Thula Baba

Pt. 1

Seated on a terrace with French journalist Mouloud on a particularly summer day in Paris is seated Jacque Webster. He’s just been handed a French book about a black boy in South America in the 1950s, the boy in the book is called Jacque. It’s a 23 minute interview. One of the few, the most telling where the interviewer pushes no real particular motive. He’s not being asked about Rihanna, not about beefing with A$AP Rocky, he has been asked to define himself, his journey and where he sees himself situated in hip hop right now. At 23, he’s somewhat of an anomaly.

Breaking down the chosen stage name “Travis Scott” on its own is revealing. Travis, a name of an uncle whom Jacque he dedicates so much of his success to whilst Scott could be his way of paying homage to his music idol and one time label mate, Scott Mescudi.  Both are points that will be a constant in Jacque’s carefully constructed persona, Travis Scott. At one moment Travis looks Mouloud in the eyes and tells him about why he does this music shit. “I have a little sister. I have an autistic older brother. He’s 30 years old and he can’t talk. But do you understand that’s who mentored me, who taught me how to walk. He can’t talk but he taught me how to walk. And my mom, my mom can barely walk. I mean it’s not like we make sad music and shit but that’s why we do it”. It’s a line that makes sense of his work ethic, a work ethic that has made this 23 year old relatively new comer become one of the most sought out rapper/producers.

“The one known as Jacque turned to Scott”

It took three reworking’s before Owl Pharaoh dropped in 2013. By the time it did, he had been signed both to Grand Hustle as an artist and G.O.O.D Music as an in house producer. He had featured everywhere from Jay Z’s Magna Carter Holy Grail’s standout hit “Crown” to directly influencing the sound of Yeezus. Owl Pharaoh featured a full roster of some of hip hop’s biggest producer names by the time it was released. The likes of WondaGurl, Mike Dean, Allen Ritter, Young Chop, Toro y Moi, Kanye West and Travis Scott himself. The masses were divided. Many said it was a copy paste of Yeezus, whilst others said that Yeezus was a copy paste submit your paper as mine before you do to Scott’s sound. The nature of the relationship between Yeezus and Owl Pharaoh allowed the other to exist. Whichever route one chooses to take both acknowledge that the result was a project that amplified the role that production played in a song. Magnified. Re-defined, revolutionized.

The process of making Owl Pharaoh seemed to be a tedious affair. After Jacque signed as an in-house producer, as we know with G.O.O.D Music, everybody’s energy was completely dedicated to Cruel Summer with Yeezus set to release in relatively quick succession of it. Working on Cruel Summer and Yeezus also set back the release date for his project. For Jacque, it seems the only evidence of this time leaving a last impression on him is how whilst on his Rodeo tour, with frequent collaborators Young Thug and Metro Boomin’, his verse on Sin City is on the shows’ performance line up. The verse was somewhat prophetic of what was to come from the relatively unknown artist Travi$ Scott.

On the balcony Mouloud asks Travis about how he views himself as a rapper. Jacque, pulls a somewhat agitated look on his face, “don’t call me a rapper. Like what some of these rapper guys do is corny. Like I’m not a rapper”. Imploring Jacque to expand on this point, Mouloud asks him about his writing process and is quickly interrupted. “Like I don’t sit in my fucking house with a guitar and write, like I’m goddam Taylor Swift and some shit. Folk tales and shit. .. If I told you the real story behind why Antidote and Impossible came about like it would be a limb blast. But I must tell you, man, I was in a moment I was feeling lit and shit and then some shit happened there was an certain absence for like two weeks, a week and I just felt like by myself and then I sat in the studio for like five days and just went in. I freestyled the whole shit. One take. All the way up until the second verse. My third verse I came back from Dallas and did my the chorus”. Jacque then proceeds to mumble hum the tune of the song. It’s the not the first time this technique of his has been referred to.  

In one of Metro Boomin’s recoded studio sessions with the making of Skyfall, mumble like lyrics are then used for the beat to fit around. It’s maybe two minutes later and he’s by the mic singing the melody and a moment later him and Metro are jumping in celebration as “I’m trapped in my conscious/my trap is still bunky/look at all of these hundreds/hit up the hood pharmacist/he serve all the muddy/might shoot at your buddy/who shot at my buddy”. It’s one of the few songs that a more elaborate meaning is held. His rap style is something that has managed to catch us all off guard. Every song of his makes sense but it hasn’t made a point to communicate some supposedly deep meaning concept. Though Skyfall is one of the exceptions, simply one needs to understand that the song isn’t about drugs but rather rappers. “I don’t want to buy no more/ your shit ain’t getting me high no more” is speaking to some of the old heads that fell off.

Owl Pharaoh was a process and it took being reworked thrice before it was made public to the rest of the world. What it mostly comes off as is a sort of ode to the state of rap music as it was more than necessarily an introduction of “Travis Scott”. It served as a homage, an experience of someone trying to find his footing. It was adolescent angst.

Was it a cohesive? As an entire project, yes. Solely based on lyrics? No. Up until that point mainstream hip hop revolved around the art of storytelling. Rhymes that fit the beat that told a story, which matched the tempo. Examples of this “wave” lies in he likes of almost everyone in the 2011/2012/2013. People’s distain for Yeezus and ultimate instinctual urge to reject Travis Scott was rooted in both projects’ lack of coherence.

What Owl Pharaoh did was demonstrate his ability to knit bars together that had nothing to do with the bars just above them yet still maintained the fluidity of a verse. It felt, and to an extent it still feels like, the verses are always secondary to the actual sound of the song, verses almost serving as an accessory. Whilst the verse does not always serve as the most poignant element of the song, it still is incredible how that same intricate beat is reworked again to fit around the same bars that make little to no sense, or can be read as empty, which allows the song to sound polished, well-constructed, catchy. Good. It is masterfully executed each time and something that has remained something that is unique only to him. An example of this is Drive that features James Flaunteroy.

Blocka La Flame was his own rendition of Pusha T’s “Blocka” off his mixtape Wrath of Caine, a song which Jacque had crooned the hook of. The move was risky but it seemed to pay off. But taking it on he managed to display his willingness to be accepted into the rap elite but with a conditional outsider/ different opinion having status within these structures, it’s an ongoing conversation he’s having with good music.

Hell of a Night was a case of, “if I had done this, this was how I might have done it”, rendition to Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Instead of a celebratory attitude to dysfunctional chaos, it was an almost muted mourning. Where Kanye got into the details of his emotions whilst simultaneously experiencing and watching something beautiful fall apart, Travis Scott simply said that something was falling apart and left it at that. If a contrast can be made between the two, it certainly is that. Both throw themselves in the act the song dictates, where Kanye bleats his pain Travis chooses beat it all out on the drums.

Though Kid Cudi made no appearance on any of the songs on Owl Pharaoh, his presence was felt all over the body. It came in the form of “Kid Cudi type humming” and the awkward shy and insecure approach to this project that Cudi had himself displayed on his albums Man on the Moon I and Man on the Moon II. Dance on the moon might as well as been a song by Soctt Mescudi himself. Perhaps Dance on the Moon and the hums were displays of guilt. It’s no secret that Kanye and Cudi stopped seeing eye to eye around about the same time Travis Scott entered the picture and ultimately it could be the reason why the two are yet to collaborate. But I digress.

Dear Gerhard, A classmate of mine in university once told me that he saw every design project as having a life of it’s own. Brainstorming was like the conception. The execution (and the problem-solving that it entailed) were the formative years which could either bring you closer to the initial vision you had or take you on a wondrously different path altogether. The production and the photographs taken of the finished piece in-situ (a snapshot of it in the context which it was designed for, often with misleading or no commentary added whatsoever) were like… the self-actualized years; the piece is finished and at peace with what it has become - flaws and all.  The presentation of the piece from inception to it’s end and it’s subsequent publication (whether it be online or wherever) was akin to a memorial service – and the better the piece, the more deserving it was of a memorial service that reflected the beautiful life it had. It’s a beautiful analogy, one that I agreed with wholeheartedly - and though our peers may not articulate it as such - I feel like it’s the most pervasive method of approaching design and illustration these days. My views on it have shifted a bit since then, though.  It’s not that I don’t believe that every piece has a life of it’s own, in fact I believe that to be true now more than ever. Despite the insistence of most practicioners within the visual arts, the work we produce is indeed a reflection of our politics. It is my belief that we can no more separate our work from ourselves anymore than we can separate ourselves from the world we live in, and if you’ve read “Education for Critical Consciousness” by Paulo Freire then you will know that he contends that human beings are not only *in the world, but *with the world (1), which I agree with completely by the way. We consume and reproduce all of the beauty and ugliness that our world has to offer, and whilst I do not believe in the existence of the soul, I think that that beauty and ugliness forms the core of the work you and I create. The tools of visual language we use such as colour, line, rhythm, symbols, patterns, references, etc can help create performative aspects of our works’ identity. Through them we can create traits (or emphasize those already apparent within our politics such as gender, ethnicity and even moods) within visual texts. For better or worse, your work is every bit a person as you are. So the analogy I gave no longer resonates with me not because I don’t think our artefacts have a life of their own, but rather because I think it’s life actually only begins with it’s interaction with the world and also that it is not up to the creators to decide when it dies. I cannot say with complete certainty what your intentions behind making the “Zuma Says It’s Ok” piece were, but with the help of some basic Cultural Theory tools and our adept knowledge of the mechanics of visual language we can however speculate. Malcolm Barnard’s old adage that design is a form of visual communication (2) is rarely ever reflected in the South African work that gets produced. I often feel like we’re just walking up to strangers shouting insults, commands, opinions and secrets at them and then walking away before they even get a chance to respond. Most of the time we’re either subjecting people to work we have made for ourselves or making work for and about people we know nothing about. People who we actually refuse to learn anything about. Surely this isn’t communication, how could it be? Taking advantage of our access to the means of cultural production to talk down to those who don’t isn’t communication, it’s cultural hegemony.  I was looking for a definition of what culture is and I found a great one by Elsie Cotter in “Culture, Subcultures & Hegemony" where they talk about the duality at the heart of it’s complexity and how although it cherishes critical thinking, it is also “susceptible to social power relations” and ultimately the site where “human agency and hegemonic processes meet” (3). What this means in a society as misogynoirist, anti-poor, cissexist and ableist (amongst many other ills) as ours is that unless visual practicioners make a concerted effort to problematize every aspect of their lives, and by extension, the texts they produce, their work is bound to embody the very worst aspects our society has to offer. I’m a follower and fan of (most of) your work, so I’ve been aware of the piece since you posted it on your Behance page in about April or May, but despite the amount of time I’ve had to process and engage with it, it still makes no sense to me. The only context you gave to the piece on your Behance page was, “The exhibition was themed around the South African “State of the Nation Address” by our incompetent, corrupt president Jacob Zuma” (4). I understand the illustration to be saying that Jacob Zuma condones something, but when I hold the visual cues you’ve used up against the material realities of our country I find it impossible to discern what the image is trying to get at. Is this supposed to be about violence? Is this supposed to be about crime? And if so, who or maybe what are we supposed to feel unsafe from? I can only assume that the viewer is supposed to fear or hate the figure depicted in the illustration & therefore be critical of the President because he supposedly approves of this person or what they represent. If this is the case, thankfully you’ve left us some clues as to the identity of this character – even if when put together those clues don’t mean what I think you think they mean. Firstly I’d like to look at the markings on the figure’s skin. The naïve line markings on the figure’s skin are suggestive of – some even flat-out referencing pre-existing –tattoos/”chappies” predominantly seen on ex/gang members within the so-called-Coloured community. I wonder if you’re aware that transposing those tattoos onto a figure wielding an AK-47 reinforces already existing racist stereotypes about so-called-Coloured people as being hyper-violent ‘skollies’. Your illustration doesn’t seem to be concerned that these South Africans have had to endure brutality at the hands of exploitative Western Cape farm owners, intra-communal gender violence or enslavement and torture by Cape colonizers, and instead carries on the tradition of cultural genocide by reducing them to a violent trope of hyper-masculinity. The second visual cue I picked up on was what appears to be a Keffiyeh worn by the figure. In an article titled “Why We Wear the Keffiyeh”, Nerdeen Kiswani writes about how it came to be worn in the 1930’s as a sign of solidarity for Palestinians in resistance against Zionist assholes (5). And yet despite it’s noble beginnings, our society’s relationship with it for the most part vacillates between it being crudely worn as a fashion statement to it being perceived as an indicator of the wearer’s support of terrorism. In light of this I wonder about the intention behind putting such a strong Islamic and cultural signifier as the Keffiyeh onto a figure brandishing a machine gun. The prevalence of this kind of depiction is addressed in Dr Shahram Akbarzadeh and Dr Bianca Smith’s paper titled “The Representations of Islam and Muslims in the Media” (6). They point out that media representations of Islam are fixated on the portrayal of Muslim people as men with beards and machine guns and ‘oppressed’ women dressed in hijabs and burkas. Kiswani even recalls an instance where just the sight of her wearing the Keffiyeh was enough for her to be vilified as a terrorist: “On my campus, a middle-aged male professor approached me, along with four other Palestinian women wearing the Keffiyeh and said, “Don’t shoot me.” From where I stand, the Orientalist connotations in your illustration bolster the Islamophobic depictions which can, have, and continue to have dire consequences for not only Muslims, but also those perceived to be Muslim because of their ethnicity. So through the visual cues you’ve provided I can so far discern that the viewer is to believe that this character is a terrorist with affiliations to so-called-Coloured gangs and Islamic extremists… Ok. The last cue I’d like to address is the pose of the figure (I’m too exhausted to get into the blanket with Ndebele patterns wrapped around his waist.). The pose is obviously a reference to Pieter Hugo’s photographic series of Nigerian men with hyenas, right? Except that you’ve put a pitbull in place of a hyena (an allusion to dog fighting and the so-called-Coloured community which it’s predominantly associated with, just a ‘cool’ pose, or both?). Apart from the pose, your piece and Hugo’s series do share a similar trait: both your works play on colonial notions of black male identity. They both frame black masculinity as uncivilized, unthinking and savage. Though, I must be honest, Pieter Hugo pulls off the illusion of objectivity significantly better than you do. He presents the image and leaves it up to our minds and centuries’ worth of racist narratives around the nature and value of black masculinity to complete the story. An uncritical viewer might be led to believe that perhaps all of those notions arounf Black African men might have some truth to them. It’s nuanced in it’s manipulation. Your piece however; the pose, the snarl, the tattoos, the Keffiyeh, the pitbull, the text, the Kalashnikov, goes so far out of it’s way to declare it’s feelings known about identities outside of whiteness. So much so that it discards it’s original aim along the way. The aim – to show how President Jacob Zuma should be held accountable for the high levels of violent crime plaguing our country – in my opinion is a valid one. But why have you gone about doing this by collecting as many violent traits and stereotypes within communities of colour that you could find? Because what it ends up being is a Frankenstein’s monster that exhibits the same notions of Black masculinity that were created to morally justify colonialism. The piece speaks more to a fear of masculinity outside of whiteness, the “swart gevaar”, than it does to the incompetency of the President. The more I tried to figure out “Zuma Says It’s Ok”, the more I certain I became this was the product of an irrational fear of People of Colour masquerading as political commentary. I tried to imagine an alternative reading, one where you were perhaps using symbols and codes that imply brutality, to create a short hand for violence on a broader scale and not actually vilifying the communities which we associate with those references. But if that was the case then why is it that none of the references for violence that you draw from are associated White people? Is it your belief that White people are not capable of violence? Or can you not fathom that the historical legacy of White people in South Africa’s propensity towards violence as criminal? If the intent was to personify a non-racialized violence then why haven’t you referenced the Afrikaner nationals who till this day call Black people kaffirs with no repercussions whatsoever? Where are the private school predominantly White all-boys clubs that glorify toxic masculinity? Where are Tim Osrin and De Klerk? The fact that most of those forms of violence aren’t criminalized should suggest to you that those are the types that the State condones. I came across an article that interrogates South African racialized fears called “A new apartheid? The spatial implications of fear of crime in Cape Town, South Africa” by Charlotte Lemanski (7). In it they state that “the racist fear of “other”” is a huge motivation for the segregation of living spaces, and that this same “fear of difference formed the crux of popular phrases used to justify apartheid, such as “swart gevaar” (black danger) and “skollie menace” (scoundrel coloureds).” Your illustration definitely ties into that, and maybe I should be angry about it, but if anything it actually leaves me exhausted. The amount of effort extolled into conjuring up this idea of the violent Other is intense. Isn’t the slathering on of not one, or two but four separate identities from People of Colour across the world just to make sure that your fears are legitimized tiring? I don’t know if it’s because of the lines you’ve got radiating off the focal image, but it feels like it’s in this perpetual state of panic. Hyperventilating even. Totally consumed by the task of convincing others and itself that it’s justified in it’s malice. And I wonder… Is that what being contractually bound to whiteness feels like? I can definitely say I feel that way about patriarchy; to be invested in it feels like a constant sprint with your eyes fixed on a point just beyond your grasp. On either side of you is reality; the world outside of your privilege, but the only way the contract and our benefits from it, remain valid is by moving at a ridiculous pace and blur out everything in the periphery. I think that’s the reason why we always talk about crime in such a superficial way. Because if we had to talk about crime in a structural way then we would have to acknowledge that it’s catalyzed by inequality. And that our privilege directly implicates us in their poverty. And the thing is, Zuma says it’s ok. The State condones it through their actions. The State’s only allegiance is to capital and those who have it. Their response to the most recent rise in student protests, gentrification and mass evictions and Marikana have shown us that. And a State built on an anti-poor, misogynoirist policies thrives off of concepts such as White paranoia. I’d like to leave you with a passage from “Education for Critical Consciousness” that you might find valuable” “As men emerge from time, discover temporality, and free themselvesfrom “today,” their relations with the world become impregnated withconsequence. The normal role of human beings in and with the world isnot a passive one. Because they are not limited to the natural (biological)sphere but participate in the creative dimension as well, men canintervene in reality in order to change it. Inheriting acquired experience,creating and re-creating, integrating themselves into their context,responding to its challenges, objectifying themselves, discerning, transcending,men enter into the domain which is theirs exclusively-that ofHistory and of Culture. Integration with one’s context, as distinguished from adaptation, is adistinctively human activity. Integration results from the capacity toadapt oneself to reality plus the critical capacity to make choices and totransform that reality. To the extent that man loses his ability to makechoices and is subjected to the choices of others, to the extent thathis decisions are no longer his own because they result from externalprescriptions, he is no longer integrated. Rather, he has adapted. He has"adjusted.“ Unpliant men, with a revolutionary spirit, are often termed"maladjusted.”