Das Racist -- rubbish in interviews, great on stage
Himanshu Kumar Suri, the other half of the duo, echoes the sentiment: “People are stupid.”
As eloquent as they might be on wax, Das Racist makes for a horrible interview: one-word answers and non-sequiturs. And for the record, it’s "Das" is in slurred "that’s," not the German definite article.
One might not expect such brevity from the bards behind lines like “Queens Boulevard Kierkegaard/Hustle hard…” and “W.E.B Dubois/We be da boys," but the whole act might just be in jest.
The question is, which persona is an act?
As the chorus of their new track “Hahahaha JK?” goes, “We’re not joking, just joking, we are joking.”
One gets lost in levels of irony and authenticity (a binary relished by hipster culture), but Das Racist manages to fuse the two sides into a bizarre state of pop-cultural transcendence.
Vazquez and Suri are part of one of the biggest buzz bands of the year, but will they make sense to Shanghai, a town that is notably behind the curve in hip-hop style?
“Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell”
Most rap shows are glorified karaoke. Our rap shows are more like glorified Guitar Hero.— Himanshu Kumar Suri, Das Racist
Das Racist’s Himanshu Kumar Suri and Victor Vasquez met in a dorm at Wesleyan in 2003. Along with their hypeman Dap, the two gained prominence with the 2008 viral hit “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.”
The narrative arc of the track is as follows: One of the vocalists is at the hybrid Taco Bell and Pizza Hut restaurant. The other vocalist is also at the hybrid restaurant. They can’t find each other.
That’s it.
The song, nay, ringtone, was dismissed by some as a gimmick and hailed by others as meta-commentary on the purgatory of "McCulture." However, it would be easier to forget in the annals of musical history if their following two mix tapes, “Shut Up, Dude” and “Sit Down, Man,” weren’t filled with some of the best lyrics of the decade.
If you ask them how they got there, the guys sound like your run-of-the-mill liberal arts polymath stoners.
Himanshu lists his influences as: books, visual art, the Internet, and “my mom.” They’re also known for their visceral, drug-fueled performances and public heckling of Sasha Frere Jones, resident know it all at the “The New Yorker”.
While they don’t have a social agenda -- “We don’t have an agenda except being fresh,” says Himanshu -- Das Racist takes one of hip-hop’s oldest motifs, talking about the magnitude of one’s dopeness, and cranks up the self-references to comment on identity politics.
“I’m not arguing for or against authenticity, per se,” says Kool A.D., “I just think that the popular conception of it feels too rigid.”
For a band so entwined with Western culture, much of Das Racist’s Asian tour might be lost in translation.
Glorified guitar hero
Thursday’s Das Racist show at The Shelter will certainly be a spectacle.
“Most rap shows are glorified karaoke. Our rap shows are more like glorified Guitar Hero,” says Himanshu.
According to the underground (literally and figuratively) club’s owner, Gary Wang, the performance will be a welcome addition to a tame scene.
“Shanghai and China has never been affected by any real hip-hop, in a cultural way … there are still some promoters who really love real hip-hop, but how many people know those or like those groups in here is different story,” says Wang.
Over the past few years, The Shelter has tried to fill this gap. They have brought big names, including DJ Premier, Krush, Cut Chemist, and Kid Koala.
Abe Deyo, the promoter who booked Das Racist, has faith in the Shanghai’s music scene’s “eclectic embrace of musical genres,” but he doesn’t expect much crossover appeal.
“I think there will always be an interesting scene here, but hip-hop will always stay underground,” he says.
