Listen to Glass Popcorn's "Memorial Day 2000"

A few things I'd accomplished by the time I turned 17—becoming copy editor of my school newspaper, acquiring "Most Improved" athletic trophies in several sports, and, against all odds, maintaining my precious virginity. Impressive as they are, my achievements pale in comparison to the career of Will "Glass Popcorn" Neibergall. As a rising high school senior he's already developed a viral web persona, headlined MOMA PS1's Warm Up series (alongside Araabmuzik), and published several academic treatises. Don't get it twisted—youth underlies his virality, but in a more complex way than other "check out this rapping kid!" memes. Glass Popcorn's age allows him an unfiltered perspective on two areas that have changed unimaginably over the last few years: rap and technology. He triangulates their fluid relationship to modern teen experience with a poise I've seen only in Spring Breakers and a few of my friends' more popular younger siblings' Instagrams. In 2011 Art Info declared Neibergall "the art world's Justin Bieber"—the description's stuck through subsequent press cycles, but I think both he and Bieber have grown beyond it. While the latter's morphed into a jacked, drop-crotched, bucket-menacing Swag God, Neibergall's latest single "Memorial Day 2000" (off his upcoming Twink Privilege mixtape) ditches his earlier work's high-concept trolling for an intimate, Why?-esque take on teen romance. I caught up with the internet's most articulate meme in between NYC college visits for a chat about intersectionality, space elevators, and life as a brand.

Noisey: Why the name Glass Popcorn?
Will Neibergall: I don’t remember the whole story, but I know it has to do with something my mom said. I know I've been Glass Popcorn for a very long time. When I was 12 or 13 I started using it as a name on Tumblr and Dump.fm. I’m not sure what prompted it, but it's something that has been easy to hold on to.

What were your first experiences with online community?
I visited the Met when I was very young and I found this book about new media art. It had the URLs in it of all these crazy online art projects before net art was a thing. Through that I got acquainted with all of these really weird websites. When I was like 12 or 13 years old I discovered dump.fm. Dump was really the moment it all changed for me for how I looked at the internet.

How would you describe the perspective of Dump.fm?
Dump.fm was started by my friend Ryder Ripps in 2008. The whole purpose of Dump.fm is to chat with images. It's all about internet-aware art culture. I woudn’t say that comes from Dump, but it is very much affiliated with Dump, because when Ryder made dump he was working on the project Internet Archeology, which tracks down Geocities-era gifs. People made Dump to appropriate the aesthetics of '90s Internet and Geocities. The whole craze around the animated gif coming back into popular attention owes a lot to Dump. Dump invented the first solely.gif Internet memes, like Deal With It.

How did growing up with this database affect your world view?
At the age of 12 or 13 in general I didn’t really know what I was doing or thinking ever. Dump exposed me, first of all, to a group of people who are collaborating and who are very critical of one another and critical of me. That vastly accelerated the process through which I take in content and new ideas. It also gave me an outlet creatively, whereas I wasn’t really creating or thinking about the internet as an outlet for creativity before. Dump introduced me to the idea that I could consistently make art informed by the internet and centered around the internet that would actually affect people’s lives and would affect me forever.

When did you start to consider your own brand?
Probably a year or so into using dump I realized that Glass Popcorn had a very unique brand, and I could do more with it than what I was doing. That is when I started trying to proliferate my image. I used to be really into the idea of being the internet's bratty little brother type, who's really carpy and critical of everything, and is really ignorant of the historical and social context of the art he is making. As Glass Popcorn I wanted to make loud and noticeable hip hop music that was detached from all historical ideas about what hip hop is.

Why do you think making hip-hop was your first creative instinct?
It's really easy and everybody does it. I honestly think if everyone in the world wanted to be an internet rapper they could. They could make music videos and go viral. You just have to have friends who make beats and then you have to write rhymes and then speak them. Also, hip-hop has always been attractive to me as something to consume, because of its greater context in the world. Hip-hop came out of this artistic place of desperation in New York, and it's really unique in music because of that. I think there is a lot to work with conceptually as a rapper that rappers in general aren’t taking advantage of.

What rappers first made an impression on you?
I was exposed to Jay-Z really early. There were a few Jay-Z songs I liked in middle school. I liked stuff that was on the radio, like T-Pain. When Auto-Tune was taking off is when hip hop really left an imprint in my mind, but pretty much the first rap song I ever heard was by the Notorious BIG. When I discovered Liquid Swords by GZA I started thinking differently about music. I think it was 7th grade. I started listening to the Wu-Tang Clan, and I realized then that hip hop could be transgressive. It was an established classic hip-hop record that many new rappers were trying to emulate, but still it felt much more transgressive than other rap music I'd heard.

At a point in time when the Internet's given literally anyone the tools for a rap career, what do you see yourself as transgressing against?
There's this whole idea that because I'm a white kid and my parents are white and have nice steady jobs, and I live in a suburb of Phoenix, and I can travel to New York to tour colleges, that my voice is less valuable because of the intersections that allow me to use it.

Which might be a fair criticism, but at the same time it seems reductive.
I think there is a lot of critical work to be done on the entire popular field of privilege-speak and privilege relations, you know? That's what I’m trying to do now. There are so many voices in rap music that there's not really a unique point to be made other than the point I feel hasn’t been made, which is that the way people talk about privilege may be wrong and destructive.

Give me an example.
This isn’t strictly related to hip-hop, but in 2013 there's a tendency for people to separate “real” from fake music. Outside of hip-hop I'd say with Daft Punk, people think that because they didn’t use computers or samplers they are somehow returning to the roots of music, doing something that is more real and more valuable than somebody doing the same thing with technology. Even in hip-hop, if you make work that's uncritical or not grounded in the context of some historical event or oppression then you are not doing "real hip-hop." Most standards that people have for rap music is that to be real it should talk about real things. Right? I think that goes hand-in-hand with people saying because I'm a very privileged person I don’t have anything real to talk about, and that people who don’t understand realness aren’t in themselves valuable artists. That's just a contextualization of the work I'm trying to do with my new stuff.

I agree to the extent that rap used to be much more located in physical spaces than it is now.
Yeah, I mean, I realize how it can sound really snotty that I’m saying rappers who suffer and have problems want to solve problems through art do not have the right to do what they are doing, but that's not necessarily what I want to say. Essentially, my position now is that if rap can change the world then rap is better for it. If rappers who can suffer can put an end to suffering then they are better for it as well. But to have an art form that's functional and really emancipatory, we need to accept with equally open arms those who don’t suffer and have less to say as potential framers of our existence in the 21st century.

Last year you posted on Facebook that you were retiring, yet here we are.
I’m still retired. Now I rap as recreation. I'm not professionally a rapper anymore, but I am recreationally a rapper.

What's the difference? You don’t get paid now?
I’ve never gotten paid. Somebody gave me 20 bucks at a show once because they liked it, but I’ve never gotten paid. What I meant is that through the whole process I've gradually become less trusting of conventions. I'm ready to leave the part of myself as a rapper that was willing to subscribe to conventions of hip-hop. When I make a song I'm no longer thinking about ,"Am I rapping fast enough or do people appreciate the 'flow' of what I'm doing? Do people think this beat has a good sonic identity?" I'm not as concerned about that because I don't think that's going to last as long as what I can actually give to the world of art. I'm still involved with hip-hop, but not in a way that's attached something indicative of what hip hop means.

So at what point are you no longer making hip-hop?
That's something for other people to be thinking about or answering. It's my goal at this point to press hip-hop further in one direction until people start to question the conventional identity of what I am actually doing. If I make it weird enough people will start to question why it's weird to them or what is normal to them.

You've both distanced and attached yourself to the idea of being a living meme. What does that concept mean to you?
The worst degradation in the western world is to be a meme. Obviously that's a joke, you have to be very privileged to be a meme in the first place. But at the same time I feel like as a meme rapper people came to expect something of me that was either more or less than human capability. I felt like a brand.

When did you first feel that way?
I first started feeling that when I played at PS1 in 2011 because Art Fag City published this article after the PS1 thing asserting that Glass Popcorn is racist because the performance used the dancer Spicy Cajun. Basically, that I was fetishizing the idea of black culture by associating myself with an exotic dancer who is a black woman.

Glass Popcorn and Spicy Cajun at MOMA PS1

Looking back at the PS1 show two years later, what stands out the most for you?
It was very chaotic and very confusing for me. I was meeting all of these people for the first time and being exposed to the scene for the first time. I'm still proud of the performance. I think it did a lot for me as an artist. Art Fag City might be right to say that some parts of it were in poor taste or whatever. At the same time I don’t think that's as big of a deal as the fact that it happened, and it was fun, and people liked it, and it helped me develop my work. I'm still proud of it.

If you could take a day off from living as the Glasspopcorn meme but you had to be any other meme for day which would you be?
Is Justin Bieber peeing in a restaurant kitchen yelling "Fuck Bill Clinton" a meme?

It's unadulterated creative genius.
I'd be strung-out messed-up Justin Bieber in that video. Either that or Mariana Abramović staring into the eyes of Jay-Z. Notice that these are all memes that have broken in the last couple weeks because I’m very current.

Just for pure sensation I'm thinking Nyan Cat.
Maybe. He probably has fun. Maybe Good Guy Greg. I'd want to be him because everyone treats him well.

Rap memes have taken off over the past few years. Why do you think that is?
Rap music has been a gradient. It's become this music that people connect to each other through, because rap invented a new language. Rap invented a version of English that is based on the way friends talk to friends. It is separate from the educational institutions, art institutions, all institutionalized thought. It's just like people meeting on the street and talking, that's the discourse of rap music. People connect over rap music more than they do over any other kind of music. As meme culture has blown up rap memes have come to prominence because everyone listens to the same songs and everybody finds the same lines funny. It's a natural consequence hip-hop music and memes existing in the same world.

I'm obviously into the internet as a social place, but sometimes I fear for people whose main dialogue with others comes in the form of shared content lacking a unique perspective.
I think all creation, especially on the internet, is a form of sharing. I’m coming from a position where I consume more culture than I create but I’m still a creator, so what I am creating is going to be more involved than what I'm consuming. But I'm very optimistic about the future of creating. I think more people feel empowered by the internet to make their own stuff. Ultimately I foresee more content, and whether or not that is good is in question.

If you could sell any merch item what would it be?
I'd sell Glass Popcorn-branded space elevators because if you own the means of production for a space elevator you are the most powerful person in the universe.

How so?
Well, maybe not in the universe. But in our local galaxy you have the means of production for everything that matters in the global framework.

What exactly would one do with a space elevator?
If you have a space elevator you can travel anywhere in the Milky Way in a reasonable amount of time. Whoever has private ownership of one can be the first to profit off colonizing other planets. It's a very big power move to have the space elevator. In Civilization 4 if you get a space elevator you win the game.

I understand that you're on a debate team. How did that come about?
I joined blindly freshman year. Now, that and Dump.fm are the two more important things in my life. They made me who I am. Actually, a week before I came here I was at nationals in Alabama. Arizona qualified just a couple kids in my event. So I went from Arizona to Alabama to compete in nationals which was really crazy. I mean it is more fun that anything. It's a team of people who are really smart and you get to talk to them and go to all of these competitions. It makes you a good speaker.

I remember you mentioned something online about someone saying something negative at a debate competition about Glass Popcorn.
Yeah, that was actually an adult, an official. Everyone on the debate circuit has come to know that I'm a rapper who's also an okay debater. There was this woman running the preparation room for extemporaneous speaking. She was like, "If you stay Glass Popcorn, girls and potential best friends will be turned off from your personality." She's nice and we're friends, but I don’t think she really knows the kind of people I hang out with.

Girls like a guy who can go hamburger.
I like to think so. I’m not really interested in any people who can’t see themselves identifying with a person going hamburger.

What's it like being in high school with an iPhone?
Everyone has iPhones. We walk around on our iPhones. I sit in French class refreshing Twitter if we're not doing anything fun. It lets me ignore a lot of high school.

There must be so much iPhone-related drama.
There totally is. People use their iPhones to tweet mean things at each other or text mean things to each other at school, and then they get in trouble. Whenever there's a fight, there are iPhones there. I see every fight in HD. Being in high school is kind of fun. I have a few friends who totally get it. They could be Glass Popcorn if they wanted to. There are also a lot of people there who influence me in a more fetishized way. In a "this is what high school is" way. It's a good artistic place for me because there are all these people who are literally detached from the whole means of production for internet art but still consume it.

Are you the only rapper in your high school?
No, there's one more, Kid Fat. He filmed a music video walking down our school hallways to our bathroom. I want to work with him, but he's so intimidating. He has goons. He's not a senior, but he has goons and he gets in fights. He does shows at bars in Tempe. I'll ask him to collab. He's really funny.

Did you go to prom this year?
No, I went to prom Freshman year. A senior asked me. We were good friends, but it was a bad experience.

Being a freshman at prom?
Yeah. People were weird about it and it's a lot of money and time. There is a general vibe of prom that wasn't really compatible with me as a freshman. Like, I’m still in touch with the girl that I went with, she's cool and we're friends, but she wasn't as into the idea of hanging out with me as she thought she was. She ended up going off and doing her own thing. I was alone at prom just eating bread and shit.

I've been there. So, tell me about your upcoming mixtape.
On Twink Privilege, I’m using my voice as more of an instrument than a communication mechanism. There will be some tracks I'll put up on Rapgenius because people can’t hear them. If you go into a rap record expecting like, "Okay I’m going to know what he's saying, he is going to have good flow, there are going to be super bass-y beats," you might be dissappointed.

[After our interview, Glass emailed me the following clarification:]

When I say that my new approach is about "questioning the conventions of hip-hop" I'm ultimately saying the right thing but it nonetheless has the wrong connotation. When I mentioned the weird vocal mixing and wanting to change rap, I'm acting like the record I made is super sonically experimental and unlike anything else people have heard, which is, for the most part, untrue. I'm a rapper and this is a rap mixtape. The beats and structure of the songs are recognizably hip-hop, but the 'transgressive' or 'unconventional' style is a lyrical thing, as well as what i'm doing with guest features and production spots to serve an overall purpose.

What does Twink Privilege mean to you?
Personalization. I want to rap about things that matter to me and additionally don’t matter to anyone else. If I do rap about things that matter to anyone else, I want to rap about them in the way that will alienate people who care about that thing. I think that politicization of rap is a deep personalization of rap. I can still be a meme and make people uncomfortable, like "Two Girls, One Cup." This is the musical equivalent. Twink Privilege is carefully calculated to be the best body of hip-hop work ever made. No one will ever beat it. This is the best thing that will ever be called hip-hop. The zero point of hip hop. I honestly might destroy hip-hop. This might be the end of rap.

What will come next?
Who knows? The void. Flooding. It could be flooding, it could just be nothing. Nothing happens after this. People will still walk around, but they won't think or say things.

Glass Popcorn is the Alpha and the Omega.
It depends which comes first, Twink Privilege or the space elevator.

Ezra Marcus already controls the universe's resources through Twitter—@ezra_marc