All the way from Brixton in the UK, the dystopian style of Gaika will be greeting South Africans and Malawians for the first time in February. A childhood surrounded by various forms of tech and scientific innovation fostered within, Gaika’s current mode of production inspired by the digitization of humanity.
Gaika’s sound can be compared to that of a future voice whispering profanities – barely out of reach. What is organic has become a ghostlike digitized chaos devoid of humanity. Like a Black Mirror episode Gaika’s message is one of grimness and disillusion.
His unapologetic worldview has been compared to the trip-hop of Tricky, and he has been deemed electronic music’s answer to Basquiat. The background noise of a post-millennial existence is given a sound track. These are the sounds of human failure, surveillance, violence, terror, masochism and exploitation all strewn together to create a seamless sound broken as the broken world that Gaika sees and contests with his music.
Titles such as ‘BATTALION’ featuring Miss Red and ‘BLASPHEMER‘ act as piercing commentaries on modern society. Collaborations with artists such as Israeli MC Miss Red known for bringing ‘Murder’ to beats speak of the idiosyncratic nature in which he chooses to execute his message of doom and despair that is only strengthened by the collaborations he partakes in. In an interview with Dazed he expresses, “How can we make art that isn’t political when you go out of your house in London and you see two or three homeless people by a cash point, and people like me are getting killed by the police. What are we doing as artists?”
Music that inhabits the industrial space pertain to a machine fetish. Gaika should however not be mistaken as a pessimist – instead he is a realist and depicts the world for what it truly has and is becoming. “I prefer to express the darkness of reality. I’m a ‘night’ person in that sense,” he tells Dazed.
At the end of 2017 the artist released The Spectacular Empire I and II that included his ‘BATTALION’ soundtrack. Perhaps it’s time to fight the machine, or will we become one with it in a world where minimum wage jobs are dying out and the friendly person at your local McDonalds is slowly but surely being replaced by an automated system. Making poverty soar at an all-time high. Let’s join Gaika on his tour in solidarity with a world that is losing its humanity.
I both love and hate using cliches. Cliches are usually true and there’s a familiarity to them that resonates but they’re also lazy and unimaginative, which makes the ego in a writer go “I’m better than this.” That being said, there really is something to them. Like “Music transcends language.” It’s something that we all tend to agree with and understand. Regardless of the language someone is singing in, we can connect with the song as a whole regardless of whether or not we understand the words. I mean, look at La Macerena, Asereje aka “The Ketchup Song”, or Gangam Style… Ok, I’m joking, but also I’m not. We know those songs are about having a good time (Also, they all came with simple dances so white people can dance to them at weddings). We know Rammstein’s music means “The world sucks and we should burn it all down”. And we get that Cypress Hill’s Spanish songs are mostly about smoking weed and doing gangster shit, although you probably figured that out from their English stuff.
Anyway, I bring this all up because today we’re introducing you to a Swedish rapper by the name of Lilla Namo. Lilla recently put out an uptempo pop song telling Donald Trump to shut up, which I’m pretty sure is something we can all relate to. “Håll Käften” has had me dancing around my bedroom singing into a hairbrush, which is awkward ‘cause I don’t really know the words – yet. But hey, music transcends language so I’m not going to feel too bad about it.
I got to have a brief email chat with Lilla about telling the POTUS to shut up, Swedish politics, and using humour and satire in her music. You can give it a read it below whilst you give Håll Käften a listen and then check out her Youtube page for some dope music videos (Forlat is particularly great)
From what I understand “Håll Käften” means “Shut Up” and is aimed at President of the United States, Donald Trump (still feels weird to type). I take it your news media and news feeds are as congested with news about the troll as ours is?
It is somehow absurd, but I was not at all shocked, that Trump won the election. If we can learn something from history is that all things move in cycles (As long as we don’t break patterns it’s gonna continue to happen. That goes for both micro AND macro level). The song really started like a shut up to all the bullshit that comes out from his mouth. People laughed, created memes and his popularity increased. Donald Trump is like an evil character from a Disney Movie, but he is also real and now one of the most powerful people in the world. The shut up was just me being tired of hearing his name and his capitalist, sexist, racist etc. statements wherever I logged on or went. It was also a shut up to people around me that had disappointed me in life. So I merged the two into a person, like I usually do in my texts and created this song called Shut Up (Håll Käften in Swedish). So when you listen to it you would think it’s about a relationship between two people. And really when it comes down to what the World is, it’s all about relationships and connections between people.
What made you write a song about a foreign politician? Is Sweden’s political climate that great or is American politics just that invasive?
The Swedish climate is fucked up as well. However, the welfare-state that was built up in Sweden has laid a strong foundation for the country as a whole. But today, the Swedish Welfare is nothing but a myth. Most important functions in society are privatized or semi-private which we can see bad results from today. A lot of my music is about the issues we have in Sweden but from a more everyday-life perspective. Writing about Trump was also fun because it becomes fictitious. So answering your question, both Sweden and America are invasive but in different ways. Everything is relative to the context. I love Sweden and can’t even imagine how it is to live in the States with a carrot as a president. Basically he is a vegetable….
In South Africa, a lot of rappers used to rap in English with an American accent, but nowadays there’s a focus on rapping in local languages and creating art that relates locally more than globally. Through that, a few have found international success because what they’re doing sounds unique and interesting. I bring this up because you rap in Swedish and I wanted to know if you ever considered rapping in English to appeal to a broader audience, or is relating to your local audience more important?
I think rapping in Swedish just makes it feel so much more real for me. I don’t master the English language in the way I do Swedish. Swedish is a simple language even when we write music, it is more about the metaphors and how we phrase things that makes the music interesting. How we chose to build up sentences or play with slang. That I can’t do with English. With that said, I’ve tried to write in English and I guess if I would be a nerd about it I would learn to master it…maybe in the future. I usually just go with the flow (no pun intended…)
I know “Music transcends language” is a cliche, but cliches are often true. Do you think it is true, and if so, how does it do so for you?
I listen to a lot of French rap and I understand zero. Music is really more about a feeling than anything else. Some notes just makes me cry and I can’t explain why. Some force you to dance and you can’t control it. Everyone knows this and I guess that’s why it’s a cliche.
Your song “Haffa Guzz” is a satirical look at how you’d spend your time if you were a guy and “Håll Käften” seems to also take a lighthearted approach (I couldn’t find translated lyrics but the song feels fun and upbeat). Do you find humour and coating things in sugar helps deliver your message, or is it just fun to do? Maybe both?
I’ve always had self distance. So I guess my music reflects my personality. I can’t take my self or life too serious at all times. I find the approach I use as a challenge when writing, it’s a smart way of explaining how things are fucked up…haha. If I would have written too literal, the essence would disappear. It’s to easy to write a song and say: FUCK DONALD TRUMP, because everyone (or obviously not everyone but most) would agree. It’s too boring for me. I don’t want the cheers of the mass. I’ve always taken the difficult paths because I know the shortcuts are not long term decision, maybe sometime I’m too complicated and I don’t even make sense to people. But that’s me. Take it or leave it.
A lot of 2016 releases have been underpinned by a sense of profound dread, of something terrible slouching its way into reality. The cosmic horror alluded to in David Bowie’s Blackstar, the inner horror of Danny Brown’s Atrocity Exhibition. Fatima Al Qadari`s riot porn, ANOHNI`s bleak portrait of environmental collapse Gaika’s paranoia, the witch burnings and mob violence on the last Radiohead album. It’s hardly surprising-the world is faced with multiple economic and ecological crises, and culture reflects the feeling that time is running out. Alongside this has been the resurgence of xenophobic and racist political movements, as the fearful and resentful vote to preserve their cherished borders of hate. France may have an openly Fascist prime minister by this time next year, as may Austria, the birthplace of Adolf Hitler……
Last week, this appeared to reach its current nadir with an orange reality TV bigot and sexual abuser becoming the most powerful politician in the world. Even more sinister than Trump are the cadre of deranged, far right lunatics who surround him. The dead-eyed religious fanatic Mike Pence. His white supremacist advisor Steve Bannon. Trump’s victory has empowered other Fascists the world over, and he hasn’t even begun to rule yet. But as sinister as this all is, it’s not as if the US has become the Trumpenreich overnight. Trump did not so much win the election, as Clinton lost it. By running Hilary Clinton, a compromised and unappealing center-right candidate, the Democratic Party failed to capitalize on popular support for progressive change, with many potential voters simply not even casting ballots. Hilary Clinton is an exemplar of the neoliberal ideology which has dominated the world for the last four decades, and which now appears to be on the verge of being superseded by the more overtly authoritarian populism represented by Trump and his vile cohorts . As Ajay Chaudhary and Raphaele Chappe recently noted, Trump will be inheriting an apparatus of detention and assassination that the likes of Clinton and Obama themselves helped to build up ` Anyone who takes seriously the threat of the newly empowered reactionary right, must take seriously the role neoliberalism has played in laying out the red carpet for its arrival. Instead of handwringing over liberal dead letters, we must come to terms with the fact that we have already been living in a form of deeply destructive authoritarian liberalism for nearly four decades now’.
Run The Jewels, the pairing of Killer Mike and El-P, have been one of this decade’s most vivid chroniclers of authoritarian liberalism. Their first two albums (which came out in 2013 and 2014) map out a landscape of income inequality, arbitrary police killings, survivalist economies and drone surveillance. This might almost be too bleak if they didn’t combine their dark worldview with colour, humor and swagger. RTJ are an ebullient middle finger aimed at the dystopia of everyday life. They were also vocal supporters of Bernie Sander’s campaign for president, which offered a platform of democratic socialism as an alternative to both Trump’s deranged fearmongering and Clinton’s robotic cynicism. With anticipation for their immanent third album already high, they responded to the election news by dropping `2100’. This songs take a more meditative approach then their earlier work. Straight off the bat, Killer Mike offers ` how long do the hate that we hold lead us to another Holocaust’. The mournful production evaporates, rather than explodes. But there is a hopeful subtext, with lyrics that praise both human solidarity and revolution ` I don’t study war no more, I don’t hate the poor no more, getting more aint what’s more’. It’s this message of a future worth living which resonates in such horrifying times. It is the same insurgent spirt which is animating the Americans who have been protesting en masse and organizing walk-outs for the last week- Fuck Donald Trump.
