve referenced Meg from A Wrinkle in Time as one of your childhood heroes — and her “smart girl struggle of being perceived as both stupid and weird.” Can you talk about the sort of weird, smart kid you were?

I wasn’t a smart kid! I couldn’t read at all until I was much older. They would all tell my mom, “She’s not going to college. You better figure out where you’re going to take care of her after she ages out.” [laughs]

So no, I wasn’t a smart kid, but I definitely was the weird kid. I think that weirdness is good. It’s monastic in a way, and I had this intense womb of my mother, my sister, my two aunties, and my grandmother. We did everything together. Other than my guy, the great loves of my life, I think, are my early years with them. One of my earliest literary memories is my sister going with my mom to see Octavia Butler read. They returned home in awe.

My mom has sort of a punky personality. She shaved her hair very short as a child, and she has never adhered to these ideas of a cultural monolith. My grandmother loved dark skin and didn’t believe in America’s understanding of black beauty even though she was half-Filipina; because of her, I wasn’t aware that colorism existed until I left home. So when my mother wanted to swim in the bayous more than she wanted to keep her press and curl, no one batted an eye. My mom was an unusual kid who understood she didn’t have to fit in to succeed or to be very, very black. To be very black, I mean, that’s the firmament of my mother’s household. You didn’t have to be conventional, but you always were black.

When and why did you move to New York? Did it have anything to do with becoming a writer?

Oh, no, I was working for a rap group.

The Roots?

Yeah, I was trying to completely rap out. I wanted to be the Puff Daddy of this. [laughs]

I worked for the Yoda of The Roots, Rich Nichols. What Rich did for me was so foundational; he was such a cultural historian, and he was completely self-taught. We could sit and listen to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, or talk about Bakhtin or Amiri Baraka or books or jazz. He loved Jayne Cortez’s poems. He would see what I was reading and writing and then tell me I needed to go listen to Ego by Tony Williams. And I think with black culture, putting sound to everything is a huge part of it. He gave all of those feelings music; he put sound to all of my memories and all of my instincts.

So I moved to New York at first thinking I was going to be Sylvia Rhone. I was obsessed with Lyor Cohen. I was like, “Def Jam, baby!” It was the late ’90s, early 2000s, and I had worked on Jay-Z’s Unplugged. I was rejecting Rich’s ethos but I eventually found my way back. This was when Jay-Z was first becoming an American star, not just a rap star. At that time, I knew that something was coming out of that moment that was going to change the world, and that I wanted to be there to see that.

Before I moved to NYC, I would sit in the studio and just listen to stories. I’d be the only girl, and not just any girl — I was the 18-year-old girl who had braces and had gone to hippie-ish Quaker schools and was bossy and wanted to write. Tariq [“Black Thought” Trotter] was one of the first people to teach me pragmatic things about writing. He would tell me to read my thesaurus, that I needed a vocabulary. It’s how I learned about cadence, about writing rhythmically. So I had a real journeyman’s experience through writing — I didn’t first learn about the way a sentence should push and swerve in school, I learned that when I hung out with rappers.

You’re known for writing profiles — some of the seminal works about our greatest artists. But I also think that description is oversimplifying because your writing is at once intensely personal and sort of about everything. It reminds me of a quote by Erykah Badu in one of your essays [“A River Runs Through It”], where she describes Electric Lady Studios as a vortex, a wormhole through space and time and the history of black people. That’s sort of how I think of your work: you as an artist-slash-historian.

What Saidiya Hartman says, “We’re touched by the mother,” right? I think I’m always trying to get back home, or to the source, or to the origin. To know. With black history in America, we’ve been prevented in very real ways from looking back. Then, once we start to look back, we look back through the fog and the amnesia of someone who doesn’t even like us.

So when I think about history, I think that it’s been gotten wrong, and I think that maybe there’s some possibility that I could offer up the way that we’ve got it wrong, and I can get it right. I think when I first started, it was because I wanted to know, and I wanted to offer corrections. It’s to say, “They don’t see us, here’s who we are.”

Right. Your writing spans so many things, but one of the common threads does feel like this protest against historical amnesia, a performance of memory as a radical refusal of our will to forget.

I also feel so much love, how much love you have for black people. I’m thinking about your piece [“De origine actibusque aequationis”] on Basquiat and Rammellzee, Rachel Jeantel and Trayvon Martin, which also tells a story about black language — oral, written, and visual. How did that come together?

The Studio Museum in Harlem reached out to me about writing something on Rammellzee for one of their exhibitions. I had always loved graf culture. It was big in Philadelphia when I was growing up, we had Curve and Soul One, and in college, I wrote my first papers on Wild Style, Lee Quiñones, the FUN Gallery, and Lady Pink.

This gave me the opportunity to deep-dive into Rammellzee, and what I found was that this man invented a language. For some reason, I kept thinking about how black people weren’t being heard. Mattering is really complex. Mattering has a vantage point, a positionality, and the reality is black lives don’t matter to everyone.

You see people who will say “Black Lives Matter,” but they will still try to control black narratives, black thinkers, and black stories. Or their idea of blackness needs to have a white source for them to see themselves in it and feel comfortable with it. So what I was interested in is: How do we deal with that as people every day? How do we deal with that silence, that rejection? One of the ways that we do that is we double down on our other-ization. What’s so interesting to me isn’t whether we should use vernacular or whether it’s appropriate for kids to speak AAVE, but rather why do people speak those languages? Why do we have a real need to reinvent whole worlds and whole languages all the time as black people?

I looked at Rachel Jeantel, an 18-year-old girl who got up and said, “I matter. He matters,” and that was profound to me. Without changing herself or wavering in her confidence she refused the defense lawyer’s condescension and his sense of our worth! It was as profound to me as what Basquiat was doing and as what Rammellzee was doing. I wanted to ask: How do we look at everyday invention that black people do as being as artful as it truly is, as genius as it truly is?

I was also reading a lot of science fiction at the time: James Tiptree, Jr., Theodore Sturgeon, and Octavia Butler. At the end of the piece, I talk about black people arriving in America as a sort of alien story, which for me, tied together how inventive and adaptable and fierce we are. Sci-fi is so political; what sci-fi can really do is zeppelin up everything going on to say, “Come with me into this imaginary world that really explains this life.”

When “A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof” came out last year, I remember a common refrain on Twitter and in online commentary about how “timely” your piece was. It was August 2017, several months into Trump’s presidency, weeks after Charlottesville.

But the reality is, you’ve been saying this — since you began writing for the public nearly a decade ago. You’ve been writing about the persistent perniciousness of racism and structural inequality for years before the broader public seemed to wake up to it. In your earliest pieces, like your 2011 piece on The Roots or your 2013 piece on Kendrick Lamar, you take great care to debunk this ahistorical frenzy about America becoming post-racial. And you were resisting this post-racial mythology at a time when people weren’t receptive to it, not least because everyone was feeling really hopeful about what Obama symbolized. How do you think about this shift in landscape?

My husband is so funny because he talks about how I’ve been waking up in a cold sweat saying that Trump was going to be president for about four or five years now. Cold sweat, literally. You do feel a little bit like a Cassandra. By the time I was in South Carolina doing the groundwork for the Dylann Roof piece, it was so clear that Trump was going to happen.

Part of the problem is you’ve got to leave New York to report. In the months before that, I had been traveling America for my book. I had been going around and had been in Virginia. I had been in rural Georgia, suburban California, Chicago, western Pennsylvania. Dylann and [the shooting at Mother Emanuel Church] had happened months before those trips, but what I realized was that Dylann was an extremity, but he expressed what a lot of people were thinking. I could see that there was this angry white sub-segment that was undergirding the ebullience of the Obama years.

Dylann was a purposeful subject because he embodied things I already wanted to say; writing about him was a way to write about what I saw going on politically and to say, “This is how bad it can get.” People don’t take white supremacy as seriously as it is, as if it’s like noxious gas that we allow some people to leak in. I’m very opposed to that. We’ve all learned to adapt to breathing the noxious gas constantly. We’re all dying of it, right?

I felt racism in South Carolina. But it is not lost on me that I had to pull this story hours before it was supposed to ship to the printers. I did that because the magazine’s editor insisted on calling this piece “The Making and Unmaking of Dylann Roof.” Obviously, there is no unmaking to a racist terrorist. But they were so committed to this absurd and offensive title that they sent it to the printers without my permission. I had to actually pull it to stop them.

So South Carolina was painful, but the inexplicable thing that stays with me now is that editing process. I just know that we don’t have to waste our time with that kind of behavior. I refuse to negotiate with post-racialists. And I don’t want to be in the room if I can’t bring my obligations and my concerns as a black woman with me.

To me, there’s no post-racial moment that ignores how many black people are living in prisons. I don’t imagine a black renaissance or any black framework for success that doesn’t address the fact that so many of us are incarcerated. That doesn’t address the fact that we don’t have good public schooling, that doesn’t address the fact that we’re dying of health disparities all over. The greatest athlete in the culture right now had to heal her own black female body while giving birth.

So in the Kendrick piece, in the Dave Chappelle piece, I was always thinking about what the context is that suffocates us, about how this moment isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Enough about the social uneasiness and concerns of the black middle class. Let’s discuss the real numbers behind what it is like to be in the black middle class right now and be losing wealth. Let’s discuss black poverty. I had been living in Louisiana when I wrote about Kendrick, and New Orleans had just experienced the greatest loss of black middle-class life ever because of Katrina. It was very hard to just say, “My president is black and my Lambo is blue.” [laughs] We needed more, not from Obama necessarily, but from a nation that wasn’t prepared to give it to us whether we had him or not.

I want to wrap by talking about A Woman’s Work, which is happening this week! I’m so excited.

Oh yeah, it is just so damn thrilling! It’s a group of people coming together to help us all think about something we should be thinking about, which is: How do we create altars in society for black female genius? And not just the women who are artists or authors. But the women who contained art and who were never afforded the space to express it. It’s not about me as a writer, it’s about: Who authored my life? It is fascinating how so many artists of color often feel as if we are a processional of legacy, and often we enter into these rarefied spaces of art through familial or localized bonds. And yet, outside our intimate memories, who knows the names of these women who made us? In my mind, the idea of bringing these stories into a space like MoMA is a glorious way of sealing a fissure, filling a lacuna, acknowledging the oversight and remedying and readying ourselves for a fuller, more luminous future where we refuse to leave those women behind.

Yes. Preach. When we first started talking about this, you referenced an Alice Walker quote that has really stayed with me since — that “we are the unsealed letter of our foremothers’ expectations and desires.” It was clear you had been thinking about A Woman’s Work for some time, that you had a really vivid sense for what you wanted the program to be.

I think I came into the world wanting to build altars to my mothers. But when my hero, my brilliant painter friend, Noah Davis, passed away, his mother introduced me to this artist who went to Cooper Union with him, Kandis Williams. For the past two years or so, Kandis and I have been discussing what it means to us to be black women engaged in these creative acts. I think of myself as a writer, so for me, it is almost a trade, a skill, not this “artistic” process. But Kandis is an artist, and we were both encountering the same dilemmas.

And this is where the act of talking becomes useful. Through these conversations with Kandis, I realized that certain things were occurring to both of us over and over again, and we both could see how they fit into this larger historical conversation of what happens to black women in America. I will never forget busting my ass on a piece for like 400 bucks with this truly fantastic editor Frannie Kelley. Only to see it years later go uncited in another piece and have a white male editor who worked on the “new piece” tell me that he wished he could have caught it and that I should see the lack of citation as a small, professional “discourtesy.” It takes nothing to cite people. I cite billions of people constantly in my writing. And yet, this is what happens to black women over and over again as we try to do this work. We get devalued or wiped out.

This was happening to so many women that I know. But Kandis immediately connected all of it to the story of Anna Murray Douglass, the wife of Frederick Douglass. Frederick and his young German lover called Anna “the Border State.” She was too Negro, too dark, too female to be of consequence to them, and yet, she supported his entire literary enterprise through her labors. There is a painful moment in her letters, where Frederick’s German lover mocks Anna for wearing a wig and suggests that she has no real intelligence, that Anna doesn’t deserve to be in this position of being associated with her educated husband’s fight for freedom. She is just the Border State, someone they have to step over or step through; she is the non-person who has no cause of her own, no voice of her own, and her desires and her ideas just do not matter. Once Kandis told me this story, I said, “Wow, girl, Anna is us.”

We know that black women are dying from stress in childbirth. But let’s start to identify who or what is causing that stress. Are you making it hard for us to live? Then you are the problem. Let’s remember that Missy Elliott had to wade through hell to create her art. Let’s remember that Lorraine Hansberry died too young. That Zora Neale Hurston died penniless. So I want to do this work so that the young women coming after me don’t have to. I want them to have the tools to call this minimization out. Last month, Kandis and I made a zine of sorts for A Woman’s Work that retells Anna’s story, but it is also a dual text. One that also records the kind of lifesaving conversations that I have with my black female friends, in particular, Kandis Williams and Naomi Jackson, who are true geniuses.

I can’t wait to see it. And you hold all the secrets as to what everyone’s been working on. Can you tell us a little bit about what else is planned?

For almost everyone I know, their mothers, black women, were the first art they saw. Every day that you get up and you get out there, you adorn yourself or you admire yourself when everyone’s telling you that you shouldn’t, I think you made art. I wanted to bring together the astoundingly brilliant people already thinking about this idea. There are people who have already laid that groundwork — Jamaica Kincaid and Julie Dash — we wouldn’t even be here doing this work without them. They’ve always been telling us about the profoundness and intensity of black matriarchy.

And I also knew people who had amazing stories, like Greg Tate’s mom. She is so above and beyond fascinating. She had worked with Marion Barry during DC’s black Republic years, then had been the secretary to the Black Panther Party. She was close friends with Amiri Baraka, she supported the fight for decolonization in Angola, and she had wanted to be a writer and journalist.

So when we think about why we have Greg Tate, one of our great cultural historians — I mean, who else has interviewed Richard Pryor and Sadé? — we must realize that he did some of this work because he had Florence Tate as a mother. Or thinking about Saeed Jones, a poet who is now writing his memoir, and the beautiful stories he has told me about his mother, who was a black Buddhist. Well, she always sounds to me like a poem herself. Darryl Pinckney is another person whose eye always picks up on the nuances of black women with care, tenderness, and respect, and he gives us the tart truth too. I loved the character of Cello in Black Deutschland so I asked him to read a section about her. I’ve followed the work of Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts and Steffani Jemison for years now. Sharifa wrote Harlem Is Nowhere, and Steffani blew everyone’s mind with her piece Sensus Plenior at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. These are two women who are creative polymaths. Their wisdom moves across forms, so when Steffani told me that they were working on something related to Katherine Dunham and the body, I begged her to be a part of this. And dream hampton’s eye for interiority abounds in her films and her writing. So I knew that I wanted to include “QueenS” because it reminds me of watching my mother and my aunts getting dressed up to show out.

Helado Negro, whose music I love, love, love, was saying to me recently — that our first polyrhythms happen in the womb because they’re our mother’s heartbeat. We’re trained at this; we do this because of them. So I wanted to bring together an altar for black and Afro-Latina women who won’t be in museums — but should be. So yes, it’s a shame that the Museum didn’t have a Basquiat in its collection, but the Museum also definitely doesn’t have a Matilde Basquiat, and she’s the one who gave him Gray’s Anatomy and enrolled him in art classes — because she knew. Two weeks ago, I found Matilde Basquiat’s grave in Green-Wood Cemetery. She was the black Puerto Rican mother of one of America’s greatest artists, and her grave is completely unmarked. Maybe that was her choice, I don’t know, but the metaphor in it killed me. I recognized that what Audre Lorde said is real. As black women, we become less than a vapor. The idea for April 29th is just to say that all of us come from somewhere, and how do we bring these black women who raised us into the space, too?

About Creative New York

Creative New York is a digital project from MoMA’s PopRally program. Through original words and visuals, we share the unique perspectives of the countless artists, musicians, and creatives that animate New York City’s vibrant cultural landscape.

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah was originally published in Creative New York on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you don’t know the name Brigitte Lacombe, one of her impossibly intimate portraits — of everyone from Meryl Streep to Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela, or Louise Bourgeois — is likely seared into your mind like only the most extraordinary images can be. In this rare interview, Lacombe reveals how she went from a high-school dropout to one of the most sought-after photographers in the world. Her personal story is accompanied by a visual commission showcasing the face of MoMA’s future: young curators and fellows representing each of the Museum’s curatorial departments and MoMA PS1, pictured alongside some of the most exciting New York–based artists.

You’ve been living in New York and traveling the world for a long time, but maybe you can take us back to the origins a little bit. Where did you grow up and what was your upbringing like?

I was born in the countryside near Avignon, in the south of France. When I was about five or six, my family moved to Paris. We lived in the 6th arrondissement, on a street that goes all along the Jardin du Luxembourg. It’s a really beautiful part of Paris. Growing up, I was never a great student. Not that I was doing anything terrible — it was more of an issue with bad attitude. I was thrown out of school every year. Finally I dropped out of high school.

I was 17. My father had always wanted to be a photographer, but wasn’t able to pursue his dream because of the war. I remember he was always taking pictures around us. I’m sure I was very influenced by that. So when I dropped out of school and was asked what I wanted to do, I decided to try photography.

What was your first professional experience like?

My father knew the director of the lab at Elle magazine, so I started there as an apprentice for him. I was very lucky to get into that environment so early, but it was also interesting because at the time, in the mid-’70s, it was only men, seven or eight of them, in the lab. It was a very formal atmosphere, with everyone wearing a white lab coat, including me.

Do you feel like that environment affected your experience in a specific way?

Because I was so young, I was a sort of little “mascot,” but a year later I was offered to be introduced to two photographers for an assistant job. One of them was this exceptional woman, Jeannette Leroy. She was a painter that had become a fashion photographer just for a few years, and when we met, I was immediately very taken with her. She took me under her wing and I worked with her for two years. She was a great mentor. Soon after, she decided she wanted to go back to painting, so she recommended me to Peter Knapp, the legendary art director at Elle. He immediately gave me work. Later on, I asked to be sent to the Cannes Film Festival because, like everyone, I was very interested in film. They didn’t mind because I had a family house nearby and it didn’t cost the magazine a thing. In 1975, I was the only woman photographer, and between that and being very young, I definitely stood out. It may sound strange to say now, because things have changed in some ways, but at the time, being a woman photographer, I feel that it was an advantage. I was different and people were interested and intrigued just by the fact that I was there. I was able to photograph everyone on that assignment, including Dustin Hoffman, who became a friend. That experience opened many doors for me. After I had photographed Dustin, he, offhandedly, invited me to take pictures on the set of his next film, which was All the President’s Men! So Elle sent me to America.

How did it feel, to move from France to the US? Do you have any lasting impressions of being here for the first time?

I first came to Washington, DC, where they were shooting the exteriors for the film. Then to Los Angeles where they were going to spend a few months shooting the interiors of the Washington Post newsroom on a sound stage. I was meant to be in Los Angeles for only a week, but ended up staying three months. I started to meet everyone in a very natural way. I met many of the mid-’70s filmmakers and actors that at that time were just on the cusp: Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, Groucho Marx, Roman Polanski, and many others. Initially I was doing all this without any real purpose, just instinctively, and kind of self-assigned, though I was sending everything back to Elle magazine of course.

But as the years went by, I became more and more focused on my work and it became evident to me that I had a real vocation. I have always lived day to day, so I never really planned or scrutinized what I was doing too much, nor paused to think about the “big picture,” but it turned out that I was truly lucky to have chosen to be a photographer so early on, not knowing that it would be my entire life. Now here I am, having done that almost to the exclusion of everything else in my life. I chose not to have a family. In fact, the more I go on the more I become singularly focused on my work, on photography. It’s almost surprising when I’m forced, like right now, to think and talk about how I ended up doing what I do because it was never planned or extremely thought through, it was all just very instinctive. But I realize how fortunate I am to have found something that I love and that, in a way, loves me back.

Was your family always supportive of your choices?

Yes. I’m sure my parents were concerned for me much more than they wanted to show, but they never pressured me to do something else, or be anyone other than who I was. This gave me an incredible sense of security in pursuing photography, and moving to New York. I was just confident I could make it work. I am grateful that my father saw me succeed in the life dream he was not able to pursue for himself. My parents never questioned my personal life choices, not getting married or having a family, even though I imagine that they might have preferred it. Though I realize I do not have everything in my life, I think I made the choices that were right for me, that I was capable of, so I have no regrets.

At what point did you officially move to New York?

I always came back and forth to New York for years. Janet Johnson [my agent and great friend] and I always joke because I think I’ve been in New York for 10 years, and she has to remind me that it’s actually been 35 [laughs]. In the beginning, I was coming for a week, a few weeks, or month. Then Dustin Hoffman’s production company helped me get my green card, so I could actually stay. By chance again, without deciding, a friend of mine was leaving an apartment in New York to go back to Paris, so I took it without even really making a conscious decision. So finally I was in New York. It has been my base ever since, but I have always traveled extensively, many months out of the year. For 25 years, I had a contract with Condé Nast Traveler, which was extraordinary — I would be dispatched all over the world. I was also working on film sets, as a special photographer, and doing many portraits. Sometimes, even though I’ve been here for so long and I consider myself a New Yorker, I still feel like a visitor.

Are there things you look forward to every time you come back to New York from a trip?

I especially love the moment when I’m arriving back in New York from the airport, crossing one of the bridges to Manhattan. I remember the first time seeing the skyline. Everything was new, noisy, heightened. The sound the bridge makes when you’re traversing it — tu-tum, tu-tum, tu-tum — I remember everything so well. I love the incredible diversity, especially now that I live in the Lower East Side, the edge of Chinatown, after having spent [my] first 20 years here on the Upper East Side. I love the gritty feeling of Downtown. But then, I’ll go back to the Upper East Side, which I still love so much, and I am dazzled by how clean and well-kept it is and how everybody is so “neat.”

Do you have a lasting memory, a favorite moment, of being in New York at that time and working in the photography and film industry?

I just recently rewatched Manhattan again, a film I worked on, again, because of Dustin [Hoffman]. Anne Byrne, his wife at the time, was this great ballerina from George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet and was cast for the film by Woody Allen. All during the filming, I was following them shooting on the Upper East Side. The experience was almost like the movie itself, with an endless conversation along the way. All these moments have been part of my deep feeling towards New York.

You talk a lot about being the only woman in the photography environment back in the ’70s. Is this something you thought about a lot? Do you feel like it set you apart in such a male-dominated industry?

Obviously, the struggles women go through now, and even back then, are very apparent. But at the time, I wasn’t really thinking about it that way. In a way, I almost feel like being one of the handful of women working back then really helped me stand out. When I was photographing actresses, I imagine that they were grateful to be able to relate to another woman, especially because I was never interested in being in their place. Sometimes, they might have been relieved to not have to deal with the seduction part, too. I’ve talked about this a lot over the years with women I’ve worked with, and they feel that it is very different being photographed by a woman photographer versus a man.

Early on in your career, what was it that triggered you into taking photographs of people as your primary subject?

I love doing portraits. I think I know what my strength is and I know that I can keep on doing it for a long period of time and never get tired of it. I’m very, very focused and I’m also very interested. I’m curious about most things, which I think helps a lot in my work. The time my subjects are with me, the time that we share, I’m absolutely 100% present. The portraits I do are simple, classic, and intimate. Very bare. For me a portrait sitting is a collaboration with the person I photograph. They have to be ready to be seen, which is really quite intimidating. And sometimes intimidating for both, for the person you photograph and for yourself. I feel that people must sense that it’s a genuine interaction, a genuine moment, and that I have good intentions. I feel like there has to be a sense of trust.

Do you know when you’ve shot something really incredible?

For the moments I am looking for, the images I’m seeking, yes. I always put people in a situation that I know is good for what I want, which is a very intimate, small space that feels protected and with a light I control. After that it’s finding a moment that feels true to me. It’s like any moment when you have to really be yourself in life without something to hide behind. Of course there are moments that are awkward or uncomfortable, let’s say when you hold a gaze with someone and then you feel like you have to look somewhere else. If you’re in a home with many people, or a team, it’s very easy to feel like you can get reinforcement from someone or something that is happening around you. But if you’re actually really just with one person, the portrait is a result of you being seen by that one person, and allowing that person to see you.

I know you have longstanding relationships with some of your subjects, whom you’ve shot multiple times over the years. How does that evolving rapport feel and how do you think it affects your work and, ultimately, the photograph?

Sometimes I feel it’s harder to shoot the people you know very well, and care about. Depending on the relationship you have, sometimes you feel more pressure, it’s almost like you’re hyper-aware. An example is Meryl Streep, who I’ve photographed many times over many years. She really does not like to be photographed. It’s been like that since the very beginning. She never enjoyed it, unless she was in character or was with someone else or was in some way acting. But for her to just be as herself, in front of the camera doing a pure portrait, is something that I think is very, very hard for her, and she feels, I think, deeply self-conscious. She does not like being looked at, scrutinized, if she’s not in a performance. Somehow, in spite of that, we have a close friendship. It is funny and strange because what I really want to do is to photograph her, and all she’s trying to do is escape [laughs].

Do you still shoot film as well as digital?

Yes, I still do. It’s very different, but I love it. I use it for portraits, and even if I start with digital, I always have it with me, especially for what I know will be something important that I want to have on film, forever. Digital has many advantages over film, of course. And the quality is very good. But I have a greater pleasure when I look into my medium-format camera; it’s another world. The fact that it’s only a certain amount of frames and you know it’s this finite number puts you in a totally different mindset. You are more attentive.

For our last question, we’d love to ask you about your famous photograph of Louise Bourgeois. She’s such a beloved artist for us here at MoMA. Can you share the story behind that iconic image?

Oh, yes. It was an assignment for The New York Times Magazine. I was sent to do a portrait of her. She was a little intimidating, tough but also incredibly charming, so the actual sitting went very well. She let me know through her studio manager, or it might have been an agreement made with the magazine before taking the photos, that we would have to show her the contact sheets, and bring the negatives too, so she could approve the images. I agreed to this very unusual deal. A couple weeks later, we met in her townhouse in Chelsea. It was Louise Bourgeois, her studio manager, Janet [Johnson], and myself. We all sat at the table with the contact sheets spread out in front of us. She looked at them intently, very focused, found the images she liked, and then pulled out a gigantic pair of sharp scissors. We had to destroy, in her presence, all of the negatives she did not approve. My heart sank. I could not believe it. At one point I think I was so hypnotized with the whole thing that I almost wanted to believe that it was one of those extraordinary moments, a piece of performance art. She selected negatives to destroy and Janet was to start cutting in front of everyone. At first I was so in shock that I didn’t say anything, but then I had to step out into her garden and turn my back because I could not take it anymore. Janet stayed there cutting, with the studio manager making sure that Janet cut the exact frames that Louise Bourgeois wanted killed. But the studio manager would occasionally, conveniently, turn away, allowing Janet to sneak more negatives into her pocket. Louise Bourgeois did approve some good images, but many were lost. At the end, she took out a piece of her letterhead stationary and in script wrote “From LB to BL,” a brief contract saying that I had agreed to her terms. Now I have this precious piece of her writing, which I treasure. The whole thing was beautifully eccentric — she was truly extraordinary.

About Creative New York

Creative New York is a digital project from MoMA’s PopRally program. Through original words and visuals, we share the unique perspectives of the countless artists, musicians, and creatives that animate New York City’s vibrant cultural landscape.

Acknowledgements

Interview and production by Anna Luisa Vallifuoco.

Special thanks to Brigitte Lacombe, Janet Johnson, and the entire Lacombe team; to all the participating artists and curators from MoMA; to Chloe Wayne Sultan from PopRally; and to Boomshot.

Brigitte Lacombe and the “New” MoMA was originally published in Creative New York on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Following their July 20 performance in MoMA’s Sculpture Garden for Summer Thursdays, Raquel Berrios and Luis Del Valle of the Spanish-language experimental pop project Buscabulla (Puerto Rican slang for “troublemaker”) sat down with Creative New York editor Anna Luisa Vallifuoco to chat about how they were destined to meet — musically and romantically — in New York, typical Puerto Rican recipes to bring people together on a hot summer day, and how the arrival of their daughter Charly changed their lives, and art, forever.

Anna Luisa Vallifuoco: Can you introduce yourselves?

Raquel Berrios: My name is Raquel Berrios.

Luis Del Valle: And I’m Luis Del Valle. Together, we form [the band] Buscabulla.

Raquel: We’re both from Puerto Rico. Born and raised. I’m from Trujillo Alto. It’s a small town in the north, close to the San Juan area.

Luis: I’m from the south — from Ponce, on the opposite end of the island.

Anna: Did you already know each other from Puerto Rico before coming here and forming the band?

Luis: We actually met here, in New York, at a mutual friend’s party. Crazily enough, we didn’t know each other from home even though the island of Puerto Rico is so small that you can cross it in about an hour and a half. Raquel has a theory about how we were destined to meet here in New York.

Raquel: It’s true. I never thought we would have met in Puerto Rico. Despite the short distance and the island being so small, we still came from opposite ends — almost different worlds. It’s strange but I believe it was destiny for us to meet here in this big crazy city where we both came to pursue our dreams to make music.

Anna: Is it important for you guys to feel like you’re staying connected to home in Puerto Rico? How do you manage to do that from NYC?

Raquel: Definitely. 100%. It’s always been so important, both on a personal level and, I think, for Puerto Ricans as a group, to stay connected and to form a strong community. To find that sense of home wherever you might be. Culturally, I think it’s something that we, as Puerto Ricans, always seek out — to find other people, food, places, music, and rituals that remind us of where we come from. From day one, since I arrived in New York for the very first time, I instantly found a place that had all these elements.

Anna: How is this reflected in your music?

Raquel: Music is a big, big part of Puerto Rican culture. A lot of the things we make are really about being from Puerto Rico and living here, far from home, but always seeking that strong community around you. It’s very important to keep that spirit alive through music and art in general, I think. Being in New York, it’s also easy to feel lost; feel like you could disappear within the chaos. So staying connected with your roots and where you’re from is what really makes you stand out and be unique in your art, but also feel less alone.

Anna: Do you ever think of moving back?

Luis: I think we’d like to get to a point where we can move to Puerto Rico and work on a record there and come back and forth to New York. We have a kid, and that experience really crystallizes what is important and what’s not. Everything feels much more real and it makes you think that having all those things that you mentioned — community, a sense of belonging, a sense of home, family — are the most important things in life. They go from being a want, this abstract idea, to a completely essential need.

Raquel: There’s always been this big connection between Puerto Rico and New York, with generations coming and going. My great‑grandmother came to New York and she had a dress shop here, lived here for years, and then went back to Puerto Rico. I think that’s kind of how we envision it, coming and going.

Anna: Where is home base now here in New York?

Raquel: We’re in Ridgewood, Queens.

Anna: Is there a big Puerto Rican community there?

Raquel: Puerto Ricans are everywhere, man. Everywhere [laughs]. There is a great community in Queens for sure. There are also places where it’s much bigger. One of the best spots is in Williamsburg, at the Caribbean Social Club. It’s supposed to be a club for the older generation, to eat, drink, watch baseball, just hang out. This woman makes the traditional rice and beans with pork, and she literally runs this bar from the back. You could go in there any day and she’ll have food and really cheap drinks ready. That’s where everybody tends to come together.

Luis: To me, there’s also something really cool about these cultures existing and having a space to thrive. It’s what makes a city like New York cosmopolitan and an interesting place to be regardless of where you’re from.

Anna: Do you find that food is an important part of bringing all of these things you talk about together?

Raquel: Food is vital. For sure. It’s really a communal thing I think, cooking in your tradition. There’s one thing I always make called arañitas — it literally means little spiders. You shred plantain, and then you pat it together and you deep fry it. It’s this really crunchy goodness. Then you dip it in mayo‑ketchup, the ghetto dip, as we call it. It’s mayo, ketchup, garlic, and lemon.

Luis: It’s amazing.

Anna: It doesn’t sound ghetto at all. It actually sounds delicious.

Luis: It’s pretty gourmet.

[laughter.]

Anna: I want to ask you, especially because you mention wanting to eventually go back to Puerto Rico, do you have a favorite memory or a great moment that you can recall of being in New York?

Raquel: Oh, hell yeah. The birth of our daughter, Charly. She was born at home. Literally at home here in New York, not in a hospital. I feel like with us choosing to have her here would tie us forever to this physical space. In a way, that did ground me. It made me feel like New York would become this important place above and beyond what it meant to me or Luis or our personal dreams and aspirations.

Luis: Any other moment, it dwarfs in comparison to that one. As obvious as it might sound, it is that one thing that makes everything worth it, or at least gives you a light at the end of the tunnel to strive for.

Anna: Do you think having had a child affects how you view your art, your music, and your cultural output?

Raquel: Oh, my god, on so many levels — on so many levels. It’s made communicating who we are and where we come from through our music that much more important. It was always important, but it’s become essential now.

Luis: I feel like it also gives us a reason beyond our own ambition to make something good. If you make something that’s meaningful enough, that’ll be your mark on the world and your legacy that you can leave behind you for your child. That’s pretty significant.

Raquel: At the end of the day, I want our music to be this conduit of ideas and memories for our daughter to be really proud of her heritage and where she comes from, and help her understand who she is, and might become. So yeah, I hope she likes the songs.

About the photography

To share the diverse nature of performers participating in Summer Thursdays this year, PopRally invited a group of talented photographers to capture the concerts. Buscabulla’s performance is seen through the lens of the New York–based photographer Josefina Santos. She shares her impressions below:

“One of my favorite things about shooting artists, and musicians in particular, is the immediate reaction I get by their live performance. It was incredibly exciting to get to meet Raquel, Luis, and the rest of the band offstage, and then be able to photograph them as they took part in this amazing transformation during their set. It was my first time seeing a band of Latin descent perform at MoMA, and as a Colombian living in New York, it was refreshing to see people around the Sculpture Garden dancing along to the music and busting out bachata and salsa moves.”

About Creative New York and Acknowledgements

Creative New York is a digital project from MoMA’s PopRally program. Through original words and visuals, we share the unique perspectives of the countless artists, musicians, and creatives that animate New York City’s vibrant cultural landscape.

The musical component of Summer Thursdays 2017, organized by PopRally, is presented in conjunction with MoMA’s ongoing initiative Citizens and Borders, a series of projects and exhibitions that offer critical perspectives on histories of migration, territory, and displacement.

Special thanks to Danielle Hall, Harry Harris, Melanie Monios and the entire Summer Thursdays team, and Zina Reed.

Creative New York Summer Edition: Live from Summer Thursdays with Buscabulla was originally published in Creative New York on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ferg and Venus were photographed by Neil Aline — a New York–based DJ and photographer who played as part of the very first Warm Up lineup in 1998 — in the MoMA PS1 courtyard under Lumen by Jenny Sabin Studio, this year’s Young Architects Program winner.

Venus: You’re a native New Yorker — from Harlem specifically. When you think of New York, what does that mean to you?

Ferg: When I think of New York I immediately think of the word home, and that there’s no other place like it. I think about New York City trains and everything that happens on the subways. I think people singing for money and doing funny and creative things. I think about the hustle. I think of style. I think of the mecca for art and music and creativity. But mostly, New York is my home.

Venus: Are there any quintessential New York moments that are seared in your mind from when you were a kid in the city in the ’90s?

Ferg: One of my memories from that time is getting lost. Not on purpose, but actually getting lost. Growing up, Harlem was my entire world. That was my New York. I remember when I first started venturing out to go to the Art and Design High School. The first day, I didn’t know anything about taking the trains. I got totally lost. I happened to have money with me so wound up just taking a yellow cab to school but was like, “Man, I fucked up,” because I should have known.

“I just wanted to be around a bunch of people that were weird and interested in the same things that I was.”

Venus: So what made you want to go to Art and Design High School as opposed to a public high school or, say, Bronx Science?

Ferg: I always wanted to further my interests. That was art, since I was a little kid. All my early influences, they all came from my father who was an artist and designer. He did the Bad Boy logo, the Uptown Cats logo, Andre Harrell, and a bunch of other stuff in the music industry. I’ve always looked up to him in that way. I remember going to see silkscreens when I was a kid and being so influenced by that process. I was always inspired by my dad’s work. Seeing him making art always made me think that I could do it too. I believe it was always in my DNA to be an artist. So I took my shot and went to art school. I just wanted to be around a bunch of people that were weird and interested in the same things that I was.

“I actually remember telling [Puff Daddy], or trying to convince him, that the baby in the Bad Boy logo was me.”

Venus: That’s a pretty major logo though, the Bad Boy logo. Did you understand that your father was part of an important artistic legacy at that time, as a kid?

Ferg: I understood he was a part of it and that these important people were his friends, but it was regular to me. I didn’t understand the magnitude of how involved he was with them or what it meant to other people. Heavy D, Teddy Riley, all of those guys. All I knew was that this was my dad. When he introduced me to Puff [Daddy], I didn’t know who Puff was. He had a big mink fur on. I remember being so in awe of him. I actually remember telling him, or trying to convince him, that the baby in the Bad Boy logo was me.

[laughter]

“Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Matisse, you know what I’m saying, Salvador Dalí…That was my world. Those were my heroes.”

Venus: I did not have that experience. My family was not interested in the arts. When I ended up becoming a DJ, they were just like, “Whatever.” They’re still like, “Whatever.” I feel like you’re lucky in that sense. So I’m curious, do you remember a specific moment that cemented your interest in art?

Ferg: I remember one day — I was maybe 9, 10 — my father left me in the car one day to draw. He was in the barbershop hanging with his friends, and I didn’t want to be around all the OGs. I was bored so he gave me paper and a bunch of different color pens and markers and stuff. I just started drawing a dog, then I started really getting focused and into it. When I was done I just thought it was the most magnificent thing ever. That feeling of pride in something that I made was so new and felt so good. I never experienced something like that as a kid. I remember since then I just started drawing, drawing, drawing. I couldn’t stop.

Venus: A lot of people think about rappers doing this annoying thing where they start their career rapping, and then they want to branch out and make stuff (even though it’s not always that good). But for you, it was the opposite.

“I went to school with goth kids, gay kids, black kids, white kids, Chinese kids that did graffiti, Brooklyn kids that rolled dice. I felt like my lunch table was the world. I did rap for fun, but I just never fathomed that it would bring me where I am today.”

Ferg: I never wanted to be a rapper.

Venus: So how did it happen?

Ferg: I was just naturally witty with words. As kids in the neighborhood, we went around battling each other. That was fun. I did it for the sport. All I knew was design, fashion, art — Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Matisse, you know what I’m saying, Salvador Dalí…that was my world. Those were my heroes. I went to school with goth kids, gay kids, black kids, white kids, Chinese kids that did graffiti, Brooklyn kids that rolled dice. I felt like my lunch table was the world. I did rap for fun, but I just never fathomed that it would bring me where I am today.

Venus: What do you remember first being influenced by creatively? Where there any specific musicians or songs that you were listening to back then?

Ferg: For sure. Music for sure. I definitely remember the Biggie Smalls album as something that really influenced me, musically of course, but also visually. That was the first album cover I ever noticed in my life. I realized that people put thought into an album cover: it was a baby with the Afro. I was just like, “I will always pay attention to that album cover!”

Venus: Do you remember going to any venues or shows when you were young or in high school that would have impacted the way that you thought about music? Are there any places that exemplify New York for you?

Ferg: You’d be surprised but the truth is, not really. I’d never been to a “show” before high school. My first official concert had to be Kayne’s Glow in the Dark tour. I remember getting the tickets for about $50 each. Lupe Fiasco and N.E.R.D were in the lineup. That was an amazing show. We got front row at the Garden because my boy’s aunt worked there. So she brought us all the way to the front. I could feel the crowd and production from the stage: the breeze and the heat from the fire and all that. It was ill. Then he brought Jay‑Z out. That was my first time ever seeing Jay‑Z come out in person. That was crazy.

Venus: That’s a big moment.

“I remember and love the landscape of my childhood, the basements, roofs — the burning-hot roofs — and the vacant lots. I just love that aesthetic of New York.”

Ferg: For sure it was. But to your question, I don’t really think of any New York places that I’d go to. I remember and love the landscape of my childhood, the basements, roofs — the burning-hot roofs — and the vacant lots. I just love that aesthetic of New York. As kids, we used to play manhunt on the roof and come out through different basements, so I know all the underground basement set-ups.

Venus: That’s crazy. It’s interesting to hear you say that because it’s like you don’t have a favorite venue, you didn’t go to venues, but you heard music and New York was not experienced as a consumer. It was like just what was there and available to you, music you heard around you.

Ferg: That’s why I think I miss those times because it was way more simple. We were just being kids. We played basketball when they closed the parks. We played basketball on the garbage can. We made the best of whatever we had.

Venus: Do you feel like New York is still the place that has the most creative spirit of American cities? A lot of people still come here to chase the dream of being an artist.

Ferg: I think New York has had a lot of energy for a long time. You’ve got to think about it. You’ve really got to think about the history of this place and its artists. It creates this vibration that’s real special.

“There’s such an artistic history to this place, this concentration of creative spirit happening in Harlem and New York at large. People want to be a part of that.”

Venus: Give us the science breakdown. Why do you think we have the vibration in New York?

Ferg: Just look at Harlem. All the way back to Harlem Renaissance, with Josephine Baker first performing for mixed crowds. There were only segregated performances before. Breaking barriers and doing something different. That’s why people want to come to New York. Then you got the ’70s, with the Warriors and the Nomads and all of those gangs. People have to understand that violence happened because these neighborhoods were segregated and kids were bored, they didn’t know what to do. Hip-hop came out of that and breakdancing came out of that because they got tired of their friends getting murdered or ending up in prison. Instead of fighting, they started battling each other with words and moves.

Then you got Kool Herc and Furious Five and all of these different groups that came out of that school of hip hop which birthed Run-DMC, and then going into Big Daddy Kane and Rakim, which changed the game for hip-hop. Then you have the style and the clothes with Dapper Dan. Can’t forget about the new jack swing era. Man, the whole bad boy and Malcolm X movie. Spike Lee, the Knicks. The Broadway plays. It’s just so much. There’s such an artistic history to this place, this concentration of creative spirit happening in Harlem and New York at large. People want to be a part of that.

Venus: It’s like survival energy here. You put people in the worst conditions possible and you still figure out how to make amazing and beautiful things. I guess it’s easy to forget that it’s not like that in a lot of cities. You don’t end up with as much art and as much music, as much flair and culture as we do here. Do you think that Harlem is the heart of New York?

Ferg: Nah, I wouldn’t say that. I wouldn’t say it’s the heart of New York because Brooklyn would kill me and Staten Island and the Bronx would kill me. Man, I think New York is the heart of the world. That’s what I think.

Venus: That’s a big statement!

“I think New York is the heart of the world…. When I think about Harlem, I think about cats who get fly, get dressed up, and you can’t tell if they broke or not. They just want to feel good. We just think with our hearts.”

Ferg: I think New York is the heart. I think you need the body to move — somebody else has got to be the brain, the legs, the arms, but I think we…New York, we’re the heart. For the simple fact that we innovate, we’re brave when times need it, we’re sensitive. We have this creative energy. The vibration we were talking about.

When I think about Harlem, I think about cats who get fly, get dressed up, and you can’t tell if they broke or not. They just want to feel good. We just think with our hearts. We thinking, “Damn, what I got to do to feel good?” We’re emotional with it. I think that’s what makes us so passionate as a people to go out there and be flamboyant and be brave because we just want to wake up and feel good. We wear good colors. We smell good. We look good.

Venus: We do.

Ferg: We the heart, baby. We the heart.

Venus: What do you think about the alternative music scenes in New York? Because I feel like ASAP definitely didn’t take the “typical” sound of New York from before. A lot of people still do that: they recycle the same New York sound, mostly from the early ’90s. I think it’s interesting for people to know the story behind how you got involved in ASAP, and how that different New York vibe was created, because it is an alternative New York rap story. It wasn’t that typical kind of rap thing. It was young kids just being weird and having fun and doing some new stuff.

Ferg: Being honest, being different, being ourselves. You had Rocky, who went to school in Alabama. He brought that Southern influence. Then you had Yams, who really was a student of hip-hop as a whole. He had a PhD in hip-hop. You go to his room, you will still see every Source magazine, every XXL magazine, everything from Pimp C down to Missy. I’m a designer spirit but I’m also a battler. I was in the streets, a cappella, no beat. Then you had Nas, who was the New York flavor of the ’90s. You had Twelvyy, which also had a New York, Bronx kind of vibe. We brought all of these flavors and all of these different facets of life together and just formed the sound of ASAP.

“I like to make things that look, feel, and sound different. I’ve always wanted to take what everybody loved, but was maybe a little safe and simple, and paint over it like Basquiat did to Andy Warhol’s painting. He just went and he fucked it up.”

Venus: Do you think there’s a legacy now? Because it’s not the same as it used to be 20 years ago. Is that something that interests you personally, to kind of redefine what rap sounds like?

Ferg: Oh, hell yeah! Every chance I get, I’m trying to fuck it up. I was in the studio with Pharrell. I was like, “Man, I’m trying to fuck radio up.” He was like, “Nah, don’t try to fuck radio up. You got to fuck the culture up.” That’s just what I’m trying to do. I like to make things that look, feel, and sound different. I’ve always wanted to take what everybody loved, but was maybe a little safe and simple, and paint over it like Basquiat did to Andy Warhol’s painting. He just went and he fucked it up.

Venus: Where do you get inspired to do that? How do you develop your creative point of view when you write songs? I want to say you’re not the average voice in hip-hop. That’s not to say that you aren’t traditional in certain senses. You’re a black man from New York listening to hip-hop, but we don’t get the sense that it’s the same narrative, the same misogynistic, limited, narrative. Where does that come from?

“What’s been inspiring me lately is just silence…. I remember I used to paint for hours with no voices, no music, no nothing. I’d be in the zone. That level of concentration, being able to hear yourself think and take direction from yourself instead of all of these voices. Silence has been really my thing lately.”

Ferg: I’ve got a lot of influences from Malcolm X to Gandhi to RZA to DMX — Ruff Ryders, the whole movement, down to Jay Z and his movement. David Bowie, Missy, Busta Rhymes, Puff Daddy. Those are the influences, but what’s been inspiring me lately is just silence. People take silence for granted.

I’m in a world of noise. Everything is noisy. Even when it ain’t noisy, it’s still noisy. It’s Instagram. It’s social media. It’s all of these things that are coming at you, so you never really get to focus on what you want to focus on. I remember I used to paint for hours with no voices, no music, no nothing. I’d be in the zone. That level of concentration, being able to hear yourself think and take direction from yourself instead of all of these voices. Silence has been really my thing lately. I’m just now getting back to the noise. I went to Africa for two weeks to put uniforms on kids. That whole time, I listened to Sampha’s album. That was the only thing I listened to.

I wanted to put myself in a place where I could hear myself. I wanted to be in a meditative mind frame. That’s how I want to be with art. I want to get lost in my world for a hot second and then come back and put it on the page, put it in a verse.

Venus: Absolutely. It’s very different from how people think about creative inspiration. It’s personal, your compass, knowing which direction you’re going in, with or without any pressures, which is really important to remember.

Ferg: I feel like a lot of times people feel the need to find things—validation, inspiration, whatever—outside themselves. You end up looking past the fact that you have so much inside already. You’ve got all the answers within yourself. It’s important to stay connected to that.

“I’m trying to get every line straight. If it’s not supposed to be straight, that’s my intent. Whether it’s a line that I’m painting or a line that I’m rapping. If it’s meant for me to slur it, then it’s going to be slurred, whether it’s on the canvas or on a track.”

Venus: You said that you used to paint a lot when you were growing up and that’s how you got into music and art in general. Where are you at with visual arts right now? Do you feel like you can easily project the same ideas that you can put into a song into the canvas or another medium? A lot of people, they don’t think about it like that. They don’t think it’s the same spirit that you take into the booth that you also take to the easel.

Ferg: I am trying to really get it back to where it was flowing before and get everything back in place again. I take it serious. I’m trying to get every line straight. If it’s not supposed to be straight, that’s my intent. Whether it’s a line that I’m painting or a line that I’m rapping. If it’s meant for me to slur it, then it’s going to be slurred, whether it’s on the canvas or on a track.

Venus: Absolutely. We talked a lot about style in Harlem. We talked about your dad. We talked about your art and music. How do you feel that dress and style function within the industry? I feel like they go hand in hand, but I think, especially in this generation, people don’t take it as seriously as they used to.

Ferg: I would have to disagree. I think people take it serious; I just think some people don’t know how to dress.

[laughter]

Venus: Absolutely. You’re right.

Ferg: People can be real serious about buying their Gucci or whatever latest expensive thing they’re into. For me, style is not just Gucci or the latest fad. I’m not into fashion. I’m into style. If you have that, you can go and make some Payless shoes look right. You can make anything look good if you have style. That’s what I’m into. Your confidence will make everything else glow.

Venus: I think it’s really cool that you have this Renaissance quality to you and that you are so interested in art and creativity and all the different forms that an idea can take. For other people who want to do something similar, what do you want young people from Harlem, from New York, to think about when they read this? What’s the one piece of advice you’d give?

Ferg: I want kids to know: just be yourself. It’s cool. It’s all right to be yourself. If you want to be an artist, have people inspire you. Be influenced by all the dope and great things that are out there, but be a filter for those influences through your individuality. Be unique and pay close attention to yourself.

The other thing is know your worth. You really have to think about your creative vision and commit to staying true to it, and always have a finger on the pulse of if you’re selling out for money or any other particular interest. I remember for the first couple years of making music I was never taking money for verses, because I knew that what I had was special and I could take it further, push myself more. Even when I needed money, when I was bone broke on tour with Drake and the whole ASAP Mob and Kendrick, I didn’t take it because I knew my worth and had faith in my ideas.

So know your worth, that’s one, and two, be yourself. That would be my advice.

Venus: That leads into my last question. Now that you’ve been on the roller coaster of success, when you get home at the end of the day, when all the noise is out, actually, for real, and it’s dark outside, what are the things that are important to you as a person, as an artist?

Ferg: I think about two things. One is asking myself what I have done to make positive change and what have I done to help other people. How did I help my family, my friends, and kids looking up to me?

Two is trying to work on myself and build myself more as the person I want to be. I think about what I’ve learned and how I’ve built myself. I think about my voyage. The kid from Harlem that used to play basketball on the garbage cans, slept on the mattress with the itchy sheets, you know what I’m saying? Now I’m in a moment of…

Venus: …Reflection?

Ferg: Yeah, it’s just reflection time. Just thinking about the before and after. And being prepared for what’s coming next. The game is just beginning.

Join us for Warm Up 2017! MoMA PS1’s pioneering Warm Up outdoor music series celebrates its 20th season this year, with 10 Saturdays presenting the best in live and electronic music — both local and global — across a range of genres. Warm Up takes place every weekend from July 1 to September 2, featuring a lineup of emerging and established artists. Highlights include Jackmaster, ASAP Ferg, ACTRESS, Moor Mother, Laurel Halo, Mike Q, John Maus, Cardi B, Sophie, Jacques Greene, RP Boo, and collaborations between Total Freedom and Ryan Trecartin as well as inc. with Ian Isiah. Additional artists will be announced throughout the summer.

About Creative New York and Acknowledgements

Creative New York is a digital project from MoMA’s PopRally program. Through original words and visuals, we share the unique perspectives of the countless artists, musicians, and creatives that animate New York City’s vibrant cultural landscape.

This interview was produced and edited by Anna Luisa Vallifuoco and Zina Reed.

Special thanks to Taja Cheek, Molly Kurzius, and the entire MoMA PS1 team.

Creative New York Summer Edition: ASAP Ferg and Warm Up Curator Venus X was originally published in Creative New York on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.