Mo’ Wax — Where Are They Now: Divine Styler (2000)
Mo’ Wax was a record label started by James Lavelle in 1992, which closed about ten years later. Initially they released 12" singles and licensed a compilation from Japan of Japanese Hip Hop, until 1994 when they began releasing albums of their artists original work. While some of these artists such as DJ Shadow, DJ Krush, and Money Mark continued releasing music after Mo’ Wax closed, others have seemingly disappeared from the music scene. In this series I will look at each artist on Mo’ Wax and try to find out where are they now…
Divine Styler is Mark Richardson, whose first releases under his Divine Styler alias arrived in 1989. He would later appear on Mo’Wax in 2000.
Mark Richardson grew up in New York surrounded by music thanks to his father Rick Richardson, who was a DJ on the radio and in clubs. Later, when he was a teenager, Mark Richardson discovered Hip Hop, though as he told Urb Magazine in their June 2000 issue, “What they call hip hop today is really completely 360 from what was going on when I was a kid…It wasn’t defined. It wasn’t called hip hop and each borough had its own version of it. There weren’t four elements that made you a b-boy. It was just kids coming outside and living life. And the life they lived was a struggle.” When the still young Mark Richardson started getting in too much trouble around New York, his parents sent him to California where he later met Ice T and his Rhyme Syndicate, a collective of artists linked to Ice T’s Rhyme $yndicate record label.
In October 1989 Divine Styler released his debut album World Power on Rhyme $yndicate, and in the USA it reached #62 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums Chart, while his single Ain’t Saying Nothin’ peaked at #10 on the Billboard Hot Rap Song Chart.
Following World Power, Divine Styler began working on his next album, which was influenced by Jimi Hendrix, and featured Divine Styler playing guitar. This led to his record label, Giant, being unsure what to do with it, and he was moved between their Hip Hop and Alternative music departments prior to the new albums release. Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light was released in March 1991, and at the time Wendell Greene, West Coast director of A&R for Giant, told Billboard (2 May 1992) “He’s ahead of his time…But when people see him perform he will touch a chord.”
The album was described as “a stream of consciousness that eddies from spacey echoes to hard rock to enigmatic whispers, closer in spirit to Jimi Hendrix and Sun Ra than to most schools of rap”, and Divine Styler found himself labelled as “alternative rap” alongside Arrested Development, Me Phi Me, and the Baseheads. Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light sold poorly, but was later recognised as essential, and All Music consider it Divine Styler’s best work, writing:
Arguably the most undeservedly ignored hip-hop release of the early ’90s, Spiral Walls is a mind-blowing, astonishing album that glitters like a dark jewel, equally nightmarish and astonishingly beautiful. Regardless of the work Styler did before or since, here he completely resisted categorization throughout — and even more amazingly, he did so on a disc released via a major label…Spiral Walls in the end is the album Prince could only wish to make in the ’90s — all-encompassing, spiritual, disturbing, and never, ever boring, a true lost classic.
Divine Styler later recalled the albums reaction, telling Bandcamp, “That album pissed everyone off. That was when I officially got my hip-hop card revoked. I transitioned from hip-hop to this alternative music world.”
Following Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light, Divine Styler disappeared, which led one fan in Canada to create a fanzine called In Search of Divine Styler. Eventually Divine Styler found out about the zine and performed a show in Toronto, Canada as a result, and when the zine was later compiled into a book he also contributed an outro.
In the meantime Divine Styler was working on his next album, and in March 1998 Muzik reviewed his latest single Before Mecca, which was self released on DTX, Divine Styler’s own label, and only available as an import from the USA. The single preceded the release of a new Divine Styler album, Directrix: World Styler Volume 2 which was also released on DTX in 1998 before it was licensed to Mo’ Wax and released in the UK at the beginning of 2000.
Prior to this, Divine Styler took part in another Mo’ Wax release in 1999, Quannum Spectrum, a collaborative album from the Quannum Projects label which featured DJ Shadow, Blackalicious, and other members of the Solesides / Quannum crew. It was reportedly his appearance on Quannum Spectrum which brought Divine Styler to attention of James Lavelle, with Divine Styler telling Excalaim, “When he heard that and he knew my past, one thing led to another…I promised myself I would never do another major record deal, and Mo’ Wax is the only kind of company I would ever sign a contract with.”
When Directrix: World Styler Volume 2 was released by Mo’ Wax in 2000 it differed from the original release, as the Mo’ Wax and DTX versions feature different artwork and packaging, as well as slightly different tracklistings, with some songs rearranged, or not included. The DTX version contains Invitation To Life, Intel, and Gift Of Love, which don’t appear on the Mo’ Wax release. Instead three new songs appear on the Mo’ Wax release, Contact 1, Contact 2, and Sound Quest. A 3xLP version was also released by Mo’ Wax which included instrumentals from the album.
Muzik gave Directrix: World Styler Volume 2 4/5 stars, calling it “almost essential”. Spin awarded it 8/10, while Exclaim wrote enthusiastically:
When Divine Styler was releasing albums back in the day he was dropping some of the most experimental, out-of-this-world hip-hop. But then he disappeared from the scene…Wordpower:2:Directrix is Divine’s ultimate full-length return, an album full of hard, underground West Coast beats produced mostly by Divine Styler with some help on a few tracks by Bilal Bashir and DJ Rhettmatic. Divine Styler and guests are experts of next level hip-hop lyricism, busting rhymes about hip-hop, religion, and space. Styles Of Beyond and Cockni O Dire drop by to show and prove why they are worthy of being down with Divine Styler, while Divine demonstrates why he should be considered the West Coast’s Rakim.
Through 2000, Mo’ Wax released Divine Styler’s Directrix as a single, followed by two 12" remix singles, Directrix (Optical Mixes), and Directrix (Dem 2 Remixes). Both the Optical Mixes and regular release were given 3/5 by Muzik, who called the original Directrix, “A bopping tune, designed for the clubs, but lacking an ingreidant to take it from an okay track to a wiked track.” Divine Styler’s second single for Mo’ Wax, Concept Design Deflon, was released on June 5 2000 as part of the Mo’ Wax Vecta series, and the single featured three new non-album songs, and artwork by Futura 2000, whose artwork was included across all four of the Vecta releases.
Following his one album and two singles for Mo’ Wax, Divine Styler returned to the studio with another album planned for Mo’ Wax. But it was over ten years later when Divine Styler returned again, and a new Divine Styler album Def Mask was released in December 2014 on Gamma Proforma. The album was followed by a free remix MP3 EP, and Def Mask Remixed, an album of remixes also available to download for free. In 2015 Divine Styler explained how Def Mask came about:
I was doing some art on Instagram. Rob [Swain] and I chatted a little bit and he wanted to use some of the art for a show he was doing. I had just started doing hip-hop demos and I gave him a couple of songs. One thing led to another and I started getting back into the swing of things. A year later he hit me up like, ‘You want to make a record?’ The reason I decided to make a record with him is that he follows in the tradition of Mo’ Wax, which is a boutique small indie label that is more art driven than monetarily driven. That always works for me…to have a company that is heavily art influenced also means the packaging is unique in a sense that it’s personal. It’s not a part of the machine. That’s what caused me to really be into it again.
Gamma Proforma re-released the Concept Design Deflon single as a free download, and also included Divine Styler on one of a series of 12" EPs by Rammellzee, featuring new remixes and artwork. Divine Styler’s remix of Brainstorm was released in 2015 and featured cover artwork by Ian Kuali’i. Other releases in the series included remixes by Sam Sever, and artwork from Futura 2000, and She One, and in 2017 a boxset was created which collected all of the remixes and artwork together, with each EP now on two 7" records.
Since Def Mask, Divine Styler has produced or featured on other peoples music but he doesn’t appear to have released any new solo works himself. In 2015 he was featured on DJ Krush’s Butterfly Effect, and in 2017 he teamed with Everlast and Sick Jacken as Warporn Industries for a self titled album. Everlast, aka Erik Schrody, and Divine Styler had first met while they were part of Ice T’s Rhyme Syndicate, and Everlast had been a member of House Of Pain. The pair have collaborated across their careers, and in 2018 Divine Styler produced and recorded Everlast’s Whitey Ford’s House Of Pain, his most recent album. Divine Styler has also produced an album for Ryu, aka Ryan Maginn, a member of Styles of Beyond, a group who Divine Styler had previously produced for and who had appeared on his Wordpower 2: Directrix album in 1998.
Regarding the lack of new music from him, in October 2020 Divine Styler posted the following to his Instagram, “The artist thing is cool but I’ve realized that being a creator in service rendering production & engineering is a bit more fulfilling in these strange times.” He would go on to add, “The last 5 yrs was a nice musical run-Stay tuned”, which we can hope means that there is new music coming in some form. Meanwhile his previous four Divine Styler albums are now available on Bandcamp, and he has appeared on enough albums and songs from other artists that you could compile an entire album from those as well.
