Weird, Random Shit I Like (aka Not an Article About Solange) Posted by Nathan S. on 05/14/14 | Filed under Opinion

I'm writing this for two reasons. 

One, even though you'd think the "Yeezus" debate had died down by now, I still get accused of not liking Kanye's latest album because I "couldn't handle how weird it is," which is hilarious because since I was a kid I'd always dug shit that was so weird it makes "Yeezus" sound like Taylor Swift. You're talking to a man who has a a tattoo of William Burroughs with a needle stuck in his head across my entire left arm. 

Second, I don't know if you heard, but Solange attacked Jay Z in an elevator. Oh, you have heard? That's probably because every site on the interwebs is beating the story to death. Even sites I usually respect have launched into a full on Solangegeddon*, flipping every Instagram update and discredited rumor into a new post. At my heart I'm a contrarian. It's why I had to spend some many days in 4th grade inside practicing the recorder instead of outside playing at recess (seriously), and it's why I wanted to spend some writing time today about the exact opposite of Jay Z-related scandals. 

So with those two factors in my head, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to some Weird Random Shit I Like That I Could Never Work Into a Post Until Today Because Fuck It I'm Writing About Daniel Johnston I Just Can't See Another Headline With Solange In the Title. 

"The Devil & Daniel Johnston"

Holy sweet baby jesus, this is one of those movies where you just sit in silence for ten minutes after it ends trying to process what you just saw. Johnston spent most of his life in mental institutions and never became anything more than a cult hero. Still, his story is absolutely incredible. We're talking about someone who, while hallucinating, threw the keys out of a small plane and survived. Someone who Kurt Cobain once called one of his favorite songwriters, someone who makes you question the relationship between madness and genius. 

I've become moderately obsessed with Johnston since watching this documentary, so, fair warning...

Storyboard P

I have to thank the wifey  for this one. I wasn't exactly born with the gift of dance, but my wife's an ill dancer, and she came back from a Storyboard P show calling him the Kendrick Lamar of dance. I don't know enough to say that, but I can say I don't know if I've ever seen anyone move like this, it's absolutely incredible. 

If you dig this, I also highly recommend P in this astounding Flying Lotus video, where it looks like he's dancing in reverse, and this dope New Yorker profile, in which he says he wants to put out dances like rappers put out albums. 

"Hearsay of the Soul"

I was at the Getty museum here in LA the other week and went into an exhibit called "Hearsay of the Soul" because I saw it had Werner Herzog's name attached. Herzog is, in his own right, one of the weirdest/most incredible people on Earth, and someone I most often refer to as "the guy who made that balls crazy 'Grizzly Man' movie. 

Anyway, I had never paid much attention to the music in Herzog's movies before I heard "Hearsay of the Soul" and learned that a Dutch cellist named Ernst Reijseger had worked with him on nearly every music, and his music was fucking mindblowing. His work has been my go to music lately whenever I need to really zone out and get out of my hip-hop bubble. 

Jeremy Fish

I've been a fan of Fish for a long time, but I've recently been experiencing a bit of a rennaisance with the man's work. His work with Aesop Rock, another one of my weird heroes, is always a favorite (see above), and I've been reading his "Rome-Antic" book daily recently. 

Ah, there, now I feel better. Hopefully this opens up some space for RefinedHype Nation to share some of the shit they're also digging that's so far outside the bounds of normal rap bloggery. Have at it people, at the very least there's one more article on the interwebs not about Solange and Jay Z.  

* Solangegeddon and all related images are trademarked properties of RefinedHype.com.

[Nathan S. is the managing editor of The DJBooth, the proprietor of RefinedHype, and a hip-hop writer. He also occasionally talks in podcast form and appears on RevoltTV. His beard is awesome. This is his Twitter.]

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