ROBERT BOLTON

Of Whatever

An essay on style; originally published in M/I/S/C Magazine

Of Whatever

I.

Friday, September 28, 2012 at 12:55 pm

Gangnam Style is the most ‘liked’ video in the history of YouTube. Drive is the film material of almost pure style. Facebook acquires Instagram. Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs. Justin Bieber’s swag coach says goodbye. Richard Florida produces research to sell. Academic-consultant-journalist is very much a thing. Kony and Old Spice have been viral. Jonah Lehrer recycles and plagiarizes and makes stuff up. Kanye West “just fucked Kim so hard.” Several of my friends, on LinkedIn, purport to be Social Media Gurus. This is the age of thought leadership, reputation management and personal branding.

Brand, in the most contemporary sense of the word, is synonymous with style. Your brand is the expression of your character, your values and the work you do, but only so much as those things fit into the decisions you make about how you project yourself outwardly. Style today, as the architect Alexander Josephson tells me, is “the way you interface with the problem of celebrity.” If that makes style a discipline in itself, it is the talent of self-knowledge – getting to the bottom of who you’d like to be, and then having the power to clearly and deliberately articulate that being. How do you exaggerate or downplay your character? How do you curate yourself? Who and what do you associate with? What do you obfuscate? How much do you reveal?

It can be trendy to talk about avoiding engagement with these questions, to quit social media, or to aim for the absence of style. Writers, designers, artists, mathematicians, software developers and chess players all strive for stylistic invisibility in their work, cutting to the shortest, most elegant solutions. It is an admirable goal. But the proposition that style is escapable is as illegitimate as the proposition that celebrity is escapable. Ours is a culture of real-time autobiography, of cultivating a public self for our circles and fields. To reject those activities only draws more attention. 

The absence of style may be desirable, but to call it absence is a lie. Style is a totality of decisions. Aiming for neutrality is one such decision, that more likely has the effect of revealing distinct stylistic features, even your brand essence. In this way, the avoidance of style can be the distillation of style. As the art critic Erwin Panofsky put it in his 1936 essay, Style and Medium in Motion Pictures, “The problem is to manipulate and shoot unstylized reality in such a way that the result has style.” The same may be said of our public presentation today.

II. 

The word ‘style’ comes from a tool for carving, what to this day we call a ‘stylus.’ Etymological evolution has seen style turn from a purely impressive etching tool to an expressive tool, one that conditions the creation of whatever.

Style is the sum of factors that either coat meaning onto or expose meaning in a given experience, much the way a fresh coat of paint or exposed brick lend affect to the functional wall or the way an expensive coat or an exposed shoulder make meaning with the body.

Style is the use, combination, permutation, and dismissal of various techniques, applied within a discipline, toward an overall mode or character. In the most successful executions of whatever, style and content (or style and function) will seem inextricable, as though no stylistic decisions could’ve been made. And what is produced feels produced exactly as only.

Two annoying things someone inevitably brings up in casual discussions about style and especially fashion are the observations that nothing is original and that style is cyclical. These points are true of fashion where heel-heights and hem-lengths rise and fall with tides of style. Similarly, artists, filmmakers, musicians and designers leverage nostalgia, sometimes suspiciously discreetly, ‘paying homage’ to the past. As a rule, whatever was stylish two decades ago is stylish again right now. That creative output always involves lingering stylistic elements or revivals of other times precisely aligns to the function of the term style as an analytical tool. Taxonomy is style’s utility. When we talk about styles we are classifying things, according to macro-groupings and microfeatures. If style were not cyclical and derivative, if everything were unique, we wouldn’t have the ability to make sense of whatever by putting it in referential categories like movements and oeuvres. Historical placement is just one of the reference points we use to do this.

We group styles according to geoethnic and chronological tags, emotional and tonal descriptions, technical and technological devices, by genres and the philosophies that power them, and by tactics and processes. Some stylistic groupings have proven productive for classifying work across disciplines as in jazz, punk, funk, baroque and Italian futurism. This is important because it shows that we can learn about one practice by looking at another. It also helps to illustrate the indefinite number of potential styles, and suggests some courses to arriving at new ones. 

That nothing is original doesn’t negate newness. New styles will always be named for new calibrations and new combinations of practices. May we never run scarce of hyphens.

Dialogue On Style

In M/I/S/C/ Magazine’s Style Issue, a short essay and a series of twenty-two interviews with artists, designers, athletes, academics, and business leaders to develop a lexicon to talk about style across disciplines. 

Poetic Styles

For M/I/S/C/ Magazine, I recently had the opportunity to ask three American poets about style in poetry and life.

Jane Hirshfield

Jane Hirshfield is the author of seven collections of poetry and has been published in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, the Los Angeles Times and multiple volumes of The Best American Poetry.

What’s your style…

…within the landscape of contemporary poetry?

I want lightness that can nonetheless cover hard ground. My work is usually in free verse with both ears open; sometimes in what I think of as wandering rhyme. Beyond the music (though never outside it), words others seem to use about my work’s thought-style are “sensuous,” “riddle,” “implication,” “clarity,” and “insight.” A slightly odd mix – but it catches something I can agree with – my poems try to say just enough to let the reader solve the question inside himself/herself, and to say it through the fragrant things of this world. They want a question deepened enough to precipitate un-simple answers, a feeling of being more saturated inside this existence. A sense of deepened and widened connection, of the kinship between grief and joy. A way to say yes to what’s given, even as it’s vanishing from under your feet.

…in communicating with lovers?

I am surprisingly uninterested in “processing” things. A conversation about something interesting is as seductive as any other kind of dance. What matters most between lovers is not what happens in words.

…of navigating the Internet?

I am on The Well almost daily. It’s my coffee shop, my Wikipedia, my fact checker, my community of friends. Beyond what’s recommended there, I don’t “explore” much. I have only a certain tolerance for screenbased time, and The Well soaks that up close to entirely. I am not on Facebook, though a lovely and generous young woman put up an author’s page about me in time for my last book, Come, Thief. In some ways I’ve been an online pioneer. I joined The Well in 1991, long before the worldwide web caught on. I had one of the earlier best selling Kindle Single e-books, an entirely implausible success since it’s a rather densely written introduction to the Japanese haiku poet Basho. I’ll have a lesson on metaphor up soon in the new TED Ed web series. But I still don’t own a cell phone.

…of defusing awkward professional encounters?

Mostly I’m like a Galapagos tortoise: I just turn in another direction as best I can, and attempt to be friendly if put in the same pen. But if that doesn’t work, it’s into the shell with me.

…’s relationship with content?

Inseparable. I mostly feel unstylish, but that’s a style too. You can’t be stripped of style any more than you can be stripped of your fingerprints or earlobes. Even if they are altered, that then is you.

Saul Williams

Saul Williams is a poet, musician, screenwriter and actor. Bridging the gap between poetry and music through collaborations with Nas, The Fugees, Erykah Badu, Blackalicious and De La Soul, his work has been published in The New York Times, Esquire, Bomb and African Voices.

What’s your style…

…within the landscape of contemporary poetry?

I guess my style is that of the provocateur. I’m interested in a mash-up of ideas, universes and parallel universes, in an attempt to lambaste the popular/ocular and expose the thing that rests deep at it’s core: the through-line, the most common denominator.

…of dress?

I dress like I write. But keep in mind, I invent words.

…of self-defense?

I stay strapped.

…in delivering feedback and critiques to other poets?

It depends. Poets write for different reasons, many are working through issues, like abuse, etc. Thus sometimes it makes no sense to critique form when it’s more of a cathartic exercise. In other cases – I often keep my critique to myself.

…of lecturing?

Seriously, dude. My style is mostly silent.

Kristen Fogdall

Kristin Fogdall’s poetry been published in Slate, The New Republic, Poetry, New England Review and Partisan Review. Her manuscript collection was a finalist for the National Poetry Series in 2000.

What’s your style…

…within the landscape of contemporary poetry?

I like the word landscape; it implies variety in the terrain. It seems to me that a large number of poets today either truly believe that language has no objective meaning, or they simply prefer to write poems that are as enigmatic as possible. At the other end of the spectrum, there are poets who prefer simply to state the obvious. I think the truly moving, useful, lasting poems are happening in the middle ground between these two camps. I hope I’m right there in the confluence.

…making decisions about lineation?

Lineation is such an important matter for poetry – at least it is for me. I spend just as much time obsessing over line breaks as I do about the sound, rhythm and meaning of the words themselves. For me, poetry is a visual art as well as an aural one. I want to give each line a heft and contour of its own. So this means breaking the lines on good strong words, rather than on pronouns, conjunctions or the like. And unless I’m writing in strict meter, I hate to see the lines all boxed up within the stanza; I’m compelled to vary their length. I might try to leave the lines alone, but it’s like talking to someone who has a big glob of food on his face; eventually I reach across the table and wipe it off!

… at the intersection of?

Science and mythology. Infinitesimal Detail and The Universe.

…informed and inspired by?

I’ve always believed that a writer’s style can be influenced by the landscape in which he or she grew up, or lived in at a formative time. I don’t mean subject matter. I’m talking about the very texture and inflection of the words, the structure and rhythm of the phrases. I feel the prairie in Willa Cather’s expansive sentences; the ocean in the clarity of Derek Wolcott’s diction. I grew up in Seattle, a place where water and mountains meet. I’m not sure a writer can ever have true insight into her own work, but at times I think I’m trying to achieve a poetic line that is both transparent and solid. The silhouette of the words on the page reminds me of a ridge of mountains, like the Cascades.

…if it must be described by a single verb?

“Chant”. Or maybe “Pray”. I often think of my poems as incantations.

Twitter Styles: From Kanye to British Petrolium

Originally published in M/I/S/C Magazines’s Style Issue 

“Style is personal,” says Claire Diaz-Ortiz, the Head of Social Innovation and Executive Leadership at Twitter. “And so is social media.” The celebrated author of Twitter For Good: Change the World One Tweet at a Time, @Claire trains organizations and social enterprises in her TWEET model, a framework to get the most – and give the most via philanthropy, social good and cause marketing – through Twitter. According to her, the formal constraint of the 140-character limit is the key driver of communication styles on the platform. “As you adapt to tweeting regularly, the way you view and summarize what you see around you changes as well. Twitter skims the foam off the top, leaving you the essence of your words and thoughts.” The key to developing your own personal style on Twitter, she says, is locating your raison d’tweet. “Don’t get on Twitter because the guy on the corner told you to. Get on it because you have a purpose.” Claire is clear that the best style to own is your own style, she offers four popular modes of Tweeting that new or recent users might want to take a cue from.

1. The ‘let it all hang out’ a la Kanye West style of unfiltered insane brilliance. Who doesn’t want to twitpic a $40,000 velvet couch, after all?

2. The ‘buttoned up and playing it safe’ brand of some Fortune 500s.

3. The ‘public relations approved this tweet’ style of BP in the midst of an oil spill.

4. The ‘I’m here to ridicule you’ style of utter sarcasm a la mock accounts of said BP accounts during said oil spills. Mimicry works. Many a fantastic humor account on Twitter has been a spoof of another.

Marketing Magic and Illusions of Simplicity

 “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clarke

From the introduction to the back-story to the execution of a particular set of events and techniques, a myriad of factors must go exactly right to successfully perform an illusion. This calculated multiplicity is key to the illusion’s power to fool the mind; Illusion is complexity veiled, and made to appear so simple that its appearance can only be construed as magic. It can have the effect of transforming people’s perception and definition of what is possible. It can create trust, while inspiring disbelief. Above all else, illusion makes people believe, even when they don’t trust what they are witness to.

 For centuries, magicians have passed bits and pieces of this intangible power on from generation to generation. The brotherhood and trust that has formed among illusionists is reflective of the power itself. There are always elements and intricacies of the execution that are held back and the greatest illusions of all are left for each individual, magician or not, to decode on their own.

Along with the magician’s code of secrecy though, there has also been a tradition—or sense of responsibility passed down through the world’s greatest illusionists—for skepticism and demystification. Harry Houdini debunked spiritualist séances and commissioned a book called, “The Cancer of Superstition.” While the Canadian illusionist James Randi exposed faith healers, wizards, psychics, prophets and more. Today, that tradition is upheld in the work of Penn Jillette and Raymond Joseph Teller who have been amazing and enlightening audiences with their mix of illusion, comedy, and skepticism since 1975.

Describing themselves as “a couple of eccentric guys who have learned how to do a few cool things,” their approach to magic and their populist success as magicians is strengthened by subversion. Penn and Teller thrive on debunking pseudoscientific ideas, they undermine their craft by making tricks look easy and, without breaking the magician’s code of secrecy, they continually invite their audience to discover the magic of magic. As Penn has said, “One of the things that Teller and I are obsessed with, one of the reasons that we’re in magic, is the difference between fantasy and reality.”

In marketing, the distinction between fantasy and reality can be a trivial one—particularly in tech, where consumers willingly engage with new and mystifying products though they may not understand the backend processes. Illusion relies on this tendency—misinterpretation of the total activities occurring. Illusionists often appear calm, cool and collected with many of their movements subtle and undetected, much the same as a duck crossing a pond – graceful and steady above water, but hidden beneath the surface is a flurry of movement necessary just to keep it afloat and on course. To this end, marketers can use illusion to distract and excuse the consumer from his unfamiliarity with new products and technologies. The power of illusion is to make an entire system of activities and channels materialize as one simple and magical experience for the consumer. Principles of design thinking enable brands to synthesize their many features and capabilities as a captivating narrative—an illusion. By creatively locating the illusory magic of their products, brands can leverage the power of amazement to shift perspectives and compel consumer activity. 

Apple, for example, officially describes the iPad not with a long list of technical jargon but as a “magical device.”  The illusion, in this case, plays up magic to obfuscate the complexities. The language, like the interfaces themselves, becomes a veil of illusion. The operating systems show only the top layer of their framework, making the user experience feel like magic. As Apple designer Johnny Ives contended in the iPadʼs original promotional video: “When something exceeds your ability to know how it works, it sort of becomes magical.” Behind the veil, of course there are innumerable processes occurring, but emphasis is placed on the visual and sensual rather than the technical—“It’s like holding the internet in your hands.” Instead of dwelling on practical features or the ‘technical how’ of the product, the strength of illusion is such that audiences are contented to wallow in a state of amazement and disbelief.

Similarly, Sergey Brin likens Google to ‘the mind of God’ – and it can seem that way sometimes with its uncannily accurate responses to keyword queries. While behind the scenes, transport agents mine the data and return with results algorithmically sorted by relevance, the product works so instantaneously and accurately as to seem magical, predictive and productive in the sense that it brings something out of nothing. In fact, it is the aggregate effect of aggregate activities showing forth as illusory magic, a product of faith and awe. Or as Teller reveals, “to fool the mind, you must combine at least two tricks.”

 Illusion’s ability to confound the senses buys the illusionist a currency of sort. This currency can be used throughout the duration of the spell to help reset the audience’s understanding and is something that magicians can capitalize on. For brands, that sense of spellbound infatuation translates as a unique opportunity to close sales and secure extended loyalty. For Apple and Google, the mysterious nature of magic plays on people’s need to believe, creating a cult-like following.

The magician’s oath promises “never to reveal the secret of any illusion to a non-magician, unless he swears to uphold the Magician’s Oath in turn.” Exposure of the secret is believed to remove the element of amazement. The tricks lose their ‘magic’ and instead function as intellectual puzzles. Penn and Teller however, debunkers that they are, frequently reveal their methods using transparent props. They reason that an understanding and appreciation of the mastery and cleverness of the illusion actually enhances the audience’s experience. Furthermore, Penn and Teller add twists and unexplained effects into the exposures that are even more astonishing than the original trick. Rather than ruining the magic by revealing the simplicity of the secret, they raise the stakes by educating their audience, and proceeding to astonish them still more. Entertaining an informed audience is more ambitious and rewarding than going for the cheap thrill. As consumers become increasingly technologically literate and curious—not to mention suspicious of sales jargon—brands too can benefit by demystifying their own magic. When James Dyson revolutionized the vacuum with dual cyclone technology, he made the dust container transparent so people could see how it worked. In the innovation economy, value is made not only from the ‘magical’ effects of a good product but also from the beauty of that product’s inner workings, the processes involved, and the methods that lead to it.

 To truly mesmerize his consumers, a savvy brand magician plays first into their faculties for astonishment and disbelief, and then engages their curiosity.

*originally published in M/I/S/C Magazine’s Simplicity Issue

Simple Wisdom from 9 Design Thinkers

For M/I/S/C Magazine, I recently produced this special feature, wherein I interviewed a theoretical neurobiologist, 2 artists, 3 writers, a cartographer, an MIT chemist, and the guy who built a robot replica of himself as a means to study the way humans interact with machines.

The format was sort of experimental; Leaving out my own questions and comments, I attempted to crystallize a series of standalone quotes that would do two jobs, 1) tell each person’s story and 2) offer un-obvious life aphorisms.

M/I/S/C Magazine’s Simplicity Issue is available on newsstands now.

Times Neue Roman - Late Night Toronto

Outclass Autumn/Winter 2012 Collection

www.outclass.ca

Photography by: Matthew Furtado 
Models: Thomas, Jason, Robert
Hair & Makeup by: Lindsay Yosira Hernandez

Epiphany: Notes on Design Thinking

A more arousing word for insight is epiphany—sudden revelations of truth, from aggregate experience, and triggered by the something trivial in the present. The feeling is part of what motivates and fulfills us as thinkers. Its surprise is its power, that the thankless labor will make itself worthwhile, in a sudden and unexpected instant. The labor though—the time spent trying to make sense of the problem, rather than the moment of unfolding—is what’s important. Waiting for moments, one loses sight of motives.

Scott Berkun, in his book The Myths of Innovation, dismisses the something-out-of-nothing epiphany as naive romanticism. “The most useful way to think about epiphany,” he advises, “is as an occasional bonus of working on tough problems… When a powerful moment does happen, little knowledge is granted for how to find the next one. Even in the myths, Newton had one apple and Archimedes had one eureka. To focus on the magic moments is to miss the point.” Epiphanies are moments of synthesis, which bring to surface and purpose, the disparate chords we had already suspected would interrelate in meaningful ways. They’re the product of extensive and diverse efforts. And there are other electric ‘moments’ along the way: the hunch before, the study toward, and the articulation after that gives the epiphany its value.

The French mathematician Poincaré saw epiphanies as the accumulation of a life’s effort. He suggested that ideas become like “mobilized atoms in the unconscious, arranging and rearranging themselves in endless combinations, until finally the ‘most beautiful’ of them makes it through a ‘delicate sieve’ into full consciousness, where it will then be refined and proved.”

With cognitive frameworks like design thinking, we’d like to think we can somehow design our cognitive processes in a kind of rube goldberg mechanism arriving finally at a powerful insight, or epiphany. Can we? Part of that comes down to exposure. How do you bring together your influences? What do you spend your time reading, looking at, listening to, and discussing? How do you intuitively pull together the right bits of data and sparks of inspiration to maximize the quality of your output? I think of this as strategic or controlled exposure—creating a deliberately polymathic environment as the ‘studio.’

*A version of this piece was published in M/I/S/C Magazine’s Insight Issue.

In Conversation with Saul Williams, 2004

Recently bumped into Saul Williams at a hotdog stand in Toronto and was reminded of a conversation I’d had with him in 2004. At the time, he was a huge influence on my writing and thinking. Looking back - I see this as one of the formative points where I began to see the interview as an art practice in itself. Rather than just a promotional means. Below is a excerpt from the piece, originally published in HipHopCanada.

Robert Bolton: In SHE, you wrote, “We are left to make magic of our own names given to us through the love of our parents” You found the sun in your name. Why was it relevant for your new album to be self-titled?

Saul Williams: It was right before I went into the studio to finish the album, my manager and I had a discussion and it boiled down to like, “Yeah, it would be cool to have a self-titled album.” And it kind of frightened me because all of a sudden I was like, “wow I think that would be cool but now that makes me listen to the music and have to make sure it represents me fully. All the sides of me. So I think that this album successfully shows more sides of me then someone might be used to. I think people usually associate me with some type of intellectual anger. This album shows other sides of me like my sense of humour. It’s a fun sounding album. Although the subject matter can get interesting at times, I had fun doing it.

RB: For those who don’t know, could you tell us about the Not In Our Name initiative? Who was involved in it and what does it stand for?

SW: The Not In Our Name initiative basically was sent out to the world to say that there are people primarily in America that do not agree with American foreign policy. We wanted to send out the message to the world to just say, “Look, I know that CNN and what have you is telling you this, but I need you to understand that we realize our connection to humanity and we realize that we are human first regardless of what our current administration says.” And so there was a lot of celebrities involved in the movement. (Susan Sarandon, Noam Chomsky, Ossie Davis, Gloria Steinhem, Sean Penn and Kurt Vonnegut) It was really about raising awareness here in the states, but it was also about sending that message out to the rest of the world so that people who were protesting against what was happening in America knew that there were people in America protesting against what our own government has been doing.

RB: Bush said, “You’re either with us or against us,” referring to terrorism. Can u comment on this with respect to your initiative?

SW: Well I did a book called, “Said the shotgun to the head and that book is one long poem that’s the voice of a man that’s telling of the coming of a female messiah. What’s interesting about this book is that it deconstructs western ideals and values and the difference between western and eastern ideals and values. It does so under the context of religion. I played with religion a lot primarily because religion has often been the cornerstone of a lot of wars that have been fought including this war in the Middle East. So what’s interesting is that if you look at an eastern religion like Hinduism, it teaches that the universe is composed of a unified duality, which they call Shiva and Shakti energy, which correlates to male and female energy. They say that those 2 sides compliment each other and form a unified whole. Buddhism, another eastern religion, asserts that the universe is composed of a unified duality, which they call Yin and Yang energy, which correlates again with male and female energy. Then you get to the west, which teaches that there’s god and devil, right and wrong, and the woman’s on the side of the devil because she bit the apple. It’s pretty interesting because when you look at these eastern perspectives that embrace the left and the right, the male and the female, the yin and the yang, the Shiva and the Shakti and you look at this western philosophy that says its one or the other. It’s right or wrong. It’s god or the devil. It’s black or white. You’re either with us or against us. And you see right there why it is that we have been the perpetuators of so much warfare not only outside of America but the history of slavery and racism and all these things. Its like wow! That’s it right there! It’s the cornerstone of it right there. That mentality that says that it’s one or the other. Because it’s not one or the other. It’s one and the other. And then at some point you come to the realization that there is no other or as Hafiz the Sufi poet says, “the other is a lie.”

RB: You have a recurring role on the UPN’s hit sit-com Girlfriends; this is probably the last place most people would expect to see Saul Williams. How did this opportunity come about?

SW: I knew the producers and they approached me the day before they started auditions like, “Yo we wrote this roll kind of based on you. You would never do it right?” I’m like, “What the fuck? I wanna see. I’ll do it!” I just thought it would be fun. And it was, I had a lot of fun.

RB: How do the art of poetry and the art of acting relate? Do they go hand in hand?

SW: I think the best person to ask that would be Shakespeare. Many of our great writers and playwrights have often been poets from Shakespeare to Amiri Baraka. So a poem, in many cases is as dramatic as a good piece of drama, be it a play a monologue or what have you. So those two can come from the same source.

RB: Many people including myself were introduced to Saul Williams through the film Slam. How important was it that SLAM be set in Washington DC?

SW: Initially, it wasn’t very important. However, at the time we were about to start shooting, the governor at that time decided that no cameras would be allowed in New York prisons. And so, the documentarian I was working with at the time, who directed Slam, Mark Levin was working on a documentary in a DC jail so we thought, “well that makes perfect sense if you think about it. Look at all the symbols.” I loved it. As a writer of poetry, I was like, “This is awesome. All these symbols.”

RB: Yeah, the reason I asked that is because the architecture in DC seemed to fit very well with the Isis and Osirus Myth that you allude to in some of the pieces you spit in slam.

SW: Exactly. And all that stuff was in there before we decided to shoot in DC. So it was perfect.

RB: You often allude to the myth of Isis and Osirus. What is it about this myth that relates to your work so much?

SW: I’ve just spent a great deal of time interested in alchemy and Egyptology and and I think it’s very connected to the founding principals of even this nation. (USA) If you look at a dollar bill, you have these Egyptian symbols including the pyramid and the eye of Osirus and all this stuff on the dollar bill. It of course has everything to do with masonry and all this stuff. I think that there’s a great many esoteric and mystical truths and strengths and powers held within those teachings. So, I study them and connect them to our present.

RB: You’ve collaborated and performed with some legendary MCs, poets and producers. Is there any experience in writing, in the studio, or performing with a particular artist that is especially memorable?

SW: I remember being in the studio with KRS-ONE and just being completely intimidated and I was like, “There’s no way I’m gonna rhyme.” I did a track with him for the soundtrack to Slam. I literally stood in the vocal booth and read from my journal. I could’ve written a rhyme for the song but I was like, “I’m not gonna rhyme on a song that KRS is rhyming on.” I was just completely intimidated. (Laughs) When I did my last album (Amethyst Rock Star), I worked with Rick Rubin. The first song we produced was Penny for a Thought and I fucked up like 30 times in the booth. I was tripping on LL Cool J and all these people that he’s worked with. And Rick was like, “What’s the problem?” And I asked him like, “Well yo, how many takes does LL need?” and he answered me, “One.” I’m like, “Oh.”

RB: What is the state of hip-hop right now?

SW: Georgia. [Laughing] No, I don’t think we need to get rid of any artists or anything. I just think hip-hop needs balance. My two favorite albums of the past year were Mars Volta and Outkast. I love the success of that Outkast album. Outkast sold more than 50 Cent, which just goes to show that the truth is prevailing. I like 50 Cent too.

RB: Your song “Purple Pigeons” makes some interesting comment on creation, calling artists ‘little gods’. It’s also a very unorthodox song. What and who was involved in its creation?

SW: First of all we had Divine Styler engineering the track. He put out an album in ’91 called Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Life. He was down with Ice-T and all these people and that was the only hip-hop album that was done on acid before Del. It was so far left. He even interviews the Devil on that album. So that was crazy. My man Orko produced it. I’m having a conversation on that song with Wood Harris, an actor. He was in Paid in Full and played Hendrix in the Hendrix movie. He’s the one who makes the comment about, “Little Gods.” And that whole story in that conversation was true at the beginning of the song. I was in Belize, just me and this guy. I was lying in a hammock. And he just read this page from the bible. Both sides. And ripped it out and rolled a spliff.