Cardi B and Lady Leshurr

Cardi B
8 x 8 inches, stencil on paper, ed. 43, 2018

Another round of teaching art appreciation, another round of stencils to trade with students. I choose popular musicians to trade with them and for this session I picked Cardi B. I like to double the stencil assignment with a top 100 entry and so I set out to listen to a bunch of her songs to nominate one for this year's list. I settled on I Believe the Children Are Our Future in a collaboration with MonoNeon. It's actually really great and so is the video that comes along with it. The subtitle to I Believe the Children Are Our Future shows Cardi B at her characteristic finest: "But not today tho, Today I'm Wilin', Today I'm Buggin' and Thuggin'." After a bit of searching I had to conclude that the song shouldn't be filed under Cardi B in my archive but rather under her collaborator MonoNeon. MonoNeon is a kind of YouTube star who does mash-ups of existing content. MonoNeon is the bass player Dywane Thomas Jr. who really has quite some credentials. His discography is extensive and include work with Prince (he was one of the last musicians to work with Prince), his influences include Dada, conceptual art and John Cage, his instrument is a "ready-made bass" that uses duct tape and other mundane items and turn the instrument into a quarter note instrument. His style of playing is also unique and inventive and is lauded by numerous musicians. Unknowingly I picked out a tune that fits right in with the avant garde lean of this year's list. Since I haven't quite forwarded all the paintings from last year I'll stay on topic with the stencil print I did last semester of another hip-hop star. Lady Leshurr had already been on the list in 2016 with Lego one of my all time favorite raps.

Lady Leshurr
8 x 8 inches, stencil print, ed. 18, 2018

Lady Leshurr (hip-hop vs. dancehall)

Lady Leshurr
24" x 12", oil on board, 2012

An NPR story on Reggae in the UK had a mention of one Lady Leshurr that goes like this: "The Birmingham-born MC got her start as a teenager climbing the ranks of the U.K. garage scene.  Leshurr's parents are from St. Kitts in the Caribbean—she has a vocal style that veers toward dancehall-style chat"(ed. from Reggae in The UK: A Steady Force.) From there I followed a link to a YouTube video of her track Lego and the intro of it hit me right away as something new and very exciting. (And the rest didn't disappoint me either.) It heard a sound I hadn't heard in hip-hop before and not in dancehall either. Back to NPR: "Producer Res Kwame says the U.K. music scene produces innovative hybrids because it's less confined by genre than in the U.S.: 'Our producers are just doing it in our neighborhood and we have the means of getting it out: pirate stations. Because we're coming from a culture where radio in the main has not been receptive to black music, we've had to find our own way and means of doing things. And that's led to a creativity at the street level.'"

It sounds a lot like the early days of rap and hip-hop. But rap and hip-hop have now become mainstream. And where then to look to find innovation and excitement?... Exactly "at the street level". Leshurr mentions both dancehall diva Lady Saw and hip-hop's Lil Wayne as her influences. The imaginary circle that contains the early Jamiacan DJs (such as King Stitt) and reggae, as well as the history of hip-hop music in the US has been completed...in England.

Lady Leshurr was born as Melesha O’ggaro. She released two mixed tapes (that can be downloaded for free) before recording her first single Lego in 2011 for an actual record label.