Neghasi armada - Superstars Only

Adrian

You live in LA now, right?

Negashi

Yeah

Adrian

Have you ever lived in New York?

Negashi

Yeah, I did actually. I lived in New York on and off for a good part of my life. My mother is from Brooklyn and my father is from Upstate. I went to kindergarten in Queens as well as 10th grade and every summer and Christmas and I've lived there like on and off throughout my adult life as well.

Adrian

When did you move to LA?

Negashi

I guess the beginning of 2018, so I've been here for a minute.

Adrian

Do you like the scene in LA more than New York? Do you have a preference?

Negashi

This is gonna be funny, but I probably like the scene more in New York. I'm kind of social and about town. People would say that about me. I'm moving into like a older stage of my life where I just want to be—I want to make comic books and I have for like a fucking decade now and it's so hard to like to focus and sit down. It's really boring when you're not doing it and then once you're working on it it's the only thing you want to do and it's hard to be pulled away. You'll be late to work, late to a music gig, late to meet up with friends, so I just want to keep drawing and drawing and drawing and drawing. I think that in LA you kind of get a little bit more of an open space format think-to-yourself thing than you do in New York. I went to Europe in the fall and stopped in New York on the way back to visit my uncle and see friends and it was like literally bam bam bam bam. Like, we're going here, we're going there, we're going there, we're going there. I was like, Oh my god, that was so much fun but I'm not trying to do that all the time.

Adrian

I feel like your art—at least like your drawing stuff—is very New York coded.

Negashi

That's interesting. I guess that makes sense in a weird way. I have to think about that a little bit more, but that's funny. I think that I definitely came more into my own as a visual artist in New York than LA because I've spent most of my life in music and then I started doing my own album art when I was like 21. I was like, damn, I want to draw. And then, years later, I lived in New York with my baby moms and my son and I made friends with Whitney Mallet, who's this writer who runs The Whitney Review, which is this pretty cool magazine that I contributed to recently. She really encouraged me to pursue the visual art stuff. She was like, "You should really show this to this person, show that to that person." And then I started getting into shows and shit. So, yeah, I guess that makes sense. I guess there's more street style stuff going on because people are actually on the street interacting with each other. I mean, there's different cultural diversity here in LA than in NYC, but there's more of it, I would argue, in New York. Just a wider range of people all up on top of each other to some degree.

Adrian

A lot of work is a lot of characters interacting, which is kind of very specific to a walking culture. When you talk about the scene in New York that you resonated with, are you talking about a music scene or an art scene or both?

Negashi

Probably both. It's really crazy how small the world is after a while. And it gets to a point where it's even like global, not even just in the States. I feel like, in New York, I was very fortunate to know a lot of people in art and music, but I often met them through more organic means, like at work or something. I'm from Atlanta and some of my really good friends in New York I met in Atlanta at a party or something. I've had a very serendipitous path in life where I end up meeting wonderful, brilliant, interesting people all the time.

Adrian

That makes sense. I mean, I found you through Instagram and you're pretty enigmatic on social media so it was hard to pinpoint your crowd. What's your relationship with social media like?

Negashi

That's so funny, I was just talking to my home girl yesterday—we were talking about some artists or something—and I was like, yeah, I really want to go to this guy's show. What's his name? Chris Lloyd. And I was like, "Yeah, when I was in New York, I was hanging out with fucking Shallowhalo and I ran into Chris Lloyd and he was mad cool." I was like, damn, all these nice ass people that I've met through Instagram. You know, a lot of people talk shit about Instagram people being fake and shit, but pretty much everybody I've met from off Instagram was mad cool. It's just a tool. I mean, obviously they are having Senate hearings with Mark Zuckerberg and shit and life is always going to present opportunities for you to test your discipline and impulse control. I'm leery of people who like setting up adversarial binaries with tools. It kind of creates a weird narcotics anonymous relationship with something that should be just merely a tool.

Adrian

You do a lot of commissions too—are people hitting you up on Instagram for that?

Negashi

Yeah. I mean, as far as strangers go. But honestly, a lot of it is people I've known for a while. I just know so many musicians here. It's primarily musicians who hit me up. Even for this book cover I did for this project called Black Ether that my friend Warren from the band Prison Religion did—he's just somebody I know through music slash Instagram. But primarily it's been music people like Fat Tony, Isabella Lovestory. Now I'm overthinking this a little bit. I'm like, Whoa, is this nepotism? It is nepotism a little bit, but it's like, these are people who really take their music and their artistic choices very seriously. So I don't think that they would fuck with me just because. But that book cover is probably something I'm most proud of recently in terms of the commission world. And then like this mural I did in Geneva for this arts foundation out there.

Adrian

Is that the end goal? To make a living off of commission stuff?

Negashi

That would be like the medium range goal. The end goal is some whole other shit. I had a taste of living the high life for a few months, and I'm ready to get back to it. But it's just funny to try to get back to it when the economy is so fucked up. It's forcing me to have some dexterity of thought and I'm just really just thinking outside of the states and how there's so much foreign money for visionaries, so to speak. I really enjoy making the work. I feel very fortunate to be in the position to make money off of drawing and painting and thinking of funny ideas. And it's funny because I know some people probably would find commission work really restraining, to some degree. But I guess that's part of why I'm lucky that I'm fucking with people that are familiar with my work and have watched it for some time, so it's not like I really have to put a limiter on my soul.

Adrian

Yeah, it's kind of a weird line because you have such a specific style, which is very high art. When these people commission you, what is that dynamic like between you and the client? Are they giving you an idea of compositions they want?

Negashi

For the most part, I ask for references and motifs. Especially with music, I like to listen to the song because I am also a musician and I have an inextricable relationship between—I'm not going to claim synesthesia or something—but I love cinema and comic books and so that gives me the ability to see something and score it. When I hear something I want to depict it, visually. So I'm like, "Give me the music, give me the motifs, give me a light concept." Honestly—maybe because I come from rap where there's a high premium on cleverness, where you're like, whatever beat you give me, I'm gonna spit something cool to it—I'm like, I don't care if you give me an abundance of information or a little bit of information. But there is a balance and I think about that a lot myself. My best friend, Mickey, would complain to me a lot about people who don't have any concept of how space works visually, but want to provide you with a whole bunch of limits when they want you to do something. So I'm leery of that when I'm working on music with somebody and asking for guest vocals; I can't overwhelm their creativity and I have to trust that I'm coming to this person for a reason and I think that I've been fortunate that I have people that approach me in that same way.

Negashi

The most pushback I ever got on a piece I was working on was from my dear friend, my homegirl, my sister, Isabella Lovestory. But, to me, I think that's the best piece I've done for anybody. But she's also like a really, really good visual artist. Like, before she made music, I just knew her as a person that made really cool drawings. So it's really interesting how that can work out. Like, freedom is cool, but it's nice when somebody can push you to bring something better out.

Adrian

Have you ever thought about digitally collaging stuff, just to save time?

Negashi

That would be like the medium range goal. The end goal is some whole other shit. I had a taste of living the high life for a few months, and I'm ready to get back to it. But it's just funny to try to get back to it when the economy is so fucked up. It's forcing me to have some dexterity of thought and I'm just really just thinking outside of the states and how there's so much foreign money for visionaries, so to speak. I really enjoy making the work. I feel very fortunate to be in the position to make money off of drawing and painting and thinking of funny ideas. And it's funny because I know some people probably would find commission work really restraining, to some degree. But I guess that's part of why I'm lucky that I'm fucking with people that are familiar with my work and have watched it for some time, so it's not like I really have to put a limiter on my soul.

Negashi

I'm thinking about experimenting with that a little bit. Like, I've been fucking around with Canva. I've been playing around with that and making some flyers for DJ stuff where just I mess around. But I feel like a safe cracker or something when I get away with physical collage if nobody can tell.

Negashi

One of my daytime jobs is working for this company doing shipping and shit and there will be blank, unused shipping labels and sometimes I'll just take a bunch of them home and, because they're perfectly flat when you lay them down, you can feed them in a scanner without a problem. I'll just draw on those and then cut them out and slap them in the drawings. But I do want to fuck with digital stuff. I think it's worth it because of the coloring potential. I read a lot of contemporary superhero comics and some of the digital coloring lately has been catching my eye.

Adrian

So you're saying you have a scanner?

Negashi

No, I do not have a scanner. I go to different scanners and it's really annoying when I have something really big. Also, I just got an iPhone like maybe two months ago.

Adrian

Yeah, I was surprised when I texted and the bubble was blue. Because all the photos on your Instagram are very Android-core.

Negashi

Exactly. Yeah, I just got it in December. When I would have to turn stuff into somebody professional, the Android phone was not gonna cut it. Even most peoples iPhone photos don't even really cut it for production. So I fuck with this place Universal Repro Graphics Incorporated for scanning. But I've realized that it can be difficult and it makes me work at a smaller scale for commissions sometimes. Like, right now I'm working on an album cover for a friend and she was like, yeah, I just need a small square.

Negashi

I like drawing on the 11 by 17 inch paper and sketching/making notes in the margins, which helps me plan the rest of the drawing out. I think that one thing that I am plagued with is a mental disorder of an unending well of ideas that is like a waterfall hitting my head extremely hard. And so that kind of sends me into a spiral like, oh, actually, this one is better right now. No, wait, I'm gonna make a new album. No, actually, I'm writing a movie. I need a momager, or I need to get an AI bot that's a fake digital momager. Cable from the X-Men has one of those in his arm.

Adrian

Do those ideas come to you in the medium that you want to create them in? Like when you have an idea are you simultaneously thinking that that idea is best communicated through an album versus a drawing?

Negashi

Yeah, pretty much. But sometimes there is a little bit of an overlap. Like, I used to draw a version of me as part of me predicting the art direction for whatever next record I was making. I don't really do that so much anymore, I've kind of separated them a little bit. The very first art show that I was in—which is something my friend, Mickey, put together—had three large pieces and we had three different musicians score each piece and perform it live at the opening. I want to one up that idea and do some sort of mural that has a score built into the wall. This one mangaka, Q Hayashida, who made Dorohedoro, put out a soundtrack to the manga with all these like weird electronic musicians and whatnot. I like that type of stuff where it's associating music with image.

Adrian

I think that interchangeability between those two mediums shows in your final products. There's a certain way of mark making and a certain tangibility in both your music and your drawings and it's all very low fidelity. Are you conscious of that when you're creating?

Negashi

It's probably a function of two things. Some of it is deliberate and then some of it is maybe financial constraints and just not having access to gear for some of the earlier work. And then some of it might be skill level stuff, where I'm wanting to reach beyond my abilities in some instances, which I feel like, if you're really clever enough, you can think your way around whatever chasm there is that you need to cross or at least project a mirage of you across the canyon where you can demonstrate it well enough to connect with other artists, if not the laymen. I think that I've done somewhat of a good job of that. With the music stuff, I've been fortunate. I've been playing with a band recently and everybody else I play with is a really seasoned musician and also very creative. I really fuck with it, trying to keep up with them.

Negashi

As far as the art stuff, I really like the way I color. I want to draw a lot better, but I really like the way I color. I'll say that much in terms of my mark making. And then with music—I like the melodies I play, I would just like the recordings to be a little cleaner. I'm working on a new record right now and I'm navigating the space between creative voice and suspending the ego to let the best thing happen. It's fun and it's fascinating, but I think I'm getting to a happy space with it. I like black metal a lot. I was reading about how, at first, they would try to use all the shitiest gear they could find to make the tapes and then eventually they figured out their exact system of how they wanted to record and it was a mixture of really nice and really bad gear from different decades. I'm really inspired by that idea as the ultimate alchemical system for an artist to work in.

Adrian

Do you doodle a lot? Is that where a lot of these characters come from?

Negashi

I guess I've made up so many of them that it's like more so just a lot of like jokes with myself and jokes about comic books or characters and shit. I've learned just in my fandom that a lot of characters are parodies of other characters and even creators. That is really fascinating to me. I love mythology and I love history. Those are probably the biggest sources of inspiration.

Adrian

There's also this acknowledgement of contemporary pop culture; in one of your Instagram posts, you show some of the references you're using and a lot of it is internet culture stuff. There's this combo of these two things at play. Is that also a subconscious thing?

Negashi

That would be like the medium range goal. The end goal is some whole other shit. I had a taste of living the high life for a few months, and I'm ready to get back to it. But it's just funny to try to get back to it when the economy is so fucked up. It's forcing me to have some dexterity of thought and I'm just really just thinking outside of the states and how there's so much foreign money for visionaries, so to speak. I really enjoy making the work. I feel very fortunate to be in the position to make money off of drawing and painting and thinking of funny ideas. And it's funny because I know some people probably would find commission work really restraining, to some degree. But I guess that's part of why I'm lucky that I'm fucking with people that are familiar with my work and have watched it for some time, so it's not like I really have to put a limiter on my soul.

Adrian

I think it's just natural. It's just my world, people are going to pull from their world. It's a double-edged sword because I think about superduper otaku type kids who can draw in perspective but all the characters look the same—the characters have no soul. Their interactions with people of different genders are unrealistic and not informed by reality. Meanwhile, I'm partying, I'm playing music, and I get to also sit down and draw these characters and be a nerd at my desk. I think that's a fortunate place to be in but it also presents a challenge where I'm stuck between two worlds. I make a lot of like beats with my friend Sam, who's part of this production duo called Spaghetti J. They're legendary in Atlanta rap; they've worked with YSL people and Peewee Longway and K$upreme and I work on a lot of music with them. I could honestly just have a life where all I focus on is being like a rap beat maker guy. Like, "Yeah, I gotta go fucking turn up at this house where he Yeats at at three in the morning and run around and post lean." I could successfully do that as a path in life. And that's not what my friend Sam does, I'm not saying that, but he is more adjacent to that world than I am. And he'll be like, "Let's go to the studio", and I'm like, "Nah, bro, I gotta draw for hours."

Negashi

It's pretty interesting, but I feel fortunate because it gives me an exciting life to draw on and the more I learn about OG comic people, I feel like there was some sort of like shift in culture where there's somehow more time in the day. Or, I don't know what, but I just feel like those older comic book people still had lives. Now, something changed to where it's really hard to choose to just sit down and draw while still being out in the world, interacting with people, having a life.

Adrian

I guess like the tools you're using are so related to academia that I'm kind of envisioning you drawing while bored in a class or something.

Negashi

What's funny is that I have a love-hate relationship with academia. I love reading PDFs about really niche topics and I've managed to finagle into having a membership to academia.edu and there's all these papers that get published where they're citing somebody whose name is really close to mine. I have like 420 citations on academia.edu. It's not me, but there's somebody named N. Armada.

Negashi

I never went to college, but my mom was a professor when I was a kid. She taught at Spelman and different schools in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, so I just always grew up in a household where science, politics, theology were dinner table discussions. My former step dad is an immigrant from Nigeria, where he studied political science, but the degree didn't transfer over so he had to drive a cab most of my childhood until he got a lot of money in tech after me and my sisters grew up. I had a very different schooling and was always a voracious reader. I started reading when I was four and started reading comic books when I was six. I made friends with this old ass Dale-Gribble-type guy who owned this comic store and would let me read mad shit all day. I've realized that throughout the years, the way they treat the real world in superhero comics has become limited—like, there's this new trend to have fake countries and conflict zones. I read a lot of 80s and early 90s stuff now and the cold war was barefaced in comic books. It was like, "The Russkies are gonna come!" Now, they just give all the countries fake names. I can't tell if it's a sensitivity thing, where they're scared of offending someone by mistreating their culture, or if it's a laziness thing, where they're not wanting to research real places and instead want to create voodoo dolls of their own ideas of places.

Adrian

It's interesting that you're talking about that because I can kind of see your visual art being a commentary on that. Your stuff is taking comic book aesthetics but introducing very grounded realism in the form of pop culture and black culture motifs.

Negashi

Yea, absolutely. When I was a kid, my parents (especially my dad, shoutout to him) would get me crazy obscure superhero comics by independent black creators. Some of them would be buckwild: really crazy art, mad evil white people. Also, I was born in the 80s, and in the 90s there was a revival of that 70s-we-can-change-the-world type energy, which was a strange ebb and flow—the AIDs crisis had been boiling for ten years at this point and people were really on some confrontational shit, in a good way. It's just life and I need to primarily concern myself with my day-to-day life, but I'm not one of those people that's like, "I can't worry about what's going on over there" because you should give some thought to what you are for and against on a microscopic and macroscopic scale. You have to worry about yourself as an individual and not live in a world of, "Oh no, the sky is falling." Even if the sky is falling, you have to recognize that the grass is still growing and you have to drink some water and get outside. There's something debilitating about watching and crying versus acting and living, which is a delicate balance for anybody, including myself.

Adrian

That would be like the medium range goal. The end goal is some whole other shit. I had a taste of living the high life for a few months, and I'm ready to get back to it. But it's just funny to try to get back to it when the economy is so fucked up. It's forcing me to have some dexterity of thought and I'm just really just thinking outside of the states and how there's so much foreign money for visionaries, so to speak. I really enjoy making the work. I feel very fortunate to be in the position to make money off of drawing and painting and thinking of funny ideas. And it's funny because I know some people probably would find commission work really restraining, to some degree. But I guess that's part of why I'm lucky that I'm fucking with people that are familiar with my work and have watched it for some time, so it's not like I really have to put a limiter on my soul.

Adrian

As you're saying that, I'm thinking about your lyricism a lot because I think your writing practice seems to follow a similar thought process.

Negashi

I think that makes sense. I've been joking with myself the past year being like, I guess after all I am a conscious rapper, just because I want to impart wisdom to people that can make them feel stronger. A lot of times, what turns me off about "message music" is that it's just a list of reasons to feel bad, mad, or sad. And, sure, those lists are long and can go on and on, but I'm not into living in that sphere and projecting that for my future and the world's future. I joke a lot with my friends where I'll be like, "Man, somebody should just talk to the children of shady elites and be like, 'Hey man, you don't have to do what your uncle did. You don't have to be like Prince Andrew. You can do something different and be cool.'" But, yes that does factor into my music and I do think about it. My favorite rappers growing up were probably Nas, Cam'ron and Prodigy. I grew up mainly listening to New York people because my mom is from New York. I fucked with Outkast—there's this weird thing where a lot of my friends in Atlanta where we treat Outkast like a ghost elephant in the room and I'm trying to get more comfortable giving them their respect and to stop acting like they didn't raise me. For some reason, I'm always like, "Nah, Young Dro, OJ da Juiceman, Gucci Mane: these are the guys." I guess I'm always spurned by Andre 3000 and his pretentious attitude towards rap music, which makes me feel like he's rejecting all of us. And it's just like, "Yo, man, what the fuck, bro? We love you!"

Adrian

There's something commendable about idolizing OJ da Juiceman and not Outkast.

Negashi

Yeah, that's more working class. And he's not doing pick-me poetry. That's what I think J. Cole and them are doing and, for some people, that may be all they need, but I need something a little stronger and dumber—something more sincere and to the point. It's funny because we were talking a lot about drawing—Juiceman is really visual; he's always talking about color. In one song, he's talking about how his whip is the same color as an armpit. Guys like Riff Raff and Lil B definitely heard Juiceman and followed that lineage.

Negashi

As far as my commitment to life and wanting people to thrive and trying to put that in my music and art—it's a delicate balance, because you can't be like, "Look at me, I'm doing good": that's alienating. There's an X-men quote from the past year, where Magneto is dying and he's talking to Storm and he's like, "Keep an eye on my boy Charles Xavier. In the end, when humanity comes for us it's gonna be him that fucks us up because he's a good man and what won't good men do to show you they are good." That fucked me up because somebody will show you anything to show you that they are good, even if what's perceived as good in the moment is actually wrong. I find that's the difficult balance I strike with that stuff. Also, it's music and it's meant to be fun, expressive, and gestural and not literal commandments. But there is that aspect to it because I do really believe that music, when it first became high culture, was coming out of spirituality, community, and union. And the same holds true for art, too. Of course, there was probably a stage of experimental individuality that probably preceded the individualist stage that we're in now, but at one point there was a band of humans going on a hunt and drawing in the mud. A lot of the instincts we have are human. It's challenging, but when I feel like I've accomplished it well, it's such a relief. Like, "Haha, that was really funny. I'm saying something really deep but it sounds stupid", or whatever.

Adrian

How did you come up with the music video for "'Normal Stuff' (the Garden)"?

Negashi

Well, for one, I love the rain and in LA it doesn't rain much, but occasionally there are these heavy, heavy rain seasons. So, it felt like, in the LA scene, having a heavy rain video is kind of a flex. I'm also very critical of fake rain. I was watching this talk of my favorite director Claude Chabrol where he was talking about how difficult it is shooting with nature, but I think if you're making a movie with a bunch of rain in it, why not shoot it when it's raining a bunch? Of course you can't control the weather. I understand all that, but still.

Adrian

You started out in music under a few different pseudonyms and then you changed it to your full name. What was the thinking behind that? Was it for consolidation purposes? Was there a thematic change?

Negashi

That would be like the medium range goal. The end goal is some whole other shit. I had a taste of living the high life for a few months, and I'm ready to get back to it. But it's just funny to try to get back to it when the economy is so fucked up. It's forcing me to have some dexterity of thought and I'm just really just thinking outside of the states and how there's so much foreign money for visionaries, so to speak. I really enjoy making the work. I feel very fortunate to be in the position to make money off of drawing and painting and thinking of funny ideas. And it's funny because I know some people probably would find commission work really restraining, to some degree. But I guess that's part of why I'm lucky that I'm fucking with people that are familiar with my work and have watched it for some time, so it's not like I really have to put a limiter on my soul.

Adrian

It was primarily consolidation. I'm not so careerist about it where I was thinking I had to really manage the brand presentation. It's more so the act and I enjoy doing the act.

Adrian

Yeah, you seem pretty unconcerned with branding.

Negashi

Yeah, I'm not like, "I've got too many posts!" In fact I'll be joking with my friends and I'll be like, "Watch me get this post under 100 likes."

Adrian

How are you deciding what constitutes an album?

Negashi

I'm really into a narrative arc. Not necessarily like a story, but I want the music to have an arc, kind of like classical music or jazz. I want for it to feel complete in a narrative sense, musically speaking, where there are highs and lows. I feel like Lil Wayne's the last guy who was really on that tip where he's like, "I'm giving you the full experience through this album." That's kind of what I try to aim for. I've got to have some really like experimental tracks where I'm trying new styles of music, some fun songs that you can just listen to on a road trip, and then a few heavy drama, minor chord tracks. Boom, that's a Negashi Armada album.

Adrian

I can see that balance of listenable and experimental tracks. I think you struck like a chord there for sure.

Negashi

What makes me really happy is when my really out-there musician friends come up to me and they like the one song that I think is really strange.

Adrian

That would be like the medium range goal. The end goal is some whole other shit. I had a taste of living the high life for a few months, and I'm ready to get back to it. But it's just funny to try to get back to it when the economy is so fucked up. It's forcing me to have some dexterity of thought and I'm just really just thinking outside of the states and how there's so much foreign money for visionaries, so to speak. I really enjoy making the work. I feel very fortunate to be in the position to make money off of drawing and painting and thinking of funny ideas. And it's funny because I know some people probably would find commission work really restraining, to some degree. But I guess that's part of why I'm lucky that I'm fucking with people that are familiar with my work and have watched it for some time, so it's not like I really have to put a limiter on my soul.

Adrian

You're catering to a few different audiences.

Negashi

If you cater to people that you know and care about—that makes more sense than catering to some imaginary audience. Like, I want to make my homeboy laugh. I want to make my sister smile. You can't just do it alone. I mean, maybe some people have such an amazing insular vision, but I do think that there's something like some sort of alchemical spark that happens between sharing the work with the public and getting input. And I'm not just always trying to make something for everyone to like. I want some people to be repulsed. I want some people to be aroused. I'm also really into the idea of there being an NBC documentary or something where they're like, "Rap isn't music." I like that. I'm like, yeah, it's something cooler than music. It's music, it's a psyop, it's a number of things. Which is why—going back to the Andre 3000 thing—I have this disillusionment when people have this pretension about their rap output.

Adrian

Right. Like that Tyler-the-Creator-type disdain for the rap category.

Negashi

I hate that. Like, much respect to Lil Yachty for making his Tame Impala album or whatever, but the rap music he makes with Detroit people is just way more objectively creative music. I find that to be almost like some colonial academia holdover of Eurocentrism on some level. I listen to a lot of Triller type rap. A lot of that shit has gotten so off the deep end, musically speaking. Like, the Atlanta drill music is futuristic as hell. I also really want Justin Bieber to go full Scott Walker. I've always jokingly been a fan of his for a while. He's a little silly sometimes, but he seems pretty genuine. And, you know, Scott Walker was in the Walker Brothers and they were a pop band, just making AM Gold radio drivel. And then he just went crazy and became an experimental dude.

Adrian

It's the same thing with Arthur Russell where all he wanted to do was make mainstream pop music but ended up becoming a pioneer for underground experimental stuff.

Negashi

Wow that makes a lot of sense, actually. I'm not too familiar with his catalog, but I've had people compare me to him.

Adrian

What do you think makes someone a superstar?

Negashi

Okay, so I gotta think about who's a superstar to me. It's funny that we were just talking about Justin Bieber. Like, that's a superstar. I think that what makes someone a superstar is someone that has exploded out of whatever is the source of their excellence and has impacted other lanes. People like LeBron James or Lana Del Rey—you don't have to be a basketball fan to know that Lebron James is Lebron James and you don't have to be a girl that was on Tumblr in the 2010s to know what Lana del Rey means to Los Angeles. You have to have this multifaceted, dynamic brilliance. And I don't mean brilliance in terms of intelligence, but brilliance in terms of shine, like a diamond.

Superstars Only

Interview with Neghasi armada