5 Shows,

1 Summer.
For more information visit
thefader.com/stubhub
DJ KHALED
rocawear.com
20 Letter from the Editor

GEN F FADE IN
24 Lil Uzi Vert 44 Glossier
28 Elysia Crampton 48 Fig Collective
31 Show Me the Body 52 Period Fashion
34 Jorja Smith 54 Dad Hats
38 Mozzy
I dont like to write about
myself. I like listening
to people. Jorja Smith

JORJA SMITH PHOTOGRAPHY FRANCESCA ALLEN.

Jorja Smith

CONTENTS 14
Jeep.com 2016 FCA US LLC. All Rights Reserved. Jeep is a registered trademark of FCA US LLC.
 FEATURES
58 Gucci Mane
At home with an iconic artist on
another comeback.

74 Charli XCX
A pop star fully commits to herself.

86 Deso Dogg
The life and rumored death of
a German rapper turned jihadist.

94 Joanne the Scammer

In Florida with Branden Miller, the
real-life man behind the scam.

108 SheLovesMeechie
and Yvng Quan
Two dancers model flowing
menswear for fall. Gucci Mane

FADE OUT
119 Stan Accounts
122 Celebrity Kid Style
124 Black and Loud

GUCCI MANE PHOTOGRAPHY GEORDIE WOOD.

APPENDIX
126 Stockist
128 Back Page
Gucci Mane photography Geordie Wood. Charli XCX photography
Renata Raksha, styling Lisa Katnic, hair Dylan Chavles, makeup
Jeffrey Baum at Jed Root, Pilar Noire at Nailing Hollywood.

CONTENTS 16
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MASTHEAD 18
 In search of #LikeaBoss

Kamaiyah at the FADER FORT 2016.

Captured by Getty Images Photographer Roger Kisby.
Wish Upon a Scam
Recently, I turned 29. To celebrate, I gifted myself
an almost prohibitively expensive facial serum
that claims to brighten skin and protect it from
the surrounding world.
You could, I guess, call the purchase an
attempt to reproduce in reality the fictional
appearance of my face on Snapchat, where a
range of beauty filters smooth over blemishes,
enlarge eyes, thin the nose and jaw, and warm
or lighten the tone of skin. (The app also offers a
rotating stable of filters that distort your appear-
ance comically, which I feel less drawn to.) With
its built-in ephemerality, Snapchat is commonly
understood as a place to enjoy being yourself,
flaws and all. But given the tools, apparently, Id
rather appear in public with no flaws.
On first glance, that impulse seems like a
totally bad thing like one that indicates Ive
fallen prey to narrow standards of beauty, or a
general pressure to look young and good. And,
in fact, it might be. But I take pleasure in filtering
my face because the result feels familiar, even
when it looks uncanny. I know I dont actually
look digitally airbrushed, but after years of subtly
manipulating my appearance online, I am used
to imagining myself as a more alluring version of
myself. Snapchats too-perfect version of me is
transparently false, which makes it feel, to me,
almost more honest than a candid photo.
For this years Fall Fashion issue, we spent
time with a group of people trying to see and
bring to life their idealized selves. After three
years in the federal pen and a life of unrivaled
fuckery, Gucci Mane is adapting to sobriety and
outrunning his legend. In Los Angeles, follow-
ing two albums of carefully manufactured cool,
Charli XCX is trying out her true self someone
who just wants to have fun. Joanne the Scammer,
the fictional creation of Florida loner Branden
Miller, is a product of Millers reckoning with his
own identity and a reflection of how isolating the
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
world can be. And in Germany, friends of Denis
Cuspert, the jihadist formerly known as rapper
Deso Dogg, reflect on Cusperts failures, and
how they propelled him to seek a life of terror
and intimidation.
In all of their stories, theres some wishful
thinking that the best possible versions of
ourselves are the ones people will see. Just like
I play around with the idea of appearing fault-
less, Gucci imagines he will remain sober, Charli
envisions an intellectual life as a dumb pop
star, Denis Cuspert wishes to feel righteous and
strong, and Joanne scams herself into lasting
cultural relevance. The truth is probably more
complicated, and certainly subject to change: to
maintain sobriety can be a daily struggle, mak-
ing pop music does not necessarily make anyone
more popular, jihadists hurt people in their quest
to make the world better, and even scammers
get scammed.
You have a sickness, my partner told me
recently, referring to my habit of almost con-
stantly taking selfies with my iPhone camera.
Unlike what I do on Snapchat, these pictures
have no filters and no setup. I think I take them
because Im bored, or to literally check in on what
I look like: if my hair has fallen in the right place,
or if that expensive serum is doing anything. Or
maybe I take them because I am trying to figure
out who I am, so that as it changes, I dont lose
track, and can maintain control. I dont post these
selfies on the internet, or send them to a group
chat. I dont share them with anyone.
Naomi Zeichner
Editor-in-chief
20
 In search of great

Twin Peaks at the FADER FORT 2016.

Captured by Getty Images Photographer Roger Kisby.
2016 Goose Island Beer Co., Goose IPA, India Pale Ale, Chicago, IL | Enjoy responsibly.
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTOPHER DELORENZO

GEN F
Artists to Know Now
The rockstar of
post-Obama rap
Story by Jason Parham
Photography by Rachel Chandler

GEN F 24
Lil Uzi

V e r t
Lil Uzi Vert feigned disinterest, twisting
his face and shaking his head, a bright
mop of magenta-tipped dreads. I hate
interviews, he said. Uzi, 21, claims he
doesnt let many people into his private
life, and when we met on the edges of
Weehawken, New Jersey a Hudson
River-lined town where he was staying
the night during a tour stop he was not
so willing to speak freely. And why should
he? I dont trust nobody. Nobody. Not
even the people around me, he said, his
hometown friend Spike in earshot. They
just the people that Im a little bit more fa-
miliar with. You can get familiar with peo-
ples ways; you can learn people. But you
dont ever let your guard down.
Thats not all true, of course. There
is one recent exception: Brittany Byrd,
his girlfriend and creative muse. On
Paradise, the airy bonus cut from his
2015 LUV Is RAGE mixtape, Uzi maps the
highs of their relationship. That feeling of
new love, as affirmed in the song, pushed
the Philadelphia-born rager to truly open
up for the first time. Paradise, its some-
where that I never been before, he confess-
es on the blissful hook. We lip lock until our
lips are swollen/ Live in the moment good
times are golden/ Im not gonna lie you got
me open.
The pairs relationship, which is well-
documented across social media, has
been going on for about a year now, and
on the day of our interview, theyd recently
gotten back together after a week-long
split. I was being a little extra, was all Uzi
would divulge about the rift. Just days pri-
or, he punctuated the initial break in a soli-
tary tweet: the word Single was followed
by a two-heart emoji and the copyright
symbol (one user, @siarah_, expressed
a pretty unanimous sentiment among
fans: NIGGA CALL BRITT RIGHT NOW &
GEN F
WORK THIS OUT WE WERE ROOTING
FOR YALL!!!!). Less than an hour later, he
released an inky lament called Stole Your
Love on SoundCloud, which contemplat-
ed the rigors of intimacy and dating.
But that was days ago, and, for now, the
past is just that. She helps me with every-
thing, Uzi clarified. Brittany, whos origi-
nally from Los Angeles, introduced him to a
pescatarian lifestyle and provides creative
assistance on shoots and music videos.
Their co-dependence revealed itself in our
time together: she was part of the reason
we fought against evening rush-hour traf-
fic into Manhattan to get to Dover Street
Market, the New York City clothing empo-
rium launched by Commes des Garons
founder Rei Kawakubo in 2013, before it
closed for the night.
Uzi loves to shop, and he browsed
through Raf Simons and Hood By Air gar-
ments in a relaxed, unhurried manner, even
as high school-aged hypebeasts prod-
ded him for a photo. He checked in with
Brittany via text on multiple occasions (she
was getting her hair done) and made sure
his assistant D. Rich sent her the address
to the restaurant he planned to go to next
and all the pertinent details for his show
that night at Irving Plaza. An hour after we
entered Dover Street, Uzi had spent just
north of $5,000 and paid for nearly every-
thing in $100 bills. He decamped with four
bags full of various threads from Supreme,
Vetements, and UNDERCOVER at least
half of which were for Brittany.
Lil Uzi Vert wasnt always a high-pow-
ered wavemaker with Super Mario tattoos
and a fondness for girls who study design
at Parsons. He was born Symere Woods,
on the last day of July in 1994. Growing up
in the Francisville neighborhood of North
Philly the 1600 block, Ridge Avenue
his boyhood was defined by video games
like Mat Hoffmans Pro BMX and the car-
toons CatDog and Franklin. Uzi only ever
held one job, working at Bottom Dollar for
like three or four days before quitting. He
wasnt a star student in school, and took
the job so his mom wouldnt kick him out
of the house. I knew that wasnt for me. I
was like, Ew, I cant work here, he recalled,
the creases in his face made visible by the
memory. He would bounce between four
public high schools Sayre, Northeast,
26
Olney, and Camelot; I was just bad, he
acknowledged before falling into rap his
senior year.
That was around 2012, the period after
A$AP Rocky released his murky debut al-
bum and Big Seans Finally Famous found
a devoted fan base among newly minted
college bros. Both releases, despite Rocky
and Sean hailing from northern cities, em-
braced styles typically associated with the
South, an approach a young Symere would
later tap into in his own unique way.
Things began to take off in 2014 when
Don Cannon heard the eponymous solo
track Uzi a Charlie Heat-backed, bar-
rel-blasting allegory of survival while
driving to Atlantic City. Cannon linked Uzi
with DJ Drama, another Philly native, and
signed the rap upstart with Generation
Now, their imprint under Atlantic. Though
Uzi had already released two mixtapes, it
wasnt until he recorded the DJ Carnage-
produced WYDW with A$AP Ferg and
Rich the Kid that he finally reached a con-
siderable audience. The 16-track LUV Is
RAGE followed Can I tell you a secret?
[Thats] a project that I really worked on,
he said and featured a guest verse from
his idol Wiz Khalifa. I dont really get star-
struck, because I am a star, said Uzi, but I
kind of got starstruck when I met Wiz.
But it was Lil Uzi Vert Vs. The World,
which came out last April, that solidified
the fact that Uzi had become a rare vessel (Thats my bro right there) have home- fortunate he is and that hed be nothing
for the kind of sound Atlantas ascendant town advantage, Uzi is just as beloved in without his fans, so he gives them his all: the
rap scene has bolstered over the last half- and beyond Atlantas borders. But why? delicious, dizzying hooks, the multichro-
decade. You know it when you hear it: the Maybe its because his personality is tai- matic music videos, the Instagrams of him
seesawing beats; the gliding hooks that lor-made for the kind of bipolarity todays and Brittany. Success is merely the result
feel like theyre rising out of some dark, rap often embraces: in conversation hes of his constant labor. The immeasurable
hazy hell; the erupting bursts of lyricism chameleon-like, moving between ex- support, the headlining U.S. tour without
that twist and turn before suddenly dis- tremes, distant and walled-off and then a major-label release in sight, the hospi-
solving; the tales of endless nights and instantly endearingly open and engaged tality from Atlanta rappers and the home
lost loves and unpardonable fuckups. Uzi to the point where you begin to wonder if he moved to last fall in North Druid Hills
has a wunderkind-like proficiency for this you could actually be friends. It could also none of it, it seems, has gone to his head.
particular style, and he knows it. When be that he considers himself a rockstar Later, as the van barreled down
asked how he feels about being associ- more than anything, and embodies that Lexington Avenue toward 15th Street, the
ated with the new contingent of weirdo motif completely a new kind of avatar thick hum of traffic dissipating, Uzi felt
Southern hip-hop, he answered without for a more evolved, post-Obama, post- at ease. The partition, for now, had come
hesitation. Everybody get everything trap sound. It may have taken root in the down. I dont plan nothing, I just do it, he
from each other, he said. Nobody really South, but through Uzi, the music could said, speaking to his serendipitous last
makes up nothing. You just see it, you like infinitely transmorph. two years. You know who plan? Old peo-
it, and you do it. And if you do it the best, Its also possible that Uzi has emerged ple. I dont want to be old.
thats all that matters. from the pack simply because he grinds
Even though kindred spirits like Lil really fucking hard. In our day together, it
Yachty, Playboi Carti, and Young Thug becomes clear that he understands how

GEN F 27
Elysia Crampton
Looking for hope
amid chaos
Story by Patrick D. McDermott
Photography by Daria Kobayashi Ritch

I had this poem stuck in my head the other

day, Elysia Crampton said recently during
a visit to Manhattan. The electronic com-
poser is small-framed, with sharp cheek-
bones and a smile thatll make your knees
wobbly. I was eating a mango with my
boyfriend, and the poem was just moving
in my head like a song but there was no
melody, the 30-year-old remembered. The
text she was talking about was Caribbean-
American poet June Jordans Reagan-era
epic From Sea to Shining Sea, although
when Crampton said the title, it sounded
more like From She to Shining She.
Crampton, a California-born Bolivian-
American who currently lives with fam-
ily in a rural town near Sacramento, finds
inspiration in what she calls the move-
ment of non-musical art, meaning the
works structural form rather than its con-
tent. Theres the husk of the movie the
way its directed, and the way the camera
moves through it, she said. I feel like
that has its own poetics. As a musician,
her own productions are concerned with
exploring form, too, from the transportive
mash-ups she made as E+E back in 2013 to
the world-swallowing instrumentals she
now releases under her own name. That
sort of movement is really attractive to
me, and I want to reproduce it, she said.
It comes from so many things, not just
film or poetry. Its just from, like, being in
the world.
When we met, Crampton was sit-
ting on a couch inside a fourth-floor con-
ference room on the Upper West Side.

GEN F 28
 The poem was The nondescript room was a makeshift
backstage area for the David Rubenstein
visible than ever. Its helping her, a trans
Latinx woman, not just survive, but thrive.

just moving Atrium, a leafy public space where

Crampton had just put on a multidisci-
Im really happy for my friends, and my
work ethic is better, Crampton said, pick-

in my head like plinary performance. For about 45 min-

utes, she deployed, among other things:
ing up a very small bottle of Jgermeister,
which she told me is her favorite. Im able
a song but guttural Spanish-language screams, his-
torical images showing violence against
to navigate capitalist, imperialist society
better, she explained, noting that by em-
there was no trans women, and aggressively beautiful bracing some aspects of it (computers for
electronic music that, at points, sounded composing music, planes for travel), shes
melody. like the score to an off-kilter adventure able to negotiate a future. Its a paradox,
movie. On stage, she wore a leather jacket, she told me. Those things are limiting and
a beet-red tank top, and military dog tags exclusive, but theyre also the gateway to
inscribed with the logo for NON, the re- her freedom.
cord label co-founded by her friend Chino Cramptons outlook reminds me of the
Amobi. A lot of the live mix sounded like gorgeous final section of June Jordans
music from her new full-length album, poem, the same one she had stuck in her
Demon City, a delirium-inducing project head. It was published in 1983 by Barbara
that she wrote and recorded alongside four Smith and Audre Lordes feminist press,
kindred producers: Amobi, Rabit, Lexxi, but feels as relevant as ever.
and Why Be.
They were always already informing This is a good time. This is the
my work, she explained of her choice to best time. This is the only time to
make something collaborative. Whether I come together. Fractious. Kicking.
acknowledge it on an album or press state- Spilling. Burly. Whirling. Raucous.
ment, theyre there. While each of these Messy. Free. Exploding like the seeds
electronic provocateurs has their own of a natural disorder.
distinct voice, they all pull from a dissocia-
tive, in-your-face sonic palette in order to Cramptons work similarly suggests
reflect and disrupt modern life, to show that hope can be found in even the most
how our world can be simultaneously pret- dire of socio-political situations, and
ty and straight-up terrifying. They make that friendship is survivals closest ally. If
some of the most punk music imagin- the natural disorder that Jordan wrote
able, even though it almost never includes about had a sound, it would probably be
guitars. On Children of Hell, a song that a lot like the music of Elysia Crampton.
Crampton made with Amobi, a sparse
reggaeton melody slithers forward while
a noisy groundswell featuring space la-
sers, evil genius laughter, and syncopated
explosions climbs purposefully toward
cathartic pandamonium.
Crampton has been calling Demon
Citys surreal aesthetic severo, the
Spanish word for severe. I tried to come
up with [a name] that was broad and open-
ended, she said. I didnt want it to be
like, Oh, OK, severo is a bunch of murder
samples thrown together with some car
sounds and an ambient track. The genre
can still evolve, because our sound is still
evolving too.
Making Demon City has been an inspir-
ing experience, Crampton said, and shes
excited for whatevers next. Her art, and
the art made by her collaborators, is more

GEN F 30
 The New York City punk band Show Me the
Body teetered over the edge of a dodgy
roof in Chinatown. It was a blindingly
bright summer afternoon, and frontman
Julian Cashwan Pratt, 22, had just had his
hair cut nearly to the skin in a makeshift
art gallery/barber shop one floor below us.
The band passed around a joint fleetly
rolled by drummer Noah Cohen-Corbett,
20, on top of a Bernie Sanders-stickered
laptop and kicked around music video
ideas. Pratt was thinking itd be cool to walk
into the John Varvatos store, the high-end
mens retailer built on the bones of the for-
mer punk sanctuary CBGB, and, like, puke
all over all the clothes. A consensus was
quickly reached: if fake vomit is going to
be used, black food coloring would be best.
A few blocks from here theres a little-
known small business called Imperial
Ballroom. Its usually a dance studio
where stern Ukrainians teach Chinese
retirees the waltz. A few days later, Show
Me the Body played a record release par-
ty there for their wondrous, intense full-
length debut, Body War, and effectively
cross-checked the unsuspecting Imperial
Ballroom into the boards.
Body War is a thorny, bizarre docu-
ment. For one, the racousness is built
around Pratts harshly distorted banjo
riffs. There are samples of the bands own
demos, manipulated until they sound like
bleeping emergency sirens. There are ef-
fect pedals, abused to the point of sacri-
fice. Some of the best shit comes from
fucking machines up, said bassist Harlan
Steed, 21. When shit sounds like its

Show Me
breaking, Im usually very excited.
There are moments of gorgeous clar-
ity within the cacophony, too, like when

the Body
the band slows everything down and Pratt
speaks directly. Songs like these feel influ-
enced equally by Show Me the Bodys pals
in the N.Y.C. rap crew Ratking both groups
are part of the collective Letter Racer
New York kids strive and crackle-voiced troubadours like Archy

to make punk as hectic

Marshall. At his best, Pratt can sound like
hes reluctantly working his mouth around

as their city. some heretofore unsayable ache. Grow out

Story by Amos Barshad
Photography by Max Hoell
in the East/ Learn to eat and fight, he sings
on Metallic Taste. Read/ And sight death
stares that keep me up at night.
We have to find discordance with-
in harmony, Pratt said, sidling up to a

GEN F 31
If it sounds right
I should wanna
both fight to
it and fuck to it.
Julian Cashwan Pratt
mission statement. Find the horror within
the pop song. Find the terror within the shit
that everyone will feel. Or, if you prefer
succinctness: If it sounds right I should
wanna both fight to it and fuck to it.
Pratt and Steed first started screw-
ing around together as stoned freshmen
in music class at Manhattans Elisabeth
Irwin, a pioneering progressive high
school (former students include Angela
Davis and Robert De Niro). Early on they
called themselves U-Lock Justice, a
cheeky term for bicycle vigilantism. Show
Me the Body has allusions to redress, too:
its a loose translation of habeas corpus,
the legal recourse under which one can re-
port unlawful imprisonment.
As Show Me the Body, theyve attained
both an aura of mystery and a passionate
following: they dont talk to press much
and generally avoid the citys traditional
venues, choosing instead to pack bridge
underpasses and alleys with sweaty kids
who get to feel like theyre something be-
tween extended crew-members and fans.
Back on the roof, joint stubbed out,
Cohen-Corbett announced, Yo, lets hit
the dim sum spot. We trekked down the
roof ladder and out to Joes Shanghai,
where a sprawl of tourists was waiting to
sample the goods. Our own chances didnt
look good. But then a grinning waiter spot-
ted Pratt and clapped him on the back;
minutes later we had a prime table in the
clamoring dining room and three bamboo
steamers of soup dumplings.
Pratt, by way of explanation, talked of
a cousins super-rich girlfriends dad who
was head of all the produce that came into
New York. Super fucked-up dude, goes
to South America with mad guns and shit.
Anyway, her mom used to come in here
and give everyone a red New Years enve-
lope. Chopsticks in hand, Pratt explained
that he recruited Cohen-Corbett, a native
of Western Massachusetts, during an ill-
begotten stint at Hampshire College. I
got there and I realized all I wanna do is
write poetry, Pratt recalled. Mouth full, he
told a story.
The first time we played this track
Space Faithful, me and Harlan thought
we were on acid: we both got this grip in
the back of our skull. A year later I was
talking to some girl and she showed me
this Emily Dickinson quote: I know po-
etry is happening when I feel the skin be-
ing ripped off the back of my skull. He
GEN F
finished chewing and smiled. I think its
Emily Dickinson.
Show Me the Body is one of those
bands that truly feels like they could have
only come from here, from this city. The
gawky-cool clothes, ill-fitting black jeans
and freebie Sherwin Williams T-shirts.
Spare talk of buddies crashing at Martha
Plimptons loft, tour managers jetting off
to London with the daughters of pop stars.
Cutting the line at the dope dumpling spot
because you quasi-know the gun-running
one-time produce king of Manhattan. Just
down the road is a little park where Pratt
used to take early-morning pay what you
can kung fu lessons.
Shruggingly, they embody the idea that
this is New York and there are possibilities
everywhere, if you know where to look. One
day, the band promises, theyll record a
whole albums worth of vocals through the
speakers of an MTA conductor. Everybody
in New Yorks got something to sell, Pratt
said, sounding endearingly, precocious-
ly, like a curmudgeon. I feel like we got
something to build. Im hyped for that. Im
down to fight for it.
32
I N N O V AT I V E L E I S U R E . N E T
Jorja Smith
A British teen fights
apathy with soul.

The day before the U.K. voted to leave

Story by Aimee Cliff
Photography Francesca Allen
the European Union, Jorja Smith tapped
her long, shimmering pink acrylics on
her MacBook as she searched online for
a specific Jean-Michel Basquiat paint-
ing. Like many 19-year-olds, she punctu-
ates references by reaching for Google
to illustrate her point. The 1983 piece in
question is titled Leeches, and its clas-
sic Basquiat a sprawling, grotesque
critique of greed. Finding it, she zoomed
in on the section she liked most: a scrawl
that says POWER + MONEY (VALUE). The
people who are the most powerful and
have the most money sometimes dont
value other people, she explained. She
stared at the messy picture for a moment.
It interests me because its hard to un-
derstand. Theres so much going on.
Smith has been performing since
the age of 8 and writing songs since 11,
amassing a broad catalog of mostly un-
released tracks that skew from pop to
modern soul. One of the earliest songs

GEN F 34
 ROBIN AND ANDRA MCBRIDE
ENTREPRENEURS

LIFE IS A SPORT. WE ARE THE UTILITY.

BE UNSTOPPABLE.

THE FORD EXPLORER

she remembers writing was called High
Street, about when all the stores in her
hometown of Walsall, in the midwest of
England, closed during the economic re-
cession of the late-00s, leaving behind a
hollow ghost town. Walsall is a run-down
place, Smith said, with a lot of creative
people, but not many possibilities.
Before Smiths family settled there,
her mom was a jewelry maker who
spent her twenties in London, and her
Jamaican-born father was the lead sing-
er of a neo-soul vocal group called 2nd
Naicha. They raised her on a diet of reg-
gae, rock, and soul, which she countered
with her own love of funky house and dub-
step. Her dad, she said, realized she had
a talent when he heard her sing Silent
Night in church. And its easy to hear
why; her voice can silence a room. Its
jazzy, and mixed with the cockiness and
slang of London, not entirely unlike that
of her hero, Amy Winehouse.
Smiths father encouraged her to learn
piano, and she later won a music scholar-
ship to a prestigious local school where
she picked up the oboe and took classical
singing lessons. From her early teens, she
harbored faith that music would offer her a
route out of Walsall. When a friend filmed
her singing Alex Clares 2011 U.K. hit Too
Close and uploaded it to YouTube, the
video was passed around school so much
that older girls would stop her in the halls
and demand that she start singing. She
was 15 when the clip was sent to her cur-
rent managers, who contacted her from
London. They kept in touch, and by the
time she finished her exams, she had writ-
ten upwards of 70 songs.
After graduation, Smith moved to
London, where she would rush home after licensing document that, until 2008, re- interview, following the results of the
shifts at Starbucks to write more songs, quired event promoters to inform the po- referendum, Cameron resigned. In retro-

STYLIST CONNOR GAFFE, MAKE UP CAROL LOPEZ REID.

avoiding clubs and burying herself in
her Tumblr feed and the surreal movies
of Wong Kar Wai. But things didnt stay
low-key for long. In January 2016, she fi-
nally self-released her debut single, Blue
Lights, a song that uniquely mixes grimes
grit with a softer plea for empathy. It quick-
ly hit regular rotation on local London ra-
dio. Taking its refrain from Dizzee Rascals
2007 political statement Sirens, Smiths
Blue Lights was inspired by the black
stereotype and by Form 696, a mandatory
lice of the ethnic makeup of their intended
audiences. It often led the police to shut
down music events simply because of a
majority black audience.
While talking about Blue Lights,
Smith once again reached for a visual
reference point and pulled up U.K. MC
Ghettss video Rebel, which opens with
a shot of a young boy watching David
Cameron on the TV, and is soundtracked
by a chorus that demands answers from
the prime minister. Two days after our
spect, its clear that the campaign leaders
did very little to engage young voices in the
national debate surrounding the E.U. ref-
erendum even young voices as outspo-
ken and passionate as Smiths. The result
was that an older voting population ulti-
mately decided the future of the country.
Smith, who mostly writes songs about the
experiences of her peers, told me: I dont
like to write about myself. I like listening
to people. In turn, it seems like now is the
right time to start listening to her.

GEN F 36
WWW.HIGHBREWCOFFEE.COM
Mozzy
Staying true to
Sacramento while
aiming for the world
Story by Lawrence Burney
Photography by Dan Monick
While incarcerated in 2014, Mozzy made
a list of things he wanted when he got
out: an SUV, two or three chains, a cool
little duck-off spot, $50,000 in cash, and
$50,000 in the bank. Shortly after his
release, the Sacramento-born rapper
blew past all of those, thanks to income
from album sales, song features, and
show money. So he set new goals, includ-
ing plans to continue feverishly releas-
ing music, to solidify his greatness, and
to ensure a secure future for his daugh-
ter. My hunger is everlasting, he said
from his Hollywood porch during a recent
FaceTime conversation. Im foaming at
the mouth. I believe it belongs to me.
For the past year, Mozzy, 28, has been
enjoying each and every second of life in
Los Angeles. His new place is six hours
from his hometown neighborhood of
Oak Park, where his time in the street
provided him with an abundance of sto-
ries to tell through song. Born Timothy
Patterson, Mozzy has been rapping since
the age of 14, first making a name for
himself in Sacramento as Lil Tim. While
his parents dealt with addiction and their
own incarceration, he was raised by his
grandmother, who owned multiple prop-
erties around Sacramento. Even after
he built relative buzz at home, he didnt
think a sustainable music career was in
GEN F 38
the cards. Dont nobody feel this hun-
ger, he said, like he was placing himself
back in that time. Dont nobody recog-
nize this talent. Dont nobody recognize
this sincerity.
Things took a turn when, after getting
out of prison, Mozzy began channelling
his feelings of hopelessness into some
gangsta shit. Inspired by his grand-
mothers tireless hard work, he buckled
down and released four solo projects
and a hit single, all in 2015. Bladadah,
named after the Sacramento slang word
for pistol, perfectly displays the contrast
of Mozzys gruff voice and nimble delivery.
On the minimal, clap-filled track, he looks
back on his time selling drugs and pimp-
ing, confessing that the dirt hes done is
weighing on his conscience, while assur-
ing you that hell still go into attack mode
if necessary. He raps the word narrate
where others would say snitching, and
humans instead of people, small
tweaks that make his stories feel fresh.
The song, which has racked up over 5 mil-
lion YouTube views, changed Mozzys life.
Life been different since Bladadah
dropped, he said as his friends choked on
weed smoke in the background. I can do
shit for my daughter that once upon a time
GEN F
a nigga couldnt do. After soaking up the
tracks success, hes been having some
new revelations about what he wants for
his career. Its bigger than Oak Park, he
says. Its bigger than Sacramento. Its
bigger than California. Not too long ago,
Mozzy would have been satisfied with
being a regional superstar like one of his
all-time favorite rappers, the now-slain
Bay Area native The Jacka, who released
over ten solo albums and dozens of col-
laborative projects, including two with
Freeway toward the end of his life. But
now with the opportunities, money, and
ticket out of the hood that his recent work
ethic has afforded him Mozzys gunning
for that Jigga and Kanye paper.
Mozzy has already dropped two solo
albums in 2016: Beautiful Struggle and
Mandatory Check. On the formers title
track, he raps, Im doing this for my daugh-
ter/ She dont never get to see her mama
cause me and her got our little problems/
It is what it is/ I thank God I aint use a con-
dom cause this little girl the reason why
Im poppin. Mozzy projects the same
sobering, almost-too-personal vulner-
ability that has made artists like Boosie
such treasures to their fans. At the same
time, Mozzy stays distinct by blocking out
the sounds of the contemporary rap land-
scape, sticking to West Coast regional
production and honing in on the little
things that make his offline community
tick, no matter how bleak or brutal. I aint
really into all the extracurricular activity,
he said. Im smooth with a Honda Accord.
Feel me? Toyota Camry, nigga.
Still unsigned, Mozzy is locked in on
becoming an even more productive art-
ist as a means to liberate his family and
friends from Oak Park. I cant believe I
spent my whole life there and thought it
was turnt up, he said with a smile that,
within seconds, turned to stone. I just
wanna take all my niggas with me like,
This aint it bruh. We out here sacrificing
our life for this? Its bigger when you see
the world. He paused to ask a friend to
grab scissors, presumably to clip the blunt
he was rolling. I live outside the struggle
right now, he said, peering into the cam-
era, pushing back the dreads draping
down his forehead. My days damn near
all be the same.
40
 THE HEART OF YOUR

STUDIO

M-TRACK 2X2M
2 - I N / 2 - O U T 2 4 / 19 2 U S B A U D I O / M I D I I N T E R F A C E
Featuring Noblesse Oblige | Watch the video at m-audio.com
rocawear.com DON BENJAMIN
42 The myth of cool girl makeup
46 Korean fashion comes to
New York
50 The end of period shame
52 Why dad hats are trending
 How the internets
coolest beauty brand
makes skincare look
effortless.

Story by Haley Mlotek

Illustration by Frank J. Mondragn

FADE IN 44
Her name was Josephine Esther Mentzer,
but only until she decided otherwise. Her
father, Max Mentzer, called her Estee,
lifting the vowels after biting down on
that middle consonant. Later she paired
her fathers pronunciation with an accent
aigu to make it sound French. Her hus-
band, Joseph Lauter, made his T a D
to match. In 1948, they began selling four
modest skincare products a cleansing
oil, lotion, and two deep moisturizers
at Saks New York; almost 60 years later,
Este Lauder Companies Inc. reports rev-
enues over $10 billion.
Before Lauder, there was Helena
Rubinstein, who sold her own brand of
cold cream from her Australian salon
beginning in 1902. She liked to wear a
lab coat while she spoke to customers,
believing it made her look and sound
more scientifically authoritative. And
before Rubinstein, there was David H.
McConnell; in 1886 he sold hand-mixed
perfumes door-to-door in New York. A
year later, he hired Persis Foster Eames
Albee, who suggested business might be
better if they hired women to sell direct-
ly to other women. In 1928, McConnell
renamed the company Avon, and the
women became Avon Ladies. They soon
proved that rose-infused oils would sell by
pretty much any name, if a nice woman
came by to personally tell you how sweet
they smelled.
A century and change later, in 2010,
Emily Weiss was 25 and spending time with
her family on a beach. She told them she
wanted to start a blog, although it wouldnt
be a blog, exactly, it would be more of an
online magazine, and it wouldnt be about
her, but it would have the kind of beauty
writing she wanted to read. She called it
Into The Gloss, and its most popular fea-
ture was The Top Shelf, for which Weiss
talked to friends and models and fashion
industry favorites about their skincare and
makeup routines.
Within a year, she quit her job assisting
Vogues then-style director to run Into The
Gloss full-time. And in October 2014, she
launched Glossier (pronounced like dos-
sier), her own brand of skincare products.
It launched with four essentials, the sorts
of items frequently recommended by the
women featured in Top Shelf: a priming
moisturizer, rosewater face mist, skin tint,
and lip balm. This year, Glossiers product
line expanded to include an eyebrow gel,
four lipsticks, cream concealer, a high-
lighting stick, face wash, and two masks.
The highest-priced item tops out at $30.
In her ve-year anniversary post for
Into The Gloss last year, Weiss wrote that
she started out with her apartment, her
cat, and spotty wi-; as of this writing, her
company takes up three oors of a build-
ing in SoHo, has 45 employees working
on the site and the brand, $10.4 million in
venture capital funding, 1.5 million unique
monthly page views on Into The Gloss, a
Snapchat following that is, according to
Weiss, larger than BuzzFeeds, and a sold-
out lipstick with a waitlist of over 18,000
anticipatory customers. The wi-, Weiss
said, remains pretty spotty.
In a golden age for content, venture
capital-backed businesses often dabble
in blogs, using them as promotional ven-
tures to supplement the companys real
work. Weiss inverted that, using Into The
Gloss as the foundation for Glossier, turn-
ing the transparent, conversational feel
of its content into the kind of consumer
insight no amount of money can buy.
Glossier has nearly 300,000 followers on
Instagram, but Weiss calls Into The Gloss
the companys largest social channel. The
comments we get on there are consis-
tently in the hundreds, and we really use
the feedback to shape everything we do,
from product development to marketing
campaigns. Products are sent swaddled
in bubblegum-pink bubble wrap pouch-
es, and every order comes with a sheet of
stickers that features a mix of palm trees,
cherries, happy faces, and Glossiers logos.
Girls love stickers, the deliveries wink. Girls
just want to have fun, the pink-and-white
palette and coy copy sing. And, of course,
they also want glowing skin.
Glossier has thrived by targeting the
midpoint between cheap cult favorites
and luxury treats: its hypoallergenic,
cruelty-free formulas welcome all kinds
of customer requirements, ranging from
the physical to the moral and nancial.
Embryolisses Lait-Crme Concentr, the
moisturizer recommended by makeup
artists all over the world, was frequent-
ly seen on the Into The Gloss proles
FADE IN
of models and actresses; the Glossier
Priming Moisturizer is, in my opinion, a
better, lighter version of the same prod-
uct. The Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour
Cream was frequently invoked as a fa-
vorite intensive salve for lips, dry spots,
and cuticles; the Glossier Balm Dotcom
is a close cousin of the same formula, but
without the punishing medicinal smell.
Both products are priced comparably.
We believe Glossier is more than just
beauty or beauty products. Its a way of
life, Weiss told me over email, listing
French pharmacy skincare, perfumer
Le Labo, and Ralph Lauren as particu-
lar sources of inspiration wholesome
brands, and within reach for the majority
of cosmetic consumers. Glossier under-
stands the conventions of beauty writ-
ing and marketing well enough to gently
mock them, and set itself apart. Of her em-
ployees, Weiss wrote, Were all feminists
and were all red up about the movement
were leading.
The movement Weiss refers to is a new
version of the friend-centric economy
best exemplied by Avon: young women
rely on their immediate circle of friends as
focus groups whose insights and retweets
can help them sell their products, brands,
and ideologies directly to their peers.
Glossier launched on social media before
it had a stand-alone e-commerce site, and
sees most of its business from repeat cus-
tomers and direct referral traffic, suggest-
ing a core community that is loyal, and a
wider one still growing. The model is a
technologically sophisticated update to
Albees Avon Ladies: rather than go door-
to-door, Weiss goes screen-to-screen.
Weiss says Glossier is for a girl who is
both like her and like people who inspire
her. But Glossier also actively solicits in-
formation from women who are inspired
by Weiss, who deliver their thoughts
through clicks and comments in a very
friendly feedback loop. At the begin-
ning of 2015, Weiss asked readers to leave
comments on Into The Gloss about the
qualities that would make a perfect face
wash; when the Milky Jelly Cleanser was
released in 2016, the site posted a long
oral history detailing how customer ideas
shaped their research and development.
Since the teamwork we did on Glossier
45
Theyre so Milky Jelly Cleanser did so well, were
hoping youre game to help us out again,
well-marketed read a new post at the beginning of 2016,
which asked readers to weigh in on a fu-
that you want ture heavy-duty moisturizer.
As they work out new products, the
to believe. demand for existing Glossier items has far
outpaced the companys literal growth.
Kelli In a conciliatory dispatch this winter, the
company explained that beauty prod-
ucts take a crazy long time to make and
promised a complete restock soon: We
hope that youll bear with us in the mean-
time and continue to support Glossier. We
couldnt (and wouldnt) do it without you.
The apology was direct, intimate, and de-
voted professional transparency made
to feel personal. It sounded almost like an
email youd get from a friend cancelling
dinner plans at the last minute. And that
was probably the point: whats a delayed
shipment between friends?
Like any business owner, Weiss hopes
Glossiers community will expand to as
many people as possible. Anyone can
be a Glossier girl, she said. Theyre
our readers, our editors, our friends.
They have freckles, pores, scars. Our girl
doesnt need our products, but she choos-
es them because they make her feel great
simple as that. I know lots of people
who want to be a Glossier girl. Many of
them read Into The Gloss before using
Glossier, and have felt seen, noticed, and
known by Glossiers marketing, in a way
so targeted its almost eerie.
Stephanie, 28, works in Toronto as a
production manager for a line of simple
streetwear. She told me she started us-
ing Glossier products as a fan of Into The
Gloss, describing it as chasing after that
effortlessly cool, beautiful face. She has
found them to be actually really good,
and singled out the Priming Moisturizer
in particular, saying it smoothes the sur-
face of her skin before applying makeup
like no other product does. By contrast,
Kelli, 30, an editor for a digital womens
lifestyle magazine, called Glossier prod-
ucts very well-marketed but ultimately
mediocre. The lipsticks are incredibly
shitty, and I think anyone being hon-
est with themselves will agree, she said.
Theyre so well-marketed that you want
to believe, because the idea of minimalist
FADE IN
makeup that encourages you to be in
your own skin is so appealing. But shes
still drawn to new drops. I want the in-
tel to effortless beauty too, she said.
Sandwiched in between glowing reviews
on Twitter and across multiple makeup
forums, there are also users complaining
that the priming moisturizer made them
break out, that the cleanser is just rose-
scented Cetaphil, and that the makeup
products are designed for people with
already-perfect skin.
On the spectrum of products Ive
tried (a healthy sweep through most of
Sephora), Glossier is neither entirely
worthy of its aspirational status nor un-
worthy of its place on my bathroom coun-
ter. Im a devoted user of their brow gel
and moisturizer, and I particularly like
the Perfecting Skin Tint, although my
shade has been sold out for months. Ive
taken to rationing usage for occasions,
like daytime dates or stressful work meet-
ings, when I want my skin to impress un-
der scrutiny. As makeup, it promises to
mimic the effects of impeccable skincare;
as skincare, it promises to replace the
need for makeup entirely. These are laud-
able, if unrealistic, goals, loaded with the
conventional hopes and traditional ideals
of beauty.
In actuality, Glossier is a literal com-
bination of nely sourced emollients, ex-
tracts, and waxes that promises the same
ethereal effects beauty purveyors have
been promising for, like, ever. Today, I like
the way it looks on my face. Tomorrow,
another brand might start telling a newer
story that will make me feel differently.
For now, Glossiers place is secure: in
2016, Weiss reports, Glossier will see a 600
percent increase in sales from the previ-
ous year. As I was writing this piece, the
Generation G lipstick was restocked after
months of being unavailable. The next
day, I counted three boxes with return ad-
dresses from Glossier in the mailroom of
my Brooklyn apartment building.
46
 BACK TO
THE
FLUTURE

J O H NF LU EVO GS H O E S
VANCOUVERSEATTLEBOSTONTORONTONEWYORKSANFRANCISCOCHICAGOLOSANGELES
MONTRALPORTLANDQUBECCALGARYWASHINGTONDCMINNEAPOLISDENVEROTTAWA
FLU EVO G CO M
Korean fashion
comes to New York

Story by Liz Raiss

Photography by Yael Malka

FADE IN 48
When New York gets you down, its comforting to know there are Previous
still places to hide like through the window onto a rickety old Left T-shirt BIANCA CHANDON,
fire escape, six floors above the world. For the fashion-forward, jeans and shoes AMI, jacket SUPREME.
another escapist wonderland is Fig Collective, a low-profile, Middle T-shirt GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY,
appointment-only shop in Brooklyn. The Bushwick boutique, jeans ANDERSSON BELLE, boots
which also sells clothes online, is one of the only places in the MARGIELA, jacket VINTAGE.
world where you can find a select handful of young, largely uni- Right T-shirt DIME, jacket SUPREME,
sex brands from the founders native South Korea: companies flannel RAG & BONE, pants RICK OWENS,
like Ader Error, VEI-8, and Bouton that specialize in a specific shoes Y-3.
kind of uncool cool. Jeans feature a slight wing at the ankle and,
perhaps, a simple word like RUN embroidered above the knee. Above
Black bomber jackets zip up over a bright blue inset panel. Even Left Jacket THIS IS NEVER THAT,
a humble striped shirt has extra-long sleeves, with holes for pants and belt ADER ERROR, shoes Y-3.
convenience about the wrist. In their adopted home, three of Fig Middle Jeans, T-shirt and longsleeve
Collectives four members (the crews film director Seungbum ADER ERROR, shoes AMI.
Hong, 29, is not pictured) wear a mixture of the American and Right Dress ZARA, jacket ADER ERROR,
South Korean brands they love. shoes NIKE.

FADE IN 49
Yongjae Kim, 33,
creative director

Sungjune Jang, 29,

photographer

Janne Chung, 33,

design director and stylist

FADE IN 50
MyMusicRx programs engage hospitalized kids of all ages and diagnoses
to relieve stress, anxiety, and perception of pain. You can help us deliver the
healing power of music to over ,00 kids at 2 pediatric hospitals across the
country. Learn more at MyMusicRx.org.
The end of
period shame
Story by Ruth Saxelby
Illustration by Faye Orlove
There is a song on Jenny Hvals new al-
bum, Blood Bitch, where the Norwegian
artist slowly intones, Smells like warm win-
ter. The lyric, from Untamed Region,
refers to the blood the songs protagonist
nds on her bed, and dips her nger into,
when she wakes up.
Theres been so much talk in
Scandinavia about the menstrual cup,
Hval said over Skype from her hometown
of Oslo. The line was inspired by online
discussions about the experience of using
FADE IN
a cup, which isnt doused in chemicals
like disposable period products such as
tampons and pads. People were describ-
ing what [their] blood smelled like when
there was no tampon or pad, and it was
so different.
Hvals sensual song denounces the
shame surrounding menstruation; the
scent of expelled cells is recast as some-
thing relatable rather than a telltale
sign of a millennia-old taboo. In a world
where girls are taught from a young age
52
that periods are supposed to be hidden
not just unobservable and unsmellable,
but also unspoken of the song presents
an image of a woman who is not just un-
perturbed by her own blood, but embold-
ened by it. I have big dreams, she says. And
blood powers.
Hval isnt the only one shifting percep-
tions about periods into undeniably cool-
er territory. The past 18 months have seen
a number of artists, activists, politicians,
and entrepreneurs take radical strides
toward dismantling menstrual stigma in
a variety of ways. While feminist artists
have been exploring the taboo for de-
cades, todays efforts are breaking out of
the fringes and going mainstream.
In March 2015, Toronto artist Rupi
Kaur posted a picture from her photogra-
phy series period. on Instagram. It depict-
ed a clothed woman lying on a bed, her
back to the camera, with a bloodstain on
both her sweatpants and the sheet. Kaurs
work broke the code of silence surround-
ing periods, and Instagram responded by
deleting the photo. Undeterred, Kaur took
to Facebook and Tumblr to write about
the censorship, and the story went viral.
(Instagram later apologized and reinstat-
ed the post.)
To Kiran Gandhi, a musician and ac-
tivist who made headlines in August 2015
for running the London Marathon while
bleeding freely, Kaurs work is an act of
radical activism. So, too, is the work of
other artists helping nudge periods into
the light: Argentinian artist Fannie Sosa
incorporates menstrual cup advocation
into her video work and teachings, while
Los Angeles illustrator Faye Orlove in-
cluded a diagram showing how to in-
sert a tampon in her animated video for
Mitskis Townie earlier this year. I like talk about it in the same way. Gone are
to confront boys with the grossness of
[periods] because I think its this clich
that girls are scared of violence and blood,
Orlove said in a phone call. Do you even
realize how much blood were confronted
with regularly? Acts like these, which
force a conversation around periods, are
crucial to combating stigma.
The truth is that most social change
doesnt happen unless society is forced
to question its problematic norms,
Gandhi said over Skype from her home in
Los Angeles. Thats why radical activism
is so crucial: because it gives the media
something to write about, it gives the peo-
ple something to gossip about, and it gives
people on Facebook a very tangible anchor
around which to have this discussion.
When the public starts talking about
something like it did last August, us-
ing #PeriodsAreNotAnInsult on Twitter
in response to Donald Trumps comment
that Fox News host Megyn Kelly must
have blood coming out of her wherever
because she was tough on him during
a GOP debate commerce is never far
behind. And thats a good thing, believes
Gandhi; product innovation is just as im-
portant to eradicating the period taboo as
activism, access to education, and policy
change. Because, along with the freedom
that innovation brings, product market-
ing budgets are a powerful tool to reach
people on a massive scale.
Thats what happened in the fall of 2015
when Thinx, a line of period-proof under-
wear, plastered Facebook and N.Y.C.s sub-
ways with ads that looked more like pages
from a fashion magazine. It wasnt just the
photos but the accompanying text: For
women who have periods. It turned out
that the M.T.A. had originally refused the
ads (no one had ever said period on the
subway before), so Thinx went straight to
the press. The media response forced the
M.T.A.s hand.
The way weve been talking about pe-
riods is no longer clinical, medical, or aca-
demic, explained Miki Agrawal, the New
York entrepreneur who founded Thinx,
over the phone. Its actually relatable. Its
like texting your best girlfriend. Because
[Thinx] talks about it without embar-
rassment, it gives permission to others to
the days of pad and tampon ads featuring
blue liquid, a sanitized stand-in for rust-
red blood. The entire period space has
been so tired and so lame, Agrawal said.
[Now] its artful, its beautiful, and its cul-
turally relevant.
A fresh, modern look has also been
important to Lunette, a menstrual cup
brand founded in Finland in 2005 and
now sold in over 40 countries around the
world. Lunettes founder Heli Kurjanen
told me that the companys clean and
FADE IN
simple packaging has won it a lot of fans
in transgender men: There are lots of
customers, especially from the U.S., that
thank us that we dont really focus on
gender that much.
The more we talk about periods, the
less shameful we feel; and the less shame-
ful we feel, the more powerful we are. That
can translate to action: in July 2015, the
Canadian government scrapped the tam-
pon tax shorthand for the sales tax add-
ed to feminine hygiene products because
they were categorized as luxury items.
In America, the 40 states that still tax tam-
pons, pads, and menstrual cups are active-
ly being challenged by campaigners. In a
Facebook post this June, New York City
Mayor Bill de Blasio shouted out Council
member Julissa Ferreras-Copelands hard
work for menstrual equality, and an-
nounced that New York is now the largest
city in the country to guarantee free tam-
pons and pads at public schools, shelters,
and correctional facilities.
Womens health is an economic issue,
Hillary Clinton wrote on Facebook in re-
sponse. Every woman deserves access
to affordable menstrual products. Bravo,
New York. If Clinton wins the presiden-
tial election this November, maybe the
U.S.A. will wave goodbye to the tampon
tax once and for all.
In the wake of so much progress
around periods, its easy to forget theres
a lot more work to do. The strongest
blood in the universe is probably menstru-
al blood, Hval told me. But at the same
time, its always being stripped of power.
As Gandhi pointed out, we need art that
works as activism to stir up uncomfortable
conversations, as well as policy change to
push forward innovation and take the con-
versation wide: its a cycle, just like the one
that half the worlds population knows as
intimately as their heartbeat. The coolest
bit? In shrugging off our hangups, were
not just helping crush a taboo; were rais-
ing a middle nger to the patriarchy and
shaping a different future.
53
How dad hats In a brilliant synergy of trends and tim-
ing, 2 Chainz reportedly grossed close to
became status $2 million in 30 days last December by
selling sweaters emblazoned with a Dab-
symbols for bin Santa. Portions of proceeds went
to 2 Chainzs T.R.U. Foundation charity,
everyone which helped out a disabled Atlanta vet-
eran with rent and furniture and donated
a car to another local family after a house
Story by Lakin Starling re. The success inspired another merch
venture, CEO Millionaires.
Photography by When you hit that second comma, its
Corey Olsen a big deal, said Charlie Jabaley, 2 Chainzs
FADE IN
manager, who co-owns CEO Million-
aires. Entrepreneurs are the new rock
stars. With CEO, we wanted to sell that
culture, and we wanted to help and inu-
ence these kids. Launched on New Years
Day, the Millionaires web store sells a line
of products featuring its hustle-inspiring
CEO,000,000 slogan. There are shirts,
hoodies, and no less than nine caps, all ad-
vertised as Dad Hats.
I noticed dad hats were a trend back
in December, said Jabaley, 28, who also
helped popular gossip site The Shade
54
AMERICAS
ORIGINAL CRAFT VODKA

WINE ENTHUSIAST RATINGS

SCORE OUT OF 100 POINTS

PTS

My American vodka beats

the giant imports every day.
Try American! Its better.
Its the only kind Room launch a web store. So Im like, This
term? Im going to blow it out of the water.
of hat accepted If a catchy name like dad hat makes
for a fresh marketing opportunity, the ac-
by all the classes tual hats are nothing new. Theyre cotton
baseball caps with adjustable back straps,
of society. the kind that actual dads, kids on sports
teams, and thrift store shoppers have
Alexandre Daillance worn for decades. Often found in solid
colors and embellished at the front seam
with a simple design, theyre more low-
key than snapbacks, tteds, and trucker
hats. But like each of those styles once did,
dad hats are currently enjoying a ash
of cultural ubiquity. Theyre a favorite
of everyday socialites looking to breeze
through a bad hair day and of musicians
enjoying a low prole, like Rihanna and
Bryson Tiller, whose face is regularly ob-
fuscated behind a brim.
Perhaps dad hats have become so per-
vasive because theyre inexpensive to
produce. NASASEASONS, a line of hats
inscribed with funny phrases that are de-
signed by a French teenager named Al-
exandre Daillance and four of his friends,
sell online and at the Paris boutique Co-
lette for $50 to $70. But they cost just $7 to
make, Daillance said. The hats 2 Chainz
and Jabaley sell under yet another label,
Trapavelli, are priced at $28 and produced
quickly. Theyre intended to be sold (and
then replaced with another dad hat) just
as fast, drawing in customers with designs
that reference up-to-the-minute memes,
like Crying Jordan, or one that actually
just says the words Dad Hat.
For the trend-engaged, purchasing a
fresh dad hat might be more fun and af-
fordable than collecting the latest Jordans
or designer purses. And a good one can
be like a real-life, wearable Instagram
caption, topping an outt with a wink.
My collections started from my parties,
Daillance said. All my best friends were
hooking up with people, but didnt want
to hang out with them after. I came up
with I came to break hearts, and that was
really successful, so I did Single for the
night. A hat is covetable, he said, when
it conveys originality: It should be sim-
ple but not something that already exists.
Where youre like, Oh, thats cool, I never
saw that before. The basic form of a dad
hat is notably unoriginal, which makes in-
FADE IN
teresting logos and phrases pop out even
more by contrast.
The blank canvas of a dad hat has also
become a billboard onto which someone
can broadcast their participation in a so-
cial movement. Looking to give his peers
a way to celebrate their blackness after
a string of protests over campus racism
led to the resignation of the president of
the University of Missouri last fall, stu-
dent DeMontaz Brown launched a line of
hats embroidered with the word mela-
nin and sold them on his own webshop,
MyMelanin. Ayda Gebrerufaels Brains-
ByG hats honor her Eritrean heritage,
with designs memorializing the countrys
independence and 1991, and are meant to
be worn as symbols of African pride.
A couple years ago, I thought about
launching a website to showcase people in
music and culture with empowering sto-
ries about overcoming adversity. But last
year I started selling dad hats instead. Em-
broidered with the words get free, they
spread the message of resilience and lib-
eration I once hoped a site could express.
A manufacturer provides both the hat and
its embroidering for $7 and I sell them for
$20. But making a prot isnt as rewarding
for me as when people tell me that wear-
ing the hat makes them feel good, or when
I see that someones worn one to a Black
Lives Matter protest or on a trip abroad.
It seems dad hats have become popular
because theyre as functional and exible
as the generation that has revived them.
Accessible to both buy and sell, endlessly
customizable, and unisex, they have the
potential to express both comradery and
individuality. If trucker hats were a sym-
bol of working people ironically popu-
larized by ostentatious, overspending
celebrities, dad hats are aspirational and
universal, offering people from all walks
of life an opportunity to feel cool. I come
from a high society type of class, and hats
were not accepted, NASASEASONS de-
signer Daillance said. But hats with just
a color and the logo, theyve been worn so
much by rich people, its the only kind of
hat accepted by all the classes of society.
No matter who you are, it will be ne if
you wear it.
56
G u c c i
GUCCI MANE is one of our
eras greatest artists, but he is
also a real person. And what that
real person wants to do now is
record rap songs with his friends.

Story by Andrew Nosnitsky

Photography by Geordie Wood

F r e e
GUCCI MANE 60
 ucci Mane moves rather deliberately
for a guy who has nowhere to go. At
G
62 he has the presence of a much
taller man, and when he walks its with
an urgent lurch, uid and reserved at
the same time. Perhaps its a manner
betting of someone who has spent
the past three years in a federal penitentiary.
Life in prison was hell, says the 36-year-old rapper born
Radric Davis. Hed been serving time on two counts of rearm
possession as a felon. It was a maximum security prison and
it was a lot of violence. People were dying every week. [But] I
think it helped me to get to the point Im at now, to drive me
out from the drugs. It gave me time to reect, it made a lot of
relationships that were toxic in my life just fall away.
For the next three months, Gucci will be on house arrest,
holed up in his deceptively cavernous mini-mansion in
Marietta, Georgia, about 30 minutes northwest of down-
town Atlanta. The place is predictably gorgeous. There are
minor shades of Scarface in his winding staircase, and Gucci
seems most comfortable when hes leaning over the bal-
cony, overlooking two-story windows that reveal an ornate
pool in the backyard. Downstairs, kettlebell weights and
a power tower surround an immaculate white baby grand
piano. A brand new white Maybach sits in the garage, as do
dozens of empty designer shoe boxes and a slightly worn
letterman jacket emblazoned with the logo for his 1017
Brick Squad imprint.
This is the life that more than a decade of producing
some of the grimiest trap rap ever committed to tape has
earned Gucci Mane. And while hes trapped in the house for
the time being, hes been making the most of his motionless-
ness, nalizing plans for Everybody Looking, his fth major
label album and rst since 2010s The Appeal. The industry
has changed dramatically in his absence the mixtape gray
market that he built his career on has almost entirely evap-
orated, with artists now negotiating exclusive streaming
rights with major tech rms but Guccis still doing Gucci.
Ever the model of efficiency, he says he recorded Everybody
Looking in the rst six days following his homecoming.
And on the seventh day I rested, he says, like the Lord.
here are two truths that need to be
acknowledged before we go any fur-
T
ther, both oft-disputed but mostly by
haters and nutjobs and nutjob haters.
1) Gucci Mane is one of the greatest
rappers of the 21st century. 2) Gucci
Mane is not a human clone who was
planted by the United States government.
Gucci is an acquired taste, to be certain. Partially, thats
owing to his choice of subject matter. Hes notoriously sin-
gle-minded, even by street rap standards. Hundreds of his
GUCCI MANE
tracks, across dozens of mixtapes throughout the second
half of the 00s, are centered on uncut, hedonistic street-
talking. No passing nods to social consciousness, no cloying
end-of-album tracks about how much he loves his mother.
Just a perpetual barrage of wordplay about what he has and
what hes sold and what he would do to anyone who tried to
separate him from those things.
Braggadocio, he explains. Thats what I like Im
doper than everybody, Im fresher than everybody, Im the
illest. Thats really me. I never really made music to make
people try to feel sad. I dont want people to feel sorry for
me. I want them to feel powerful, I want them to feel aggres-
sive, I want them to feel invincible. I want to hear the fuck-
ery. I want to hear the shit that people probably think, This
aint good to be played around kids.
What Guccis music lacks in compassion and introspec-
tion, he has more than compensated for with sheer style.
He was born in Bessemer, Alabama, a small city located just
southwest of Birmingham, and still carries an accent. This,
multiplied by an Atlanta-learned swagger acquired when
his family moved there when he was a kid, has left him with
a distinctive and malleable mush-mouthed ow, decep-
tively simple from a distance but revealing new rhythmic
dimensions upon closer inspection. This has proven to be
a gift and a curse its likely allowed him to sneak more
complicated cadences into tracks with crossover appeal,
but has also drawn him the ire of rap fans raised on more
conservative, East Coast tongues, who deride him as insuf-
ciently lyrical.
Like E-40 or Camron before him, Gucci is a lyricist
obsessed with the elasticity of language, constantly nding
new ways to say the same things over and over again, hang-
ing on to every sound and synonym with a palpable joy. I
think I was a born poet, honestly, he says. My mind just
works in a unique way. Always since I was a little kid, Id
see words and make them rhyme. So much of his appeal
depends not on what hes saying but on the angle at which
words fall out of his mouth his strained emphasis on
certain unexpected syllables, his sideways pronunciations.
Check the 08 mixtape classic Bachelor Pad, on which he
turned standard-issue sex romp boasts into full-on verbal
gymnastics: Lil mamas a monster/ Thunder in her pajamas /
My johnson in her tonsils/ Then I shove it in her ster-num.
While Guccis hood stardom never translated to the same
level of crossover success that contemporaries (and rivals)
like T.I. or Young Jeezy did, his modern-day resonance
dwarfs theirs. Hes directly mentored two generations
of trap rappers: his original Brick Squad affiliates Waka
Flocka Flame and OJ da Juiceman, who took over Atlanta
rap around 2009, and then Young Thug and Migos, both
alumni of around-the-clock, circa-2013 sessions at his Brick
Factory studio, and who have redened the genre again in
his absence.
61
 A lot of artists have a problem with putting other peo-
ple on, and people dont embrace them [when they do it]
because it aint genuine, Gucci says. Im always trying to swapped out his once-signature potbelly for a six-pack, hav-
help people. I wouldnt give a damn if I get four artists right
now and all of them burn me. Imma get me four more,
because I feel like the more people I help, the more good
I do. No matter what a person does, helping somebody can
never hurt me.
Far beyond Atlanta, the likes of Chief Keef and Fetty
Wap have cited him as their primary inspiration, and more
than a few less-interesting rappers have built careers around
aping his slack-jawed style and a scant couple of his many
ows. I like that the kids embrace me. I feel proud, Im at-
tered, Gucci says, eschewing any old world biter-shaming
and citing his simplicity as the draw. I think Im the easiest
to imitate. I cant imitate Eminem. And they cant imitate
Eminem, but they can imitate Gucci. Is Eminem good? Yes.
Do I recognize hes super talented? Hell yeah! But do I want
to play that when I jump in my Maybach?
Despite an enormous creative footprint, his career has
been full of ups and downs, often marred by legal troubles.
For every major album release it seemed like he had a coin-
ciding criminal incident. He killed a man who broke into his
home, an act that was later ruled as self-defense. He allegedly
pushed a woman out of a moving car. After a court-appointed
stay in a mental facility, he resurfaced with an ice cream cone
tattooed on his face. And so on, and such and such.
The last of these ordeals would happen in the fall of
2013, rst pregured by a series of bizarre Twitter rants
in which he threw friends and peers like Nicki Minaj and
Drake under the bus in the most vulgar terms possible. He
apologized shortly thereafter, attributing the outburst to his
prescription cough syrup addiction and announcing plans
to go to rehab, but he would never make it there. Instead,
he was arrested a few days later, after yet more odd behav-
ior prompted a friend to call the police. They found him at
an East Atlanta intersection where he began screaming at
them. And with a loaded handgun concealed on his person.
I done had a history of violence, a history of just erratic
behavior, Gucci says now. I had a history of drug abuse
and drug addiction. All of it ties [together]. Its just a spiral
of destructive behavior.
The 2013 breakdown landed Gucci back in prison, but
his visibility only grew while he was away, particularly on
social media, where #freegucci hashtags and assorted fan
art ruled the digital landscape. This new crossover fame
likely had as much to do with his mythology as it did with
his music, if not more so. More than two dozen full-length
mixtapes cobbled together from the Brick Factory record-
ings were released while he was in prison, but very little of it
seemed to connect much further than his original core audi-
ence. Guccis reckless persona appears to translate better to
the social media sphere than his actual recordings.
GUCCI MANE
So fans were a bit confused when a new Mane came
home from prison, physically and mentally. For one, he
ing knocked a good 75 pounds from his frame. The dramatic
weight loss caused many of the tattoos that cover most of his
body to change shape. Even his iconic ice cream cone began
to fade some, rendering it difficult to see in certain light-
ing. When he jumped back onto social media, his frequent
Snapchat and Instagram posts painted him as sober and
almost disconcertingly happy, ashing a white and toothy
grin while hanging out blissfully with his ance, the model
Keyshia Kaoir.
When he spoke to his followers, gone too was the
Alabama drawl that has so long dened his raps, and in its
place was an affected tone falling somewhere between the
British limo driver from the Grey Poupon commercials and
a full-on mechanical man. There is an inherent air of irony
to this voice, sounding something like a bratty child doing
an over-the-top take on what he imagines a good kid to
sound like. This would make sense given the circumstances
of Guccis life at the moment. Everybody is looking, includ-
ing, presumably, his PO, so he needs to be on his absolute
best behavior. (If youve been listening to Gucci for a while
youll know that the alternate accent isnt entirely new he
employed a similar voice and persona on the interludes of
the 2009 mixtape The Cold War: Great BRRRitain.)
But these changes were enough to get the crackpots
cracking. In a usual internet case of reverse Occams razor,
several people began to speculate that this new Gucci was,
in fact, a clone, possibly planted by the CIA for reasons
unknown. When Gucci outlined his lunch plans for the day
Just fruit, veggies and water, very light one Facebook
user commented, This nigga on snapchat talking about I
want a fruit salad. NIGGA The REAL Gucci dont want no
fucking FRUIT SALAD. Bitch he like activists [sic] slushes
That post has received more than 15,000 shares.
As with everything that happens on the internet, the
clone talk is more a running gag than a genuine conspir-
acy theory, and Gucci rightfully took it in stride when he
heard the allegations. On Snapchat he made a formal non-
statement in his fully stilted robot voice: I am hearing that
Gucci is a clone I will neither support nor deny those accu-
sations. He elaborated later, in a day-to-day conversational
tone a lot closer to his old accent, if just a tiny bit sharper:
Its funny to me. I guess people aint used to me being
healthy and taking care of myself and being happy, so I can
understand why they shocked I embrace it. A clone is like
perfection. If I look like a machine or a robot then Im doing
something well.
Joke or not, consider this how tragic is it that so much
of the world is, in effect, rooting for the delinquency of a
great artist? Why treat healthy living and sobriety as a
punchline or even a betrayal? Its one thing to nd pleasure
62
I dont want people to feel
sorry for me. I want them to
feel powerful, I want them
to feel aggressive, I want
them to feel invincible.
through fuckery in music, its another to wish a lifetime of
fuckery on an actual human being who is seemingly work-
ing his hardest to transcend it.
Whats the use in having all the money if you gonna
die and be unhealthy and be sick or diabetic or fat as hell?
Gucci says. What you gonna do then? Fallin out, having
seizures. That aint what I need to be, that aint the future I
want. When I was on drugs so bad, I talked different. When
I was smoking weed, a damn near pound of weed every day,
I was congested. When I was drinking lean like crazy every
day, I was out my mind. I was always sophisticated, but it
aint even sophisticated now its just a sober, a more con-
scious Gucci. And people probably aint used to it. It took a
minute for me to get used to it. But theyre gonna have to get
used to it because its here to stay.
ucci remembers being just 7 or 8 when
his brother, six years his senior, intro-
G
duced him to rap music by way of LL
Cool J. When he was in the fourth
grade, in 1989, he snuck to the ea
market and for $5 bought his own rst
cassette, 2 Live Crews As Nasty As They
Wanna Be, on the strength of its raunchy cover alone.
These guys [were] talking about head, pussy, cock,
he says. My mother found the tape and she was like, You
bought this?! She sat on the porch and played it outside,
just to embarrass me, he continues. Every time somebody
would come to the house [shed be] like, Oh yeah, you know
thats Radrics tape right there. I wouldnt even come out the my rst CD. He pressed up 1,000 copies of Str8 Drop Records
house the whole day because I didnt want anybody to see
me or know that I was listening to stuff like that.
Later that year his father, from whom Gucci Mane inher-
ited his nickname, moved the family to the Mountain Park
Apartments on the east side of Atlanta. Across the street was
a split-screen metaphor of Guccis life to follow: a record
store run by Edward J, a pioneering bass DJ, and, next to it,
a car wash that doubled as an open-air drug market.
My dad was like the breadwinner of the house, but
he was just the most street guy I ever met, he says.
Everything he did, all the money he got, he got it out the
street. [In Alabama] I was naive to that, [but] as soon as I got
to Georgia I went outside and seen the streets. The streets
was always around me [there]. It just changed my whole
perspective on life.
As the 90s progressed, he was drawn to the music of
street-minded Memphis rappers like Kingpin Skinny Pimp,
Project Pat, and Tommy Wright III, and to the real-life
street culture that surrounded him in Atlanta. He did well
in school, well enough to earn a scholarship to Georgia
Perimeter College, but was busted on a drug charge before
classes started. The judge actually deferred Guccis 90-day
sentence so he could attend for one semester, but he never
GUCCI MANE
connected with the college lifestyle and ended up literally
ipping his books for brick money.
Even before then, Gucci had begun to think about tran-
sitioning toward a legal hustle. I remember the Hot Boyz
album coming out, I remember listening to Birdman and
Mannie Fresh, and it inspired me, he said. I wanted to
be behind the scenes of the music. Gucci agreed to bank-
roll the rap aspirations of a neighborhood friends younger
brother, and this meant buying beats from Zaytoven, a bar-
ber/producer who had recently moved to Atlanta from the
Bay Area.
Im like 19, [and the rapper is] 14. Im selling weed, sell-
ing dope, and the little boy smoke weed, remembers Gucci.
He came to the studio like three times. Hes trying to write
stuff. Hes talking about the trap but he dont really know
what hes saying. Hes lying. And the numbers aint adding
right. And Im telling him, Nah, what you saying just say
this. And Zay observing this.
On the fth session, [the kid] didnt come again, he
continues. But me and his brother there. So Zay say I
guess cause Zay didnt want to lose the deposit, and he had
been watching me Why dont you try it? I didnt try that
day, but that kinda put the seed into me.
After his arrest, and its ensuing 90-day jail stint, Gucci
made the decision to focus on rhyming. I cant be standing
on the corner no more because I had pleaded rst offender,
so that mean if I dont get in trouble its off my record. I
think I had wrote like 14 or 15 raps while I was locked up.
When I got out, I recorded all those 15 raps, and that was
Presents Gucci Mane La Flare and sold them for $10 each out
of the trap. When the initial run sold out, he took the album
to Guyanese bootleggers on the west side of Atlanta and let
them handle distribution for him.
The rest of Guccis history lives in his discography. He
linked with local label Big Cat Records and released his
proper debut, Trap House, in 2005. That relationship eventu-
ally soured and dissolved into his current, perpetually off-
and-on-again situation with Atlantic. But even when he was
recording high-prole collaborations with the likes of Mariah
Carey and Lil Wayne, he always kept one foot in the inde-
pendent hustle. And this was where he shined brightest. To
truly understand Gucci Mane, one has to indulge his 06-09
mixtape hot streak. The 20 or so full-length tapes he released
during this period represent one of the most remarkable runs
in the history of the genre, matched perhaps only by Waynes
similar run from a few years prior.
He recorded 2007s No Pad, No Pencil in just two or three
days (depending on who you ask), off the top of his head and
with all the beats provided on the spot by a then-unknown
17-year-old producer by the name of Mike Will. He says the
2008 street hit Photoshoot, on which he switches ows
and rhymes over an off-time reversal of the beat halfway
65
through his third verse, was entirely improvised from top to
bottom, hook and all. When asked about the line of thought
behind this creative model, Gucci turns into a motivational
speaker. You gotta detach from the outcome, he says. You
cant overthink it, whatever it is. You just gotta do it. Put it
out there and have faith it gonna be right. Everything you
make is good.
Many rappers ood the mixtape circuit early in their
careers as a way to ease into a unied, more professional
style. Gucci did it because simply he had too many ideas
to ever settle down. At his peak, nearly every song seemed
to have its own distinct angle, each of them brimming
with ows and concepts. And while he made some cre-
ative missteps in the years since 2010s The Appeal, for
instance, will go down mostly as a botched crossover effort
he thinks his recent life choices are only set to make him
sharper. I used to think that I had to be high to record, but
GUCCI MANE
now I know I dont, he says. Being sober I can feel shit. I
can feel again now.
aturally, Gucci has had a studio
installed in the house. Its contents are
N
state-of-the-art except, perhaps tell-
ingly, the vocal booth, which is rigged
up old-school bedroom style, the mic
in the middle of a small, maybe 8 x 4
closet with comforters hanging from
the wall to soundproof it. A TV stand has been repurposed as a
storage space for dozens of neatly folded pieces of yellow legal
paper: all the lyrics sheets Gucci wrote during his prison stay.
Though Everybody Looking has been nearly complete for
a few weeks now, minus some continued post-production
tweaks from Mike Will, Gucci is already headed back into
the booth today. He talks abstractly about the next project
66
but isnt clear about what that is or when it will emerge. It
seems like hes just working because work is what he does.
When he enters the studio, Sean Paine, his in-house engi-
neer since the Brick Factory days, is already sitting at the
console, dressed in all black with a cap pulled low. You
got them beats from Zay? Gucci asks. Lets go through
some. Sean plays an instrumental for a few measures, but
Gucci passes. The second one, with a classic, carnival-style
Zaytoven bounce, will work.
Gucci grabs a page from his lyric stash with the words
Gangsta Story scribbled at the top in red pen. He sits
down in a desk chair, looks it over as he leans all the way
back, and bobs his head to the track. After about one minute
he announces, Alright, cmon, to no one in particular, then
proceeds into the makeshift booth, closing the door behind
him. On mic, he crumples up the sheet for dramatic effect
and announces his presence with a Slick Rick Heeere we go,
before launching into a cautionary tale that would make
The Ruler himself proud.
Its a rare narrative track from Gucci, reminiscent of
Timothy from the Great BRRRitain tape but considerably
GUCCI MANE
more complicated full of petty crimes, crumbling reputa-
tions, courtroom stabbings, and star-crossed baby mommas.
The ow echoes his pitter-patter on 2009s Frowney Face
but feels looser in delivery. It only takes Gucci a few takes to
get the track down, then he commands Ad-lib! into the mic.
Sean hits record again and Gucci delivers: NO NUTS! GO!
DAMN! WOOH! BLAOW! SHH! HUH!
He emerges from the booth a mere 25 minutes after he
entered. By now Zaytoven and Mike Will have arrived, Mike
in Jordan sweats and a white tee, Zay in a faux-cutoff tee
with full sleeves mimicking dragon tattoos and two diamond
crosses not unlike the pair Gucci is wearing. Zays beats
be like a blank canvas! says Gucci, visibly psyched to play
the nished track to his guys. Mike concurs: He know your
pocket. Gucci then breaks down the entire narrative its
based in truth but the names have been changed and ends
up talking more quickly than he raps. Its a horrible story
but it sound good on a Zay beat! A couple of Frankenstein-ed
punch-ins later and the track is done.
As if on cue, Mike has already made his way over to the
MPC and starts laying down an uptempo, almost Miami
67
bass-inspired drum loop. Very quickly he turns a rudimen-
tary scratch track complex with stuttering hi-hats and a
rolling, water droplet bassline. He tags Zay in, who stares
intently at the MPC for a minute before hitting the keys and
playing around with a melody on top.
While they work, Sean passes Gucci a small pad and
Gooch gets to it. Zay asks, What we namin it? and Gucci
responds, Side Door. The four of them move briskly and
quietly, apart from the thump theyre creating. Any creative
conversation is sparse, and purely utilitarian, all one-word
commands and sentence fragments. Mostly it seems like they
are communicating via mindmeld and shared musical pas-
sion. In the few down moments, they crack jokes and make
small talk. The night before, the Golden State Warriors had
lost the NBA Finals to the Cleveland Cavaliers, blowing a two
game lead. Mike lightweight mocks Steph Curry in the wake
of his choke act but Gucci defends him, offering up the Yoda-
like koan, Frustration is basketball.
In just 10 minutes theyve completed the beat, with
Mikes uptempo drum track blown out by Zays meander-
ing, almost New Agey melody. Mike compares it to 2Pacs
Ambitionz Az a Ridah. Gucci preemptively declares it a
classic, to which Mike half-hesitantly rebukes, Not much
thought put into it. Gucci isnt buying this: Thats the
most in-pocket you can get. He paces around the room a
little longer, eyeing his pad, mumbles OK, and lumbers
back into the booth. At one point Kaoir comes upstairs and
sneaks into the booth. He greets her with a Hey beauti-
ful before closing the door behind the two of them. Shell
remain for the duration of his verse, but he immediately
gets back to rhyming. As he does, Zay begins disconnect-
ing the MPC and keyboard, transporting them into a sec-
ond studio across the hall so he can continue making beats.
Gotta keep cooking.
Gucci makes an on-the-spot decision to freestyle the
second verse. When hes done, he leaves the booth beam-
ing with pride and quoting the bars that he just invented:
Guwop, why you got a fo-fo? You on Billboard/ Desert Eagle on me
but I still kick it like a eld goal. They briey discuss the strat-
egy of splitting between freestyle and written verses. You
laid down the foundation, says Mike. That shit a hybrid.
Your bounce is in the freestyle, adds Sean as he begins to
mix the track down. The knowledge is in the written. In
about 90 minutes theyve completed two entire songs. They
are good songs, too. Maybe even great ones.
wo days later, the whole crew recon-
venes at the house to lm a video for
T
Guwop Home, a celebratory single
from Everybody Looking that features
Young Thug on the hook. Making
the most out of Guccis limited situa-
tion, theyve moved the entire studio
GUCCI MANE
poolside. Sean, Zay, and Mike Will are all in attendance,
mock manning the boards and frolicking in general. Thug,
however, has yet to be accounted for.
Everything moves at a crawl, as video shoots usually do, a
dramatic shift from Guccis normal pace. A throng of scant-
ily clad women alternate between getting oiled down in the
shade and melting in the 90 degree Atlanta heat. In the down
time, Zay sits inside at the piano and plays idly, revealing the
hidden layers of sophistication in his usual style.
Gucci is characteristically friendly to everyone, greet-
ing the pool cleaner with roughly the same warmth that he
offers to famous Canadian rapper Drake, who makes a brief
surprise visit to pay his respects to the Trap God and check
out some of the new album. They discuss plans for a future
collaboration, with Drake joking, I gotta make some calls
and get you into Canada!
Shortly after Drake leaves, Young Thug shows, only
about ve hours late. Still, his arrival marks a joyous occa-
sion. Its the two rappers rst time seeing each other since
Guccis come home Thug recorded his contribution to the
song remotely and their elation lls the air. Gucci stomps
over from the opposite side of the pool with a childlike bel-
low, My friend is here! Im so happy now! They hug, their
respective chains clanking. A few minutes later when they
reenact their reunion for social media, Gucci adds, This is
a great day!
Thug, who in the years since Gucci went in has blos-
somed from a promising cult favorite into one of the most
brilliant rap stars breathing, reminisces fondly on the time
spent with his mentor in the Brick Factory. He taught me
everything, Thug says. Most denitely he taught me dont
never stop. He was rapping every day, all day and all night.
Hell be mad at me if Id leave the yo [the studio]. Hed
be like, Man, you dead broke and you goddamn running
around and Im up a whole lot of millions and Im working
every day. How the hell that look? Gucci chimes in, chees-
ing: Id tell Thug all the time, Where you goin?! You see me
in here every day, why you goin so soon?
And Thug is unfazed by the many changes in his old
friend: I dont give a fuck. He could be seven hundred
pounds, he could be two pounds. Either way it go, hes still
Guwop, he says. Im wit it. He gonna be fat, Im gonna get
fat too, fuck it. He gonna be skinny, Im gonna be skinny.
They chop it up for a few minutes more, both of them still
wearing ear-to-ear grins as Gucci gives Thug a quick tour of
his new digs. Then they get down to business with the video
shoot. Theres nowhere to go and work to be done.
68
You cant overthink it, whatever
it is. You just gotta do it.
Put it out there and have
faith it gonna be right.
Everything you make is good.
At Home with Gucci Mane

Photography by Gunner Stahl

GUCCI MANE 70
GUCCI MANE 71
GUCCI MANE 72
GUCCI MANE 73
Shame
CHARLI XCX used to be afraid
of making straight-up pop music,
even though thats what she always
loved. Shes not scared anymore.

Story by Duncan Cooper

Photography by Renata Raksha
Styling by Lisa Katnic

L e s s
JACKET, SKIRT, AND BOOTS OPENING CEREMONY, EARRINGS HOT TOPIC,
CHOKER STYLISTS OWN, HAIR CLIPS CLAIRES.
DRESS JULIA CLANCEY, BOOTS MAYA SHOES OF HOLLYWOOD,
LACES BIZZY B.
 dont think being healthy is really fun,
Charli XCX says, as she cracks into her
I C
third vegetable juice in three days. I
dont think not partying is really fun,
either. But here she is, 23 years old at
an upscale caf in Los Angeles, the city
where she now lives part of the time,
powering through the nal day of a month dedicated to try-
ing something new: avoiding alcohol, exercising regularly,
and eating sugar-free. Very un-XCX, she says.
The occasion of our meeting is Charlis third studio
album, which, though still untitled, she says is nished and
scheduled for a 2017 release. For her rst LP, 2013s True
Religion, she took a writer from Grantland bar-hopping and,
the next night, kicked off a sweaty concert by announcing,
God, Im so hungover. Her second album, Sucker, released
the following year, was commemorated by a Complex story
that ended with her drunk-dialing the reporter. And so it is
with what seems like genuine semi-embarrassment that she
realizes that this story is going to involve juice.
Im really bummed that youre hanging out with me this
week because literally until the beginning of June Id never
done that shit, she says. But when you start getting asked to
go to more events and award shows, and youre on display as
an object I just began to think about it more. For some rea-
son the Daily Mail likes to write about me, and I got sucked
into reading it. No matter who you are, sometimes it hurts
when people are like, Youre a fat bitch. It just made some-
thing click in my brain, and Im not really quite sure what it
is. I dont think to own my pop star-ness or whatever means
I have to go to the fucking gym, but now Im having juice so
thats just cool.
Wellness never made anybody a pop star, but a pop star,
more than ever, is what Charli is trying to be. I want to make
the best pop album of 2017, she says. If she can pull it off,
itll actualize a childhood dream: I really just wanted to be
Britney Spears when I was younger. Youd be forgiven for
missing that reference point on her rst two albums, though.
Charli has always written big, catchy, emotional hooks, but
shes often backtracked on their boldness with dense, clunky
production. Alt-pop with an emphasis on alt, her sound until
now has seemed practically designed to protect her from
accusations of making what some might call the wrong kind
of pop: party-obsessed, super-slick, and blithely commercial.
Maybe its just getting older and becoming more com-
fortable in her own skin. But with a combination of the con-
dence won by critical acclaim, and the self-awareness of
someone whos used to being criticized, this master of say-
ing fuck it has nally said fuck it about her music, too. For the
rst time, Charli XCX has recorded an album thats as fun to
listen to as shes always wanted her life to seem fun to live.
Making it has taken some hard work shes just not sure she
wants you to know that.
CHARLI XCX
harli was born Charlotte Aitchison, in
1992, to a Scottish father and Indian
mother. Back in the 70s, her dad had
been a party promoter with a disco
club in Bishops Stortford, the town
where Charli grew up an hour north of
London. Her parents actually met at
his club, she says, at a New Years Eve party while he, dressed
like John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever, was changing
a beer barrel at midnight. For Charli, though, home was a
quiet place. Her attempts to lead friends in playground ver-
sions of Spice Girls songs were a bust, and the only band
at her school played Guns N Roses covers. She dated their
young lead singer for a while, but as a teen she began to
focus her musical interests far elsewhere: on a trashy, neon
party-world she was discovering online through artists like
Uffie and the French label Ed Banger.
At 14, Charli started making beats on a Yamaha keyboard
and posted her rst songs to Myspace. I was rapping about
dinosaurs and teddy bears and that whole world of, like,
cuteness, you know? she says now. Some of it was fucking
terrible. Some of it was pretty compelling, too, like her song
Art Bitch, with tricky lyrics that consist entirely of back-
handed compliments to a popular artsy teen; the song is an
eternal puzzle, because as a listener you can never quite tell
if Charli is meant to seem justied in her condescension
or pathetically jealous. In any case, before long her music
caught the attention of a local party guy named Chaz Cool,
of the band The Coolness, who invited her to play some raves
of her own. My rst one and the best one I ever did was
when I was 15, she says, in a peanut factory in Hackney. I
went with my parents and we stayed until 6 a.m. My dad was
real into it. There was loads of people dressed up as zebras. It
was like a real drug scene, party scene, and Id only seen that
on Skins. I played at two in the morning, then three weeks
later I turned 16 and signed a deal.
One of the reasons Charli says she decided to go with
Asylum Records, a subsidiary of Atlantic, was because she got
along so well with the man who signed her, Ed Howard, and
his wife, Miranda Cooper, who was part of the songwriting
team behind tracks for Girls Aloud and Sugababes. Though
those titan British girl groups of the 2000s were very much
a product of the pop music machine, Charli was initially
uncomfortable with being a part of that world. When youre
16 and you sign and you go through rounds with produc-
ers, that kind of factory way where you go in and you meet
someone and you do a song and you leave you dont really
know who you are, she says. Even though I think I wrote
some really fucking good songs in that time, it sounded like
everybody else. I didnt know what I sounded like yet. It
took a few years of detours including an abandoned stint
at the Slade School of Fine Art, which hit either its high or
low point when Charli did a performance art piece where
77
SHIRT AND SHOES OPENING CEREMONY, SKIRT KENZO, EARRINGS ALDO,
HAIR CLIPS CLAIRES, JACKET AND SOCKS STYLISTS OWN.
she danced with a bunch of hamburgers stuffed in her bikini
before she recorded her rst album.
In 2012, Charli started working with the producer Ariel
Rechsthaid, feeling much appreciation for the comfortingly
anti-factory studio he had in his backyard in L.A. Together
they developed the busy sound of True Romance, which ges-
tured equally to left-eld EDM and 80s gothic rock, and
frequently buried her vocals in tricky effects. I denitely
felt like I was afraid when I wrote that record, and you can
hear it, Charli told Pitchfork a year after it was released. I
wanted to make a pop record, but I wanted to make it cool.
While True Romance was self-conscious to a fault, its sound
was very of-the-time. Reviews compared Charli favorably to
Grimes, and remixes connected her to a well-curated group
of popular-yet-indie artists, including Blood Orange, Odd
Future, and Jai Paul.
The album wasnt a blockbuster in its rst year, it sold
just 12,000 copies in the U.S., according to Soundscan
but by then Charli had already proven her ability to write
a hit. I Love It, a sneery track shed off-handedly penned
in a hotel room around the same time, far out-performed
anything on her album when her demo was re-recorded by
the group Icona Pop. There were memorable lyrics, like the
generation-rallying Youre from the 70s, but Im a 90s bitch, and
it was the rst song to feature whats become a Charli XCX
signature: a subtly catchy melody paired with the sort of easy
hook that anyone can scream-sing along. I dont care! I love it!
But Charli initially distanced herself from the track, telling
people that shed given it away because it didnt t the vibe
of her debut, or that the words didnt mean anything, or that
it just didnt feel like her.
Which made it all the more frustrating when, more than
her album, it was the thing that people in the music business
wanted her to recreate. That song set me up in this factory
of songwriting, which, at the time, I hated, she says, but
now I love. Going into the studio and being asked to write
over and over again for other artists, and kind of recapture
that energy thats denitely how I enjoy working now, and
what I enjoy about making music: that I can just go and do
it really quickly. Now I just want to write songs like that all
the time. I just want to work, like, top line, top line, top line,
top line, she says, referring to a songs punchiest combo of
melody and lyrics.
In retrospect, Sucker was largely about working toward
this realization. Shortly before she started making it, Charli
once again landed a hit for someone else: Iggy Azaleas
Fancy, on which she wrote and sang the chorus. Fancy
became the rst single to go No. 1 on Billboard with Charlis
name attached, and the rst big music video with her face
in it, too, but its success, and more requests to reproduce it,
triggered for her a minor crisis. I wanted to get some energy
and some aggression out, she told the L.A. Times, so she
ed to Sweden to record unltered punk songs with Patrik
CHARLI XCX
Berger, the producer of I Love It. In the end, those demos
and their scuzzy guitars would morph into parts of Sucker,
which turned out sounding far more like Blur than Britney.
In interviews, she said she had no intention of getting
Sucker on pop radio. You joined my club/ Luke loves your stuff,
she sang on the title track, a sarcastic reference to Dr. Luke
and the industrys embrace of her hits above her other music.
At the same time, she worked on the album with a broader
range of established pop producers and co-writers than
she ever had before, including Steve Mac, a songwriter for
Shakira and One Direction, and Stargate, a go-to produc-
tion duo for Rihanna throughout her career. Intentional or
not, it seemed almost inevitable when Break the Rules and
Boom Clap, two songs from Sucker that kept up the sneery
vocal style of I Love It and Fancy, became Charlis rst
solo singles on Billboards Hot 100. The album sold twice as
many copies in its rst week as her debut did in its rst year,
and its music videos have earned combined YouTube plays
of over 400 million.
Thanks in part to the songs placement in the schmalzy
teen romance The Fault in Our Stars a tting home for a
track about rst kisses and uttering hearts Boom Clap
became Charlis rst solo Top 10, but it was a turning point
in her catalog long before then. After Charli wrote it, the
song had initially been offered to the former Disney Channel
star Hilary Duff, she told Popjustice in 2014. And her peo-
ple were like, This is NOT cool enough for Hilary. Charli
took that uncoolness, so anathema to her earlier and weaker
music, and this time she owned it. Shes even come around
on I Love It, now. Its easy to say that the songs you feel
are the most you are your most successful songs, she says,
but, like, I do feel like Boom Clap and I Love It, especially
in terms of top line, are just the most me. Once Charli felt
she could engage the music business on her own terms, she
stopped worrying and learned to love the pop machine.
A big focus for Charli lately has been building out that
business side. Last year, she hosted a BBC Three docu-
mentary called The F Word And Me, about the relationship
between feminism and pop music, and was invited to Simon
Cowells house to audition to be a judge on the U.K. version
of The X Factor, though she thinks she freaked everyone out
by talking too much about behind-the-scenes details. I was
really into the lighting, and how much say I would get over
the stage show, and whether I could bring my own stylists in
for the artists that I would be mentoring. It was an inspiring
experience nonetheless. I just fucking like Simon Cowell,
she says. Hes very talented at creating celebrity culture and
TV shows, and he has an ear as well. I like his vibe and his
ambition, and I think I have that. I like the idea of being like
a female Simon Cowell.
Earlier this year, Charli started a record label under
Atlantic, Vroom Vroom Recordings, and signed her for-
mer bassists solo project, CuckooLander, which she also
80
manages. Now that shes all about speed-jamming top lines,
songwriting has become an even bigger focus, alternatingly
fun and dead serious. She recently recorded a jokey demo
with Rostam Batmanglij, formerly of Vampire Weekend,
called My Pussy Is the Freshest, and says theyre not-so-
jokingly thinking about sending it to Nicki Minaj.
When it comes to songwriting for other people, Ive
become quite ruthless, Charli says. I see it as a creative
outlet whilst Im creating it, but after the song has been
made, I wanna make money. I want the biggest artists to
cut these songs, and I want them to be No. 1. When it comes
to my own record, that shit doesnt happen, so thats where
I think about what I believe to be artistic, what I believe to
be beautiful.
Since 2013, her songwriting has been published by an
imprint started by Stargate, but she just nished the process
of switching to a publishing company of her own. She has set
an ambitious goal of placing 20 songs with other artists this
year, and says shes got maybe 5 so far its hard to say until
they actually come out. Last year, she was asked into the stu-
dio with Rihanna to write songs for Anti, and then for the
new album by Gwen Stefani, who is probably the closest pop
ancestor to Charlis vocal style and attitude, though her con-
tributions didnt make the cut for either. She has had other
recent successes, though, like Same Old Love for Selena
Gomez and will.i.ams Boys & Girls.
Charli actually learned an interesting lesson from
will.i.am, something shed failed to appreciate back when
she was talking down on I Love It. He was like, It doesnt teenage years Vroom Vroom was the rst Charli project to
matter what the verses say, just say anything in the verses
and make the chorus really good, Charli remembers. His
verses are a vehicle to get to the chorus, and then he just says
cool words. I listened to all of his songs, and I was like, Wow.
he really sticks by this theory. This guy is a fucking genius!
harli is hoping to shoot the rst music
video for her upcoming album in a
C
few weeks, so we head to Beverly
Hills, to the home of Diane Martel,
the director behind Mariah Careys
All I Want for Christmas Is You and
Robin Thickes controversial Blurred
Lines. Martel insists on privacy, so while she and Charli
make plans, I oat in her pool. When Charlis done, she
comes in the water, which is surrounded by succulents and
tropical trees. She says she wishes she hadnt spent so much
money on exotic plants when she moved into her house
she hadnt realized you could just get ferns at IKEA. Beside
the pool are a few inatables that look like the donuts on The
Simpsons, and Charli says that on her last tour Martel helped
with set design. They created an inatable zebra-print gui-
tar that cost $10,000 and another $10,000 to replace after
Charli accidentally popped it.
CHARLI XCX
That tour ended abruptly, at Charlis behest. As an artist
I need to move quickly and write a lot to not feel restless, she
wrote in a summer 2015 Facebook post, cancelling half the
dates midway through their run. I am struggling to create
whilst Im on the road, and that is making me unhappy.
Six months earlier, shed kicked off the album process
by convening a recording session with the whole like left-
of-center pop gang in Sweden, including Patrik Berger,
Andrew Wyatt and Pontus Winnberg of the group Miike
Snow, and the songwriter Noonie Bao. That crew was a bit
familiar, so Charli cold-called someone she admired but
had never met: SOPHIE, the British producer born Samuel
Long who, along with his sometime collaborators at the PC
Music label, was making a name by twisting bubblegum pop
sounds into hyperactive, grotesquely sweet club music.
In just two days, Charli and SOPHIE recorded three of
the four songs that would make up her Vroom Vroom EP,
released via her imprint in February 2016. The EP sounded
like something SOPHIE would make: synth drops like guil-
lotines, breakneck tempos, voices like Crazy Frog. Vroom
was like an assault, Charli says. Vroom was not us trying to
appease anyone. I think my label got afraid, and I think a lot
of people were confused. But I just felt that I wanted to I
just wanted to do that. Thats the scene I came from when I
was younger, that club scene. Thats originally what I saw in
SOPHIE, and Id never actually made music that was repre-
sentative of that.
Having successfully plumbed her antiestablishment
sound as captivatingly off-putting as Uffie she swung the
pendulum of her career in the opposite direction. Im not
going to sit here and say that Im a good producer, she says,
because Im not, but I am a really good curator, and I know
when that shit is gonna work. Almost every track on her
new album, she decided, would feature both SOPHIE and
Stargate on production, like two sides of one super-brain.
I didnt want to make just an album with SOPHIE,
and I didnt want to make just an album with Stargate,
Charli says. I wanted to make an album with SOPHIE and
Stargate. Sure, some of SOPHIEs records are a little harsh
and off-the-wall, but the goal is to be making progressive
pop music. Stargate obviously come from a totally different
world, but at the same time thats also their aim, you know?
That xylophone on their old Ne-Yo R&B shit, the way the
handclaps were programmed? I know people are going to
be like, She wanted to make the album with SOPHIE, and
her label said, You need to put it with Stargate to make this
work. But it was never about putting SOPHIE in a pop
environment and attening him out. It was knowing they
could bounce really well, in a room together, working to
each others strengths.
And they were all in one room frequently alongside
Noonie Bao and Bloodpop, the experimental beatmaker
81
DRESS KENZO, SUNGLASSES AND BRACELET OPENING CEREMONY,
RINGS MARGIELA, STOCKINGS ANITA BERG, SHOES VIVIENNE WESTWOOD.
I was like, Uh, what am I doing?
If I make a party record, I can go
on tour and party every night.
turned producer for Justin Bieber for about ve weeks. It
was in Los Angeles, at Westlakes Studio A, the same place
Michael Jackson made Thriller. (Currently the only song on
the album produced elsewhere was made by the Brian Eno
collaborator Fred Gibson with contributions from SOPHIE
added after the fact.)
I think I make my best music with Stargate, Charli says,
just because they know how to edit my ideas in the quickest
way. You could be the shittiest songwriter in the world and
go in and do a scratch take with Stargate and they could cut
it up and make a fucking hit. Which makes me sound kinda
shitty, but I am good. Im pretty good, she laughs.
Perhaps owing to how fast the album was recorded, the
new songs are easily the most straightforward shes ever
made, and the most joyful-sounding too. One with the work-
ing title Come to My Party is exemplary: its name isnt
some play on words, its just a song where Charli invites you
to a party. At least a half-dozen hooks and micro-hooks are
stacked over the songs three twinkling minutes, her words
memorable if not especially deep. Theres the cheery, chanty
part about how were all young and full of love; a pseudo-rap
bit about working like a young Kardashian; and tag-team cli-
maxes about self-reliance I do what I wanna do, and I do it
my way! and unity, with an open invitation for all the boys
and the barbies to come hang with Charli.
SOPHIE and Stargate serve up clever chord changes to
match every section, with ourishes peppered throughout:
a chopped-up intro and a robot saying XCX, pitched-up
CHARLI XCX
background vocals like supportive Tweety birds, and an
almost dubsteppy bassline that stretches out at the end. But
never is anything but Charlis voice on top. And what that
voice is telling you, more clearly than ever before, is not that
complicated. Its telling you that its time to have fun.
I denitely think that this is the most pop-commercial
album Ive made, which I love because Ive always loved pop-
commercial, Charli says. Ive just never committed, I sup-
pose. Instead Ive always made breakup songs or really emo
love songs. But Ive never been fucked over by a guy, never
been cheated on. That just comes from, like, romantic-style
movies. Ive always been very much the opposite of what I
write about. Because I do like to party, and when I go out,
I dont like listening to love songs. Like, I skip them. I like
watching DJs, I dont want to watch bands. I realized that at
the end of Sucker. I was like, Uh, what am I doing? If I make a
party record, I can go on tour and party every night.
She still nds seriousness in that, though. I think its
harder to write really respected party music than it is to
write a love song, Charli says, but I think Ive done it. And
if anybody ever is going to fucking say that SOPHIEs party
production is throwaway, theyre a fucking idiot. Because
hes someone who spends years creating sounds. On the
other hand, she says: Its also this whole thing of: its fun for
people to think its dumb. And people who want to read into
it more can get really deep in it.
In a phone call, A. G. Cook, the head of PC Music and also
currently Charlis creative director, expresses the same thing.
83
If the tracks really, really good, then it can be fun and stupid
and progressive and interesting all at the same time, he says.
I think Charli is probably the best proof that you can bring
something to radio but also make it a little bit more not
even edgy, just sort of appreciating the fun, weird stupidity
as well as the real craft.
SOPHIE emphasizes that craft, too, by way of rejecting
the idea that his attraction to pop music is disingenuous, or
ironic. The kind of music that we get excited about needs
to feel contemporary, and it needs to feel like an accelerated
and personal version of our favorite music of the time, he
says, in a different phone call. But theres zero irony. Why
would you bother to make something along that perspective?
Youve put so much time and effort and basically your whole
life into creating something and standing by it. Its from a
place of wanting to make something we feel, and hope other
people will feel, too.
Back in the days of Charlis early idols, pop music and
specically female pop singers were often derided by crit-
ics as articial and shallow. And whether it was predatory
contracts or invasive paparazzi, these women were treated
as disposable as their music was said to be. Almost 20 years
later, few people are better equipped to debunk pop musics
supposed disposability than Charli. Which makes it all the
more surprising that, in just another breath, shes happy to
hide the hard work of it.
I used to really care about my validity as a writer or as
someone whos going to be received well, Charli says. And
now I dont. The more Ive grown up and the more Ive become
secure with myself, Ive become comfortable with being ques-
tioned. I dont mind if people think Im a fake. I kind of like
that more. Its like, Oh she doesnt do anything, shes vapid,
shes a projection of other peoples ideas. Im playing with that
now more than ever. Sometimes its like, I would rather talk
about my boobs and the outts that I just bought.
This is something Charli has always expressed in her
carefree persona: its not her problem to prove shes respect-
able. By going full fun-loving in her lyrics and production,
and by embracing being called vapid for it, she is renewing
that commitment. Charli doesnt subscribe to the idea that
some work is good and other work like looking good or
always seeming cheery, however unfairly demanded is
bad. My one hope for 2017 is that Kylie Jenner becomes
a pop star, she says at one point. Kylie and Paris Hilton
would be my top people to write music for. They didnt put
in Charlis kind of time with music, grinding it out over hun-
dreds of songwriting sessions, but they worked their asses
of in other, less celebrated ways, and Charli wants her pop
world to honor women like them. Got my good grades, now I
wanna go dumb, she sings on one track on the album. Good
girls dont do that type of stuff, she sings on another. She might
be referring to a nice Friday night, or she might be signing a
new lease on her career.
CHARLI XCX
he month of healthy living is set to
end with a house party, and booze will
T
be officially back in play. Earlier in the
afternoon, Charli heads to a vintage
clothing store to pick out an outt
for the night with Max Hershenow,
a member of the electro-pop duo MS
MR and, for the past few months, Charlis roommate. Max
asks an employee if they have any dog collars, but they cant
nd one. She picks out a black mesh crop top that says sex
symbol in silver stitch.
That evening, Pringles and red cups and bottles cover
a hardwood table in Charlis house, a multimillion-dollar,
maze-like Tudor deep in the Hollywood Hills, built in the
1920s with a steeply pitched roof and exposed timber frame.
The sounds of Beyonc and SOPHIEs Bipp pour from her
sanctuary-like home studio, which has arched windows on
three sides and musical instruments hanging between them.
On a central brick patio, string lights illuminate a small
group of musicians and models and other good-looking
people. Max strides in wearing a black dog collar; he bor-
rowed it from Charli, who already owned one.
Charli talks to a woman in a zombie T-shirt about the
night they met Marilyn Manson, and to an older guy about
a song she once tried making that sounded kind of like Def
Leppard. If she ever revisits it, she wants to change one lyric,
though, which is also the title: Victimless Crime. Shes not
sure 14-year-old fans will know what that means. Every hour
the party seems to double in size, spreading throughout the
ground oor, into nook-and-cranny rooms lit by candles
and around brick replaces that sprawl wide.
The whole place is glamorous but homey Charli says
having Max around has really helped. When she rst moved
in by herself, in early 2015, weird things kept happening.
Once, after she went away for a few weeks, she returned
to nd all the windows open, though the security system
hadnt been triggered. And people kept calling in the middle
of the night, at one point threatening to send a cake with
Kill Yourself written on top. Charli now admits theres
a certain charm in that image, so campy and odd, but she
was nevertheless startled the day a big box showed up at her
doorstep, unexpected.
But the delivery, upon inspection, wasnt a menacing
dessert it was a bunch of Taylor Swift merch. Charli had
recently appeared onstage at one of Taylors concerts, where
they duetted to Boom Clap, and the surprise was a thank
you sent by the artist herself, a pop giant reaching down to
someone guring out how she might be one.
84
JACKET 2ND DAY, SWEATER VIVIENNE WESTWOOD,
CHOKER ERIN DANA, BOOTS BY PLEASER.
S o n g s
The story of DESO DOGG,
the German rapper who
fled to Syria to sing for ISIS.

Story by Amos Barshad

Illustration by Elisabeth Moch

of War
 ne summer day in 2013, the German
jihadist Denis Cuspert was holed up
O
in a home controlled by his fellow
ghters in the Junud al-Sham mili-
tant organization when he was hit by
shelling from the Syrian Air Force. He
suffered a critical head injury, entered
a coma for nearly a week, and was moved from hospital to
hospital in search of a specialist to save his life. My head was
open and some parts of my brain were coming out, hed say
in an interview posted online that fall. The brothers cared
about me a lot. And through the mercy of Allah, I woke up.
Upon his recovery, Junud al-Sham produced a neat, crisp
bit of video starring Cuspert. Posing on a couch in a gray
cardigan and a taqiyah skull cap, with a landscape of roughly
beautiful hills behind him, he brags that he had grabbed his
weapon and had been prepared to re at the jets ying over-
head when the bombs dropped. And with evident glee, he
waves off the rumors of his death: Praised is Allah! According
to the media I have been murdered two or three times.
Cuspert had arrived in Syria earlier that year. Two years
before, the Arab Spring a wave of street protests in the name
of civil liberties and democratization had rattled the region
and deposed longstanding autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia.
In Syria, it prompted a civil war. On one side stood President
Bashar al-Assad, who succeeded the 30-year rule of his father
in 2000 and was holding on to power with determined, indis-
criminate brutality. On the other was a confounding array of
splintered rebel groups devoted to Assads ouster.
Some rebel groups would come to be supported by the
United States. Others, like Cusperts Junud al-Sham, were
declared terrorist organizations: perverting the ideology of
Islam to homicidal and draconian ends, their stated goal was
the creation of a purported caliphate.
Like other similar groups most notoriously the Islamic
State, which Cuspert would eventually join Junud al-Sham
were dedicated propagandists who produced a steady torrent
of online content aimed at sweeping up would-be ghters.
And to those ends, Denis Cuspert was a valuable asset nearly
as soon as he stepped foot in Syria. Because, in his native
Germany, Cuspert was already infamous. Just a few years
prior, he was best known as the rapper Deso Dogg.
As an MC, Cuspert was an obvious product of 90s
American hip-hop. With heavy chains, coiled rage, and a lean,
muscular frame, often paraded shirtless in his music videos,
he was clearly pinching a bit of Tupac (he named one album
Alle Augen Auf Mich, a German translation of Pacs All Eyez on
Me) and a bit of Mobb Deep. But a few years before arriving
in Syria, hed left hip-hop behind.
In Germany, he had helped create an organization dedi-
cated to jihadist propaganda named Millatu Ibrahim, or
Community of Abraham. In mosque sermons and media
appearances, he spoke grandly of the plight of the Palestinians,
DESO DOGG
the drone attacks in Pakistan, and the sins of American impe-
rialism. He presented himself as a reformed indel (Deso
even was short for devils son) whod embraced the light.
Though he left rap, Cuspert never abandoned music.
He began instead singing songs in praise of the interna-
tional jihad, what jihadists refer to as nasheeds. Traditionally,
nasheeds are songs of uplift, mostly a cappella, about Islam, its
practices, and its history. But these were songs about ght-
ers-in-arms, about explosions, about mass murder. In one,
a German-language adaptation of a jihadist anthem called
Qariban Qariba, Cuspert declared, Enemies of Allah, we want
your blood/ It tastes so wonderful.
After leaving Germany, he reimagined himself with a new
name. He was now Abu Talha al-Almani Abu Talha the
German. Thanks to Junud al-Sham and Islamic State videos,
he became possibly the most prominent black man within
jihadist ranks in Iraq and Syria. He was an ex-gangster rap-
per on the front lines, cheating death, singing songs of war.
In videos, he was seen marching through the bloodied and at
times decapitated victims of his fellow ghters; his job was to
praise the massacring, and he took to it with fervor.
It comes as no surprise that even Abu Talha being rushed
to the hospital after the air attack was captured on camera,
noted the Middle East Media Research Institute in a report
after the incident in the summer of 2013. Few jihadi alive
today are as photographed or video-recorded as Cuspert. In
an email in June of this year, Isabelle Kalbitzer, a spokesper-
son for Berlins intelligence service Verfassungsschutz, wrote,
he was something like a pop star of jihad.
In October of 2015, two years after his coma-inducing
incident, Cuspert was again reported to have been shelled.
According to the Pentagon at the time, he was traveling in
a pick-up truck on a road out of Raqqa when he was hit in a
U.S. airstrike and killed.
During the months that followed, ISIS continued to
release videos featuring Cuspert. In them, he never explicitly
refers to the October airstrike; the simple presumption was
that the videos were made before his death. In recent months,
however, online chatter from institutions, academics, and
semi-amateur online jihadist watchers alike suggested that
things werent as clear as they seemed. Verfassungsschutz,
the Berlin intelligence service, went as far as to announce
that they could not conclusively say Cuspert was dead. This
echoed what was being spread by German-speaking ISIS
supporters through social media: that Cuspert was alive.
Then, in July of 2016, the Pentagon refuted their previous
claims as to Cusperts death. While withholding their actual
intelligence as classied, a spokesperson, Marine Major
Adrian J.T. Rankine-Galloway, released the following state-
ment to The FADER:
In Oct 2015, the Coalition the network of nations
jointly ghting ISIS conducted an airstrike against opera-
tive Denis Cuspert, aka Deso Dogg and Abu Talha al-Almani.
88
Because we are talking about intelligence, I really cant speak
in great detail about this. However I can tell you that, at the
time of the strike, our assessment was one of a successful
strike against Denis Cuspert. Since that assessment, there has
been new information. It now appears that assessment was
incorrect and Denis Cuspert survived.
enis Mamadou Gerhard Cuspert was
born in Berlin on October 18, 1975.
D
Cusperts biological father, a man
named Richard Luc-Giffard, was a
Ghanaian national who left the fam-
ily when Cuspert was still a small child
(not long after, Giffard was deported).
Deniss mother, Sigrid Cuspert, was a white German. Shed
go on to marry an African-American G.I. from Savannah,
Georgia. Together they had a child, Cusperts half-brother
Jermaine. Years later, Jermaine would briey rap, alongside
Cuspert, under the name Lil Deso.
Cuspert and his stepfather clashed often. When asked to
describe his childhood, in an early interview with the news-
paper Exberliner, Cuspert answered, Really hard. With a belt
and stuff. With grits and Rice-A-Roni. I had a tough time. In
the same interview, Cuspert also credited his stepfather with
gifting him the N.W.A. tape that changed his life: It was like,
boom. In my head. Niggers for life. Niggers with attitude. To
one friend, a rapper named MC Bogy, Cuspert instead cited
the more pop-friendly LL Cool J as his rst favorite.
He started petty thieving his rst boost was a toy car
and jacking tourists as a teen. Later, while in juvenile hall,
he began rapping. He claimed to run with a crew called the
36 Boys, a street gang based in the Berlin neighborhood of
Kreuzberg (postal district: 36) made up primarily of rst-gen-
eration Turkish and Arab immigrants. The 36 Boys got in vio-
lent confrontations with neo-Nazi gangs and were obsessed
with hip-hop transplanted directly from the American G.I.s
prevalent in the city before the fall of the Berlin Wall. I always
fought for 36, Cuspert told a Berlin reporter named Robert
Rigney. I bled for 36. I was stabbed for 36. Everything.
As an adult, he sold drugs and bragged to one hip-hop
journalist that hed done every crime besides rape and purse-
snatching. In the early 2000s, after charges of aggravated
assault, he bounced for years between a few Berlin prisons.
Post-prison, Cuspert ailed. He continued selling drugs.
At one point, he was briey checked into a mental health insti-
tution. Gradually, the citys hip-hop scene became an uneasy
home. Working primarily with the Berlin label Streetlife
Entertainment, Cuspert released his rst solo albums Murda
Cocctail Vol.1 and Schwarzer Engel. Initially, though, he was
brought into the scene as showpiece muscle.
The video for the mid-2000s track NDW 2005 by the
rapper Fler is a telling document of Berlin hip-hop. It kicks
off with Fler on a rooftop in a massive fur-hooded parka
DESO DOGG
engaged in Saudi-style falconeering with a apping bird of
prey perched on his gloved forearm. Then a Fight Club-esque
basement brawl ensues. Cuspert, who doesnt rap on the song,
is nonetheless present to walk menacingly through hallways.
Like many international hip-hop scenes, Berlins was slow
to break out of a deep indebtedness to American styles. The
Berlin MCs many of them Turkish, Arab, or white may
have never articulated it as such, but they coveted what they
believed Cuspert represented. Cuspert often bragged of being
one of the only true gangster rappers in Germany; he talked
vaguely about his loyalty to and respect for the streets. On
NDW, within a hodgepodge of borrowed cultural signi-
ers, there is one element specically that the big and brawny
Cuspert is lending: American-style hardness.
Cuspert tended to obfuscate exactly when Islam came
into his life, telling one interviewer he was born into the reli-
gion, then another that 2001 was his real entry year. But by
his 2007 track Wilkommen In Meiner Welt, one of his best
known, Cuspert had publicly embraced his faith. He talks of
rising at dawn for the morning adhan, or call to prayer, and
begs for absolution. I whisper softly to Allah, he raps, Please do
not drop me! By those days, he was often fullling the Islamic
pillar of salat by praying ve times a day.
He had two kids at this point, a son who lived with his
mother in London and a daughter who lived with hers in
Berlin. He was estranged from both Every day is a test, Im sick
of all this stress, he raps on Wilkommen. I am alone out there
without my kids.
Daniel Schieferdecker, the editor-in-chief of the Berlin
hip-hop magazine Juice, interviewed Cuspert around this
time. Schieferdecker recalls that Cuspert was polite and
respectful, and offered him coffee and tea. In conversation,
though, he could be grand: Im not a musician like every-
body else. I want to write music history.
He was also, Schieferdecker says, a confused man, caught
between hip-hop and his edgling faith: He said that he may
have to leave the music business to get calmer, and that he
tries to follow the lead of musicians like Cat Stevens who make
music the Islamic way. He said that this might be his way, too.
Three years later, in February of 2010, the rst public
record of Cuspert stepping toward a violent interpretation
of Islam emerged. It was a video, recorded at Berlins al-Nur
Mosque, in which Cuspert engages in a conversation with an
imam named Pierre Vogel.
A broad white man with a thick red beard, and a one-time
semi-professional boxer, Vogel is a controversial gure in
Germany. He preaches an ultraconservative strand of Sunni
Islam known as Salasm, which is both the official religion of
Saudi Arabia a staunch American ally and the purported
basis of the ideology of the Islamic State. Vogel is under-
stood by some as a willing incubator of radicals, though in
a Facebook post in 2014, he denied that he ever encouraged
Cuspert to violence.
89
 In their video conversation, Vogel praised Cuspert for
moving away from hip-hop, which he and many Salasts
consider haram: forbidden. At the same time, he was clearly
fascinated by the character of Deso Dogg: during the course
of their talk, Vogel imagines Cuspert leading an exodus of
fellow ex-rappers into Islam.
By the end of the year, Cuspert was pinging around
Salast mosques in Germany for seminars, providing emo-
tional tellings of the story of his conversion. Still fumbling
toward knowledge of Salasm, he came off as a peer to young
audiences who were still learning themselves. He was a hit.
ne afternoon in Berlin, I visit the home
of MC Bogy, who was close to Cuspert
O
in the mid-2000s. Its a cramped studio
apartment lled to the edges with dusty
tchotchkes of Americana: a framed Big
Pun triptych, likenesses of Ice T, and
a string of still-in-the-packaging Tony
Montana dolls to complement the Tony-Montana-holding-a-
microphone tattoo that graces Bogys soft white belly.
Hes wearing cargo sweatpants and a camouage du-rag;
he has a Mike Tyson-like Maori face tattoo. And he is unfail-
ingly polite, providing me with coffee, juice, and a plate of
fresh watermelon. For the next few hours, he speaks with
great passion in halting English of his good friend Deso Dogg.
He calls their union like Steven Spielberg meeting Stephen
King two titans, coming together. We made much music
together, he says. Im very proud of that.
Cuspert wasnt, Bogy insists, an angry person. Once, dur-
ing a recording session, a rat scurried through the studio
and Cuspert jumped to its defense. He said, Its an African
mouse. I dont know why he decided it was an African
mouse. He said, Stop, stop, dont kill the mouse. Hes from
Africa, like me! Cuspert got his way, and gently guided the
rat into the alley.
Bogy shows me one of Deso Doggs old lyric sheets,
with words written in a big sloping font across lined paper.
Its signed Abu Maleeq. Maleeq is Cusperts sons name
Cuspert was naming himself, in traditional Arab conven-
tions, Father of Maleeq.
I slept with him in the same rooms, Bogy says. We
wore the same clothing. We went to other cities together I
went to the dope spot, smoked weed, took cocaine, fucked
bitches. Look, I was addicted to drugs, and he always wanted
to take me away from drugs. He helped me when I was sick,
he always stood with me when I was drunk. Im not seeing it
with pink glasses on. He was always there for me.
Bogy converted to Islam as an adult, and says he would at
times pray with Cuspert. He rails against Pierre Vogel, seeing
the imam as the man who poisoned Cusperts mind. But he
waves his and Cusperts shared faith off as too intimate to dis-
cuss. You love your dick, I love my dick, he says, grabbing
DESO DOGG
his crotch while pointing to mine as emphasis for the anal-
ogy. But thats private! Thats yours and thats mine!
To explain what happened to his old friend, he reaches
instead to the comfort of American culture. Maybe in
Germany people would kill me for what I say, yes? But for me,
its a story like Anakin and Darth Vader. In Star Wars, Anakin
Skywalker is a fallen hero: touched by the forces of the Dark
Side, he becomes the treacherous villain Darth Vader.
I bring up the possibility at the time of our conversa-
tion, unveried that Cuspert was still alive. I dont know,
Bogy says. But for me, I cry for him like hes been dead a long
time. He cant come back. Theres no coming back.
Then, slapping my chest, he leaps up and hits play on an
old Deso Dogg track. Can we talk about music? Can we get a
feel for the old Deso?
Looking close to tears that never come, Bogy pleads with
me to see it his way. He knows he and Cuspert never sold a
lot of records; he wants me to understand that that does not
take away from what they did together. The fucking press
say he was a rapper with no success, that he was a loser. He
was no loser! He was a good rapper! He had good homeboys!
His heart was great and open!
y 2012, Cuspert had permanently left
Berlin for the northwest German city
B
of Solingen. Working with a man
named Mohamed Mahmoud, whod
already been imprisoned in his native
Austria for promotion of terrorism,
Cuspert founded Millatu Ibrahim, the
online propaganda organization.
By then, Cuspert was already recording his violent
combat nasheeds and dispersing them through Millatu Ibra-
him. According to Benham Said, an analyst for the Ver-
fassungsschutz intelligence service, it was at this point
that observers of the jihadi trend in Germany all became
aware [of ] the increasing relevance of Denis Cuspert for
the movement.
Within the Berlin scene, the rap music of Deso Dogg had
been respectfully, tepidly received. There was local media
attention, and shaky connections to the U.S.: he opened
some shows in Germany for DMX around 2006 and once
recorded, but never released, a song with a peripheral asso-
ciate of 50 Cents named Spider Loc. Daniel Schieferdecker,
the Juice editor, assumes Deso Dogg never made a living
off his music.
Vanessa Mason, a singer and onetime member of the
German dance-pop group Real McCoy, collaborated with
Cuspert. I met him as a teenager, and he was feared by lots
of others, she says. But I only knew him as a kind-hearted
individual who was, I believe, searching for a family.
The rapper Kaisa, Cusperts labelmate and regular collab-
orator, knew Cuspert as a casually practicing, Friday-prayers
90
Muslim. Back then, making music, going on tour, getting
tattoos? Nobody thought He trails off, then picks up again.
He wasnt angry all the time, of course not. But I think he
was looking for something. He always wanted to be some-
body. He wanted to be a leading role.
Abdul Kamouss is an imam who specializes in preaching
to German-speaking Muslims like Cuspert. Before Cuspert
left for Solingen, the two met at al-Nur Mosque, where
Cuspert also met Pierre Vogel. Their conversations, Kamouss
recalls, felt aimless: Cuspert was clearly more interested in
politics than religion. To Kamouss, Cuspert intimated that
hed been briey involved with a Berlin-based group with
ties to Hezbollah, the radical militant organization that
dominates Lebanon. Its bizarre, if true: Shiite Hezbollah is
a sworn enemy of the Sunni Islamic State, under whose ag
Cuspert would wage war.
Quickly, Cuspert grew frustrated with Kamouss and
stopped coming around. He started to drift, to look for
something political, Kamouss says, adding with a self-dep-
recating smile, not me. I am a soft Muslim. Later, watching
Cusperts reinvention online as a prominent speaker and
singer, Kamouss was horried. He was trying to be an image
of himself, a persona, Kamouss says. He felt entitled. He
had a sense of being important. With his charisma and his
background as a creative person, it seduced the uninformed
younger generation. They would not even realize that he is
not trained, that he is teaching about things that are too com-
plex for him to even touch.
Cuspert was an ex-con whod lost years to prison. He was
estranged from his children and their mothers. His rap career,
and the image with which hed chosen to dene himself, had
stalled out. And then, at 35 years old, he found himself, for
the rst time in his life, inuential. From the outside, the rise
appears to have been swift, and intoxicating.
In a way, Kamouss sees Cusperts path as inevitable: he
talks of Cusperts psychological problems, of Cusperts
thirst for a new life. And yet in imagining one last conversa-
tion, Kamouss lifts clenched sts as if to shake him by the col-
lar. I would speak to him pointed, directed, so that he would
get it, he says. I would sit with him and not let go.
ver the course of May 2012, Cusperts
organization Millatu Ibrahim clashed
O
with a local nativist political party in
a series of protests and counter-pro-
tests rife with stone-throwings and
stabbings. At the end of the month,
in response to the clashes, Germanys
Federal Ministry of the Interior officially banned Millatu
Ibrahim. Practically speaking, the move was somewhat cer-
emonial: Cuspert and his group could have likely skirted the
decree by renaming themselves and continuing to produce
videos. Instead, a month later, Cuspert boarded a plane.
DESO DOGG
His rst stops were Mersa Matruh, in Egypt, and Darna,
in Libya. There, according to a UN Security Council report,
he received training in rearms with unidentied groups of
militants. By 2013, he was in Syria ghting for Junud al-Sham.
They clashed with Syrian government forces in Latakia, near
the Turkish border, and raided villages of the Alawite minor-
ity, the support base of President Assad.
In the same interview in which he gloats of cheating
death, Cuspert talks briey of his past life: I only can say
that this time when I was a musician, it was a gloomy time.
And yet he shows a ash of pride about his notoriety. Just
recently I met one brother, some weeks ago, who was new
here to the Land of Honor, saying: Oh really? Deso is here?
And I was a little bit shocked that this thing has been deeply
burnt into the minds of the people. He also cant help but
talk in the tropes of hip-hop. OK, rst of all, he says, sound-
ing just a bit like hes doing afternoon shoutouts at Hot 97, I
want to send my brothers from all the Lands of Honor with
the best of greetings
Around this time Cuspert released a combat song called
al-Jannah, al-Jannah, meaning Paradise, Paradise. In it, he
fantasizes of his death as a suicide bomber back in his native
West. The bomb in the crowd, pressing on the button, he sings in
German. Right in the center or in the subway, with a smile directly
to my Creator, pressing on the button, al-Jannah, al-Jannah.
By the beginning of 2014, an indication perhaps of his
outsized ambition in the world of jihad or of his ckleness
Cuspert elected to leave Junud al-Sham for a larger organi-
zation. He pledged an oath, a bayah, to what was then known
as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
ISIS had self-appointed the capital of its caliphate in
Raqqa, Syria. With extortion, torture, and unfathomable mas-
sacres, it was winning land and recruits. And within the jihad-
ist world, for sheer output and reach, its propaganda network
had no equal. And just as with Jund al-Sham, Cuspert was
embraced by the ISIS content arm.
The entity in charge of spreading Cusperts content was
al-Hayat, the Islamic States English-language media division.
Its al-Hayat that publishes the Islamic States infamous mag-
azine, Dabiq, and courts far-ung would-be jihadis through
videos posted on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp,
and the Russian-founded messaging service Telegram.
Naturally, Cusperts bayah video was recorded and dis-
seminated. My goal was to get famous with music, he says
in the hour-long video, an AK-47 bandied about for effect.
And when there would have been a big musical event, like
the Grammys, I would have stood at the stage, I would have
said: There is no god but Allah! I hereby cancel my music
career! As he talks, footage from his old music videos is
spliced in. There he is, young Deso Dogg, never smiling,
throwing punches and headbutts towards the camera lens.
In the video, he talks of a car accident. He doesnt say
when it happened. He was driving fast on the way to a club
92
with a friend when the car skidded out. Both walked away,
but for Cuspert, the near-death experience was an awaken-
ing. He understood now that, as a quasi-rap star, he was noth-
ing according to Allah a poor soul, imprisoned between
spotlights and groupies.
As Cuspert rails against his old world, we see photos of
various vices seemingly plucked from online stock photo
archives, or a lazy Google Images search: music festival rev-
elers, a close-up of pills and powders, a man pouring a beer.
Its so clumsy as to be surreal. Then, Cuspert consummates
his bayah. He sits on his knees in front of a green sheet, in
camouage. My dream has been fullled, he says. Victory, that makes schlager music cheesy German party pop. His
or martyrdom. I will continue my work until a bullet or
rocket shall hit me! And as hes wrapping up, at this purport-
edly hallowed moment, you can clearly hear the distinctive
whistle-chirp noise of an incoming message. Someone in the
room had not muted their Samsung Galaxy.
After joining ISIS, Cuspert became a wandering mascot:
over and over, in propaganda footage from ISIS battleelds
throughout Syria wherever atrocities occurred there
was the man now called Abu Talha al-Almani. He was like
Wheres Waldo, says Alberto Fernandez, a former counter-
rorism specialist with the State Department. He was pop-
ping up all over the place.
In one video, Cuspert talks of loot plundered from Kurds
and Yazidis living near the town of Kobane. In another, hes
in Homs, in the wake of the grisly conquest of the al-Shaer
gas elds: hes captured on video beating a dead body with
a sandal. Later in 2014, hes seen in Deir al-Zor, the site of a
bloody massacre of Sunni Arab Shaitat tribe, brandishing a
recently decapitated human head.
Throughout his appearances, he kept producing his com-
bat songs. The videos are calculatingly horrible: over images
of prisoners in orange jumpsuits having their throats slashed,
Cuspert sings of rolling heads and men with black masks,
their creed sharp as knives. Dont be sad my mother, he says in
one song, Fisabilillah. Your son is rushing to Allah.
Within the international network of jihadist propaganda,
there have been the occasional personalities. But most are
eeting; they pop up for a month or two of rabble-rousing,
then disappear. Like the rapper he once was, Cuspert, for a
while, was practically taken on tour. In the video of the loot-
ing of Kobane, a fellow ghter even recognizes him on cam-
era, and shouts out, there is Abu Talha! It seems that Cuspert
was ultimately not a mastermind or general, but on-air talent.
n a recent summer night in Kreuzberg
the home of the notorious 36 Boys
O
I meet Muci Tosun. An original 36er
turned kickboxer, he proudly carries
forth the name of his gang, which has
produced such famous alums as the
lmmaker Nico Celik and the celeb-
DESO DOGG
rity chef Tim Raeu. For a while, Tosun even ran a retail shop
in Kreuzberg selling 36 Boys merchandise.
Its Ramadan, so we meet late, after the evenings iftar
meal. Tosun, stocky and snub-nosed, immediately denies
Cusperts claims of 36 Boys membership: He tried to set foot
in the 36 Boys, we tried to support him a bit. We gave him the
branded clothing. But he was never really a part of it.
Cuspert didnt show up, Tosun says, until after his prison
stints, meaning the early 2000s. Mostly, though, Tosun
ignores my questions in favor of lightly pushing a new pro-
tg on me: a 40-something, mildly portly, fair-haired man
stage name, he happily tells me, is Dino Blondino.
I assume Tosun is rejecting Cuspert after the fact. But,
independently, the rapper Killa Hakan, another original
36er, tells me the same: The story of the 36 Boys was writ-
ten in the 90s. Deso Dogg came very much after that. He
was a fan. He tried to be part of it, but everything was done.
Deso was a little boy during the ghts he was never in
the ghts.
After a few more similar conversations, I come to believe
that Cusperts involvement with the 36 Boys which he
shouted out, with pride, in his songs may have been a feint
toward grandness. The Berlin reporter Robert Rigney recalls
meeting him one afternoon at Tosuns 36 Boys shop. I was
talking to the guys about hip-hop, Rigney tells me, and
some guy spoke up in the background and said, Hip-hop is a
war! And that was Deso.
No one I met in Berlin entertained the possibility that
Cuspert had again survived an airstrike. But we didnt talk
about him as if he were dead, either; we talked about him as
if he were too far gone to come back. If the Pentagons latest
intelligence is correct if Cuspert is still alive, and presum-
ably still ghting for ISIS then the friends and family that
Cuspert left behind in Berlin will have to continue grappling
with the strange legacy he continues to unspool.
While in Berlin, I try unsuccessfully to get in contact with
Cusperts mother, Sigrid. Once Im back in New York, she
responds to a message Id sent her on Facebook.
She is hesitant to talk at all. I wont speak to anyone about
my son, she declares at rst. But the fact that I write for a
music magazine seems to warm her up a tiny bit. Eventually,
we chat briey. She tells me that she met Cusperts stepfather
at a disco, and that he passed away last year, from lung cancer.
She says she last saw her son ve years ago right around the
time he left Berlin for Solingen.
My whole family loved music, she tells me. My other
son, I named him Jermaine because Im a Jermaine Jackson
fan. I have 200 CDs still. Oldies. Old soul. And hip-hop, I ask?
I love hip-hop. And your sons hip-hop?
He makes music, but not war music, she says. And,
long time, he makes no more music. I have his CDs. But
thats the past.
93
Rise and
JOANNE THE SCAMMER
lives for drama. Branden
Miller is just trying to live.

Story by Patrick D. McDermott

Photography by Cait Oppermann

S c a m
 randen Miller collects fragrances. Hes
got 25 in total, arranged carefully on
B
top of a wooden dresser in his Daytona
Beach, Florida, bedroom. The spread
which includes colognes, perfumes,
and at least one unisex scent is ex-
pensive, each glass bottle cast in its
own sultry shape. Would you like to smell some? he asks.
I say sure, and he starts ripping a piece of paper into small
strips, placing them in a row on the dresser. This is my fa-
vorite thing to do, he says.
Branden, 25, lives in a one-bedroom in a quiet gated com-
plex 15 minutes from the Daytona shoreline. He shares the
apartment with his long-term partner, Xavier, a long-limbed
drug and alcohol counselor and graduate student he met
on BGC, a pre-Grindr gay dating app geared toward black
men. The apartments decor is mature. Hanging by the door,
theres a framed painting of a rainy Paris street. Leaf-like
decals billow across the walls. Everything in my house I
bought with my porn money, Branden tells me.
He started doing porn when he was 18, and it paid his bills
until recently. But his life changed in 2015, when he made
a video in which he, wearing a blonde bob wig with brown
roots, delivered a monologue in a husky half-whisper: I just
want to let you girls know that Im a real messy bitch a liar,
a scammer. I love robbery and fraud. Im a messy bitch who
lives for drama. Joanne the Scammer was born.
Branden had performed in character online before. As
Miss Prada a transgender diva, trouble-making comic,
and occasional prostitute hed amassed both fans and no-
toriety. But Joanne is his most successful invention so far.
Today, Brandens Joanne the Scammer Twitter account is,
objectively, an internet sensation. Its populated with end-
lessly clever missives, both video and text-based, about rip-
ping people off, robbing, cheating, and lying. Some posts are
outrageous, but others are strangely empowering. Scam to-
day before today scams you, goes one recent tweet.
In videos, Joanne wraps herself in gray fur, speaks in an
exaggerated posh accent, sucks down Newport cigarettes,
and runs up charges on other peoples PayPal accounts. She
hacks, she steals, and she lies under oath. Joanne the Scam-
mer is an egocentric criminal, and she wears her aws like an
elegant necklace, paid for with embezzled funds.
Brandens life is less action-packed. At home, he keeps
the curtains drawn, the AC on full-blast, and the lights low.
Some of his hobbies include painting, giving himself facials,
and hand-making dog toys out of socks and yarn. He doesnt
leave often unless its Friday, when he goes shopping. After
the scent-smelling session, we drive his Chrysler to a strip
mall full of chain stores a couple miles away; its only Thurs-
day, but he makes an exception. Hes dressed in sweatpants,
a Polo cap, and white Air Jordan slides with socks. Colored
contacts make his eyes a stormy, unnatural gray.
JOANNE THE SCAMMER
Ulta doesnt have the cologne he wants, so he picks out
some $36 body cream made with Dead Sea salt instead.
Shower time is fun, he says. You sit there and you have
your little moment. The lady at the checkout counter asks
if theres a chip in his credit card. The card in his hand is
scratched up, ancient-looking, and literally held together
with tape. Denitely no chip.
Whats the deal with the chip anyway? Branden asks her.
Its supposed to be safer so people cant steal your identity.
Oh wow, he says, giggling a little.
Our next stop is Volusia Mall, a 93-acre, by-the-books
shopping center. As we cross the hot asphalt toward Dil-
lards, Branden tells me that buying fragrances makes him
feel powerful. I like to go in here like Im not going to buy
something, then prolong it, and buy something at the last
minute, he says. It makes them think you dont have mon-
ey, then bam.
Today hes on the hunt for Spicebomb, the masculine
scent by Viktor&Rolf, makers of Flowerbomb. When Im
buying perfume for Xavier, I lie and say its for my mom,
he tells me later. Some things are too gay for me. Since hes
picking up cologne, though, he doesnt have to worry about
that. He nds Spicebomb straight away, then eyes a Gucci
scent he doesnt have yet. He buys them both.
randen grew up in Hopewell, a small
city in Virginia. He was adopted as a
B
baby by an older white couple: Buddy,
who died of cancer when Branden was
12, and Veronica, a stay-at-home mom.
Branden didnt learn he was adopted
until age 17, when a family friend broke
the news. He doesnt know much about his biological par-
ents, except that they were black and Puerto Rican. I read
my adoption papers when I found out, he says. It said a lot
about my mom, but not her name, nothing I could contact.
On my dads side it was just like, Black and tall.
I went to an all-black school, and people would say,
Branden, youre black, or Branden, youre adopted, he
says. I was like, No, actually Im white. He laughs about
it now, but remembers the discovery as traumatic. That
was tragic, Im not going to lie. I found out I was adopted,
and then I found out I was black. I was like, Oh shit, none of
these people are really related to me at all! That was a fucking
He stops for a second. I thought I was white. I had white
friends. I was a white person! I still have my moments where
Im like, Oh my God. Thats really awkward. Once, he asked
his mom why she hadnt told him the truth. She said she was
scared hed run away.
Branden says he was always interested in entertaining,
and good at determining what worked. In one old photo,
where he cant be older than 9, he wears an unkempt black
wig. One hand is on his hip, and the other held high in the
96
JOANNE THE SCAMMER 97
JOANNE THE SCAMMER 98
air, like a pint-sized homecoming queen waving from atop a
parade oat. The wig was always a sign of funny for me, he
says. I put the wig on and people laughed.
As a teenager, hed go on his familys computer to watch
Chris Crocker, the pre-Vine performance artist who rose
to prominence after his teary-eyed Leave Britney Alone!
monologue went viral in 2007. Branden was a fan, but also
convinced he could do better. My goal was to upload a video
on my dial-up computer and be funnier than Chris Crocker,
he says. I thought I was going to blow up on YouTube, like
him, because I thought I was funnier.
At school, he struggled with telling friends he was gay.
Branden says he dressed trade, the nebulous slang term for
a man whos into guys but doesnt advertise that fact. I was
very masculine. I had braids. I had girlfriends. I acted the
whole part, he says. Not too many people knew I was gay.
Its really awkward, but they thought I was a ladies man. He
came out at 16, after his older sister found gay porn on the
family computer. I remember my mom saying to me, God
made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve! Shit like that.
After nding out the truth about his birth parents and
his race, Branden started playing around in drag. I went to
high school in drag with one of my friends and it shocked
everyone, he says. Before graduation, he dropped out. And
for several months after, he dressed as a woman every day.
Creating the characters stemmed from me nding out I was
adopted, and trying to run away from that, he says. I knew
at the end of the day I wanted to be a man, but I just didnt
want to be myself. I felt like everything was a lie.
Brandens never held down a conventional job. When
Buddy died back in 2003, Veronica collected enough money
to keep her kids happy. Anything I asked for I got, he says.
Thinking of going to work was scary for me. Even in school,
I could never listen. I dont like authority or being under
someone, so I thought of ways to get easy money. After leav-
ing high school in 2008, Branden moved to Florida with his
adoptive mom and started dating Xavier.
He started doing porn not long after the move, signing
up for a cam site after a one-off XXX video he posted got a
bunch of attention. He typically acted straight, catering to
viewers who fetishized gay-for-pay actors, like another char-
acter entirely. He performed for years and, sometimes, sold
fake porn videos over Skype comprised of cobbled-together
footage from other places on the internet.
As a teenager, Branden created the Miss Prada charac-
ter. She uploaded campy pop songs to SoundCloud and ap-
peared in vulgar YouTube videos, sometimes professing her
undying love to Chris Brown. Id double dutch in an eight-
lane highway for your dick, she said once.
In 2014, Branden overdosed during his rst-ever hard
drug experience. It started when a friend gave him a crystal
of MDMA. It made me say I love you to people, which I
never do, he says. One time I gave my dad something for
JOANNE THE SCAMMER
Christmas, and I said, I love you and my mom said, Buddy,
Branden said he loved you! And he didnt say nothing back.
Branden didnt want the unselfconscious high to end,
so he kept swallowing more. On the third day in a row of
no sleep, while listening to P!NK in his bedroom, he sensed
something was wrong and dialed 911. I dont know if that
was from the anxiety or the overdosing, but I was in the hos-
pital looking at some little girl running around like, Im gon-
na die. I remember ghting myself to wake up, then I felt this
really peaceful feeling, like, OK, Im just gonna die.
He survived the night, but suffered through a serious
bout of depression and anxiety in the incidents wake. Irra-
tionally afraid he was going to die, he would visit the hospi-
tal regularly, looking for someone to tell him he was going
to be ne. He got better slowly, and kept making Miss Prada
videos. Posted between shirtless seles on Instagram, some
of the clips racked up hundreds of thousands of views, but
the success was inconsistent and he still relied on porn for
income. Joanne came along at the right time: in pop culture,
where her shamelessly messy persona was fated to resonate,
and in Brandens life, which badly needed a jump-start.
Today, keeping her relevant is his only job. I literally
have the most boring life, he tells me while using a PlaySta-
tion controller to ip through YouTube videos on the TV,
often starting one for a few seconds and then switching to
the next. I dont get along with people, he says. People are
really cheesy to me. His dogs, a shih tzu named Tank and
a yorkie named Bella, scuffle at our feet. Most nights, Bran-
den stays up late playing Grand Theft Auto, wreaking cyber-
havoc as a rie-wielding white woman in tight pants and a
Spring Breakers ski mask. Elements of Joanne the Scammer
are based on this character, Branden says. Los Santos, the
name of the sprawling ctional city that debuted in GTA V,
where you can be anyone and do anything, is tattooed on
his forearm.
At one point he switches to cable, pausing for a spell on
Girl Meets World, the Disney Channels big-hearted reboot
of the beloved 90s sitcom Boy Meets World. Her names
Rowan, he says, gesturing towards the shows lead actress,
Rowan Blanchard, a precocious Gen Z thinker with a sizable
internet following of her own. She tweets me, too. Sky Fer-
reira, Jhen Aiko, and a host from The View have also paid
their respects. People would be shocked at my DMs, Bran-
den says. Katy Perry said hello to me the other day actu-
ally, she said miss u bb gur. This is probably the one for me,
though, he says, holding out his iPhone for me to see. She
didnt do nothing but send hearts, but its Solange Knowles.
Once he started getting recognition for his Joanne per-
sona, near the end of 2015, Branden deleted the Tumblr
where he hosted the majority of his X-rated pictures and
videos. And as his porn money began to run out, he got a
call about doing a photoshoot as Joanne, and then anoth-
er asking him to appear in character at a party. Each paid
99
JOANNE THE SCAMMER 100
JOANNE THE SCAMMER 101
$1,000. I was like, Oh shit, Ive never made money without do-
ing porn, he remembers. The porn customers are really
nasty, and they dont give a fuck about you, he explains.
My fans now call me queen. They call me icon. They call
me legend.
Out back, twin houseplants dangle from hooks over
Brandens porch, which is dotted with overowing ashtrays.
He smokes menthols, just like Joanne. For a while, we watch
old Miss Prada videos on his phone. One is a homemade mu-
sic video for Marilyn Mansons Dopeworld, which Branden
directed with a friend and edited himself. While denitely
amateur-looking, its impressive: Branden has a sense for
timing, splicing visuals and sound with a precision that cre-
ates something unnerving or funny or both. He applies the
same skills to his Joanne the Scammer videos, which are typ-
ically shorter. Part of Joanne is improv, he says, but as with
his economically phrased tweets, it takes an editors eye to
ensure something will pop off.
Joannes appeal appears to be a result of Brandens tech-
nical gifts and of something less tangible: the characters
unhinged psyche, which connects with many on a spiritual
level. Knowing that someone is shifty and untrustworthy
and thats their calling card is very funny, but theres also
something deeper going on, Chelsea Peretti, the comedian
and Brooklyn Nine-Nine actress, tells me later over the phone.
I think women frequently are trying to be likable, and its
so cathartic to see this female character that isnt doing any
of those things, Peretti says. Joanne the Scammer is 100
percent about her own gratication, and thats appealing to
women. Her attitude is like: what can I get from people? Its
your darkest, most self-centered self. You watch and youre
like, What if I just allowed myself to be that, full-time?
Rules to live by: Only help women. Only Scam Men,
reads one Joanne tweet from May. But Joannes comedy
doesnt just click with women: for anyone, life in 2016 can
feel like one giant scam. Theres a racist television person-
ality in the throes of an alarmingly legitimate campaign
to be the next president of the United States, and theres a
near-constant stream of bad news to make your head spin
or your heart ache: just within a couple weeks, weve seen
Brexit, terrorist attacks in France and Turkey, citizens killed
by police and police killed by civilians. If it feels like every-
things falling apart as you helplessly watch, wondering if
anyone is looking out for you or your future, its no surprise
that youd nd some relief in Joanne. Shes a ercely inde-
pendent hot mess who goes to obscene, hilarious lengths
to look out for herself. The creation of a recluse, Joanne is
a byproduct of how frightening and lonely the world can
feel. But shes also an escape from it all, a funny-as-hell re-
minder to keep your guard up, to scam today before today
scams you. Recently, I saw a photo of a teenager holding up
her college diploma on graduation day. The caption? Just
pulled off my biggest scam yet.
JOANNE THE SCAMMER
he next day, Branden is making in-
stant ramen in his kitchen. He says
T
he almost exclusively eats Popeyes
fried chicken, so this is a rare almost-
home-cooked lunch. A few beams of
Florida afternoon leak through the
closed curtains, but otherwise youd
never know what time it was. Did you see what happened?
he asks. Apparently, hed tweeted a derogatory word for
Mexicans a couple days before, and last night there was a
restorm of backlash.
Its not the rst time hes prompted critique. In post-
ings that date back to 2011, hes tweeted the word tranny,
which is widely accepted as pejorative, especially when used
by a cisgender man who dresses up as a woman for laughs.
Joanne the Scammer calls herself Mexican-American and
Caucasian, so her use of the n-word has been considered off-
putting, even though Branden is black and Latino. Between
2010 and 2015, when he was performing as Miss Prada, Bran-
den tweeted jokes about rape and made tasteless comments
about Chris Browns assault on Rihanna. He began to ex-
plain that Miss Prada was a ctional alter-ego, and not a real
extension of his identity, in one notorious Instagram post
from 2015, writing: if you think I live my life as a transexual
hooker with multiple stds your crazy.
I was trying to conrm, I guess in a very messy way, that
I am not my character, he says today of the post.
Branden explains that hes still learning about which
words he should or should not say, and which mean-spirited
sentiments are darkly funny and which ones cross the line.
He tends to delete posts once he notices theyve upset peo-
ple. I was completely un-knowledged at the time, he says
of his use of the tranny slur. I wouldve never said it if I
knew transgender was the modern term, because you got to
be correct today. Screenshots of his missteps, new and old,
regularly ood his mentions.
I said a lot of stupid shit. I would base my comedy off of
a lot of unpopular opinions. They didnt understand I was
a character then, he says about the offending Miss Prada
tweets. According to them Im a racist, Im transphobic, I
dont like Beyonc, I hate Rihanna, I support women-beat-
ers, literally anything you could think of. I get called names
because I say nigga. People are like, Youre not black, you
cant say that. In order for me to say Im black, I have to say
I have [adoption] papers. He pauses to slurp some noodles
into his mouth. Its irritating to kind of have to prove myself
sometimes. Its really aggravating. Some of my tweets are re-
ally sick, but I play a sick character. I dont really want to
explain myself and give them that satisfaction.
I ask him if he thinks Joanne is a good person. Scam-
ming and identity theft are real crimes that negatively af-
fect people all over the world every day violations that
wreck lives, not just credit scores. No, I dont, he says with-
102
I play a character that lets me
do whatever I want. Its the
one time I can kind of be free.
out pause. I do think she has good intentions. Shes here
to make you laugh. Thats why I get so upset. My intention
isnt to hurt anybody.
In a bizarre turning of the tables, Branden was the vic-
tim of a scam in May of this year, when a person posing as
a Twitter employee swindled him out of his account infor-
mation by promising to get him veried. I thought it was
sick, hilarious, he says of the ordeal, throughout which he
never broke character. Im busy with wine forgery right now
babe. Can we chat later? he wrote in one email to the real-
life scammer, who demanded $500 in ransom. Branden nev-
er paid, and though all of his tweets were deleted, he laughs
about it now. In the end Twitter veried his account.
The internets a ckle place, and web-based fame is just
as eeting as any other kind. After Brandens old idol Chris
Crocker saw his notoriety dwindle, he made porn. When
theyre living for you, theyre really living for you its
like youre walking on air, Crocker tells me later, over the
phone from Tennessee. The thing is, there will be a point
when people turn on you. Its just the way the internet is.
He says hes a big fan of Joanne the Scammer, and thinks
Branden has a better chance to have a lasting career than he
ever did. Brandens going to make mistakes we all do,
Crocker says. But how he feels about himself and his work
cant come from public responses. If its self-fullling, thats
how hell keep creating.
Brandens tweets are more popular than ever right now,
but like they say, nothing gold can stay. This doesnt seem
to bother Branden Joanne might crave fame and fortune,
but hes just trying to live comfortably. Hed like to parlay his
internet celebrity into a role in a movie or a book deal, what-
ever will get him enough money to buy a modest house in
Florida and never have to work for someone else. So far, hes
been paid to record personal greetings as Joanne, collected
$10,000 to appear in a makeover video with viral hairstylist
Anthony Cuts, and signed a three-video deal with Super De-
luxe, a web production company and distribution network.
The rst will be a parody of MTV Cribs starring Joanne and a
borrowed L.A. mansion.
Whatever happens, I already feel like Ive succeeded,
Branden says. Ive made so many people laugh and that
was the goal. You can be anything you want. Im happy I
went my own route, as I always do. I will never be forgotten.
Still, it must be daunting to know that there are people
waiting for him to slip up. Thats how it goes, though. Peo-
ple just dont want you to succeed at all, Branden explains.
They know my past and they dont feel that Im worthy of
being veried or talking to celebrities. I have to be funny at
all times. If I say something not funny, the one thing they
dont give me a second chance. Im cancelled. He stamps out
his cigarette. That just happens when youre me.
Branden tells me hes comfortable in his own skin, but
online and in person he does things that suggest he still
JOANNE THE SCAMMER
struggles. When you ask me if Im gay, I say yes, he says.
Do I aunt it? No. He says the attitudes towards homosexu-
ality that surrounded his Southern childhood are ingrained
deep, and keep him from being open about his love life. I
was raised a certain way, he says. I never kiss my boyfriend
in front of my mother. I never hold his hand. She knows we
date, and she knows I love him, but I never do that in front
of nobody, actually.
His words are a reminder that Earth is still a scary place
to be yourself. Just days before we meet in Florida, 49 people
were brutally murdered on Latin night at Pulse, a gay club
in Orlando, 45 minutes from Brandens apartment. It was the
closest queer hotspot, and though he rarely goes clubbing,
when he did, he went to Pulse. It was an emotional day,
Branden remembers of the mass shootings aftermath. I ask if
he considered tweeting something about it from the Joanne
account. To me, that is personal, he says. I dont want my
Twitter to be personal. I like to detach myself 100 percent.
For Branden, masquerading as someone hes not provides
a way to cope with or maybe just circumvent his feel-
ings about his own identity. It wasnt my strategy, but it just
so happens I play a character that allows me to do whatever
I want, he tells me. Its the one time I can be kind of free.
n our last day together, we venture
to buy smokes at a nearby 7-Eleven,
O
where a wide-framed, round-faced
man with a crew cut is hovering near
the drinks fridge. I swear to God I
thought that was George Zimmer-
man, Branden says as he climbs back
into the car, referring to the Florida man who shot and killed
an unarmed black teenager named Trayvon Martin in 2012.
He killed that guy in Sanford, which is only 40 minutes from
here. It was so fucked up. Thats why I stay in the house.
Before we return to his apartment, we pick up Oreo Bliz-
zards from the local Dairy Queen. On the way home, Bran-
den takes a few detours, like hes trying to stretch the outing
for as long as he can. He puts on Hawaiian Tropic, an un-
released Lana Del Rey song with lyrics about crystal meth
and Elvis Presley.
The street is lined with hunched-over palms, and theres
a small church on pretty much every block. One sign reads:
GOD IS NOT LIMITED BY YOUR LIMITATIONS. I went
to my boyfriends church and saw people catch the Holy
Ghost, Branden says. If I ever caught the Holy Ghost, I
think Id never be the same. I would never shut up about it.
But they just do it and go home and continue to gossip.
So youre probably not religious, I say. I dont buy it,
he says, laughing. I have this really lame theory that when
people die they become stars. Its not a popular opinion, but
its a good one. He turns onto a road that looks just like the
one before it. When I die, Im going to become a star.
104
I t s

Falls fluid throwback

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Story and styling by Shibon Kennedy
Photography by Cara Stricker

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116
GROOMING COLBY SMITH AT JED ROOT, PHOTO ASSISTANT JONNIE HOKKLO,
FASHION ASSISTANT PAULINE SENG, IAN MCRAE, SPECIAL THANKS TO ATTIC STUDIOS.
 Meechies hat TOKEN, jacket COLLINA STRADA,
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THE REALITY OF
TEEN-RUN STAN
A C C O U N T S
A new generation of artist
fandoms typifies our yearn-
ing for 24/7 access.
In late June, just moments after the week-
ly update of the Billboard Top 200 was
released, user @beyonseh tweeted: drake
sold less than the entire BB top 200 but
due to streams, he remains number one
Alongside a screenshot of sales totals for
proof, @beyonseh attached an image of
Beyonc in front of an open MacBook.
With her fist tucked underneath her
chin, she peers at the screen with a slight
smirk. As if seeing what we see, Beyonc
is amused. The message of her self-titled
2013 album, and her cultural dominance
By Laur M. Jackson
in its wake, hangs in the air: Its all about
the single. The hype. The shade is real.
Though the haunting melody of
Eminems and Didos 2000 collabora-
tion has nearly faded from popular cul-
ture, stans in 2016 look quite different
from the tragic anti-hero who gave us
their namesake. This generation has
birthed an evolved class of artist fandoms:
Little Monsters, Barbz, the Navy, and the
Beyhive, among other uber-faithful sup-
porters. In lieu of writing letters, these ra-
bid fanbases track an artists every move.
There are the conspiracy theorists, too,
such as the sub-coalition of Directioners
who believe Louis Tomlinsons son is a
decoy, but most stans deal in facts that are
very tangible. They can name the designer
Illustration by Christopher DeLorenzo
FADE OUT
behind the iconic gold tunic Bey wore at
2011s Glastonbury Festival in a heartbeat
(Alexandre Vauthier) or recite all of 1989s
accolades without misstep. Stans are ruth-
less about what they know. More than any
journalist, perhaps, they are the best his-
torians, critics, and marketers an artist
could ever hope for.
The more you love something or
someone, the bigger the urge is to learn
more, Evan Cox, the 18-year-old behind
@beyonseh, told me. His is a modest fol-
lowing in the realm of teen internet sen-
sations 21,500 followers but Coxs
posts circulate widely. One of his most
popular tweets was of footage from
Beyoncs Run the World (Girls) per-
formance at the 2011 Billboard Music
119
 Stans are the best historians,
critics, and marketers
an artist could ever hope for.
Laur M. Jackson
Awards, accompanied by the caption,
Me giving a powerpoint presentation
on feminism at school. In response to
another users incredulity over the suc-
cess of the tweet, which in its rst three
months reached over 2 million people,
Cox replied: all my tweets do well sis idk
why you're surprised thats what hap-
pens when you have real followers!
Stans are made and not born and
sometimes during great strife. Cox began
tweeting in earnest in early 2013, what he
considered peak Beyhydration season.
Beyonc hadnt done much of anything in
what seemed like centuries, he said. The
drought became an opportunity for Cox to
interact with an artist-based community as
a casual fan. But the more active he be-
came on Twitter, watering the seeds of his
blossoming fandom with past interviews
and performances from Beys career, the
more I started loving Beyonc and under-
standing her and her fan base more deeply,
he explained. Later that year his following
began to swell, which he attributes to the
surprise release of Beyonc in December.
The [general public] is more interested in
artists right after they release content.
Aaliyah Jewel, @blackheaux, said her
entrance to stan culture can be traced to
a single event. I started out as a personal/
humor account, and then one day I came
across a gif of Zayn Malik and Harry Styles
dancing. She was only 14 years old at the
time, but found herself hooked, moving
from Tumblr to Twitter in 2013 and quick-
ly gaining traction rst as a fan account for
One Direction and then for Zayn after he
left the group.
Cox and Jewel, though, represent stan
culture with a twist. They demonstrate an
unavoidable truth of our time: teens often
make the best e-strategists. Their tweets
leave a digital signature quite distinct
from the anonymous accounts jockeying
to be the most official unofficial fan source.
Massive entities like @beyoncereigns
(173,000 followers) and @ZayneJMNews
(151,000) take on a corporate monotone
on par with many singers own junkets.
Unlike the many dime-a-dozen updaters,
Cox and Jewel couple their unconditional
stanhood with social media personas all
their own. They share seles along with
professional photo spreads of their faves.
Tweets about math homework and col-
lege applications are strewn between con-
cert footage and Instagram captures. At a
glance, their approach is not unlike that
of any other user who tweets about the
things that matter most to them.
But scroll a bit further and it becomes
apparent how their accounts deviate from
self-absorption. As teens who are hyper-
aware of the worlds they generate and
participate in online, Cox and Jewel under-
stand stanning as something beyond a rela-
tionship between fan and artist, but a form
of community management that comes
with ethical responsibilities. How often
were Directioners silent on Islamophobia
aimed at Zayn? Just as misogynistic ap-
praisals of the artists dating history run
rampant amongst Swifties, many pro-
fessed Bey fans will tweet an album cover
but never say a word against misogynoir.
Not so with these two. I believe that
its important as a big account to talk
about these issues, Cox said, whose pro-
LGBT, pro-black, and pro-black women
messages are weaved seamlessly into his
accounts pro-Beyonc imperative. His
motives, however, are more personal than
just Bey. I think that its the fact that I have
many people in my life who are heavily af-
fected by the injustice that continuously
happens from day to day, and Im just sick
of it. Cox also runs @PocFashion, a photo
catalog of fashion icons of color.
Jewel said she sees parallels between
FADE OUT
her and Zayns commitment to social is-
sues. Hes reserved, but quite outspoken
when he needs to be even if hell receive
hate for it. As proof, she cited his infa-
mous #FreePalestine tweet, for which
he received death threats and no public
support from his former bandmates.
Being curator of your own community
is by no means easy. Stan love is messy. A
lot of people on here are well into their
twenties and thirties and do nothing but
live to stir up drama and troll, Jewel said.
Ive been teased by grown men and wom-
en for being what they consider is too
young for Twitter.
There have been other Bey stans
and other stanbases who have come
for me, which I nd weird, Cox added.
[Someone] made a separate account so
they could tell one of my mutuals that i
liked a tweet against their fave that's a
new type of obsession, he tweeted in July.
As for how often they personally insti-
gate the inter-stan drama, both remained
somewhat coy. Thats tting for a Twitter
culture that deals primarily in veiled
slights and shady shenanigans. When
Im bored I will reply just for the kii and
the gag, but thats about it because it usu-
ally takes too much energy, Cox said. And
according to Jewel, Sometimes its just
easier to block these people and move on.
Things are, of course, a bit cheekier on
Twitter. Ima always be here girl. You en-
tered my mentions rst , taunted Jewel
in response to a user with girl group Little
Mix in their handle. imagine having to
discredit your fave to impress other stans
on the Internet, Cox tweeted amidst an
intra-Hive feud. yall need to stop hid-
ing behind your bey usernames and avis
thinking you wont get dragged because
you have one. ill still come for you.
As an outsider, the displays of fan bra-
vado can seem petty, if not toxic. But what
that evaluation of stan culture misses is
the wider entertainment egosystem to
which stans play a critical part. If debates
cause ripples, and ripples keep things in-
teresting, stans are responsible for com-
posing a high-strung concentrate of love
and competition that maintains the rel-
evance of an artist even in the absence of
their art. And, when the art does come,
theres a home for it to go to.
120
 FIELD DAY X THE FADER
2016

Get your early bird tickets for 2017

www.fielddayfestivals.com
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WHAT CELEBRITY
REPRESENT NOW
C H I L D R E N
By Liz Raiss
The market for kidswear is
big business, but its pint-
sized stars stand for some-
thing even bigger.
Its jarring to think that North West
admirer of mermaids, tutus, and the movie
Frozen is already 3 years old. Even Kim
Kardashian, a meticulous historian of her
familys day-to-day life, can hardly seem
to believe the passage of time. In a video
posted to Instagram in June, Kim, aboard a
yacht with her husband Kanye, gathered her
squirming daughter on her lap and cooed,
Are you not gonna get any bigger? Youre
not gonna get any taller? North, clad in a
printed one-piece swimsuit with red ruffles
along the straps, happily gave in with a sim-
ple K. Fortunately for Kim, and for those
of us who live for around-the-clock updates
about celebrity children, large swathes of
the internet essentially function as a North
Illustration by Christopher DeLorenzo
West scrapbook, an ever-expanding cata-
logue of her daily hairstyles, outts, activi-
ties, and facial expressions.
North is hardly the rst person to un-
dergo meticulous public scrutiny from
the moment of birth. The eager, modern
market for celebrity baby content took
its current form in 2006, when Vanity Fair
saw a 60 percent rise in sales after put-
ting Suri Cruise on its September cover.
Vanity Fair didnt pay her parents Tom
Cruise or Katie Holmes for the image, but
two years later, when People wanted dibs
on the rst photos of Angelina Jolies and
Brad Pitts twins, they came with cash in
hand a reported $14 million. Several
famous offspring identifiable by their
rst names steadily trailed in their wake:
Angelina and Brads child Shiloh, David
and Victoria Beckhams son Harper, and,
of course, Beyoncs and Jay-Zs daugh-
ter, Blue Ivy. Since then, the inuence of
celebrity children has extended beyond
print journalism and into a blossoming,
recession-proof economy: childrens wear.
FADE OUT
According to a Global Industry Analysts
report, the worlds childrens wear market
is expected to balloon by 2020, pulling in
an estimated $291 billion. GIA attributes
this growth a 50 percent increase from
todays levels to recovering economies,
increased disposable income, and a ood
of luxury brands entering the market.
Winnie Aoki, the Australian-based
designer responsible for the $2,000 dress
Blue Ivy wore to her grandmothers birth-
day, specializes in kid couture. Aoki crafts
dresses from confectionery layers of tulle,
sequins, and luxury fabrics under the la-
bel Mischka Aoki, named after her own
8-year-old daughter. The dresses, which
can take up to 300 hours to craft, fre-
quently come with ve-digit price tags.
According to her website, Aoki started
the brand after she realized there werent
any clothing options good enough for
her daughter; for her, clothes represent
style and luxury at the same time. While
it may have been difficult to locate high-
end designer clothing for children in
122
2008, when Mischka was born, the lines
explosive popularity Aoki has dressed
not just Blue Ivy, but North, Penelope
Disick, and Suri is an indicator of the
steadily increasing desirability of luxury
childrens wear.
Since 2010, designers like Gucci,
Dolce & Gabbana, Chlo, and Lanvin
have launched pint-sized mini-labels
(Baby Dior, founded in 1967, was ahead
of the trend). Designer kids clothing of-
ten mimics its grown-up labels dening
aesthetics on a smaller scale, and smaller
budget. A frothy pink crpe shift dress for
your little one by the French label Chlo
might cost $246, but thats a relative steal
compared to the $1,650 adult version.
While the market for practical mid-
level childrens clothing includes more
casual brands like J.Crews Crewcuts
or Bon-Ton, a trendier leader in that
space has emerged in Kardashian Kids,
launched in 2014 by Khloe, Kim, and
Kourtney and carried everywhere from
Toys-R-Us to Nordstrom. While not as
cool as Norths customized Palace and
Supreme streetwear, Kardashian Kids of-
fers objectively of-the-moment clothes,
miniaturized versions of what the
Kardashians themselves wear, or, at least,
wore in the early seasons of Keeping Up
with the Kardashians. But these dip-dyed
rompers, wet-look pleather leggings, and
plush faux-fur capelets rarely top $30.
Working alongside brands like
Kardashian Kids is an Instagram com-
munity of fashion-minded parents known
as Instamoms who tirelessly post color-
ful, high-contrast photos of their children
posed in mid-level and designer clothes.
Angelica Calad is one of them, a former
fashion marketing major who runs @
Taylensmom, an IG account that has in-
vited its 132,000 followers into the lives,
and more specically the wardrobes, of
3-year-old Taylen and her younger sis-
ter, Aleia. Calad, who employs a full
team that includes a publicist for her two
daughters, recently completed a day-long
Snapchat takeover for Kardashian Kids,
though she maintained she has never pro-
moted clothing brands for cash. Instead,
she said she makes money from compa-
nies like Amazon and Starbucks, which
have tapped into Taylens inuence via
sponsored posts that can run a brand up
to thousands of dollars. I don't charge any
[fashion] brands because I truly believe in
the reality of my page. I don't believe that
my fashion sense needs to be sold.
Calad describes Taylen as the largest
kid inuencer in the southeast region of
Florida, and though she dresses her girls
for daily shoots, she insists each one has
their own little style. I know some peo-
ple will be like, Well how do you dene
somebodys style at 6 months old? she little hands and adorable chubby cheeks)
said. You dont, but you do see the things
that theyre comfortable in. Which raises
a more important question: who are these
clothes even for?
In Kids and Branding in a Digital World,
published last year the media theorist Barrie
Gunter argues that the success of designer
diffusion lines play[s] on the idea that par-
ents are the source of earliest social learn-
ing for their kids, thereby encouraging
parents to project their own brand valua-
tions onto their children. This isnt neces-
sarily a bad thing, as Gunter hypothesized,
unless children become overly sensitised
to a need to be seen as trendy and fashion-
able and where self-identity is centrally
dened in terms of commercial brand asso-
ciations. A few years ago, a 2010 study pub-
lished in Psychology & Marketing found that
children can identify child-oriented brands
like McDonalds or Disney and assign them
value as young as 3 years old. Attention to
clothing arises later, in tandem with pu-
berty, when tweens begin to use clothing
to attract romantic attention. So while it
may affect children, the rapacious growth
of the luxury and mid-level childrens wear
industry, one that sometimes emphasizes
form over function, is aimed squarely at
parents, especially those who consider
their kids to be avatars of their own wealth
and success.
Kim and Kanye have been subject to
accusations of dressing their daughter
according to their own agenda, but there
have also been more serious criticisms,
like that they are sexualizing her ward-
robe. Somewhat paradoxically, theres
also been a substantial amount of noise
about Norths gender-neutral streetwear
ensembles in all-black. In October of
2014, gossip site Hollywood Life polled
its Hollymoms with a serious inquiry: an alternate life.
FADE OUT
Do you think its strange that Kim and
Kanye dont dress Nori in pink? Beyonc
faced a different set of accusations
grounded in racial bias when a
change.org petition regarding Blue Ivys
afro, titled Comb Her Hair, made the in-
ternet rounds in 2014.
Often, the way people talk about ce-
lebrity children, and celebrity parenting,
reects deeply-held prejudices. Yet these
kids have the ability to gently (with their
push back against racial stereotypes and
gender norms. Before Blue Ivy and save
for Jaden Smith, no celebrity babies had
afros because there were no black celeb-
rity babies of this generation. Buried in
the exultant praise for Shiloh Jolie-Pitt
wearing a suit is the dark reality that up
until only a couple years ago, Jolie and
Pitt would have been widely raked across
the coals for enabling their childs non-
traditional gender presentation.
While the Instamom network and
luxury childrens wear market can be ex-
ploitative (i.e. dressing their children in
order to exhibit their own sense of style
and nancial security), it also facilitates
an enduring fascination with its tiny ce-
lebrity beacons of social progress. Like
a ford in the internets relentless river
of outrage and tragedy, the ubiquitous
North, Blue Ivy, and their ilk allow us
to experience simple moments of joy.
Perhaps more signicantly, these chil-
dren also provide us with newer, more
exible models of American childhood,
ones not restrained by gendered clothing
or Eurocentric standards of beauty. They
dont have straight blonde hair or blue
eyes or size zero moms; they are quite
simply, to millions of followers, carefree
black kids.
A coworker of mine who closely fol-
lows Norths daily movements explained
how her initial affection was an extension
of her appreciation of Kanyes work: I
always thought the world would be a bet-
ter place with more of him in it, she said,
and North is more of him. But ultimate-
ly, it was his daughters happiness, her
serenity amidst chaos, that continued to
endear her. She looks like a happy little
human like someone I couldve been in
123
THE POLITICS
BEING BLACK AND
Black people have been pro-
filed, policed, and even killed
for the noise they make. But
what if you listen to what
theyre actually saying?
I remember sitting in the school cafete-
ria during my last year at the University
of Western Ontario in 2014. As usual, the
space was noisy and full. My friends and
I stood near the exit so that we could hear
each other speak and, like many of our
peers, we were talking and laughing
loudly. But unlike them, who were mostly
white, we were being watched.
It was as if time slowed down. The peo-
ple in line for food all turned to stare at us
with looks of concern and annoyance. On
the other side of the room, several students
peered up from their phones and conver-
sations, gazing blankly. I think people
are watching us, I said to my friends. But
we already knew. As black women, being
stared at in public for expressing a form of
joy is so common that its surprising when
it doesnt happen. But there was something
different about it that time. It was that our
presence, a large group of black women,
was made to feel unwelcome. I didnt just
feel judged. I sensed fear.
Five months later, in Florida, Michael
Dunn was sentenced to life in prison with
no chance of parole for shooting and
killing Jordan Davis, a 17-year-old high
schooler, who wouldnt turn down the Lil
Reese song playing in his friends SUV.
In August 2015, a book club of 11 black
women (including an 83-year-old grand-
mother) was kicked off a Napa Valley
Train tour after they were deemed to be
laughing too loud.
By Eternity Martis
Around the same time, Peter Toh of
Torontos AfroFest, an annual celebra-
tion of Afro-diasporic arts and culture,
received an email from the City notifying
him that its usual two-day permit would
be canceled. The free outdoor festival,
which has been running for 27 years and
attracts over 100,000 visitors, would be
forced to downsize to a single day for rea-
sons involving time limits. But there was
also another message buried in the Citys
response: AfroFest was too loud.
Over the past two years, Ive watched as
black people have been silenced, arrested,
and even killed for the noise they make.
Black people arent more or less loud than
anyone else, and yet the noise we make
is feared, scrutinized, and made public.
Understanding why theres such a sensi-
tivity and fear of black noise is a com-
plex and intricate question that doesnt
supply a simple answer.
In the early 20th century, when jazz
musicians like Duke Ellington and
Thelonious Monk began using harsh,
clashing piano chords to express the pain
of African-American oppression, crit-
ics felt the technique wasn't mainstream
enough. The academic Paul Watkins has
described how these artistic attempts at
sharing the black experience have, liter-
ally, fallen on deaf ears: The more rup-
turing or polyphonically disruptive the
more often such productions have histori-
cally been interpreted, often by white crit-
ics and listeners, as noise.
In 1968, following the historically sig-
nicant black uproar of the Civil Rights
movement, James Brown released Say It
Loud Im Black And Im Proud. By the Stadium in Pennsylvania and AT&T Park
end of the decade, that track was part of
the shift that led to people identifying as
FADE OUT
OF
LOUD
black instead of Negro. Being unapolo-
getically loud and black slowly replaced
decades of chasing respectability.
In the 80s, rap groups N.W.A. and
Public Enemy shouted political and racial
messaging based on the black experi-
ence, once again drawing criticism from
white critics and institutions for being
too harsh and aggressive. In her 1994 book
Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture
in Contemporary America, Tricia Rose
wrote that the continual struggle hip-hop
engages in makes it a noisy and powerful
element of contemporary American popu-
lar culture which continues to draw a great
deal of attention to itself.
The public narrative of this musi-
cal history coincides with policing the
actions of regular folk living their lives:
when it comes to parties, festivals, or just
the everyday movement of black people,
there is particular emphasis on noise. Each
year, there are noise complaints surround-
ing the Toronto Caribbean Carnival. In
London, residents living near the Notting
Hill Carnival have complained about it
being too loud and rowdy, which led to the
use of decibel readers by city officials to
police volume levels in the past.
For years, Brooklyn residents have
complained about noise when artists like
Jay Z, Kanye West, and Rihanna perform
at the Barclays Center. In 2014, insulated
ceiling panels were installed at the venue,
and a representative for the sites devel-
oper told residents: This isnt happening
during Barbra Streisand. (The Barclays
Center declined to comment for this
story.) Venues including the Hersheypark
in California have received similar com-
plaints, though there may be valid reasons
124
why hip-hop is constantly targeted.
Bass travels an incredibly long dis-
tance and goes through walls and build-
ings, unlike treble sounds, said Marshall
Chasin, director of research and chief audi-
ologist of the Musicians Clinics of Canada.
And hip-hop has a lot of bass, like reggae
music. Its difficult to stop some of the bass
sounds from getting through. Chasin also
said that because hip-hop doesnt have one
consistent beat throughout a song, the on/
off of the bass can be agitating to some.
But, in terms of decibels, Chasin
said other genres are just as culpable. I
wouldnt say hip-hop is louder than classi-
cal and you can have classical music that
is as loud as rock. He noted that rock con-
certs can peak at 120 dB, which is consid-
ered extremely loud, considering ear pain
begins at 125 dB. If anything, rock concerts
should also stand to breach noise bylaws,
but even if they do, they rarely make head-
lines (an exception: a recent Auckland
AC/DC show was so loud sound vibra-
tions were picked up by seismographs, the
instrument that measures earthquakes.)
Chasin also pointed out another impor-
tant factor to consider when it comes to
volume complaints: personal preference.
If somebody just doesnt like hip-hop,
theyre going to be more aggravated with
it than the music they like.
It was social media noise that helped
AfroFest find its footing again: Toh
Illustration by Christopher DeLorenzo
gathered thousands of signatories on a
petition that circulated on Twitter and
Facebook. In March, after additional pro-
tests by Black Lives Matter Toronto
routinely described in the media as loud
but peaceful AfroFests two-day per-
mit was reinstated. But maybe it should
never have been restricted in the rst
place: the festival, which takes place in
a 37-acre public park, received just eight
noise complaints last year. According to
James Dann, manager of waterfront parks
for the City of Toronto, more complaints
were made to other agencies. He said
theres no standard about how many com-
plaints it takes to restrict an event. If its
one or two complaints, its not going to be
an issue, he said. If we start getting mul-
tiple complaints through multiple agen-
cies then we denitely follow up. Theres
still no evidence that AfroFest breached
decibel levels.
And what about the policing of noise
outside of a music context? Danielle
Phillips-Cunningham, an associate pro-
fessor at Texas Womens University, said
the Napa Valley train incident is represen-
tative of how black women are viewed in
public. Theres always been this idea that
women who are loud arent ladylike, that
black women are not the typical, white,
pure, respectable woman, she said. But
how can a group of jovial women pose a
safety threat?
FADE OUT
Lisa Johnson, one of the 11 women
kicked off the train, told me that since the
incident she monitors her behavior in pub-
lic. We nd ourselves constantly checking
like, Are we being too loud? she said. And
its a shame that its come to that because
laughter is about joy and feeling good.
Theres always an association with us
and anger, and that informs the perception
that were loud and disruptive, Phillips-
Cunningham said, adding that the stereo-
type of the angry black woman often puts
us at a disadvantage. But its more than
that: its readily believed, and reportedly
caused two women in the book club to
lose their jobs. People, and organizations,
pathologize the mistreatment of black
women because of a public perception
that black people women in particular
are inherently obnoxious, confrontational,
verbally abusive, and loud.
These fears mainly dwell in white
spaces: public areas that reect white, mid-
dle-class identity and values often to the
exclusion of people of color. For me it was
a university cafeteria, but it can be a music
festival, a wine tour, or an entire gentrify-
ing neighborhood. Last fall, the East Bay
Express reported that new white residents
of East Oakland, California, were using
an app called Nextdoor to organize police
complaints about black residents making
noise in neighborhood parks. Around the
same time, a local gospel choir in the area
received a $3,500 nuisance fee because
their choir practice was too loud. If white
neighbors will call the police on black
people singing bible hymns, theres prob-
ably not much else we can do in Oakland
besides breathe.
If the perception of black noise in
music, in protest, or in celebration is
somehow threatening, then there must
be an interrogation of what makes people
fearful. Perhaps its fear of what will be
revealed when you listen to what were
actually saying. Black noise can easily be
dismissed as antagonistic, abrasive, and
futile, but it is survival. It forces people
to acknowledge black experiences and
oppression, and its loud even when no
one wants to hear it. But the thing with
noise is that even if you try, you cant block
it out. Eventually you have to listen.
125
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