Shirt the Rapper
How Shirt the Rapper made a fake New York Times article and site to promote his rap album. Inadvertently it paved the way for the high school dropout to get an MFA.
Discipline: Music, Apparel, Painting, Conceptual Art
The Queen’s New York-born rapper not only had an obsession with rapping at a young age but also had a fascination with conceptual and visual art. His influences include Marcel Duchamp, John Baldessari, and Jackson Pollock. Back in 2014, he gained notoriety when he created a fake New York Times article reviewing his debut album, RAP within an entirely fake New York Times site that spread and as it was quickly reshared. Shirt creatively bought the domain name www.nytimes.la. A very slight change where people might not realize it’s not a .com at a glance. For the article, he co-opted the writing style of NYT’s staff music reviewer Jon Caramanica, who validates indie musical acts with his reviews. Shirt pieced together sentences and paragraphs from past Caramanica articles. The stunt was part performance art, and part culture jamming. His inspiration for doing this was the poet Kenneth Goldsmith. One of Goldsmith’s tenets is that enough great writing has already been done in the world and now it’s more about curating ideas and texts to get your point across (1). Shirt lists Kenneth Goldsmith and Biggie as his inspirations in the fake article. He even references Goldsmith on his track Flight Home from his recent album, “Goldsmith taught me to copy, so I crossed seas, Look at me dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s.”
Shirt’s body of work goes beyond rap. It includes painting, videos and clothing. When it comes to his music it’s not enough to just make the music but to create all the visual elements around it, the art, the videos, the marketing. He’s made a cult classic series of shirts with both by placing both Adidas and Nike logos right beside each other as is. Essentially creating what would be the world’s greatest streetwear collaboration that could never be. According to Shirt, people have always done some kind of bootleg with sportswear graphics, “But I felt like, and I Googled it, no one had ever to my knowledge, put the logos as is next to each other. And I felt that’s a t-shirt that has to exist. I’m gonna do it.” He made one and wore it out. With the reaction alone he knew he had to go make more. People would stop Shirt in the street and ask about it. He also recalls a guy across the street spotting and him and shouting, “There’s hope for the world yet, Adidas and Nike working together.” This work spawned a series of paintings and a pop-up art exhibition. The insight he got from making the bootleg tees was by putting the logos together it made people feel like there’s hope in the world given the fierce rivalry the two brands have. The brilliance of it was his timing, with bootleg DIY t-shirt creation on the rise, sneaker culture becoming mainstream, and limited edition collaborations being sought out not only by reseller and sportswear devotees, is why the shirts were so readily accepted by the community (2).
A year after Shirt’s fake New York Times article stunt he attended a lecture that Kenneth Goldsmith was giving at New York’s School of Visual Arts. After the lecture Shirt waited in line to speak with Goldsmith, upon introducing himself as Shirt, Goldsmith had to double check he heard him right and asked for his name again. He then asked if he was the Shirt that was responsible for the New York Times article. Unbeknownst to Shirt, Kenneth had friends at the New York Times that forwarded him the stunt. He loved it. Immediately on confirmation, Goldsmith turned to the remaining people in the room from the talk announcing “this is Shirt the rapper!” The following day they had lunch where Shirt took Goldsmith through his entire body of work, the paintings, the t-shirts, the music which lead the professor to invite him to lecture to his masters writing program students at Penn. Shirt would take the students through the body of work just as he had for Goldsmith. Goldsmith finally asked the class should Shirt get an MFA? The students told him no, not because he wasn’t worthy of it but because he already had a body of work he amassed without schooling (3).
Following the lecture, Kenneth asked Shirt if he wanted to get an MFA. Shirt’s response was disbelief, “How can I do that? I’m a high school dropout with a GED.” Also, he lacked an undergraduate degree. To which Goldsmith responded, for Masters of Fine Arts degrees it’s all about the portfolio review. Kenneth reminded Shirt that he had a great portfolio with a ton of work. Goldsmith would not only introduce him to the head of the MFA program at a school in Switzerland but wrote him a stellar recommendation which got him into the program. Upon moving to Switzerland and settling into campus Shirt realized the school had a state of the art recording facility that no one ever used. This is where Shirt would record and complete his next album Pure Beauty (4).
Upon completing the album during a brief visit to Los Angeles, he thought he’d be able to use his current body of work as a calling card again. He wanted to meet another one of his idols. This time it was the Venice based conceptual artist John Baldessari. He felt like it was the right time to reach out and try to meet him because in addition to his work he also had a new story about getting into an MFA program. He found John Baldessari’s studio email address on his website, the standard “info@“ email address, which was a shot in the dark as “info@” email addresses rarely get answered. Two hours later he got a response from John’s people stating that they’d like to meet him and two days later he was in front of Baldessari. Shirt played his new album for Baldessari and told him about the album name Pure Beauty, which consequently, is also the name of one John’s famous pieces. Shirt’s initial intention was to use the name, but Baldessari approved the use of not only the name but his artwork as well. He’d pay homage to Baldessari again the following day in Los Angeles with an art gallery pop up that also doubled as a listening party for his new album. For the show, he recreated one of Baldessari’s performance pieces. Instead of writing Baldessari’s “I will not make any more boring art” repeatedly, he put his putting his spin on it by painting, “I will not make any more boring rap” all over the walls (5).
On the verge of self-publishing, his new album to iTunes Shirt got a direct message from the Third Man Records team asking if he had anything coming up. Third Man Record’s is the record label of Jack White of the White Stripes. He said coincidently enough he was getting ready to publish his album live to iTunes. They asked him if he could take it down because they wanted to sign him. He not only got signed but he is the first rapper signed to Third Man Records (6).
Shirt’s story not only reminds me that it’s critical to keep making as your output is your ultimate business card or resume for that matter. You get hired for the work that you already do. And if you have a body of work you have every right to ask for meetings. Even cold asks. Always try and work with your idols. It’s been a Rick Rubin strategy throughout his career. The relentless approach to creating builds momentum and at the end of the day, if you don’t get paid for it, you’re not empty-handed. You still have the art that you wanted to create.
References
1. Castillo, Arielle. “Meet Shirt, the Rapper Who Faked the New York Times.” Splinter, Splinternews.com, 24 July 2017, splinternews.com/meet-shirt-the-rapper-who-faked-the-new-york-times-1793840792.
2. Staple, Jeff. “Business of HYPE With Jeff Staple, Episode 13: Shirt, Rapper, Artist, Maker of Things.” HYPEBEAST, HYPEBEAST, hypebeast.com/2018/7/shirt-rapper-interview-jeffstaple-business-of-hype-episode-13.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid
6. Ibid
Originally published at blog.viktorbezic.com.
