Yesterday, thousands of Trump supporters breached the U.S. Capitol, interrupting the Senate's hearing to confirm Joe Biden as President, in a disturbing act that has been deemed "domestic terrorism."
An influx of photos and videos of the mob quickly spread across major news outlets and social media, showing — expectedly — not a single face mask in sight. With everyone's personal identities out in the open, law enforcement and those watching the terror unfold online were able to see exactly who was professing their support for (almost former) President Trump's dangerous antics. Unfortunately, there were a few familiar faces.
A photo began circulating on Twitter of musicians Ariel Pink and John Maus in a DC hotel room with film director Alex Lee Moyer, captioned, "the day we almost died but instead had a great time." Fans of the previously-beloved indie icons began worriedly speculating whether or not the trio had visited the capitol in the midst of the riots that caused the building to lockdown and left four people dead.
And here's the picture. Sorry your creepy shitty white men favs are confirmed creepy shitty white men! https://t.co/J3CP8YBLj9
Unfortunately, Pink and Maus were, in fact, at the capitol. In a video obtained from Moyer's private Instagram account, Maus is seen among a sea of Trump supporters.
"i was in dc to peacefully show my support for the president [sic]," Pink later tweeted as the photo and video began making their rounds. "i attended the rally on the white house lawn and went back to hotel and took a nap. case closed."
Maus, on the other hand, keeps a lower profile than Pink, though the two have been tight since the early days of their careers. Maus' involvement with the capitol riots yesterday is less clear, but it's still a head-scratcher, considering he once released a song called "Cop Killer."
Well, there's two more artists to add to our Spotify blocked list.
After years of keeping most of his finances under wraps, the inevitable has become official: Kanye West is a billionaire.
West's wealth shouldn't come as a surprise. His mansion is insane. His namesake shoe is in the race to dethrone Nike Jordans. His in-laws are the country's most famous family, and his buddies include the country's most infamous family. It was only a matter of time.
While plenty of well-known musicians achieve great wealth, billionaires in rap are few and far between, with West's longtime collaborator Jay-Z being the only other confirmed hip-hop artist to reach the milestone. See just how much your favorite rapper is worth below.
Kanye West: $1.3 billion
Kanye has apparently claimed that he's worth upwards of $3 billion, but Forbes has estimated a slightly humbler $1.3 billion. Aside from being one of the decade's most influential hip-hop artists, he owes much of his wealth to his stake in Yeezy, his sneaker that's produced, marketed, and distributed by Adidas.
Jay-Z: $1 billion
Last year, Jay-Z made headlines when he became rap's first confirmed billionaire, according to Forbes. His assets include real estate, spirits, visual art, stakes in major companies, music streaming service Tidal, a luxury sports bar—the list goes on. He's not a businessman; he's a business, man.
Dr. Dre: $800 million
Since the former NWA member sold his Beats Electronics to Apple for a cool $3 billion back in 2014, Forbes estimates that Dr. Dre is worth about $800 million.
Sean Combs: $740 million
Noticing a trend? The richest rappers don't typically get rich from rapping alone. Forbes reported last year that Sean Combs—AKA Diddy, FKA Puff Daddy—has a net worth of about $740 million. Much of that is thanks to his "equal-share venture" handling the marketing and promotion for Ciroc vodka.
Eminem: $230 million
With a music career spanning almost a quarter of a century, Eminem has become one of the world's top-selling artists. His net worth has been estimated at $230 million.
Drake: $150 million
Drake isn't the world's richest rapper yet, but at a mere 33 years old, he's got an impressive head start. Forbes reports that his net worth in 2019 was $150 million, in part thanks to business endeavors like his own record label and alcohol brand. Additionally, he has endorsements from brands like Sprite and Burger King, serves as the global ambassador for the Toronto Raptors, and is the figurehead for Apple Music. Just look at that house!
Lil Wayne: $120 million
Lil Wayne's net worth is estimated at $120 million. Besides soundtracking every school dance between 2008-2011, he recently started his own cannabis brand, and in 2016 he released a memoir called Gone Til' November: A Journal of Rikers Island about his time at the New York prison.
Nicki Minaj: $100 million
Nicki Minaj's label, Young Money, announced earlier this year that she'd become the first female rapper in history to amass a net worth of $100 million. In addition to launching her own fragrance, she's garnered an impressive resume of brand endorsements and partnerships, including with MAC Cosmetics, Adidas, Fendi, and Roberto Cavalli. She also co-owns Tidal.
Kendrick Lamar: $75 million
At just 32 years old, being one of the 2010's most definitive artists (and winning a Pulitzer) is enough of an accomplishment itself. Kendrick Lamar is estimated to be worth around $75 million, having collaborated with brands like Nike and Reebok. In March, he also announced a mysterious new project with his manager Dave Free called pgLang, which is described as a "multilingual, artist-friendly service company."
The story of psychedelics is intertwined with the story of music, and tracing their relationship can feel like going in circles.
For thousands of years, artists have been using naturally-grown herbs to open their minds and enhance their creative processes. Since LSD was synthesized by Albert Hoffman in 1938, psychedelics have experienced a reemergence, blooming into a revolution in the 1960s, launching dozens of genres and sounds that focused on acid, shrooms, and all of the portals they opened. Around the 1960s, scientists also began studying the relationship between psychedelics and music, and even back then, researchers found that, when combined, music and psychedelics could have therapeutic effects on patients.
More modern studies have discovered that LSD, specifically, links a portion of the brain called the parahippocampal—which specializes in personal memory—to the visual cortex, which means that memories take on more autobiographical and visual dimensions. Other studies have found that LSD can make the timbres and sounds of music feel more meaningful and emotionally powerful. Today, psychedelic music still thrives, and you can hear flickers of those early trip-inspired experiences all across today's modern musical landscape.
"There is a message intrinsically carried in music, and under the effects of psychedelics, people seem to become more responsive to this," said the psychedelic researcher Mendel Kaelen. "Emotion can be processed more deeply. It's a beautiful narrative. It's like a snake biting itself in the tail."
All that said, psychedelics can be as dangerous as the archetypal live-fast-die-young rock and roller's average lifestyle. They can destabilize already fragile minds and can encourage further drug abuse and reckless behavior. Often, psychedelic revolutions have coincided with colonialist fetishizations, apocalyptic visions, and appropriations of Eastern culture.
However, sometimes psychedelics and musical talent can come together in a synergy so perfect that it can literally create transcendent and healing experiences. Hallucinogens affected each of these following musicians in a unique way, but their experiences with hallucinogens produced some of the greatest music of all time.
Harry Styles — She
In his revelatory Rolling Stone profile, Harry Styles spoke out about how magic mushrooms inspired his most recent album, Fine Line. Inspired by Fleetwood Mac, the 25-year-old apparently spent a lot of time at Shangri-La Studios in Los Angeles tripping and listening to the old psychedelic greats.
"Ah, yes. Did a lot of mushrooms here," he said in the interview during a tour of the studio. "We'd do mushrooms, lie down on the grass, and listen to Paul McCartney's Ram in the sunshine."
Things even got a little violent, as they often can when dealing with hallucinogens. "This is where I was standing when we were doing mushrooms and I bit off the tip of my tongue. So I was trying to sing with all this blood gushing out of my mouth. So many fond memories, this place," he reminisced affectionately.
Kacey Musgraves' dreamy song "Slow Burn" was apparently inspired by an acid trip. Listening to the lyrics, you can hear the influence of psychedelics twining with country and singer-songwriter tropes. "I was sitting on the porch, you know, having a good, easy, zen time," she said of the songwriting experience, which she said happened out on her porch one evening. "I wrote it down on my phone, and then wrote the songs the next day with a sober mind."
LSD, she said, "opens your mind in a lot of ways. It doesn't have to be scary. People in the professional worlds are using it, and it's starting to become an option for therapy. Isn't that crazy?" Her affection for the drug also appears in her song "Oh What A World," which contains the lyric, "Plants that grow and open your mind."
A$AP Rocky — L$D
While A$AP Rocky's affection for LSD isn't a surprise given his propensity for writing about the drug, apparently the rapper has an intellectual approach to his psychedelic experimentation.
"We was all in London at my spot, Skeppy came through," he told Hot New Hip Hop about his experience writing LSD. "I have this psychedelic professor, he studies in LSD. I had him come through and kinda record and monitor us to actually test the product while being tested on. We did the rhymes all tripping balls."
Apparently his first acid trip happened in 2012. "Okay, without getting anyone in trouble, I was with my homeboy and some trippy celebrity chicks and…" he said in an interview with Time Out. When asked how long it lasted, he said, "Too long, man. Twenty-three hours. I was trippin' till the next day. When I woke up, I was like, Damn! I did that shit! That shit was dope. It was so amazing. It was a-ma-zing. Nothing was like that first time."
Acid changed his entire approach to music and success. "I never really gave a f*ck, man, but this time, I really don't give a f*ck," he said. "I don't care about making no f*cking hits." Instead, he focuses on creating. "It's so hard to be progressive when you're trippin' b*lls," he said. "You make some far-out shit!"
The Beatles' later music is essentially synonymous with LSD, and the band members often spoke out about their unique experiences with the drug. According to Rolling Stone, the first time that Lennon and Harrison took it was actually a complete accident. A friend put LSD in their coffee without their knowledge, and initially Lennon was furious. But after the horror and panic faded, things changed. "I had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass. It was like gaining hundreds of years of experience in 12 hours," said Harrison.
Paul McCartney had similar revelations. LSD "opened my eyes to the fact that there is a God," he said in 1967. "It is obvious that God isn't in a pill, but it explained the mystery of life. It was truly a religious experience." Of LSD's effect, he also said, "It started to find its way into everything we did, really. It colored our perceptions. I think we started to realize there wasn't as many frontiers as we'd thought there were. And we realized we could break barriers."
Using the drug not only helped the band create some of the most legendary music of all time—it also brought them closer together. "After taking acid together, John and I had a very interesting relationship," said George Harrison. "That I was younger or I was smaller was no longer any kind of embarrassment with John. Paul still says, 'I suppose we looked down on George because he was younger.' That is an illusion people are under. It's nothing to do with how many years old you are, or how big your body is. It's down to what your greater consciousness is and if you can live in harmony with what's going on in creation. John and I spent a lot of time together from then on and I felt closer to him than all the others, right through until his death."
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (Remastered 2009)www.youtube.com
Ray Charles — My World
The soul music pioneer allegedly once described acid as his "eyes." Charles was blind, but LSD is said to have allowed him some version of sight. Though he struggled with addiction, Charles eventually got clean, though his music always bore some markers of his experiences with the subconscious mind.
Actually, blind people on LSD and hallucinogens can experience hallucinations of different kinds, though it's somewhat rare. According to a study in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, this happens because during a trip, "the plasticity of the nervous system allows the recognition and translation of auditory or tactile patterns into visual experiences."
Clapton struggled with drug abuse throughout his life, and LSD certainly had an influence on him. While he was a part of Cream, he frequently played shows while tripping, and according to outontrip.com, he became "convinced that he could turn the audience into angels or devils according to the notes he played."
Before he was creating the ultimate dad rap, Chance the Rapper was an acidhead.
"None of the songs are really declarative statements; a lot of them are just things that make you wonder...a lot like LSD," said Chance the Rapper of his hallucinogen-inspired album, the aptly named Acid Rap. "[There] was a lot of acid involved in Acid Rap," he told MTV in 2013. "I mean, it wasn't too much — I'd say it was about 30 to 40 percent acid ... more so 30 percent acid."
But the album wasn't merely about acid; like much of the best psychedelic music, it was more about the imagery and symbolism associated with the drug than the actual drug itself. "It wasn't the biggest component at all. It was something that I was really interested in for a long time during the making of the tape, but it's not necessarily a huge faction at all. It was more so just a booster, a bit of fuel. It's an allegory to acid, more so than just a tape about acid," he said.
Jazz great John Coltrane was a regular LSD user who used the drug to create music and to have spiritual experiences. Though he struggled with addiction throughout his life, LSD was one drug that had a major artistic influence on him. While it's not known for sure if the album Om—which includes chanted verses of the Bhagavad Gita—was recorded while Coltrane was on LSD, many rumors theorize that it was.
"Coltrane's LSD experiences confirmed spiritual insights he had already discovered rather than radically changing his perspective," wrote Eric Nisenson in Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest. "After one early acid trip he said, 'I perceived the interrelationship of all life forms,' an idea he had found repeated in many of the books on Eastern theology that he had been reading for years. For Coltrane, who for years had been trying to relate mystical systems such as numerology and astrology, theories of modern physics and mathematics, the teachings of the great spiritual leaders, and advanced musical theory, and trying somehow to pull these threads into something he could play on his horn. The LSD experience gave him visceral evidence that his quest was on the right track."
Jenny Lewis — Acid Tongue
Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis wrote the song "Acid Tongue" about her first and only experience on LSD, which happened when she was fourteen. She told Rolling Stone, "It culminated in a scene not unlike something from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas—the scene where Hunter S. Thompson has to lock the lawyer in the bathroom. I sort of assumed the Hunter S. Thompson character and my friend – she had taken far too much – decided to pull a butcher knife out of the kitchen drawer and chase me around the house… At the end of that experience, my mom was out of town on a trip of her own and she returned to find me about 5 lbs lighter and I had—I was so desperate to get back to normal I decided to drink an entire gallon of orange juice. I saw that it was in the fridge and decided that this would sort of flush the LSD out of my system, but I didn't realize that it did exactly the opposite."
The Beach Boys' mastermind Brian Wilson was famously inspired by psychedelics, which both expanded and endangered his fragile and brilliant mind. After his first acid trip in 1965, an experience that he said "expanded his mind," Wilson wrote "California Gurls." After the trip, however, Wilson began suffering from auditory hallucinations and symptoms of schizophrenia, and though he discontinued use of the drug, he continued to hear voices; doctors eventually diagnosed him with the disease. Wilson later lamented his tragic experiences with LSD, stating that he wished he'd never done the drug.
Though it led Wilson on a downward spiral, LSD inspired some of his band's greatest work—namely the iconic Pet Sounds, which launched half a century of "acid-pop copycats."
The Flaming Lips — Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
The Flaming Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" is widely believed to be the product of lead singer Wayne Coyne's LSD experimentation. This theory is corroborated by the fact that the album's cover features the number 25 (and LSD is also known as LSD-25). They also frequently reference LSD in their music, which includes an album called Finally, the Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid.
the flaming lips yoshimi battles the pink robots part 1www.youtube.com
Jimi Hendrix — Voodoo Child
While there is still some general contention on whether Jimi Hendrix hallucinated frequently, nobody really doubts that he did. According to rumors, the legendary musician even used to soak his bandanas in acid before going onstage so the drug would seep through his pores.
According to one source, Hendrix did more than just play music while tripping. He was also an expert at (of all things) the game of Risk.
"Jimi would play Risk on acid, and I never — and me personally — ever beat him at all," said Graham Nash in an interview. "He was unbelievable at it. He was a military man, you know, he's a paratrooper, and I don't know whether you know that about Jimi, but no one ever beat him at Risk."
The Doors — The End
Jim Morrison was a documented LSD user, and it eventually led him out of his mind. "The psychedelic Jim I knew just a year earlier, the one who was constantly coming up with colorful answers to universal questions, was being slowly tortured by something we didn't understand. But you don't question the universe before breakfast for years and not pay a price," said John Desmore in Riders on the Storm: My Life With the Doors.
Morrison used many different drugs during his lifetime, but apparently LSD had a special place and he avoided using it while working. "LSD was a sacred sacrament that was to be taken on the beach at Venice, under the warmth of the sun, with our father the sun and our mother the ocean close by, and you realised how divine you were," said Ray Manzarek. "It wasn't a drug for entertainment. You could smoke a joint and play your music, as most musicians did at the time. But as far as taking LSD, that had to be done in a natural setting."
Morrison himself—a visionary who was also a drug-addled narcissist—was kind of the prototypical 1960s LSD-addled rock star. Alive with visions about poetry and sex but lost in his own self-destruction, he perhaps touched on something of the sublime with his art, but in the end he went down a very human path towards misery and decay.
Like many of these artists' stories, Morrison's life reveals that perhaps instead of using hallucinogens and psychedelics as shortcuts to a spiritual experience, one should exercise extreme caution when exploring the outer reaches of the psyche. When it comes to actually engaging with potent hallucinogens, that might be best left to the shamans, or forgotten with the excesses of the 1960s.
On the other hand, we might do well to learn from the lessons that people have gleaned from hallucinogens over the years—lessons that reveal just how interconnected everything is, that shows us that music and memory and nature may just all stem from the same place.
Certain musicians are blessed with the ability to hear, see, feel, or taste music, a variant of the neurological condition known as synesthesia.
While you don't need to have synesthesia in order to be a great musician, there seems to be a significant correlation between musicians capable of creating exceptionally impactful tunes and those who perceive sound in color. Here are some of the most noteworthy musicians with synesthesia:
Frank Ocean
Anyone who's heard Frank Ocean's Blonde knows that the album exists in more than one dimension, and this isn't an accident. Ocean sees colors associated with his music, and his album Channel Orange was inspired by the color he saw when he first fell in love (which was, obviously, orange).
Extra Minutes | How Lorde sees sound as colourwww.youtube.com
Lorde has described synesthesia as a driving force behind all her music, and like Ocean, she has sound-to-color synesthesia, which means all music has a color in her mind. "If a song's colors are too oppressive or ugly, sometimes I won't want to work on it," she once told MTV. "When we first started 'Tennis Court' we just had that pad playing the chords, and it was the worst textured tan colour, like really dated, and it made me feel sick, and then we figured out that prechorus and I started the lyric, and the song changed to all these incredible greens overnight!"
Even though he's blind, the musical legend and innovator Stevie Wonder can see the colors of his music in his head, which might explain why his music sounds so vast and rich.
The "Piano Man" singer can see the colors of the music that he plays, and it sounds like his perception is influenced by tempo and mood. "When I think of different types of melodies which are slower or softer, I think in terms of blues or greens," he said. "When I [see] a particularly vivid color, it is usually a strong melodic, strong rhythmic pattern which emerges at the same time," he said. "When I think of these songs, I think of vivid reds, oranges, and golds."
Billy Joel - Scenes from an Italian Restaurant (Official Audio)www.youtube.com
Kanye West
The brilliant musician and recently born-again Christian once said that all his music has a visual component. "Everything I sonically make is a painting," he said. "I see it. I see the importance and the value of everyone being able to experience a more beautiful life."
Kanye West - All Of The Lights ft. Rihanna, Kid Cudiwww.youtube.com
For West, visuals need to be compatible with the colors he hears in his head. "I see music in color and shapes and all and it's very important for me when I'm performing or doing a video that the visuals match up with the music – the colors, y'know," he said. "A lot of times it's a lonely piano [that] can look like a black and white visual to fit that emotion, even though pianos are blue to me and bass and snares are white; bass lines are like dark brown, dark purple."
The "Happy" singer (a yellow song if there ever was one) has been open about his synesthesia, and he has a very in-depth way of perceiving musical color. "There are seven basic colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet," he said. And those also correspond with musical notes…White, believe it or not, which gives you an octave is the blending of all the colors…" So that means chords would be blends of different shades, and harmonies would likely involve the blending of compatible colors. For Pharrell, synesthesia is instrumental to his creative process and to his worldview at large. "It's my only reference for understanding," he said. "I don't think I would have what some people would call talent and what I would call a gift. The ability to see and feel [this way] was a gift given to me that I did not have to have. And if it was taken from me suddenly I'm not sure that I could make music. I wouldn't be able to keep up with it. I wouldn't have a measure to understand."
Pharrell Williams - Happy (Official Music Video)www.youtube.com
Duke Ellington
For the jazz great, individual notes also have different colors—but their exact shades depend on who's playing them, not the note itself. "I hear a note by one of the fellows in the band and it's one color. I hear the same note played by someone else and it's a different color," he said. In addition to associating music with colors, he also sees sound as texture. "When I hear sustained musical tones, I see just about the same colors that you do, but I see them in textures," he added. "If Harry Carney is playing, D is dark blue burlap. If Johnny Hodges is playing, G becomes light blue satin."
From the sound of things, Tori Amos experiences music in a very dreamlike and psychedelic way. The singer-songwriter and piano prodigy has said that songwriting feels like chasing after light. "The song appears as light filament once I've cracked it. As long as I've been doing this, which is more than 35 years, I've never seen a duplicated song structure. I've never seen the same light creature in my life. Obviously, similar chord progressions follow similar light patterns…try to imagine the best kaleidoscope ever."
After hearing Blood Orange's saturated, vivid sonic craftsmanship, it's not hard to believe that its creator is synesthetic. However, for Dev Hynes, synesthesia isn't a walk in the park. "Imagine color streamers just bouncing around," he explained. "It's hard for me to focus at times because there's a lot of things floating around, pulling me away. Situations can become very overbearing and overwhelming."
Blood Orange - Dark & Handsome | A COLORS SHOWwww.youtube.com
Charli XCX
Synesthesia helps Charli XCX curate and shape her songs, and apparently, the pop queen favors sweeter, brighter colors. "I see music in colors. I love music that's black, pink, purple or red - but I hate music that's green, yellow or brown," she said.
"I have that condition, synesthesia. I see music in colors. That's how my synesthesia plays out," singer, rapper, actress, and legend Mary J. Blige explained succinctly.
Mary J. Blige - Be Without You (Official Music Video)www.youtube.com
Marina Diamandis
The former star of Marina and the Diamonds (who now goes by only Marina) apparently can see sound as color, but she also associates certain colors with days of the week. Her synesthesia also sometimes causes her to associate music with scents. "Mine usually only expresses itself in color association but I do smell strange scents out of the blue for no reason," she's said.
In Billie Eilish's technicolor universe, every sense bleeds into everything else, and things like numbers and days of the week have their own color palettes. "I think visually first with everything I do, and also I have synesthesia, so everything that I make I'm already thinking of what color it is, and what texture it is, and what day of the week it is, and what number it is, and what shape," she said in a YouTube Music video. "We both have it [she and brother, Finneas O'Connell], so we think about everything this way."
Billie Eilish - Ocean Eyes (Official Music Video)www.youtube.com
Alessia Cara
Alessia Cara thought that synesthesia was just something everybody had, until she realized not everyone could see sounds. "I didn't know that synesthesia was something that was, I guess, only a thing for some people," she said. "I thought that everybody kind of experienced it. So for me, it was just a natural pairing to my music. Everything audible was visual to me, and it still is. And so I think when I write, it's kind of cool to listen back and say, 'Well, this song feels kind of purple' — if a certain drum sound sounds purple and the song feels purple, then I know that they kind of match. It just really helps me figure out the whole package of a song." And like Kanye West, her synesthesia influences her visual content. "Even with videos — it helps me figure out what I want to do music video-wise," she added. "So it's definitely a strong aspect of my writing."
Synesthesia isn't reserved for 20th and 21st century legends. Many classical musicians possessed synesthetic abilities, such as the composer Franz Liszt, who apparently used to ask orchestra members to make their tone qualities "bluer" and would say things like, "That is a deep violet, please, depend on it! Not so rose!" While orchestra members thought he was joking, they soon realized that the musician could actually see colors in the music he created.
We love to make fun of them, laughing at the knowledge that there are people out there who are going to be stuck with a garish numerical figure on their foreheads or a phrase like "Always Tired" under their eyes for the rest of their lives.
On the other hand, tattoos in general have always received harsh criticism. Though every millennial seems to have at least a few fine-line arm tattoos nowadays, all over the world and in many faiths, tattoos are sacrilegious, evidence of Satan's corrupting influence or its many iterations. Thus, tattoos have always been mechanisms of subversion and counterculture, whether as markers of membership in certain groups, or monikers of individuality, or signifiers of devotion to a certain kind of art or person. They've been ways of reclaiming or altering one's physical appearance, ways of taking ownership of a body that, all too often, capitalism and the media try to devour or force to align with some standard.
Are face tattoos that different? Certainly that devil-may-care, f*ck-the-man attitude is what many bearers of face tattoos want to project; their images are intended to enrage and provoke, to shock and entertain, or simply to deviate from the norm.
I'm not telling you to get a face tattoo during your next drunken night out (please don't). And truthfully, I would never get a face tattoo, mainly because I'm too indecisive but also because I plan on reinventing myself entirely every few years and/or pulling a Gone Girl at least once in my life. But if you're deeply committed to your aesthetic or persona, and if you can envision getting old with whatever your emblem or image of choice may be, I respect that choice.
Like it or not, face tattoos are here. While over the past decade they have grown in prominence among a certain subculture of rappers who are based on a specific, unnamed social media platform, they're definitely not a new phenomenon, and they have a long and complex history.
Face Tattoos in History
The widespread stigmatization of face tattoos may be ingrained in our collective consciousness from ancient Greek and Roman times, when convicts and prisoners used to be marked with facial brandings that signified their crimes.
Face tattoos hold various purposes among groups like New Zealand's indigenous Maori, who often use facial scarification and ink work as a way of symbolizing faith or mourning. (Mike Tyson later provoked ire when he showed up with his famous tribal-style face tattoo, provoking cries of appropriation).
Chameleons Eye/Shutterstock
Around the 1900s, tattoos as we know them today began to rise in prominence, and lower working-class groups like punks and sex workers began using heavy facial ink work as markers of self-expression. According to the photographer Derek Ridgers, who took a lot of photos of heavily tatted punks and club kids in the UK in the 20th century, face tattoos in particular are ways of shouting, "I know I'm never going to be a conventional member of the society like you, and I don't want to be."
In the 1980s, face tattoos became extremely popular among gang members, especially in American cities like Los Angeles. Tattoos became markers of undying loyalty, though typically gang members wouldn't be allowed to get face tattoos unless they also had their entire bodies inked—to earn the right to a facial inscription, you had to have gone past the point of no return.
Even today, many artists will refuse to do face tattoos unless you've earned it; as one tattoo artist told The New York Times, face tattoos are "a rite of passage."
Face Tattoos in Practice
Around the turn of the century, Wiz Khalifa, Birdman, and "human canvas" Lil Wayne broke onto the music scene wearing heavily inked visages. But face tattoos have experienced a kind of explosion over the past decade, as thousands of unsigned SoundCloud mumblecore rappers and social media stars fight for social media clout by using face tattoos as ways to shape images for themselves by marking their commitment to their craft, faith, or individuality.
Lil WayneGustavo Caballero/South Beach Photo/Shutterstock
Wiz KhalifaCAROLINE BREHMAN/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Makeup model Kat Von D has a collection of stars on the side of her face.
Oscar Gonzalez/Nurphoto/Shutterstock
Kehlani has the words "Espíritu Libre," or "Free Spirit," under her eye, among others.
John Salangsang/Shutterstock
Lil Uzi Vert is covered in tats, too, which he once said were intended to make him "unemployable."
Lil Uzi Vert Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
While those tattoos are probably more manifestations of internal instability than proclamations of identity and individuality, some face tattoos are powerful expressions of self. Others are just funny. Among the most famous mainstream acts with face tattoos is Post Malone, whose ink reads, among other messages, "Always Tired" and "Stay Away." He once explained that these tattoos are meant to p-ss off his mom. In the end, Posty wouldn't be Posty without his face tats, and they're pretty funny and lighthearted extensions of his already chaotic image.
Photo by Nina Westervelt/Shutterstock
The late rapper Lil Peep had a collection of face tattoos which were, arguably, inextricable from his persona. One of them bore the words "die young," and, as we know, Peep died at 21. After his passing, many of his friends got face tattoos in his honor. Sometimes face tattoos can be stand-ins for so much more.
Face Tattoos in Theory
At risk of reading too deeply into all this, I'd further argue that face tattoos as we know them today tend to correspond to some level of internal turmoil. Perhaps today's face tattoos are ways of acknowledging the validity of the inner emotions that plague so many of us but that we so often suppress—such as the perpetual exhaustion that comes from being alive, intertwined with the desire to withdraw into oneself and to hide within one's image or one's art, tangled up with the desire to take nothing seriously while also wholly committing to one's image and performative persona at the most radical and self-serious level.
Though we should be aware of their history, implications, and the double standards that exist in terms of who can have face tattoos and when, I'm not sure we should be so quick to demonize all face tattoos. The idea that all humans should look the same or align their bodies with some standard of "purity" contains the seeds of a eugenic sentiment, or at least a seriously puritanical one. And of course, feeling that all people should look the same way is only a stone's throw from the Orwellian concept that all people should think the same way, and we all know where that leads.
On the other hand, the idea that face tattoos symbolize a "correct" kind of freedom and individuality is also not an accurate summation. Obviously, we don't all have to love face tattoos, as they (and ink in general) do go against the values of some religions, cultures, or individual opinions. When they're used for clout or pure aesthetic, and especially when people with no connection to specific communities appropriate imagery, face tattoos are disrespectful at best, point-blank. Furthermore, tattoos that exist on bodies of color (and on Black men in particular) have typically been associated with criminality and danger, whereas white people—especially those with cushions of wealth to fall back on—usually tend to be able to get away with appropriating the aesthetics of these tattoos without actually facing the consequences.
In the end, maybe face tattoos aren't all good or bad. Perhaps their value is situational, reliant on the observer, the person wearing them, and the context and implications of their design. Though in all likelihood, at this point, any self-respecting owner of a face tattoo would've told me to go f*ck myself.
When women aren't writing, producing, and playing their own instruments, when they're singing words they don't believe in, or when they're feeling uncomfortable around all-male recording and production teams, how could they be making their finest work?
Fact: 21.7% of artists in the music industry are women*.
Additional fact: only 2.1% of music producers are women.
Recently, there's been a lot of discussion about the lack of female representation in the music industry, but there's been less emphasis on the startling lack of female producers. This has to change, because in order for women to achieve real equality in the music industry—not just illusory representation in the form of overt sexualization and commodification—they need to be producing their own music.
They also need to be playing their own instruments, working their own sound systems, and signing artists to their own labels. In short, more women need to be taking control of their work.
In a recent interview, producer and artist King Princessstated that "it's tough out here for women who have a vision, and I think that the most important realization I came to in music was that I need to be the person responsible for my vision. I need to hold myself responsible and learn this shit. It's not hard, it's just daunting to be a tech god."
Miquela interviews King Princess | Coachella 2019www.youtube.com
She's right. Many women, for whatever reason, find themselves deterred from production, resigned to the idea that only men can adequately mix and master their tracks; but, in order to totally take control of their images and sounds, women need to hold themselves accountable and learn.
After all, just because a woman sings in a band and poses for press photos does not mean that her success is a victory for women on the whole. Women have been featured as vocalists in front of all-male bands since time immemorial, propped up as pretty faces while men rail on their guitars, fiddle with the levers on their soundboards, and pull the strings of the entire situation.
Plus, female frontwomen—especially in the commercial cover band industry—are often held to disturbingly sexist standards. Just look at the ads for artists on Craigslist and you'll notice that many of the calls for female vocalists specify that the candidate must be "in good shape" or even "slim," a disturbing and archaic requirement that throws the standards and requirements that haunt the music industry in stark relief.
This isn't to say that all female frontwomen are nothing more than pretty faces. It is to say that if we want to achieve gender equality in the music industry, underrepresented parties need to take up space not only behind the mic but in all aspects of performance and creative development.
First and foremost, female producers would create space for many female artists who might have otherwise been deterred from pursuing music. After all, recording studios and concert halls are dark, intimate spaces where sexual assault occurs far too often, and it's impossible to know how many women have left music industry due to bad experiences at the hands of men who feel they have the power to take advantage of them. Earlier this year, a bassist named Ava revealed that she quit the music industry because of abuse she received at the hands of Ryan Adams when she was underage; and her story is far from an isolated incident. According to The New York Times, Ava "never played another gig" after "the idea that she would be objectified or have to sleep with people to get ahead 'just totally put [her] off of the whole idea' of being a musician." Her experience is not an isolated incident.
This is a tragic but all-too-common story. But if more women were to take up production, claiming these traditionally masculine spaces as their own and creating safe environments for young female artists, who knows what kind of alchemy could occur?
As things are now, the lack of female producers—and the concurrent number of female artists who have left the industry due to assault and intimidation at the hands of powerful men—could explain why women have been so underrepresented on end-of-year lists and in awards circuits. Plus, even if you do remain in the industry, it's quite difficult to create work that's true to your vision if you're not writing and producing at least part of it. (Rihanna can do it, but then again, Rihanna is an ageless superhuman, so that argument is irrelevant). Many pop songs with female vocalists—especially the kind that are getting pumped out by increasingly desperate LA's producers—were clearly not written by their singers, and so they're weighed down by a kind of synthetic detachment. When women aren't writing and producing, and when they're singing words they don't believe in, how could they possibly be making their finest work?
The same is true for instrumentalists. Though there are millions of extraordinary female musicians, a video of the top 10 greatest female guitarists features only a few female shredders and mostly includes songs with vocals, whereas every man in the top 10 is shown shredding on their rather phallic axes in full-on rock god mode. As long as women aren't shredding, their rock music is simply not going to be as effective as Mick Jaggers. (On the other hand, whether we really need more shredding is a topic for another discussion).
Of course, this definitely isn't to say that women can't rock—they can and do. Many women have annihilated all expectations and gender norms, despite impossible odds, using their traumas as rocket fuel. Courtney Love transformed her anger and pain from a 1991 assault into the song "Asking For It," and she's been destroying sexist expectations for her entire career. The entire Riot Grrl movement was dedicated to bucking gender norms and bringing unruly, powerful women to the fore.
Plus, some of our greatest, most innovative (and most criminally underrecognized) guitarists and songwriters have been women—take Big Mama Thornton, the original writer of Elvis's "Hound Dog" who received precisely zero of the royalties he received from it; or Sister Rosetta Tharpe, whose work was a fundamental precursor to rock and roll; or anyone on She Shreds' list of 50 Black Guitarists and Bassists You Need to Know. So, so many female greats—women of color in particular—have been wiped from history or are just beginning to receive their due.
Similarly, though they comprise a tiny percentage of the whole, there have always been female music producers. The problem isn't that they don't exist, but that they're not recognized, argues producer Ebonie Smith, citing many who are doing excellent work but who are not receiving adequate acclaim. These include WondaGurl, the teenager who produced Travis Scott's "Antidote" and part of Jay-Z's Magna Carta Holy Grail; Nova Wav, who produces for Kehlani; Nicki Minaj's producer DJ Diamond Kutz; and hundreds of others.
Things seem to be moving forward, at least. Initiatives like Smith's Gender Amplified, Inc. are encouraging women and nonbinary people to take up production and music tech. In terms of instrumentalists, a recent Fender study found that roughly 50% of guitars purchased in 2016 were bought by women or girls; and with publications like She Shreds elevating the voices of diverse female guitarists and bassists, we'll most likely be seeing a whole new generation of players rising from the ashes, the angry cries of their foremothers ringing in their ears. For some, that generation has already arrived—for example, LA Mag recently published an article with the self-explanatory title "Women Are Saving the Electric Guitar."
The Way Ep. 5: Cherry Glazerr's Clementine Creevy Teaches "I Told You I'd Be With The Guys"www.youtube.com
Studio Politics Featuring Ebonie Smith - EPISODE 1 - "ALL IS GOLDEN, GIRLS."www.youtube.com
Still, as of now, the statistics show that far too few of the instrumentalists, composers, conductors, and record label executives who occupy positions of power are female. Of course, women are not at fault for their own historical marginalization. For a long time, women have been quietly discouraged from railing on guitars, instead advised to sit quietly at pianos or to sing prettily while men did the work. Plus, the tour and studio life often wasn't viable for mothers (though naturally, it's always been perfectly acceptable for fathers). The dearth of women in the music industry is the project of age-old systems of sexism and classism.
But things are changing. Sexism still exists, but with women comprising roughly 50% of the workforce, we can no longer use sexism as the sole excuse for why there are so few female producers. On the whole, as a society, we've moved past second-wave feminism, wherein the only goal was to get women into the workplace. But in the realm of music producers, it's like we're still living in the 1950s, when it was radical for women not to want children. Women—as well as men—are to blame for the lack of female producers in the modern era.
Perhaps the issue stems from mindset. "What the experiences of women reveal is that the biggest barrier they face is the way the music industry thinks about women," said Professor Stacey Smith, whose studies generated a report called 'Inclusion in the Recording Studio?' Smith writes, "The perception of women is highly stereotypical, sexualized and without skill. Until those core beliefs are altered, women will continue to face a roadblock as they navigate their careers."
After all, production requires a unique combination of attention to detail, technological savvy, artistic vision, and brash fearlessness. You can learn literally endless amounts about how to produce, how to mix and master and EQ every fiber of every note; but ultimately, production is taking shot after shot into the dark. It's about believing in your own ability to hear and shape the music into the form you want it to be in. It's about taking control, the kind that will remain largely unattainable to women as long as the aforementioned perceptions exist.
Hopefully, someday this dissolves and we all realize that we're all floundering in the dark together. Maybe someday we'll all understand that gender is a fluid concept, and the ability to create art is one of the things that binds us together as human beings.
But that is not the world we live in. And until that world exists, we desperately need more women behind the mixing board.
*This article recognizes that trans and nonbinary people have often been more erased and marginalized in the music industry to a much greater extent than cisgender women.
Eden Arielle Gordon is a writer and musician from New York. Follow her on Twitter @edenarielmusic.