"What else you gon' do?"

October 30, 2016 9:02 PM

Vince Staples is interviewed by Simone White

I never wanted to be a rapper; I like to be quiet in my music. Actually, having this job, I don't know… I know that certain music made me want to feel and do stuff on the wrong side of the fence, so my whole thing is being mindful of that reality and not pretending it's not there. That's more of a responsibility where I'm from, you know? Life has a soundtrack. And certain music is a soundtrack to a certain type of identity or feeling. So what happens sometimes when you don't pay attention to what you say and what you do, like 50 Cent, the Game, and those kinds of guys—they made us feel like our lives were worth nothing, basically.

posted by the man of twists and turns (21 comments total)

I love this album, but it's not background music or easy listening or anything like that. It takes attention. Such an interesting man; I hope he has a long and interesting career.
posted by rtha at 9:42 PM on October 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

If you haven't heard it, Like it is, the albums closer, is worth a listen.
posted by lkc at 10:31 PM on October 30, 2016

Vince is an interesting cat. On several occasions, folks would walk into my place while '06 was playing and walk out needing a copy. I get that; it's how I got into it, too.

But hey, Simone White. WHO IS SHE? That was some deft work on her part (or maybe it was edited in post). When she attempts to have him unravel his relationship to the b-word and things get weird... She moves it right to a conversation on black cultural masculinity. Smooth. Looking her up and ordering some of her work tonight.
posted by artof.mulata at 10:42 PM on October 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

Some Simone White...

No Drugs, No Diseases
Simone White

The worst case scenario of inevitable return involves going home again and again. This
retrograde and fiendish instantiation of the principle of elliptical byways implies creaturely
relations.

In a recent, not bad black movie, Staggerlee's off-put butch cousin winds down the evening
in a blue jumpsuit too tight in the crotch. She smokes and revelates. He jus a reg'la DC niggah
that like to run his mouth.

I guess I got the joke because I laughed, plus, in terms of Being, reg'la DC and Philly look
about the same, which I saw demonstrated in The New Yorker the other day by way of
Barkley L. Hendricks' North Philly Niggah.*

It was beautiful, mind you. I wish people wouldn't presume to dismiss as paranoid certain
claims about cause of death. The government does kill people—just because you never saw
it happen don't make it right.

Obsession didn't come to me genetically, but Anthony has a chicken wing twitch of the right
arm. A succession of lunatic safe words whirl-a-gig the compulsive atmosphere of my
kitchen, some combination of baby talk, magic and the killing power of opium.

I haven't the stomach for adultery. Talk to me about the day's news, or better yet, put it in a
postcard because I've forgotten the sound of your voice and might hang up on you. Nothing
clears a room like cocaine and listening devices.

Sun Ra, you purple-haired madman, I saw you outside a convenience store in our hometown
coming from that Fela show everybody went to in 1986. Fuck you, old dead genius black
man.

Jesus, hair falling out in clumps, rhyme, excessive material wealth, mental incapacity, slavery,
the rectum, alternate side parking, Stanford, fried shrimp, Edgar-suit—these are the butt of
all jokes.

Give me the satisfaction of absolute attention and watch it roll down a muddy hill in a city
park. Give me a credential a porkchop a gutted boy in camouflage who smiles. Give me
some toilet paper to blow my bloody nose on. Watch Jacob the Jeweler

on his way to prison apologizing to your unapproachable America. A passport and a Nobel
Prize universal misshapen what am I chopped obnoxious ballerina without dairy toast or
cancer.


*See also my notes on Kara Walker's Philadelphia: "a black woman [in turn of the century giant
church hat] swallows whole the head of her male companion [he wears a fur coat, a simulacrum,
it seems, of the fur-collared coat swaddling the figure in Hendricks' North Philly Niggah], her jaw
swung open, nose flared, brows arched with demonic effort." What style must be gobbled in this
unearthly manner? Which persons-in-clothes will eat, and which will be eaten?
posted by artof.mulata at 11:11 PM on October 30, 2016 [7 favorites]

I'm pretty sure I didn't understand half the references in that poem, but I still loved it. Thanks.
posted by axiom at 11:15 PM on October 30, 2016

VS A lot of people have a fetish for blackness. They don't really like black people.

Like nobody likes smoking crack. They just like being high. If they could get high another way, they wouldn't smoke crack.

SW Black people and crack are the same? What are you trying to say?

VS They haven't figured another way to be obsessed with a culture.

Holy shit.
posted by shmegegge at 11:30 PM on October 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

Vince Staples is definitely one of my favorite rappers out, but I can't help but find that a lot of interviewers have a preoccupation with wanting to know his gangsta past, and it seems like every interviewer runs into the same situation when they ask. Vince has a vibrant personality and they mostly seem to stick to gothic, cynical questions and dreary personifications of him, instead of him as a funny and brilliant person. They briefly talk about him being smart, but rarely show much of it. It's sort of frustrating, because I want to sit down and hang out with Vince Staples and ask him about basketball, shoes, pop culture stuff, artworks, and of course music, but not like "music" as an interview topic.

Two of my favorite Vince Staples things:

A Chat with Vince Staples About His Mind-Blowing Ray J Theory of Everything

Vince Staples: Clippers Fan, Chris Paul Hater
posted by gucci mane at 11:38 PM on October 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

(Forgot to add, the Simone White interview is exceptionally good. I feel like the FADER interview and the Verge one may have been done on the same day or something. Had the same vibe as each other.)
posted by gucci mane at 11:39 PM on October 30, 2016

Vulture* ugh
posted by gucci mane at 11:39 PM on October 30, 2016

I had not heard of Vince Staples until a late night Youtube journey brought me to the video for Señorita, which had me saying holy shit... HOLY SHIT... from the part where I started to realize what was happening until about 20 minutes afterward when I went to seek out more. He's spits righteous fire.
posted by louche mustachio at 12:30 AM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

everybody hard until it's only God they seein'
kitten soft
but in they songs be trappin' hard as Jeezy
I don't believe it
posted by hototogisu at 3:49 AM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

If you haven't heard his 2016, EP Prima Donna, you should.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:11 AM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

Dude. I got to see him at LouFest and it was definitely a lovely thing. There's a line in his song "Lift Me Up," that says "All these white folks chanting when I asked 'em where my niggas at?/Goin' crazy, got me goin' crazy, I can't get with that/I wonder if they know I know they won't go where we kickin it..." When he sang that, all the white folks in the crown, myself included had that look on their faces of "Yeah, that's so true. We ARE assholes." But we kept grooving.

He's got a hell of a vision and a beautiful way with words. I hope he sticks around for a good long while.
posted by teleri025 at 8:22 AM on October 31, 2016

Wow.

The song doesn't make any sense because where I come from, things don't make any sense. I don't know why we don't like the niggas around the corner, but if somebody say one of their names, I'm gonna say, "Fuck 'em." Why? Because I was told to say "Fuck 'em." Ain't no way around it. You go to school, they tell you, "Martin Luther King was great, but he got shot dead. Malcolm X was great, but he got shot, too. Oh yeah, and y'all want to know about the slaves?" And that's pretty much all you get. And then you go home, and there's no greater power in this world than fear. Somebody's scared of you, they'll do whatever you want them to do. My mom used to always say, "I don't want you to love me. I want you to be scared of me." I feel her because, at the end of the day, if I wasn't scared of my mom, I'd probably be a bit worse off.

Love doesn't mean nothing. You go to school your whole life just to be told you ain't shit but a slave or a dead nigger that got shot by somebody. And then what else you got? College is a culture thing; it's a tradition to go to the same school your family went to or go to the army like your dad did, blah, blah. Where I come from, you could be from the same hood as your parents, and that's pretty much as far as it goes. Also, I live in California. California is a different place.

posted by straight at 9:09 AM on October 31, 2016 [5 favorites]

Summertime
This could be forever, baby
This could be forever, maybe
Do you like the sunshine, do you like the snow?
Do you wanna talk about it, or be alone?
I think that you should know that, this could be forever, baby

Open up your eyes and tell me whatcha thinkin'
Open up your mind, and tell me whatcha seein'
Inside of me, where I be fussin', fuckin' up this evenin'
I probably couldn't fix it if I knew the reason
Up on the sea, where I see you fallin' in the deep end
Is it love? I would really love to know the meanin'
What's the grudge that you're holdin'?
Hold my hand let me take you to the land
Where the ocean and the sands are meetin'
Look at the sun, all we need to see to know our freedom
Open up your heart, if we don't love then we fall apart
This could be forever, baby, I never seen you wetter, baby
Then when the tears fall soakin' up your sweater, baby
I didn't mean harm, don't make me regret it, baby
Cause if I never knew ya, I could never do this to ya
Hope you understand, they never taught me how to be a man
Only how to be a shooter, I only need the time to prove it

Cause this could be forever, baby
This could be forever, baby
This could be forever maybe
Do you like the sunshine, do you like the snow?
Do you wanna talk about it, or be alone?
I think that you should know, that this could be forever, baby

My teachers told me we was slaves
My mama told me we was kings
I don't know who to listen to
I guess we somewhere in between
My feelings told me love is real
But feelings known to get you killed
My feelings if I miss it's true
I spend my moments missin' you
I'm searchin' for atonement, do I blame my darker tone?
I know somethings are better left unsaid and people left alone
Pick up the phone
Don't leave me alone in this cruel, cruel world
posted by gucci mane at 9:31 AM on October 31, 2016 [6 favorites]

Oh man my dumb ass just realized that the cover of Summertime '06 is a Joy Division reference, and thus the "love will tear us apart" bit he wrote to accompany it.
posted by atoxyl at 10:07 AM on October 31, 2016

I tend to agree with gucci mane about preoccupations that recur in interviews of Vince, but I thought this one was a little more incisive and natural, perhaps because the interviewer was a fellow wordsmith.

(atoxyl, I was also behind the ball until he mentioned it in a video.)
posted by nagemi at 1:14 PM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]

Prima Donna, his most recent EP, is very good. The short film for it is also interesting. He's really talented, really smart, and seems really honest. When that Norf Norf video popped up of the white woman crying at the lyrics, he responded with some empathy (though calling her "emotionally unstable" isn't great). I'm really excited to see his career blowing up.
posted by wpgr at 1:34 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

nagemi, I meant to say that I liked Simone White's interview 😔 The first two links are okay articles about Vince but fall down the same hole together.

That isn't to say I don't like interviews getting down to "who he is" and such, it just seems like people fall into the same hole when they go to do a piece on him. He isn't completely stonewalling anyone, but he doesn't talk about gang activity. Every person doing a piece on him should know that by now. There are other things to know, we don't all need to find out whether he's shot someone or what have you.

I guess my dream Vince Staples piece is a long form exposé that touches on a multitude of different subjects in order to create a wide image showing his personality, his wit, his humor, his intelligence, and his talents. That's why I like watching videos of him and more loose pieces. He's still capable of being deep and expressing a dark truth about life even when not being pressed to do so.
posted by gucci mane at 5:56 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

gucci mane: Right, my bad. A brief YouTube binge between reading this thread's comments and writing mine erased your follow-up comment from memory. We're in total agreement. I mean, the FADER and Vulture articles even end on the same agnostic tone. I felt fremdschämen for Jeff Weiss:

I ask if he’s depressed and he responds, as he often does: “I don’t even know what that means.” […] I ask if he has the answers because he seems like one of the few people smart enough to figure it out. “I don’t know shit, bro,” he says wearily.

It's as if the mystique around Vince has less to do with mystery—being coy about his past—so much as an awe for what he does say, an eagerness for him to "drop knowledge" (as the Rolling Stone headline puts it) which raises him on a peculiar pedestal. And he's been chewing over this situation a lot lately, I reckon. What's what I get from a surface take of the hotel room scene in the Prima Donna film linked by wpgr above, in any case.

Forgot to add that I had a similar experience as teleri025 watching him live—epitomised by the acute discomfort of a largely non-black audience yelling the "Norf Norf" hook ("I ain't never ran from nothin' but the police"), which as usual Vince managed to lampoon on stage without salting the vibe. Same went for his running commentary about the audience being almost entirely male. On top of that, there was a hilarious moment when a security guard dragged a disruptive fan over the barrier; said fan was a white guy with dreads. Vince quipped that he got what he deserved for cultural appropriation, and we, the (again, largely non-black) audience, roared in approval. I left that hall sweaty and enthused, but conflicted.
posted by nagemi at 9:59 PM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

Very late to this thread but I really enjoyed his GQ series on YouTube where he reviewed things.
posted by ellieBOA at 9:58 AM on November 6, 2016