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Music

Interview - Kool A.D. Talks Politics, Macaulay Culkin, and Beards

Kool A.D. might not be the best rapper alive, but he is very much one of the smartest.

Kool A.D. might not be the absolute best rapper alive, but he very well may be the smartest, and silliest too. The rapper just dropped two mixtapes full of that smart dumb shit in 19 and 63, taking the discursive and funny work he was doing with Das Racist and stripping it of any sense of structure or formula, but also works to free him from the label of “Dude in Das Racist.” 19 and 63 is Kool A.D. finding his voice by diversifying himself, whether it’s by adopting the very Based adlib of “Bieber!” for a few songs, or having E-40’s son Issue flip a sample of his own dad into a caustic noise song with knockout raps from Kool A.D. and Issue sandwiched between the cacophony, or even playing it completely straight and rapping alongside the likes of Meyhem Lauren and Busdriver.

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On the cusp of an impending blizzard, Kool A.D. came into the VICE office to talk about being into Macaulay Culkin’s art, the inherent conflict of trying to be a progressive artist in a capitalistic society at all, and also his beard. Stream 19 and 63 below:

NOISEY: When was the last time you had a job?
Kool A.D.: Last time I had a job, like a real job, I think was at Walter Reed theatre up at Lincoln Center, right before my old group Boy Crisis got signed. I've had a couple different movie theatre jobs. Jack London, Emeryville. Shout out to Jack London and Emeryville. I was a projectionist at the Wesleyan University movie theatre. That was the last time I had a job, I want to say that was 2007, or 2008 I think, yeah.

Do you like not having a job?
I love not having a job, yeah. I guess I've had like, quote unquote, I did little bits of work obviously, mostly just music-related but occasionally other things, odd jobs and stuff, but it’s very good to not have a job.

Do you think you view yourself as a musician first or as an artist first?
Since I left Das Racist, the majority of my money still probably came from music stuff, some leftover checks, some stuff I did a while back that finally, you know, and then drawings, so I'm trying to expand into that a little more, cause I think it involves hanging out with people slightly less. I mean, I like hanging out with people. But I like to do it on my own terms.

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I saw on Twitter that you were a fan of Macaulay Culkin’s art career.
Yea, that was actually a big influence on me.

Really?
Yeah, I mean I really like his paintings and I really liked the idea that he could parlay his fame and notoriety in one realm into something that obviously looked way more fun and seemed to reflect his personality a lot more than his acting. I guess I haven't seen any of his later work; I'm sure he probably did some Off-Broadway plays to try and get his cred back after being a darling for so long.

I guess fame is an inherently reductive thing.
It's whatever. That said, you can make a career out of doing very little so it’s nothing to complain about, comparatively speaking, versus a sweatshop, but if you think about in those terms literally every job in the United States is bullshit. Not every one, but a lot of them. White collar work is largely pretending to be busy, and I think that's so a lot of the entertainment industry, whatever.

Tell me a little bit about your politics.
I mean, it’s hard to say specifically. I don't know how to answer the question.

Then answer this: do you identify with the post-game conference that Rasheed Wallace once gave where he just said, “It was a good game, both teams played hard?”
“Good game both teams” is usually my line, but I guess I came up in the Bay Area, a home for very progressive politics, and it’s easy to sort of reduce that to not meaning anything. I guess if you really want to put a label on generally I’m to the left, but I like to speak on things that have happened. It seems like there’s enough food in the world for everybody to eat and it's kinda fucked up that a lot of people aren’t eating, shit like that, capitalism doesn't seem very great, kinda sucks, etc.

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So, tell me about the conflict of thinking in that way but also being someone whose ability to survive off of their art involves being popular?
If you want to bring it to what I do day to day, I guess just having to be cool as part of your job, personally in the music that I've been putting out, I think when you're a younger kid you like shit and you think it’s cool and you don't really understand why; you don’t really have an ideology that's really fixed, which I guess is why people love to sell shit to kids, because they don't really know what they're thinking and doing that much. But at the same time very much what you're thinking and doing. I don't know if I make shit just for the kids either, like, I try to make shit that’s good for my peers, who are increasingly getting older as I get older too. For a long time I felt like almost making music or art or whatever was like too bourgie of an activity, not worth doing because it was just sort of giving credit to this whole….when you think about high art, art history…

You’re saying the history of art is written by the upper-class.
It’s like a real systemic snobbery that devalues certain ideas…I'm speaking way too generally, but I guess that being the case, art has existed for a very long time and I can’t deny the fact that it makes me feel better to listen to music. It's less of a question now for me, especially because I been doing it for long enough now that I consider it my job, so I just try to make stuff that a younger me who is still kind of in awe and sort of mystified by this type of shit, would appreciate.

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What's your favorite joke?
My favorite joke? Let's see…I like the one where the whale goes into the bar and goes [whale noise] but it really only works when you're hella drunk, and only specific people can really tell it in the way that makes me laugh, but the only joke I can actually remember when someone is like, “Tell a joke!” is this joke where this piece of string goes into a bar and asks the bartender, “Lemme get a beer,” and the bartender says, “We don't serve pieces of string,” so then the piece of string leaves he ties himself into a knot, he frays up like the ends of himself or whatever, and he comes back and he's like, “Lemme get a beer,” and the bartender is like, “Aren’t you the same piece of string that was in here a second ago?” and he's like, “No, I'm a frayed knot…”

It’s literally the only joke I can ever remember on command, although I feel like on uppers sometimes I have like eight more jokes.

How long have you been growing your beard?
I trim it, but I haven't cut it in about a year, I'm actually cutting it all off for a music video on Sunday, it's gonna be not even the main part of the music video, but it's kind of an aspect of the video. But I still have a couple other videos that are almost done, so you are probably not going to se that one for a minute.

To chronologically preserve the beard?
Yeah, the other videos I shot all have the beard so it's going to be weird, but this shit grows out in like a month.

Drew Millard's tweets grow as fast as Kool A.D.'s beard. Find him here - @drewmillard