#m.a.a.d

© Kahlil Joseph, Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

m.A.A.d., 2014

GOODNESS CHAPS

It’s that time again. Top songs of the week eh. Well, I don’t know about anyone else but I’ve got no idea what week it is let alone day or month so perhaps we’ll scrap that little feature but not so ruthlessly that it gets dropped as the convenient format kickstarter for my blog.

In other music discussion:

Kendrick Lamar.

He’s really popped up these last few years/decade or whatever time frame is the right one.

Wasn’t a huge fan of Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe. And I mean I wasn’t a huge fan in the sense that I didn’t constantly listen to it or have a shrine or whatever, not that there was an aversion to the song.

To Pimp A Butterfly however. I am so intrigued by this album.

There’s so much to it. Objectively, as an incredibly produced sum of music that’s accessible and upbeat and just so much fun to listen to. But also as a huge piece of black history.

I’m not gonna read a couple of articles then paraphrase the information as my own so here’s an already well written link of where I’ve read such information:

https://noisey.vice.com/en_uk/article/how-kendrick-lamars-to-pimp-a-butterfly-artwork-is-the-lasting-document-of-americas-hip-hop-president

Like, I am a huge fan. As in shrine type fan with constant chantings and near religious worship, but at the same time I have my questions.

Why are the faces of the women in the album artwork covered up by hands/bottles/men’s faces etc?

Still not sure i’m on board with the whole calling women ‘bitches’ thing but am open to an explanation.

What is the meaning of King Kunta and why the references to James Brown, Michael Jackson, Johnny Burns, etc? So I know that the title references a guy from Alex Haley’s Roots which has been on my reading list for too long but I wanna know how the brain process happened that took such specific little snippets from a board of songs and sewed them back together in the craziest patchwork blanket that makes everybody wanna cut the legs off him.

m.A.A.d, 2015 (dir. Kahlil Joseph)

Brace yourself, I'll take you on a trip down memory lane 

This is the opening to the first verse of Kendrick Lamar’s “m.A.A.d city”. It brings to mind Nas’ 1994 song “Memory Lane (Sittin’ in da Park)”, in which Nas reminisces about the tumultuous days of his past living in Queensbridge. Lamar takes a similar position throughout his debut studio album - the hood poet who observes and is occasionally steeped into the environment. It’s a vivid recollection that paints images with just enough room for imagination. It’s the type of storytelling that writers cream their pants over. 

And over 3 years after the album had been released, it received a visual counterpart.

Any way you look at it, the art of making music videos is not what it once was. Video killed the radio star, and YouTube flattened the industry. So when things like Frank Ocean or Beyonce’s “visual album” come out, I see the push to make visuals once again significant to music being made in a big way. One particular short film remains, for me at least, the focal point of understanding the art of marrying music and film today.

Kahlil Joseph’s name is becoming slightly more recognizable thanks to his work on Beyonce’s Lemonade, but his other works like Flying Lotus’ “Until The Quiet Comes” and FKA twigs’ “Video Girl” have built his impressive catalogue up to this point.

M.a.a.d’s distribution remains less widespread than everything I just listed. There was no HBO special, no creator-sanctioned upload to YouTube - just a premiere at Sundance and an exhibit at the MOCA in Los Angeles. I won’t speculate too much about this choice, knowing there’s probably some “artistic grandiosity” that the creators behind the short film give to it - but I won’t be surprised if it eventually comes back online again, officially.

Two things previously said about this short that I will cite here before going forward:

the short film has been described as, "a feeling of Compton, two decades after the riots."

when asked about filming the LA community twice (for FlyLo and Kendrick respectively) director Joseph said “I shoot communities because I think there's a lot of richness there and a lot of honesty and a lot of pain. It's interesting how they deal with that pain, it's been there for centuries. And it's not fake pain. They mask it with all these layers to the point where they don't even know what they're masking.”

And so, if you’re reading this and you’re mad because you haven’t seen the short and don’t have a way to do so, don’t worry. Because I’ll describe it as I speak on aesthetics and such. (But I’ll also be flexin’ because I got to see this shit and you didn’t, HAHA!)

M.a.a.d has little to no narrative. As stated before, it’s feeling. It’s a mood collage of Kendrick Lamar’s environment growing up. Compton, California is rich with a distinct culture, and it’s on full display.

Beginning with the opening lines of “m.A.A.d city” we are thrust into kinetic energy and violence: gunfights, dancing in the kitchen with strobe lights, VHS footage of Reagan, the Rodney King riots, and tires burning out for no other reason than to help us visualize strife in the city.

There’s a notable switch of aspect ratios throughout the entire short, giving a scattered, patchwork feel throughout the 15 minutes. Portions in 4:3 with rounded corners, others in widescreen, some segments entirely in VHS format - all illustrating a different look at the community that the artists bear to the audience. There’s a “picture book” feel to it, as though you’re looking at portraits, while the widescreen portions are wholly cinematic, feeling almost surreal, jarring even. Once it depicts the upside down specters that are fixed throughout the city, it becomes apparent that its concern is not solely with documentary realism or heavy abstract symbolism, but something in between.

Kahlil Joseph masters the combination of art film and music video in an age where there’s no real demand for either. Maybe that’s part of why it’s not officially online? I don’t know, I said I wouldn’t speculate but there I go typing it down. Whoops.

The point is: the music informs the visuals. None of these images would exist without Kendrick’s coming-of-age concept album. And while you can appreciate each frame of this film on mute (or at least I could), you have to realize that they’re woven into each other in a way that only makes sense. It’s musical. It’s poetry. It’s why Kendrick will always be listed as one of the best of his generation, next to Macklemore. (Nah, I’m fucking with you.)

Maybe the best way to communicate what I’m talking about is to risk being banned and show you a snippet of the “Sing About Me” sequence. 

It has everything that Joseph to packs throughout: life, death, intimate family footage, magical realism, the city, the people, and home. Is it staged, or is it natural? Maybe both? Who knows?

I return to this short film every so often because I still haven’t figured it all out. Sometimes it’s a minute or so, sometimes almost the whole thing. I know it’s nice when you watch anything and immediately “get it,” but that’s not a requirement, and M.a.a.d is proof. I don’t get all of it and I don’t need to. It simply needs to exist, for us to stumble upon, like an installation in a museum.

I hope this kind of content is not a temporary thing. With movies and media moving where they are, it’s refreshing to see artists still putting their voices out, even in short form. Look out for whatever comes with Joseph Kahlil’s name in the future. And of course Kendrick’s name as well. Because it only comes every so often.