Moderator: Frank Meegan
Jacob Cupps, “Countersurvelliant Sampling in King Vision Ultra & Algiers’ SHOOK WORLD”
From the use of AI for sample detection to the admission of rap lyrics as evidence in
criminal trials, the last decade has seen a renewal of surveillant attitudes towards hip-hop’s
cultural practices, concurrent with a right-wing authoritarian shift in US politics. This paper
examines one type of disruption in the face of this return, emergent in the musical practice
of the Brooklyn-based DJ and producer King Vision Ultra. Theorizing in dialogue with the
artist, I combine my interviews with KVU and close readings of several tracks from his LP
SHOOK WORLD (2023), a collaboration with the post-punk band Algiers, to demonstrate
how sampling within the “sonic lineage” of a hip-hop tradition can at once affirm and protect
the cultures most directly impacted by this authoritarian shift while agitating and
undermining its attendant logics.
My analysis highlights the diversity of sampling’s discursive functions. On SHOOK
WORLD, some “stolen” instrumental samples pay homage to a musical artist or style while
others aesthetically indict the artist that recorded them; some spoken samples espouse
beliefs congruent with the artists’ decolonial, collectivist worldview while others document
the various ideologies justifying the forms of state violence increasingly carried out in the
New York subway system. None of these sampling practices are new, per se: indeed,
foundational hip-hop studies texts document these overlapping discursive functions during
digital sampling’s adolescence (Rose 1994; Schloss 2004). However, their continued use
attests to hip-hop’s current subcultural practitioners’ ability to retain some capacity to thwart
cultural forces of surveillance and authoritarianism, even as hip-hop has attained its own
form of cultural ubiquity. Although narrating this dominant/subcultural split risks
romanticizing hip-hop as an ever-insurgent cultural practice, I alternatively conclude that this
dissonant coexistence supports Greg Tate’s (1996) observation that hip-hop is “perverse
logic of late capitalism pursued by an art form.”
Frank Meegan, “Freak Fashion and New York Independent Music:
Utopias of Obscured Identity”
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the New York independent rock scene has
metamorphized to host multiple genres at the same venues, including rock, electronic, and
experimental music. Despite the scene’s mutations, New York independent musicians and
organizers continue to forge connections in art and fashion worlds. Many New York musicians
are visual artists and, in recent years, some Brooklyn music scene participants have adopted
freak fashion as a creative expression. Nightlife-goers known as “freaks” dress in extreme
garb and cultivate aesthetics drawn from performance art, while celebrating gender
inclusivity and racial diversity. These revelers sometimes wear clown face paint or
makeup that subverts human features. Some have body-modifications and others wear
grotesque outfits influenced by science fiction. Freak theorist Renate Lorenz argues that
freak fashion can be seen as a radical practice within queer and camp cultures as it
challenges and obscures foundational assumptions, norms, and limits of the self, of
identity, and of the body.
This paper contributes to freak theory by considering the relationship between
freak fashion, artistic expression, and musical practice in New York. Local scene
participants use new media platforms like Instagram to promote their fashion
experiments, which can dovetail with musical careers and record promotion. Musicians
perform at Do-it-Yourself (DIY) venues that exhibit sculpture, painting, and multi-media
performance to foster an elevated and unconventional atmosphere that confounds
spatial and temporal norms. I feature musician and costume designer Lust$ickPuppy,
whose music practice and fashion design challenge conventional identity as they create
music that redefines punk. I show how freak fashion, visual expression, and music
practice embody utopian ideals that manifest at DIY venues, in the local New York
scene, and online.
Chi Chi Thalken, “Dystopian Swagger: The Style of New York’s Underground Hip Hop
Scene in the ‘90s”
When independent New York hip hop trio Company Flow dropped their album, Funcrusher Plus,
in 1997, a lot of new things came to the forefront – business models, production techniques,
lyrical subject matter, and flow. Another aspect that deserves just as much discussion is the
look of this new branch of hip hop. From the sci-fi/dystopian artwork of artists like Matty Doo,
who designed the covers of Organized Konfusion’s Extinction Agenda and Company Flow’s
Funcrusher Plus, to the incorporation of comic art by Keo X-Men for Operation Doomsday, to
the minimal abstract art of M. Sayyid for Antipop Consortium, there was a distinct look within
this new branch of hip hop that both paid respect to hip hop’s roots while also pushing it in new,
unexplored directions. In this presentation, I will be examining the look of Underground hip hop
in New York’s scene of the mid to late ‘90s, talking with both the graphic designers, graffiti
artists, and musical artists who helped shaped this new niche of hip hop and give it a visual
language that matched its audible style. We’ll dive into the unique influences that converged to
make all this happen, but also explore the set of circumstances around technological
development that also shaped the look.
