Tag: north

For the January Issue of Dazed & Confused, Danna Takako spent two days in the company of RiFF RAFF, hip hop’s next great white hope. Watch the exclusive behind the scenes video above and read her full interview with him below.

Clad in a silk Tom Ford robe on a red, satin-lined bed in his North Hollywood apartment, viral hip pop wonder RiFF RaFF is licking my hand. A camera flashes, as do the gold grills on his teeth when he smiles afterwards. “I love Tom Ford,” the Houstonite says. “I love Harrison Ford, too.” A few minutes later, he’s throwing a cooking pot filled with Trix cereal over his apartment balcony, yelling “breakfast coming!” in an exaggerated hillbilly accent. At one point, without a word, he walks out of a room squeezing his ass with both hands. Once you spend 48 hours with one of the most loved (and loathed) men in music, you begin to realise that it is impossible to predict – or prepare for – what is going to happen next.

Over the last two years, RiFF RAFF (ne Jody Christian, aka the rap-game autistic, aka the rap-game Jodie Foster, aka the rap-game Dawson’s Creek) has become a star of today’s visually led, ADD-heavy generation. He calls himself a “part-time head turner, full-time jaw dropper” in his underground hit “Jose Canseco”, and has a shoulder-length mane teased like an 80s hair-metal god (or braided into patterned cornrows with yarn), while MTV and BET tattoos fight for space on his neck and torso. The 28-year-old has brought a bizarro sense of humour to the world of rap, keeping jaws on the floor with indecipherable couplets about Ninja Turtles, old white basketball-players and rabies. And weirdly, he makes you want to rap about them too.

“He is a walking entertainment chamber before anything even comes out of his mouth,” says OG Ron C, the founder of key southern-rap label Swishahouse, who grew up in the same North Houston neighbourhood as Christian and was his first manager. “Everybody forgets that the rap game is part of the entertainment business. That’s why he’s winning.” Pop shapeshifter Diplo, who signed RiFF RAFF for a supposed eight-album deal on his Mad Decent imprint last autumn, agrees. “He’s like a walking, talking funny-pages. In the streets he gets stopped by black kids, white kids, old people, young people, because he’s so flamboyant. But as a rapper, he’s one of my favourites. He has the best punchlines, he’s the funniest and he’s got the craziest imagination. He writes hooks for days.”

RiFF RAFF is trying on different pairs of garish sunglasses. “I’ll get the person who tweets me randomly, like, ‘You’re white, I hate you. Why do you got braids?’ Then a couple weeks later I’ll see the same Twitter name saying, ‘Damn man, this is my new favourite artist, I love him.’ I’m not the average person so when somebody sees me it’s going to be bipolar: it’s one or the other, you’re going to love me or hate me.” He adjusts a gold $100 bill ring that covers his first two fingers. “I can’t change me and I can’t change other people’s thinking. All I can do is continuously get better. So if I’m doing that, even if somebody doesn’t like me or respect me, I don’t care.”

His “MTV” neck tattoo serves as a memento of his first show-stealing entry into the media world in 2009: a memorable stint on the thugreform reality series From G’s To Gents. Eliminated after two episodes, RiFF RAFF described the show as “an hors d’oeuvre on a table. It’s not a steak and shrimp, it’s like somebody had some cheese crackers on a table and I decided to eat a couple.”

The main meal came in 2012, it seems. He’s been impossible to avoid this year, thanks to an endless maze of wavy music videos and improv comedy sketches, and a bewildering variety of famous alter-egos (most notably his posh British alias Jody Highroller). His videos hit colossal figures; after his original YouTube account got banned for inappropriate content, his JodyHighroller channel racked up over 17 million views in ten months. He’s flooded the market with mixtapes and internet hits (including collabs with Action Bronson, Kitty Pryde, Wiz Khalifa and Lil B), but has yet to release a debut album. He is the quintessential modern musical phenomenon.

“If you watch one YouTube of his,” Diplo explains, “you automatically think, ‘This is the wackest shit I’ve ever seen.’ You watch two of his YouTubes and think, ‘Damn, this is weird. Why am I watching this again?’ But on the third one, you realise he’s a fucking genius.” He laughs and adds, “But the best thing about him is he’s just genuine. He genuinely exists in this other world – the rap twilight-zone.”

Just as with his tattoo-wrapped body, the inside of RiFF RAFF’s two-room studio is dotted with splashes of colour, impulse and weirdness. Retro abstract modern art fills the walls. Four different shades of du-rags and a packet of dazzle beads (usually worn on the end of his braids) are spread across a table in his living room. Piles of bombastic vintage clothes line the floors, including LA Light sneakers and a few aerobic jackets that must have graced the wardrobe of a soccer mom in the 90s. Shopping bags from Gucci and Versace sit upright on the carpet. His kitchen cupboards store iced-out chains that he designed himself, hiring a local LA jeweller to create a bejewelled Cheshire cat and an oversized pendant in the shape of an ICEE slush cup.

“I haven’t even started my career yet, really,” RiFF RAFF says, spreading out a wad of $100 bills on his bedspread for a photo. “I haven’t dropped my first album yet, I haven’t been on a world tour, I’ve never done a big-deal song. So all this buzz and everybody talking about me is all...” He trails off and shrugs. “My shit, it started at ground zero. All of my fans and the people who really understand, they research me – they see this shit day by day, building. It’s like a boxer training for a fight. I started out this chubby kid who started working out progressively everyday. So everyday for the last year or two I’ve just been training, and now I’m in top-quality shape, ready to go. I’m jumping past all the lightweights, featherweights, and going straight to the title fight.”

For a guy who has built his career off DIY videos, it’s no surprise that he harbours dreams of becoming a Hollywood Highroller. Rumours abound that Harmony Korine based James Franco’s lead character in the forthcoming Spring Breakers on the Houston native, and although Korine and Franco have stated otherwise, RiFF RAFF’s not entirely convinced. “When people see James Franco in this movie, they’re gonna see me,” he says while shuffling through his music collection – an interesting mix of Gucci Mane, Little Dragon, SBTRKT and Culture Club. “Since the movie, me and Harmony have become good friends. We have some bigger shit coming, more movies will come. I got so much going on in my mind, I’m never comfortable. I always need more, more, more.”

His hunger for more is deeply rooted. Raised in the streets of the south, he was the middle son in a family of seven. When asked about the music played in his house, he puts on the lowdown country songs of John Anderson and Toby Keith and hilariously belts out every single lyric. It makes sense of the country influence in his acousticguitar jam “Time”. But growing up, he says, “It went off to where there was not a lot of money. I’ve had no money, I’ve had a lot of money, I’ve lost a lot of money. I’ve been back and forth with everything.” He pauses. “That’s why other people’s input doesn’t really matter to me, because nobody’s put me where I’m at. I don’t owe anyone shit. No one’s responsible for me and I’m not responsible for anyone.”

The cameras are off and RiFF RAFF lies on his couch, facing the ceiling. While speaking, he forms a circle with his forefinger and thumb in the same shape as a circular lamp above him, and moves it up and down repeatedly towards the lamp and back down towards his eye. It’s reminiscent of a hyperactive, daydreaming kid at school not listening to the teacher. “School was so boring,” he says. (Supposedly he dropped out in tenth grade.) “It’s like, if you don’t like coffee, drink something else. And if you don’t like school, do something else.” In many ways, RiFF RAFF is rap’s Peter Pan, refusing to grow up or play by anyone else’s rules.

He tends to keep to himself for that same reason. “If I do let someone into my life, then we have to do things my way,” he says, shortly after directing the Dazed team with shot ideas. “Otherwise we’ll be clashing heads. And after one or two times of clashing heads I’m going to erase you out of my phone and out of my life. I don’t argue. I do things my way... Nobody can hurt you if they’re not in your life. Once you totally sever someone from your life and cut all ties, you have no more emotion towards them because they don’t exist in your memory.”

Perhaps he does truly live moment by moment without looking back, solely “based off instinct and feeling”, as he claims. Or it could be that he uses his raps and characters as an escape route. His rhymed free-association flies at a staggering pace, hopping between obscure metaphors and pop-culture references. The lyrics from “Squirt” (with Lil Debbie) attest: “I want the world in my hands, PalmPilot / Butterknife the chopper, razorblade the margarine / I beg your pardon Olive Garden Aston Martin.”

Producer Paul Devro, creative director at Mad Decent, highlights the intensity of RiFF RAFF’s creative output. “When we go to the studio, I’ll play him at least 30–40 beats every session. Within five to ten seconds of each song, he’ll either mumble a melody to it or say, ‘Next.’ I hear ‘next’ a lot.” He laughs. “With each one he picks, he’ll write to it, usually one hook and one verse. We record six to ten songs in about a three-hour period this way. We laugh when we record them a lot. He knows how insane some things he says are, but it all makes sense.” When asked about the album deal they signed, Devro says, “It’s either eight or 44 albums. No one will ever know.”

RiFF RAFF’s transition into America’s wildest white rapper began in earnest when signed by Soulja Boy’s label, S.O.D. Money Gang (as the “SODMG” tat on his stomach indicates). Dismissive as he may be about the past, RiFF RAFF’s upbringing is throwed throughout his diverse tracks. He holds down the hypnotic flows of H-Town’s syrup-sippin’ idols from the late 90s (such as Fat Pat), and he can sing with the R&B funk of the legendary Pimp C (his “Lil Mama I’m Sorry” anthem is proof). “The reason why he probably doesn’t really talk too much about Houston,” OG Ron C explains, “is because a lot of people thought his style is the old Houston. That’s what he grew up on so that’s what he knows, but people hated. I knew it would work. I just loved the creativity and his personality. He’s always seen a bigger picture than everyone.”

Back at the hand Back at the hand-licking photoshoot, RiFF RAFF is throwing and catching Haribo gummies in his mouth. He’d arrived a half-hour late to the shoot (“My condolences... I brought a bottle of vodka!” was his intro) after a full morning of shooting a music video “for some internet thing.” The night before he had a studio recording session with Mike Posner, the underground Drake. With his translucent blue eyes widely dilated, he admits to living “a fast life. I do a lot of shit that I probably shouldn’t.”

Life in the fast lane is one thing; the hype machine moves even faster. RiFF RAFF’s homegirl Kreayshawn is certainly an interesting case-study in viral rap-wonders gone wrong: her debut album is rumoured to have set the all-time record for the lowest first-week sales in major-label history. When asked which is the better fate – to live too fast and lose one’s mind, or to disappear into oblivion and lose the public’s mind – he doesn’t flinch. But he doesn’t exactly answer, either.

“Bottom line,” he says, “either you’re gonna accept that I’m great, or you’re gonna ignore it. You know what I mean?” Two of his friends arrive unexpectedly. Shouting “turnt up!”, when he opens the door, they mob in, putting Chief Keef on full-blast. Young, reckless and infectious, they down shots of Russian vodka (with a milk chaser) and make joke variations of the phrase “turnt up”. One of them, Jackson, says he’s been friends with RiFF RAFF for five years, and works with him in a capacity that’s “hard to explain”. His companion offers that Jackson is the “rap-game Robin”, as in Batman and Robin.

“When it comes to friends,” RiFF RAFF had said earlier, “I don’t like to be around just anybody. Everything has to happen for a reason.” Later that night, RiFF RAFF is arriving at the Standard Hotel in Hollywood with the ATL Twins, following a live radio session. The blond identical twins (Sidney and Thurman Sewell, aka Sid & Thurm) are also featured in Spring Breakers. They not only dress, think and talk the same, they also always have sex with the same girl at the same time. Tonight they’re with a striking, voluptuous French siren.

The trio’s shared hotel-room has become the set for an impromptu music video shot by @MATTHEWBOMAN (director of stripper/rapper Brooke Candy’s “Das Me” video). Someone in the room spontaneously rips open one of the hotel pillows and turns on a giant fan. Whirring feathers fill the air, the French girl’s shirt comes off, and questions of a journalist’s duties arise when asked to “dance and twerk on the silver beanbag on the bed.” As I twerk in a Venetian mask, coughing on feathers, I wonder if I would ever believe this story myself.

Just as RiFF RAFF is in the middle of lip-syncing his verse, a pounding on the door rises above the iPod dock. A dreadlocked skater, drinking vodka out of a large Evian bottle, stumbles over to open it. Most of what he says to the unimpressed security guards in the doorway is incomprehensible, but a distinct line jumps out: “A woman on PCP ran into this room, ripped open one of the pillows and then ran off. We don’t know who she was or where she went.” The ATL Twins look slightly worried about room charges. They talk in hushed tones with an occasional glint from their matching top-teeth grills. RiFF RAFF is freestyling in the corner, covered head to toe in feather shrapnel, totally unfazed. In a glance, it sums him up: amused in his own abstruse world, completely self-aware but unconcerned with much else.

“People have to use ignorance to catch up or to dumb (what I do) down,” he’d said earlier in the day. “When you haven’t seen anything before, it’s like a UFO. I’m like the Loch Ness monster. But I’m not a myth. I’m right here, in the flesh.”

Text by Danna Takako
Photography Nick Haymes
Film by UZI

There are a lot of pretty girls in Norwegian photographer Torbjrn Rdland’s work. Yet his interest in melancholic eroticism is just one aspect of a complicated practice which touches on the meaning and process of photography. Much of his current work seems to be pushing the limits of the body – how it can be twisted and contorted, how skin can be drawn on, covered up, transformed. Working fluidly in colour and black-and-white, Rdland, like Ryan McGinley, has managed to create images accepted by both the “cool” press and art establishment. This January Rdland opens an exhibition in Copenhagen focusing on American landscapes and presidents, especially Reagan and Kennedy. “I’m fascinated by how quickly chaotic reality becomes mythologised. The Ronald Reagan I got to know through news media as a kid is not the same Ronald Reagan children today are introduced to,” he points out. Here Rdland talks to Dazed about his fascination with Americana and our Instagram world.

What do you find interesting about referencing and exploring ideas around Americana?

I’ve always felt connected to American vulgarity – in poetry, pantheism, rock’n’roll and hip hop. Studying visual cultures of Japan, Scandinavia and North America helps me figure out what I’m about and where I can take my photography.

Why did you end up in LA?

I gave up on all the alternatives. Los Angeles is a good mix of villages, cities and nature. And it’s founded on mythology. I don’t know how the place is influencing the work exactly, but I know myself better now than before moving here. I cannot promise that I’ll end up in California though.

Tell me about the role of construction in your images. Are things ‘found’ or are you more interested in creating things to feel ‘found’?

Probably both, but definitely the latter! One problem with so-called ‘staged photography’ is the look of these didactic tableaus, making it very clear that you’re studying a construction. It doesn’t really matter to me how the photograph came into being. The important question is how to see it: how the photograph asks to be read. I can be equally invested in an object I just found as one I waited six months to get or travelled from continent to continent with, but in general it helps to live with it for a while. I typically keep something around for months before dealing with it photographically. Situations with people are always sessions. I decide the clothes and so on. I never just pull out a camera and start ‘shooting’. You can wait around your whole life for something interesting to happen in front of you. I believe in forcing a more active approach.

Yet despite this there is a quietness to your work – is that something you strive for?

No, that comes naturally. My physiognomy is quiet. I strive for action and for the work to speak up.

How and why did you start working with people in contorted positions?

Well, maybe it’s an early sign of decadence if I tire of human figures in more relaxed positions. I hope not. I always try to stretch the medium, to push at the limitations of what I can do within straight photography. Having photographed people for more than ten years, maybe I had to push and bend more drastically to stay interested.

Tell me about your latest book. Why did you call it Vanilla Partner?

The title was free. There were no albums, books or even a kinky movie named Vanilla Partner. And it says something about a relationship I find myself in: photography is my straight partner. I try to introduce fantasy and religion to it, but it’s not easy.

You also seem to be really interested by texture at the moment – something sticky, fluffy, visceral. What is attracting to you to that tactility?

It’s all we have. A painter has the texture of the picture itself, the tactility of paint on canvas. In photography the focus is on how other surfaces are represented photographically. I always look at what painters do.

In a lot of your earlier images you represented women in nature – it’s a classic romantic concept. Were you interested in playing with that art historical heritage?

I don’t play with or reference art history; I see myself as adding to it. To photograph beautiful women in nature was a challenge, partly because it’s inflamed, both aesthetically and politically. I like to think that my images take active part in a discussion on how and what they mean. This was a central aspect of the project from the very beginning. To link a primate to nature makes perfect sense. The real problems start when you say she doesn’t also represent culture, and clearly I’ve never gone there.

What attracts you to depicting femininity in particular? Do you feel there's a tension there as a man?

Yes, the tension can be different – also in a wider sense. Everyone loves and hates pictures of young women. It’s intense! Most people seem so caught up in their own bodies and personal perspectives on this material that they cannot see it for what it is.

A number of the images in Vanilla Partner depict people being drawn or painted or tattooed on. How did this motif develope and what the idea was behind it?

I think it developed from black-metal corpse paint. Back in 2001 I photographed leading musicians on the Norwegian metal scene. Looking at my portraits of Frost (of Satyricon), Abbath (of Immortal) and Infernus (of Gorgoroth) started me thinking about the psychological implications of paint on skin. There’s also a smaller photograph from the following year... it has a German title: Goldene Trnen. This is a portrait of a young woman with lines of honey on her face. An art historian will probably see it in the Catholic tradition of the crying virgin, while a dude reading Dazed online is more likely to see a facial. I’m drawn to pictures that cannot easily be pinned down. I like conflicting readings – I think you find truth there. But to return to the question: there was no initial idea behind all this – maybe more of a longing. I now see painting on skin as an immediate escape from the confusion and boredom of everyday life. Hairless apes have always listened to music and painted their bodies to make life more real. It’s linked to a spiritual longing that is everywhere in my work.

How do you feel about the ubiquity of image culture today, compared to when you started working with photography?

Younger people today seem unburdened by the quantity of photographic images being produced. This, of course, is a healthy attitude. There will always be a need for subtle reformulation. The situation when I started was more anorexic. Reality seemed lost behind an excessive overproduction of photographs. The postmodern mindset saw no reason to make new pictures; we had already produced too many. Reappropriation was almost a moral choice. It’s funny; looking back, the early 1990s now seem like a calm period of libraries and magazines, before the online explosion of Instagram, Tumblr and TwitPics. Today I see Instagram feeds adopting strategies from critical art filtered through the Fail Blog perspective on commodity culture. It’s quite exciting and I’m not contributing.

Your approach has been emulated by a younger generation of photographers, including those working with fashion as much as within an art context. Is that a frustrating or interesting situation for you?

We both know that fashion photographers adopt anything that moves to a beat. I’m actually more puzzled by the massive number of educated young art-photographers who approach the world like an Alec Soth. I always saw my material as coming out of a culture just as much as being the product of my conflicting personality. So I do not claim full ownership.

What do you think the role of emotion is in photography? Is it something you strive to create in your viewer or your images?

That is a very good question – I’m still struggling with it. Asking for an emotional reaction is asking to entertain or to sell something. This, at least, is the standard view. My more emotional photographs are created to make the viewer reflect, but I’ve also seen them have an emotional effect on people and that didn’t seem all wrong. Actually, it didn’t seem wrong at all.

Vanilla Partner by Torbjrn Rdland is out now, published by MACK

rodland.net