GUESS WHAT, BITCH? Coronavirus!” Cardi B’s shriek echoes until it resembles a siren. A hi-hat-heavy beat comes in on the rapper’s frantic warning: “Shit is real!” The words are from a 46-second video Cardi B posted on Instagram in March, broadcast to a shellshocked nation. But it was DJ iMarkkeyz who turned them into a cheeky club banger with visuals to match every beat drop—Childish Gambino, Beyoncé, Future, Elmo, and Bugs Bunny all get crunk as an animated coronavirus molecule floats by with a toothy smile like the alien villain in a kids’ cartoon.
The year looked bleak until iMarkkeyz (real name Brandon Markell Davidson) remixed it. “It’s a lot of wild nonsense going on,” says the 30-year-old producer-editor from behind his computer screen in East New York; he’s wearing rectangular Clark Kent glasses, a du-rag, and a plain black face mask with an iM printed on it. (Even in non-covid times, the mask is his signature look.) “But somebody’s gotta make people not live in fear.” Along with “Coronavirus,” he created joyful musical interludes for 2020’s other distressing news cycles. “Lose Yo Job,” centered on a viral clip of a Black woman being detained by a security guard, became a national anti-police-brutality protest anthem, making it all the way to a Saturday Night Live cold open featuring Jim Carrey and Maya Rudolph. In November, his tongue-in-cheek remix of Donald Trump’s spiritual adviser repeating the words I hear a sound of victory arrived right as many Americans needed to hear it.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 21, 2020-January 3, 2021-Ausgabe von New York magazine.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 21, 2020-January 3, 2021-Ausgabe von New York magazine.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
Can the Media Survive?
BIG TECH, Feckless Owners, CORD-CUTTERS, RESTIVE STAFF, Smaller Audiences ... and the Return of PRINT?
Status Update
Hannah Gadsby's fascinatingly untidy tour through life after fame and death.
A Matter of Perspective
A Matter of Perspective Steve McQueen's worst film is still a solid WWII drama.
Creator, Destroyer
A retrospective reveals an architect's vision, optimism, and supreme arrogance.
In Praise of Bad Readers
In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.
The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
The Water-Tower Penthouse
Gigi Loizzo and Angel Molina's apartment on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx looks out on Yankee Stadium.