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Torch: Mobius Strips, Rap Formulas and Wine
37 Plays3 months ago
If you've always wondered what quantum superposition or David Lynch films have to do with German hip hop, this is the episode for you. We discuss "first German freestyle Rapper" Torch's one and only solo album, and try to figure out his explanations of the tracks and his methods published in a book 20 years later.
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Transcript
Introduction to Epsilons and German Rap
00:00:00
Speaker
As an intro, so the guy we're talking about today is a bit of a mathematician, and he's talking about epsilons and formulas, so you could play on that, I guess. Already far above my pay grade. i don't know if I'll be able to keep up.
00:00:14
Speaker
Yeah, might also be above his pay grade, to be honest. And it's all in German, too? I don't know. this this might be the end for me. German maths is famously the hardest maths, so... Well, clearly. Yeah.
00:00:26
Speaker
They say it's a universal language. Obviously not true. When you do it in German, I mean, it just goes to a whole new level. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. But I think that will actually do. Or do you have a funny intro idea?
00:00:37
Speaker
Nope. Nope. Okay. German math. German math. Okay, great.
The Beginnings of German Rap: Torch and Advanced Chemistry
00:00:48
Speaker
So yeah, we're talking about... and So first off, this is the German Rap Podcast. We talk about German rap in, of course, English, because why would we talk about in any other language? And last time we talked about advanced chemistry and the Fantastic Four, sort of early German rap beginnings, GI discos, initially English rap, which then turned into the first...
00:01:12
Speaker
German rappers, and we are talking about the self-proclaimed first German freestyler today, Torch, which you might remember from as one of the members of Advanced Chemistry.
00:01:23
Speaker
I do. I remember Torch from Advanced Chemistry. I thought they were very cool, and I'm excited to learn a little bit about Torch and why he's doing so much math, because frankly, I didn't see him as a mathematician.
00:01:35
Speaker
True, yeah. Actually, I didn't either. What do you remember about Torch? Do you remember anything? It's fine. It was like a group of three, and we talked like two seconds about it. But do you remember anything about Torch specifically? Off the top of my head, I don't have much about Torch specifically.
00:01:50
Speaker
Yeah, okay, no worries. But he basically is from Heidelberg, which is, as far as I am, as an Austrian, I'm concerned, middle of nowhere in Germany, but I guess there's a few people there. Fucking around.
00:02:01
Speaker
He likes to stress that some famous people were there at some point. No one, as far as I know, is from there, really, but apparently Goethe was there at some point. But I mean, no one that matters actually comes from Heidelberg. Yeah, no, no. Torch is from Heidelberg. I shouldn't be this dismissive. No one that matters except for Torch is from Heidelberg. And we will talk more in future episodes, maybe about the different German regions, um similar to US regions, but very different when it comes to rap and hip
Torch's Cultural Impact and Political Commentary
00:02:30
Speaker
hop.
00:02:30
Speaker
Look, I don't want to spoil this show for anyone, but if no one important is from Heidelberg, then I think I have to put in protest because I lived in Heidelberg growing up for a little while. Oh, damn. Now I'm getting fucking slandered by my co-host.
00:02:46
Speaker
This is ridiculous. I love this. I didn't know you actually were in Heidelberg. That's amazing. I was right outside of Heidelberg. Okay, so Tom, you know more about Heidelberg than I do then. Can you give us a little summary?
00:02:59
Speaker
Heidelberg is fucking irrelevant. Okay, great. Well, after this podcast, it won't be because now two famous people are from Heidelberg. and But he said in his autobiography, which is not called an autobiography, he says that I think Goethe was in Heidelberg at some point and some other famous literature person was there too.
00:03:22
Speaker
So the people wrote stuff there. Torch wrote stuff there, clearly. So yeah. And he was born to a Haitian mother and an East Prussian father. oh shit. So that's also from last time, if you remember. like to i I do. I remember he had a lot of political commentary baked into his writing.
00:03:41
Speaker
And I assume that would be why. It's like an influence in And we also last time touched on sort of com commercialization and sort of undergroundness and anti-commerce. And Torch is definitely in the anti-commerce camp just to kind of put him in a box for now.
00:03:59
Speaker
And very much a purist and like, is this hip hop? What is hip hop? Yeah, remember we were talking about the way that hip hop had evolved and who gets to say what is hip hop? And Torch had some strong opinions.
00:04:13
Speaker
Exactly. And the strong opinions will continue and be quite fun. And I honestly, I like Torch. And also I got to listen to a lot of his music, which I hadn't really listened to before. Also kind of a bit of context and framing. Again, I was not around when all these things came out. This is also my first time listening to a lot of these.
00:04:31
Speaker
But of course, loads of people are referencing him to this day, to some extent, but also in like early 2000s rap.
00:04:39
Speaker
as sort of the godfather of German hip hop. And we'll see why that is. But yeah, so advanced chemistry, obviously quite important.
00:04:49
Speaker
And Fremde im Alland, which we talked about last time, was this track about sort of systemic racism in Germany and identity and so forth. And moving on in his sort of rap career,
00:05:04
Speaker
He ended up hosting the first dedicated hip hop television show in Germany.
Hip Hop Purity and Blue Velvet: Torch's Philosophy
00:05:10
Speaker
Yes. yeah Also off, I should say first off a lot of credentials. He didn't just randomly stumble into that. At that point, he'd already been super um dedicated to all these sort of freestyle ciphers and events that happened all around Germany, which yup he classified as real hip hop. Whereas, for example, the Fantastic Four we talked about last time were not real hip hop because they never showed up to these things and just made music.
00:05:34
Speaker
And yeah, hosted this hip hop show where they also brought in loads of international artists, Americans and all over Europe, kind of this sort of very like, yeah, kind of scattered hip hop scene, at least in the nineties, it was that.
00:05:50
Speaker
And then later on quit that network. And we're not really going to talk about that time that much today, but also probably got a bit too commercial for him, the whole thing. Exactly. Somebody who considers like ciphers and rap battle and stuff like that to be sort of the core of hip hop.
00:06:06
Speaker
Doing a commercialized show where you're being advertiser friendly and you want to um retain people's interest in that sort of ah marketable way, definitely. I mean, I'm surprised in the first place, frankly, that it's something that he took up, I guess, more than anything, maybe he considered it like an opportunity to expose more people to what he considered true hip hop.
00:06:32
Speaker
But the fact that he even stuck with it for a season is pretty impressive to me. It's not that. Yeah, no I think it was actually quite a few episodes. I'm not sure how many. But yeah, he also had like breakdancing in the studio, things like that. So fun stuff, graffiti artists and so forth. Everything he considers hip hop basically. And he got to pick the team to a relatively new um TV station.
00:06:54
Speaker
He also talks about in some interviews how they were not even broadcasting to all parts of Germany yet. at that point. So yeah, quite new, quite fresh. And then once it got more commercial, he got out like understandably as you say exactly. He had some semblance of control early on and it still felt somewhat isolated from the mainstream, you know?
00:07:15
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. And then by the late 90s, which is still very early for German hip hop, he was already considered sort of like retiree slash pensioner kind of thing. Yeah. Almost because he had been around for so long. And he also, I think, referred to himself that way.
00:07:32
Speaker
Okay. and Those sweet, sweet hip-hop pension funds that they always talk about. Yeah, those, like, yeah, so much... Such a good pension that they got back then. Yeah. There's interesting stuff here because it must have gone really, really quickly back then because we're...
00:07:47
Speaker
The first episode, we talked about stuff like released in the early 90s. And at that point, it was anyone who did it basically was not doing it for... I mean, I'm kind of parroting Torch's viewpoint here, but we'll go with it for now. Basically, no one was doing it for commercial success because that was not an option. Like, you weren't... You didn't start hip-hop or anything.
00:08:09
Speaker
record any tracks because you thought oh a major label will pick this up and they'll make loads of money because that was just not happening and then the fantastic four were the first ones that showed that it was possible in a way and then it must have gone really quickly because then also instead of doing individual tracks and freestyles and these cyphers albums started coming out and everyone had an album because that was the commercial thing to do right album sales were huge yeah of course i mean even today you see like a lot of A lot of people, a lot of freshmen, so to speak, in hip hop want to put out like mixtapes and stuff before you ever put out an album. Or I guess that has been the case historically is that you would put out mixtapes, you'd put out maybe like a single here and there.
00:08:53
Speaker
But I mean, It's pretty interesting to think that in this sort of culture around marketable hip hop evolves so quickly that you go from doing things that are as underground as like performances and battle rap and and all of these other, like, as you said, graffiti and things like that, that sort of exemplify hip hop straight into the most marketable form of music, which is you sell an album on the store floor so people can go buy it for, you know,
00:09:20
Speaker
however many euros or marks or whatever it was at at that point. Yeah, it was marks. Yeah, exactly. And it it was not exactly like a huge money making thing at that time as well. I'm sure even the big ones didn't actually make that much back then. if We could even talk about today how it doesn't make artists particularly much. That's true. true true true Absolutely.
00:09:42
Speaker
Yeah. So even I think there you'll get a lot of animosity from his side against artists that sort of sell out. But even like the artists
Technical Aspects and Philosophical Approach to Hip Hop
00:09:52
Speaker
that he was complaining about back in the day weren't exactly rolling in cash either. They were just happy that they could do this for a living. you got to pay rent, man. Yeah, exactly. I get it. I get it.
00:10:01
Speaker
But yeah, I also respect his kind of commitment to the purity of it and not really doing it for money. Although, of course, he earned money from it as well to some extent. But he clearly, you cannot say that he is someone who ended up pursuing a career that would maximize the amount of money he could make. So one solo album, which also took him a long time.
00:10:23
Speaker
That's the Blue Velvet Blau Assump. And there, if we start talking about the album a little bit, it's basically... and At the time he released it in 2000, people had been waiting for it for quite a while and he had been working on it for ages. And it was sort of a, he laid on said as well that it was sort of a work of perfectionism and that when he released it, it was actually already kind of dated in a sense. I'm not sure he said that in so many words, but that's the impression I got.
00:10:51
Speaker
And it's very different, but ven today we'll do it a bit differently anyways. where We'll actually listen to couple tracks and then discuss them. But first off, we will talk about his maths, which is a fun part of his methodology, I guess.
00:11:08
Speaker
So the first time I heard of this was he showed up in this interview at some point with another MC where he was asked about his technique and technique.
00:11:19
Speaker
First, he went on the classic thing with like, you just need a white sheet of paper and like some kind of garden in your head or something like that. And then he goes on to saying that actually it's mathematics.
00:11:32
Speaker
Mentioned some epsilon as well. And decode slash encode language. He talks about that in his book too. And I was confused and intrigued.
00:11:44
Speaker
And so I bought his book for 36 euros. Nice. Okay. I don't think this podcast is over that much money. He's still in those royalties. Yeah. But i'm I'm happy to support his creative endeavor.
00:11:57
Speaker
A bit of a story about the book. The album came out in 2000, which we said was already a little bit past his peak popularity, I guess. Yeah. Don't want to be so mean as to say Prime, but maybe already Prime 2. You know, you know. Yeah.
00:12:12
Speaker
and the book was written in two thousand and ten So 10 years, that's fine. Well, it was actually released in 2021 or published in 2021. So a little bit of time passed between album and the book.
00:12:29
Speaker
And in his interviews, he says that actually when he made the album, he first off wasn't sure he wanted to actually make an album because it's so commercial and this is just a thing people do. So he seemed quite torn about actually doing an album. And then he was like, okay, I'll actually do an album that's accompanied instead of music videos by a book.
00:12:48
Speaker
which I think is kind of a cool idea. I'm not sure how many people have done The book is specifically designed to be like part of the album experience. Exactly. yeah As opposed to like a reflection on it.
00:13:00
Speaker
Exactly. That's what he says. But then he wrote it 10 years later and it came out 20 years later. So yeah, a little bit of a problem here. And that's also, I think the mathematics interview thing happened in 2000. So quite close to the album, but then I didn't see anything in that vein for a long time.
00:13:19
Speaker
until I and see the book. And there we come back to this kind of theory behind his music. And there is some interesting stuff there where he talks about different literary forms and stuff like that, like that some of his songs could be seen as sort of mythos or legend.
00:13:37
Speaker
And some are just lyrics, lyricism, I guess. And some are sort of, he's called some of it a Kafkaesque stream of consciousness. We're not stopping there. It's like the, I'm sorry, pretentiousness.
00:13:50
Speaker
we Look, I didn't want to say. Yeah, this is a book review podcast now. Everyone gets your notebooks out. We're covering chapters one through eight. Exactly. Yeah, are actually in chapter two already. The chapters are very short. Making progress. Also, brief teaser to the next podcast episode.
00:14:07
Speaker
I also bought another book. Oh, God. By the podcast budget. Yeah, exactly. It's exploding. It's out the window. And I initially wanted to cover both in this one episode, but we will have enough with this one.
00:14:21
Speaker
Okay. But the yeah, next one is also, I think in my opinion, much better book, but this one might, we might have, but also by torch. Yeah, this one is by Torch, exactly. yeah The direction we were going, I thought you were going to say that all of Torch's albums here to the fourth are associated with books that came out 20 years after, which means the next one would come out in 2031 or something. The next 20 podcast episodes. That's why we will have so much time between the episodes. We can only make one every 10 years. That's exactly right. If I ever record a hip-hop album, I will make sure to write the book about it 10 years later and release it another 10 years after that. And so you can only listen to the album if you also read this book 20 years later. Exactly. if Wait 10 years and then then you can listen to it exactly. So next we have his textual categories.
00:15:12
Speaker
We have trivial life slash present. which was developed slash introduced in 1987 to 1988. I don't think we actually listened to any of this era, but he says that it includes all sorts of things, live performance, party, battle songs, political texts.
00:15:34
Speaker
And he already have the problem that this is like a category where he basically puts everything into it. And it's actually more of a time period, I think. But anyways... We move on to the next and textual category, which is lived experience, you could translate it, slash past.
00:15:53
Speaker
This is 1991, 1992.
00:15:56
Speaker
So he is working through lived experiences and talks about these things as if they were dreams in a way. And these are quite a few songs that we will listen to today are in this category.
00:16:11
Speaker
And then we have visions slash future. And again, lived experience, but this time with a question mark instead of as before, I didn't say it. So my bad, an exclamation point.
00:16:23
Speaker
And here he is working on lived experiences from his dreams. And he thinks because his dreams often feel realer than reality. And Yeah, and so that's his textual free textual categories of rap. That's his rap theory part one.
00:16:43
Speaker
Right. And this is how he defines his own like chronology moving through writing and his engagement with hip-hop. Exactly, yes. Okay, got it.
00:16:56
Speaker
To be fair, he says these are textual categories, but also times, so this could also be seen as his time periods as an artist, I guess. Sure, But he also calls it, and we're back to some slightly pretentious stuff, the Trinity.
00:17:11
Speaker
Okay, right. This is the Trinity, and he will talk about Trinity more, but he really likes that word. Okay. So I'm going to say probably not any religious connotation, but more like he likes things that comes in frieze.
Analysis of Torch's Music and Academic Commentary
00:17:27
Speaker
Of course. It was the magic number, as they say. Exactly, yeah. Sorry, I'm putting you spot. But what do you think, after this kind of thing, what would be the next well category? yeah right so So we've gotten like lived experience, then we've gotten visions of the future.
00:17:42
Speaker
I'm going to say it's like I'm going to go ahead and guess that he's grouping the next category into like his own death or like the end of his existing, the beginning of like a new existence, something like that, a future. yeah It appears in his texts for sure. But actually the next thing that we're talking about is colors.
00:18:01
Speaker
How did you not guess that? Yeah. I mean, that was clearly, that was obviously the leap that I should have made. Exactly. Yeah. So we have, The text's colors appear in text, although i could not really as colors as such, but he associates colors with them.
00:18:17
Speaker
Also, I think this is an example of like like, not in a mean way, I really like him and his approach clearly worked for him. But I think this is a classic example of like, we didn't have autism back then. Oh, of course. It didn't exist back then. We just grouped songs by colors. Exactly. Yeah. Well, ah yeah, he has synesthesia. That's clearly what this is.
00:18:43
Speaker
Oh yeah, that's the word for it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He has synesthesia, which is you know being able to connect colors to concepts or ideas, or like people say, certain numbers as colors. I wonder if the same thing as is like corroborated elsewhere ah in his discography.
00:19:00
Speaker
But like that. Yeah, I mean, his main he clearly also really likes the album title is Blue Velvet. Right. Named after obviously the David Lynch movie. Right.
00:19:11
Speaker
Which I haven't seen. so poor research on my part. Yeah, we're both fake podcast hosts. Yeah, but it's it's apparently really good movie, so I might watch it afterwards and report back. Well, we should watch it together so that we can both bring forth our incredibly important ah opinions and ideas on it. It's considered a masterpiece, apparently, so good taste in movies.
00:19:32
Speaker
But he also seems quite fascinated by the title Blue Velvet, which Blau is something German, because he said blue is obviously a very hard color and rough, and velvet is very soft.
00:19:45
Speaker
I can follow on the velvet part, the blue part that must be- Yeah, I don't know if I follow on the blue quite so much. But that's probably a personal thing. I'll stick with it. I'll stick with it. And so the texts are categorized into red, which is rage, which makes sense. Violet, which is deep rage.
00:20:01
Speaker
Yellow, which is hope. Orange, which is rage hope. Rage hope. Yes. Does he say more about that at all? No. Okay, good.
00:20:14
Speaker
and I'm sensing a pattern here, which is there's rage. There's another form of rage. There's a third form of rage. And then we also have hope, which is great. But it seems like he's primarily dominated by the idea of rage when he's talking about these things. Yeah, which don't really fully get because his texts are actually very kind of respectful and at least what I would consider, like definitely not in the battle rap genre, I would say. Sure, okay.
00:20:42
Speaker
which we'll have in future episodes. But yeah, but I guess you can express it differently. Yeah, blue is depth. So here is actually not harsh, it's depth. Green is depth hope.
00:20:53
Speaker
And that's the colors. Okay. Those are all clearly all the colors. Yeah. I mean, all the colors from the album. Yeah, exactly. Then we have rhyme categories, which I'll kind of skip over, not just because of the language barrier, but also because in my opinion, I don't make that much sense. Some of them...
00:21:13
Speaker
Some of them make sense. So I will actually talk about a few a little bit. Sure, hit me. He is not just the first freestyle rapper, but also in the group of the first guy who apparently used the first doppelrรคme, which double rhyme in German, which means that you rhyme two syllables, not just one.
00:21:32
Speaker
So yeah. And then you can have a triple rhyme, which is three syllables or three words, depending. And you have something homophone ah rhyme.
00:21:45
Speaker
Which is two words that sound the same but are actually different. Yeah, exactly. Which is, I think, more common in German rap than in English rap, probably because we have more longer words, so just more kind of possibilities. Yeah, I'd imagine it's like a necessity of the mechanics of the language.
00:22:00
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Exactly. And then you have like alliterations, which we all know, sort of like just kind of the same sounds repeated, but they make different words. Yep. And there's loads of categories that make sense, but then some that are just a repetition, where it's, in my opinion, the same thing.
00:22:17
Speaker
but a different category in his book, which I mean, it's fine, but he goes a little bit too deep here, I think. Or at least. think he's about some bullshit with some of these categories now. Yeah, exactly. But I think is this is post hoc.
00:22:33
Speaker
And this is not how he thought back then. Maybe he did. I can't look into his brain, but at least from his early interviews where he says these texts come to me, I think it's more like, oh, this sounds cool.
00:22:44
Speaker
And not, oh, this is this type of rhyme. This is category D in my rhyme book. Right, of course, of course. So, yeah, I think that's that's sort of, but I mean, that's okay. We can also analyze things after they happen. That's okay. Of course. I think there's a level of legitimacy to the idea of retroactively looking back at your techniques and the way that you put together art and then being like, well, how was I doing this even if it wasn't conscious? That's totally bad. Exactly. That's true. That's true.
00:23:13
Speaker
But at the same time, you have to have some level of rationale there. And it sounds like he might be going a little bit out the window with it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Now we get to well, I mean, he calls this subchapter poetry performance, but this is actually not really about that. It's about BPM.
00:23:32
Speaker
Oh, okay. Or at least a big part about it is about BPM. Right. Which, yeah, first off, it explains what BPM is. I don't think we'll have to explain that these days. Everyone knows it maybe.
00:23:43
Speaker
Back then, it wasn't so common to talk about. Although the book was published in 2021. Back then in 2021. Back then, yeah, who knows, right after COVID. Music theory wasn't really a thing in 21. Yeah, exactly, yeah. But what we talk about here is that BPM and beats in general have a lot to do with a heartbeat, which I mean, I can accept that.
00:24:08
Speaker
Sure. That seems like a rational jump to make. I could. Yeah. Yeah. um And clearly in his head, that's like a big connection. But then we get a little bit of ah bullshit again, in my opinion.
00:24:21
Speaker
Also, think about the abbreviation of Blauer Sampt is BS. Right. I'm not going to say anything else. Whoa, whoa, he's throwing shade now. Torch is going to come out of retirement. Yeah, yeah. yeah Yeah, get your ass. To this me, yeah. a Huge respect still for Torch, but yeah, some of this is a bit goofy.
00:24:43
Speaker
I will ad hoc translate this. and So the heart is a sort of measuring stick for the speed of music. which Yeah, fair enough.
00:24:54
Speaker
My dad is a doctor, so maybe this is why I have a certain connection between heartbeat and music. Yeah, and was like, is it just me or is this a little bit of a stretch? He was like, young Torch at six years old wandered into his dad's office and saw like a full... Him doing open heart surgery there. Yeah, he saw his dad doing open heart surgery in his office desk and was like, clearly, clearly this is connected to music and immediately went and sat down with his crayons on blank paper and started writing ciphers about that were set to a certain BPM. I mean,
00:25:32
Speaker
He was just a visionary, and I don't think any of us can deny it, frankly. Yeah, exactly. And now we get a concrete example from the album, which is In Your Arms, is this track. And the feeling should be sort of melancholic and um kind of thoughtful, is what he says. And with 77 BPM, it is just slightly under the average average Heart rate. yeah Right. Okay. You know, and that's a detail I'll give them. That's cool. I like it when people sort of do mixed modal ah design for their music. That's interesting.
00:26:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's interesting too. I'm just wondering, again, is this something he thought about back then? Or is this something that comes to him now? Yeah, he was looking at a spec sheet for Blue Velvet and said, what can I pick out that seems interesting that I can correlate to some bullshit in my head?
00:26:30
Speaker
We get to more of that as well, which is another amusing thing. Then, yeah, he talks a bit more about sort of how you can perform your lyrics in a different way, like different intensity and things like that.
00:26:45
Speaker
But it's very brief, actually. And, yeah, the next thing is that I found noteworthy is his... I think he calls it rap rate.
00:26:59
Speaker
But I now need to find the actual specific wrap ratio. Sorry. We don't actually get any formulas in formula notation in the book, which for me, as a little bit of a scientist myself, I was very disappointed. Yeah, exactly.
00:27:13
Speaker
But also I'm a big fan. If someone explains the formula that doesn't need an actual written out formula in just a few words. So actually kudos to him. So this formula calculates the exact percentage of wrapped versus unwrapped time on a track.
00:27:27
Speaker
Interesting. Okay. So he's, he's just doing a proportion of what instrumentals and or chorus versus the actual rap cipher. Okay. And he's he says that his rap ratio ranges from 50 to 90% on his album.
00:27:43
Speaker
So that's a fair trivia fact. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. But yeah, that's that's the main scientific framework of Torch.
00:27:55
Speaker
We've covered all of the bases now. Right. So wait, let me go ahead and do a recap and you let me know if I'm missing anything. Yeah. i'm missing things I'm just going to confidently say that once you have to recap that everything's correct. Right. Sure. Yeah. Okay. So we had his textual eras, which were basic, which were also interchangeably eras in his life.
00:28:15
Speaker
Between the late 80s and I think when he put out his album. Yep, pretty much. Late 90s, right? Then beyond that, we also had the colors, I believe, which were sort of, we determined that he might have synesthesia because he thinks of colors as associated with very particular feelings, like tactile feelings and also with emotional feelings.
00:28:37
Speaker
So he has some parallels between Those things, um and that's probably correlated to the title of his album. From there, we have his most mathematics section, which is the various characteristics and specs that make up his album. So heartbeat, BPM, rap ratio, all of these things that can be sort of calculated or associated with calculations that also apply to his album.
00:29:07
Speaker
Have we mostly covered it? Yeah, pretty much, except the rhyme categories, but that's something I think most people know about anyway. Rhyme categories, which is bullshit. Yeah, exactly. if some added bullshit. Exactly, yeah. So it's more like, think he really, he also makes quite a few literal like references to literature that I left out previously.
00:29:29
Speaker
just because they're not that interesting in my opinion. Sure. But so he, I think he kind of wants to maybe frame it a bit more as high art rather than just a hip hop album.
00:29:40
Speaker
But at the same time, he's also someone who says like, this this is very hip hop because it's not commercial. So yeah, but clearly he has his very own frame of mind for music and it's really interesting how he approaches it. Yeah. Unfortunately, but i actually wished he wrote a bit more about it because it is only a very small part of the book.
00:30:01
Speaker
Then we get to the whole five sections about the graphic design of his different single and album covers. Jesus Christ. And then we passed 40 pages.
00:30:13
Speaker
The rest of the book is just explanation of his texts, which makes sense because it's meant to be an accompaniment to the album. But I kind of hoped that 20 years after the album, we could have gotten a bit more. What we'll do now as we go into the break is I will ask you for a great analysis and then we will compare it to Torch's. Sure, sure. I like it. Yeah, yeah,
00:30:35
Speaker
And we'll see if you can come up with an as intellectual explanation as Torch. Oh, God. We're laying the pretension on fake here. Yeah.
Deeper Meanings and Criticisms of Torch's Work
00:30:45
Speaker
So yeah, before we go into the break, the show notes and sources are, as always, on GermanRappPodcast.com, which is a domain that still exists.
00:30:57
Speaker
And I will have to renew in the next seven days. and That's fine. Don't worry about it. It's going to be there when you're listening to this. Exactly. It's going to be there when you listen to it. This is true. Okay. And now we will go into the break and just to track number one, actually.
00:31:26
Speaker
Okay, we're back. What did you think of that? I thought it was pretty cool. I liked it a lot. I think that his style is definitely evocative of that late 90s sort of version of hip-hop. You can see the glam-hop with all the models and then big, you know, fancy cars and jacuzzis and stuff in the video. So that's very like very much dated as part of the period, but more interesting maybe than I had expected from him. And obviously this is a guy who thinks of himself as an intellectual. So maybe I should have expected more in the first place, but it was cool. I liked it a lot. And I have thoughts on it, but I don't know if you want to introduce the audience to the song or. Okay. Yeah, I should, should.
00:32:10
Speaker
That's a good, good point. Okay. So the song is actually called, we are one, my stars. So we used to be stars. And obviously he sees it as an advanced chemistry song or the one advanced chemistry song from the album kind of,
00:32:24
Speaker
referring to their, what used to be their fame, even though at this point he was still quite famous. But yeah, great. But let me know more of your thoughts. Yeah. So I'm i'm going to run through the song more or less chronologically.
00:32:40
Speaker
The first verse he's talking about, well, when they used to be stars and he's talking about the way that that weighed on him, the expectations that were, Flirting around him forever in terms of making music that was digestible, making music that was marketable, and sort of the idea of hitting metrics in order to retain his position of power and position of authority and fame within that industry.
00:33:10
Speaker
Eventually, he starts talking about like, okay, well, now we're out of it. The stardom is behind us, the fame is behind us. And so now I'm happy that those expectations are no longer there. And I'm happy to let new generations move forward and innovate on their style and innovate on my style. He even specifically says at one point, you know, you got your style from me.
00:33:30
Speaker
um So there's that level of machismo where he says, you know, I'm still the one who defined how you guys think of hip hop today. ah But I'll let you take the torch, ah no pun intended, from me because i don't have to worry about what it's like to be on top anymore. Right.
00:33:52
Speaker
Beyond that, you know, he uses lots of imagery of what he considers as authentic hip hop. He has like graffiti feature. He has breakdance featured and From what I can see from the videography, he is in like what seems to be isolated, like warehouses or or like the back of clubs and stuff like that, where it's not really venues that are associated with with like music and and marketed music it's more like what he considers hey like this is a breakout break dance circle or whatever this is what it's like to be part of hip-hop and at some point during the video uh tony l rolls up in a limousine and
00:34:33
Speaker
This is where maybe my analysis goes off the rails a little. I think he effectively is kidnapping Torch. ah Maybe not like physically kidnapping him, but definitely guilting him into getting into this limousine and sort walking away from what he considers the authentic hip hop lifestyle.
00:34:50
Speaker
And he pulls Torch. And says, look, like you and I were famous. And I think that there's like a, you know, like a duty to that. Like we still got to uphold whatever position we did hold in in hip hop at that time when we were part of advanced chemistry together. So get out there and do what you have to do to to remain famous or remain influential because that's your duty. effectively to the industry. and And at the end, it's pretty interesting. He drops him off in front of a stage with with Torch's name on the on the cover where it says, you know, Torch is going to be performing tonight and a big crowd silently staring at him. And so...
00:35:27
Speaker
We sort of get back to that initial message that was at the very beginning, which is the expectations, whether he likes it or not, the expectations are there back on him again because Tony L has pulled him back into that lifestyle and is telling him, you are mandated to keep doing what you're doing. You got to keep making money, got to keep being influential, and Torch doesn't want it.
00:35:48
Speaker
Yeah. That's what I pulled from it. I'd like to see what he says. I love it. Well, I mean, it's very different from Torch's analysis, which you could have probably guessed. I mean, so you will have to visually describe what you're seeing. Torch says it's this.
00:36:04
Speaker
up Okay, so Torch is likening the song We Used To Be Stars to a Mobius strip. Do you want explain to the audience, or should I'm not sure i I will try. But I think this is, again, where I loved your analysis, and I think it's very much like, yeah, the idea is like, it's not super crazy concept to say, like, yeah, we had our time, we shaped hip-hop or our culture, or whatever, in a certain way, and we're passing it on with both, like, melancholy, but also...
00:36:35
Speaker
Kind of an awareness that the future generation will, you know, take the torch. And then again, i liked your analysis at the end as well. That like, yeah, he's kind of clearly not sure if Tony Elk kidnaps him or not. But yeah, that's sort of implied. And clearly he doesn't see the crowd the same way at the very end of the song as he does at the beginning. So there's some disconnect there. But we don't talk about the crowd or anything like that in the book, although we talk about the music video and he says, as in the text and in the video, there are different time perspectives.
00:37:11
Speaker
It's a play on past, present and future. A 360 degree time loop, which in mathematics is described as a Mobius strip, basically.
00:37:25
Speaker
And just like paintings by Escher, which you might know, like famous illusionist sort of like in terms of painting style.
00:37:35
Speaker
And is from every viewpoint, it's a different picture. And he says that basically we talk about in melancholy, nostalgic way about advanced chemistry.
00:37:49
Speaker
But the time in the song seems to be the year 2000, at which point they were actually not really stars yet, but underground stars. And in reality, he's actually talking about the future, which the song will be viewed at.
00:38:06
Speaker
And we kind of go off the rails there. I'm not going to go through the full thing. But he just keeps talking about present, past, and future. And one part, again, that is that sort of it starts with a limo and ends with limo.
00:38:19
Speaker
It's part of the loop. and But I really, really wonder if 2000's Torch has the same view on this as 2021 Torch.
00:38:30
Speaker
Because this is not what I got from it at all. Okay, look, I understand where he's coming from with the comparison to the Mobius strip. I understand the idea of like the time loop and no matter where you are in the video, there's commentary on both the present, the past and the future.
00:38:52
Speaker
it makes sense. I completely agree with you. I think when Torch wrote this song and performed it, he wasn't thinking of this as like a, ah like speaking to the audience in the future as a commentary on advanced chemistry and his career in the past, which is now 10 years, you know, after the release of the album or whatever.
00:39:13
Speaker
But I mean, it's cool in concept and I like it when, you know, people talk and try to connect things to more esoteric ideas like the Mobius strip. So sure. Yeah. Yeah. mean, it's fun. It's fun. And we can talk about it. So that's good. Like it gives it a bit more different kind of depth, I guess, even if it comes from Torch and not 2000s Torch, potentially.
00:39:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:37
Speaker
He also talks about, despite this complex concept, he didn't want it to be a kind of artsy art video.
00:39:48
Speaker
And so like magicians with their tricks, he wanted to distract the audience with rap cliches like cars, the posse shots, girls in the pool, breakdance and trash can that's on fire.
00:40:01
Speaker
Right, of course. The cliche of rap videos in the 80s and 90s. It was all a ruse. The reason that he did the videography to to you know make subjects of women's asses and nice cars and having a lot of money and alcohol is not because he actually believes that those things are important, but because he believes that telling the audience those things are important while also saying a different message is actually what he wanted.
00:40:30
Speaker
He was just diverting us 20 years in the past. Yes, that's where a future part of it comes in.
Torch as an Intellectual Artist and His Influence on German Hip Hop
00:40:37
Speaker
He's too goddamn smart for us. Yeah, I know. he tricked us again.
00:40:41
Speaker
ah See, I just thought, I was like, well, clearly I'm just watching a rap video from Lil Wayne because there's a bunch of asses and alcohol in my face. So that's obviously what the artist wants me to take away from this.
00:40:54
Speaker
But you missed the Mobius strip. Torch got us again. Missed the Mobius strip. Yeah, I know. It's a classic. So we finished a chapter on this, of the pages on this song in his book with like the song and video had two functions.
00:41:10
Speaker
To give the viewers what they know and expect. So i yeah, Lil' Bane video with asses and alcohol and money. But also to let his decoders, which i didn't mention, he early on talks about decoding as an art form. So basically to look at the deeper meaning, but he uses different terminology.
00:41:30
Speaker
and to look behind the surface to dig and he says I think so he maybe I'm not sure it sounds a little bit condescending but he says I think most just saw the the bright colors and the girls but forgive them yeah thank god you know yeah so you're forgiven dog i was worried that when i saw the asses and the alcohol in the cars he was gonna hold it against me personally he was gonna seek me out and he was gonna say you had failed me you were supposed to decode this this was a cipher and you have failed my test but i'm glad that he's actually gracious enough to allow me to continue to live
00:42:14
Speaker
Yeah, I actually, I want, i kind of want this, is this a trope? Like the kind of and sort of gangster, not gangster rapper, but like prestige rapper, whatever you want to call it, who is actually like a an intellectual genius and is playing everyone.
00:42:29
Speaker
So I think that's a great trope. That was his trope. And bizarrely, this is not where the chapter ends. We actually have in smaller print a quote, which I'm debating if I should read it in full.
00:42:45
Speaker
Okay. I think I might as well, because I don't know which parts to pick out. So this is a quote by Dr. Peter Michael Plourd, who is um a professor at the University of District of Columbia.
00:43:05
Speaker
And he says, just meeting Torch in 1993 in NYC was improbable. I was an emmy from Massachusetts in the battle for world supremacy and he was a young rapper there visiting from Germany during doing new music seminar week.
00:43:19
Speaker
At the time, I was in college and had no inkling I'd also become a mathematics professor and how our destinies would become intertwined or entangled, if you will. Torch's story is all about possibilities and probabilities, which is also found at the heart of quantum mechanics.
00:43:36
Speaker
The concept of the once and future is important to Torture's story and that of King Arthur and Excalibur. What? Yes, I'm not picking this i've Also this book. Yes, well, that's why I think the whole quote is important for context. Because how how could I pick out any part of this? And by 1993, I was already recording in the rap group Excalibur.
00:43:59
Speaker
again connected to Excalibur, and was hopelessly intrigued by Mobius trips and the concept of time travel and infinity. In fact, my first solo album would later be titled Infinity with a funny spelling.
00:44:14
Speaker
Now still a very active MC as Professor Lyrical, I am heavily involved in developing quantum literacy programs at the higher education level and can unequivocally state the story in his book is not only possible through lens of quantum entanglement, where the very odds of an electron's position can collapse upon merely being observed and where an electron can be in two different places at the same time. It is probable in the quantum realm where superposition is reality and not simply the stuff of science fiction.
00:44:44
Speaker
This dude is a, he's yapping. Yeah. He's a professional yapper. I know. He was like, I met Torch once at a conference in 1997 and I'm a math professor now who studies quantum mechanics and also joined Excalibur.
00:45:01
Speaker
And by the way, quantum superposition. Yeah, I know. It's great. What is happening? I'm so happy this book came out before AI because otherwise I would think this is like chat chippity. It's just like AI slop. What was he comparing? He was saying Torch's career is he's comparing that to quantum superposition, to quantum entanglement? Yes. Yeah.
00:45:26
Speaker
Because of the idea of potential. Yeah. So he clearly Torch was like, I'm writing this book. You're a guy writes things. You're a who's a professor. Yeah, you're a professor. You write things.
00:45:40
Speaker
And is there any relation to quantum entanglement? And I was like, yeah, I mean, it's all probability. Yeah, I'll give you a quote. Sure. yeah Let me write you up something in this email real quick. Just toss this in the book, I guess.
00:45:54
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. i can unequivocally state that the story in his book is not only possible through the lens of quantum entanglement, blah, blah. So yeah, the story in his book, which I'm sure he read, is possible for quantum entanglement, as is probably the story in most books.
00:46:12
Speaker
But yeah. Anyways, I thought it was interesting to see his perspective on this, and I'm glad we got enlightened because our interpretation was clearly that.
00:46:23
Speaker
No, that was really valuable insight. Next time I'm watching Torch's video about how we used to be stars, I'll start considering... quantum superposition and how that relates to the Mobius strip of you know the asses that are jiggling as they get out of the jacuzzi or whatever Exactly. I do think some of this is also, don't want to be too hard on torture. Some of this is he later on says in some interviews, like some actually quite recent ones that have like 500 views on YouTube. And one of them is mine now is where he talks about sort of the role of the artist and that the artist is sort of magician. We've heard a bit of that in the book as well. of course And that it's kind of the job of the artist to keep up the illusion and to have some kind of trick as to how the art is being made.
00:47:15
Speaker
And I'm wondering if Torch, the artist in this book, to some extent, uses that again, where he's like, oh, yeah, well, of course it's a Mobius strip. But actually, he doesn't know because usually artists don't actually know exactly how the art is made, right? Or it's very intuitive process.
00:47:34
Speaker
Of course. So I don't know. Maybe he's playing that. You're saying this is actually a meta continuation of what he was doing when he was writing the music. When he was writing the music, He needed to sustain ah this image or the illusion that he was such a popular rapper or whatever. Not even to say he wasn't, but he needed to sustain the illusion of being this incredible artist. And now in 2021 or whatever, when the book released, he has to do the exact same thing.
00:48:03
Speaker
And this time, instead of using flashy music videos, he's using mathematics and other actually yeah esoteric ideas to keep people engaged with the art. Yeah, yeah. like it.
00:48:15
Speaker
Yeah, maybe that's, yeah, you put it in much better words than I did, yeah. And I like the meta idea for sure. There's also some sketchbook pages or like sort of his like sketchbook thing where he's written the word kinematic and written S equals V times T and things like that. So some mathy stuff. Yep, that seems mathy to me.
00:48:39
Speaker
Yeah. So I guess that gives some credence to the idea that maybe he was already operating on this idea back then. Right. Unless he went back later and it made up these notes, which feels a bit, I'm not sure. But also on the other hand, now that I'm looking at these notes in more detail, because I have the page open.
00:48:58
Speaker
He had some columns with 1980, 2000, and then very suspiciously the third column is 2020, which is when the book was published. So not sure if back in 2000 he picked out 2020 as a specific year. Right.
00:49:13
Speaker
He was like, this is the year we're publishing. Clearly, I have to make it, you know, associated. Mm hmm. So, yeah, I don't look. Are we giving torch enough credit?
00:49:24
Speaker
How do we know he wasn't like an autistic super genius that actually thought every word in this book while he was making the album? And this is entirely legitimate.
00:49:35
Speaker
Good point. Yeah. Yeah, we will never know, I guess, unless we get him on the show, of course. yeah Torch, come on the show. Yeah, I think he gives interviews still, so who knows, maybe. yeah a phone call Yeah.
00:49:50
Speaker
Okay, we'll go to another track now. And yeah, which with another great Torch explanation of what it's about. This one's a bit more trippy, so get ready for that.
00:50:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:04
Speaker
Okay, so now we just watched the title track, Blue Velvet, which George himself says is the weirdest track on the album. It's named, as the whole album is, after the movie Blue Velvet. And in the movie, there's a specific kind of crazy scene where one of the characters, Dorothy, is sexually assaulted by a psychopath, Frank.
00:50:29
Speaker
and Jeffrey, another character, watches from her closet kind of maybe knowing that he can't help her because if he steps out he might be murdered as well so yeah I haven't seen the movie so I don't know if this is a great review for it if the scene exists in it but apparently it's a masterpiece according to IMDB and so forth so who knows apparently Torch likes it and he made a track which we'll listen to now
00:51:14
Speaker
What are your thoughts on it? Well, he's definitely right when he says it's the weirdest track. um It's trippy and the lyrics are unusual. yeah They're from multiple perspectives.
00:51:27
Speaker
um You can definitely see all of his references to the movie. There's lots of like use of violent language. There's use of real high intensity emotions. There's allusions to sexual assault and lust and All of these things that presumably are subjects of the scene in the movie.
00:51:49
Speaker
I don't know how to summarize it, frankly, because it's so unusual. i think it's a good one to go out and listen. It will be in the show notes. It's weird one, but I think it's the closest the album comes to really being out there and being very experimental.
00:52:07
Speaker
Yes, this is definitely not something I would consider like widely marketable. I wouldn't consider this something that just put on the radio or, you know, toss the CD on while you're hanging out with your friends. This is like a creepy meditation on the movie and the scene and sort of, I guess, to an extent, what must have been going on in the minds of the characters, maybe.
00:52:30
Speaker
Or I'm trying to find the word personification of certain objects. within the scene in the movie. It's really interesting and it's not like the previous song or track. Exactly. Yeah, I picked those two because the previous one is pretty much the polar opposite of this. I think it could probably not be more different. The whole album is quite interesting and we've made fun of Torch a bit in this podcast, but I think it's worth a listen.
00:52:59
Speaker
This one, again, Torch's analysis, 20 years later is maybe a little bit strange. So we'll get to that now.
00:53:09
Speaker
So he says that it's the weirdest track on the album. I think we agree. Even though you haven't heard the whole album, but yeah, it's it's definitely my opinion, the weirdest. Wait, before we get to his analysis, can I make a guess at what he's going to connect? Oh yes, please. Please give me a guess. Okay.
00:53:26
Speaker
but For like a little bit of reference here for the audience, I'm looking at the translated lyrics. And the first part is about like the personification of a nightgown. It's lust. It's ah the way that I guess Dorothy felt being watched or being stalked by this psychopath.
00:53:48
Speaker
There's several allusions to infinity and space. I'm going to guess that he's going to connect it to the scientific concept of dark matter, which is always around you and unobservable, but inevitably impacts physics, even though we don't understand it. I'm going to say he connects it to dark matter. Sean, it's... I love that guess. It's completely wrong, but I love it. I think he you could have done so well as an editor for Torch because this is really lackluster. This like explanation that he has here is very short.
00:54:22
Speaker
The other one was like several pages here. We just have one page and the second page, which we'll get to, which is not by him. That means quote by someone else. And... Yeah, no scientific explanations here, actually.
00:54:34
Speaker
The only pseudo-scientific concept we get to is the Trinity, because there's three characters. And it's not a dimension time this time, it's the dimension space.
00:54:46
Speaker
And so I guess that's related to dark matter to some extent. Yeah. I mean, dark matter impacts how space and gravity work together. so you know. Exactly. Yeah. I think there's some credence to my idea here.
00:54:57
Speaker
So I think he had the starting points of this great idea that you formulated, but he didn't quite get there. Even though, you know, Torch is scientific genius. He didn't go that far. And um then we get to the wild shit.
00:55:11
Speaker
So basically, first he rehashes what I just said before. It's basically that Jeffrey Beaumont is in the closet in the movie, in a closet, and Dorothy Valens is sexually assaulted by Frank Booth, the psychopath.
00:55:28
Speaker
Then he says, because it's quite short, I think I'm going to translate most of it. What does this have to do with hip hop? Absolutely nothing. But the three people built a trinity.
00:55:40
Speaker
But this time, not in the dimension time. Like, we actually... This is also another good thing that we picked those two songs, because in the other one, we had a trinity with time, right? Past, present, and future. But in the dimension space.
00:55:53
Speaker
In the text, I take different perspectives, which we then can translate to hip-hop. Now, how do we translate these to hip-hop? Do you have any guesses? Okay. I'm going to say he's making a return to the like, to his earlier reference of connecting like BPM or like characteristics of the music itself to hip hop. So I'm going to say that it's like, depending on the action being described in each verse,
00:56:22
Speaker
No, I got nothing. I'm trying so hard. Honestly, I can see I can see it. It's tricky. It's tricky. I think in a million years, I could not guess this. Please. And it's very, what makes it extra difficult for you is because his explanation, the other one was so detailed and kind of had weirdly a lot of strange details that like, I'm almost surprised he managed to,
00:56:45
Speaker
I'm going to say makeup. here Here, he... I don't know. it feels It feels very strange. So he says, let's say the ah person watching is Jeffrey Bermond, like we said from the movie, who has to see how hip-hop, in brackets Dorothy, is sexually assaulted.
00:57:07
Speaker
So hip-hop is being... sexually assaulted or of course done bad things too. Right. But he could also help Dorothy. But because he doesn't do that, he is a little bit of Frank Booth.
00:57:18
Speaker
So he becomes an accomplice in a way. At the same time, he's also a victim because he has to witness this act.
00:57:30
Speaker
Hold on. Hold on. So Dorothy is hip hop. I see where he's coming from. He's not, I mean, this isn't like some stroke of genius. He's just literally saying the market and the popularization of hip hop has ruined what I consider authentic.
00:57:51
Speaker
And therefore I'm upset because I probably could have affected this, but also I'm traumatized because I couldn't stop this. Yeah, but also it's like a weirdly straightforward set of parallels that he's drawing between this really horrific scene in Blue Velvet and what he considers being done to hip-hop, you know, when he releases his album. That's... It's certainly something.
00:58:21
Speaker
Well, we're getting to a bit more of something because the next one is even wilder and inappropriate, in my opinion, to compare this. Dorothy could also be the rapper Torch.
00:58:33
Speaker
which is dissed by gangster rap in brackets Frank. Yes. And the hip hop scene is like Jeffrey in the closet and just looks by.
00:58:47
Speaker
There's no fucking way. I'm not making this up. Torch just lost so much credibility. There's no way he was like, I've basically i've been metaphorically sexually assaulted by a psychopath because gangster rappers like to make fun of me in their music.
00:59:04
Speaker
There's actually no fucking way that he was like, this this seems like a good parallel to draw, guys. yeah I'm putting this in a book. I think he had nothing on this song. think that was his weirdest artsy take. ah I think he was just like, oh, this movie is really fucked up and interesting. kind of like it, which I mean, yeah I think we've all felt about movies at some point this way. And then he's like, I'm going to make a song that reflects this.
00:59:29
Speaker
And now again, we get to the post-talk part. He tries to apply it to hip hop in some way because hip hop is this sacred thing to him. And there can't be a song in his album that isn't hip hop. And this application here is really not doing him any service. Yeah.
00:59:43
Speaker
Yeah. And then he says like, but all the roles kind of blur together. So you can't really kind of interpret clearly one feeling or and anything specific. So he's kind of like backing away from his own explanation here again, thankfully. Very wishy-washy. Yeah. So it's both the feeling of helplessness, victim, and perpetrator at the same time.
01:00:09
Speaker
And then he says in one podcast, not ours, like this podcast, just to clarify for the audience. song was interpreted as an example of um gender roles in rap.
01:00:22
Speaker
um And then he says another sentence in the same paragraph, for me as an artist, the main thing is um to find fulfillment and bring myself into it. Which I'm like, okay, it's not really related to anything you've said here, but yeah.
01:00:40
Speaker
Does he expand on gender roles at all? No, doesn't. He just says these are gender roles, by the way. Yeah, we have not we don't have time for it today, but there's also another song called Hey Mรคdel, which is like, a girl, which is sort of what you would expect with that title, in a way.
01:00:58
Speaker
and In his analysis in the book, he says that the Mรคdel is, drumroll, hip-hop, an analogy for hip-hop. Wow. She is hip-hop. Wow. Yeah, and they kind of grew apart over time, and that's, yeah. Oh, that's fucked up. No. Yeah.
01:01:15
Speaker
And then he pines for hip hop. He wishes they could have what they used to have. make Wishes they could have what they used to have. And he mourns all the things that they used to do together. and Exactly, you already got the song down. Like haven't even heard it, but you actually know exactly what it's about. I'm an autistic genius with synesthesia. Did you realize?
01:01:39
Speaker
We're learning so many things today. Your Heidelberg connection. The torches were the same person. Yeah, exactly. And then we get a full page of a quote by rapper and DJ Rick Ski. It basically just talks about the album of Blue Velvet being like an interesting album, which often was like went above and beyond the genre and in the different areas.
01:02:03
Speaker
And that torches for him the first kind of serious German rap artist and talks about how wide the range of Blue Velvet as an album is. But the thing is, Torch, this is in the category of the song Blue Velvet in his book.
01:02:20
Speaker
And the leading sentence is the rapper and DJ Rixky about the song Blue Velvet proceeds to quote him talking about the album Blue Velvet, not mentioning the song in a single line.
01:02:32
Speaker
So Torch wanted to just give himself some credit and was like, this guy was talking about my album, but the album is titled the same as the track, so I'll just slap it on the track page. Exactly, exactly. it's Perfect. Perfect. Incredible decision making. His editor must have loved that.
01:02:50
Speaker
Yeah. One more fun fact about the song, actually, which I think is really cool, is that the samples from the song are, the guy you're talking is Klaus Kinski.
01:03:01
Speaker
So Klaus Kinski is the main actor that Werner Herzog worked with. And for our audience, Werner Herzog made this really interesting documentary. He has a very interesting view on the world.
01:03:12
Speaker
Go check him out. We don't have time to talk about what exactly he represents. But Klaus Kinski, very, very strange man, very weird actor. Actually threatened to kill Werner Herzog several times on set. Holy shit. Yeah, I can... But we can't go off the rails too much. But basically, yeah, kind of weird, fucked up...
01:03:29
Speaker
actor who it's like if Heath Ledger played the Joker but twenty four seven jesus Oh, Christ. Basically that kind of thing. Also in the 70s, 80s.
01:03:40
Speaker
So yeah, interesting character. Definitely interesting choice and I think a good choice for this track. Because I can definitely see it like kind of him. He could have played that psychopath in the movie, probably right convincingly, even though he didn't.
01:03:53
Speaker
Okay. completely i did not expect this kind of unrelated, overlepting actor I know this track from the You know what? Fair enough, though.
01:04:04
Speaker
I mean, Torch had a vision. Torch has a good taste in literature and film and stuff like that, but some of his post-hoc... explanations of what he did kind of do him at this service in my opinion because the art maybe would have been better without this accompanying book or maybe maybe we just leave the commentary off next time torch exactly just let the audience deal with it death of the author as they say Exactly, yeah.
01:04:32
Speaker
So i like I like the explanations you had for the songs more than but his own. Well, look, hey, look, this is a great reference. Torch, if you have another album coming out and you need someone to second your bullshit...
01:04:47
Speaker
Hit me up. Hit my lock. Yeah. Maybe we can get a track on Dark Matter this time. i haven't exactly I haven't read all the track descriptions, so maybe there is one on Dark Matter. yeah so Well, yeah. Clearly he would have known about it at that time yeah so and been writing about it. So I look forward to seeing the Dark Matter track that inevitably comes up ah later.
01:05:06
Speaker
who So yeah, but that was Torch. Or that was his album at least. His career later on. We see him in some interviews. I think he had one, like a couple more live appearances in the 2000s, but no new solo album or anything like that. no good.
01:05:25
Speaker
Maybe some collab tracks with others. Yeah, some features. Yeah, he was kind of happy to go into retirement and or like sort of semi-retirement, but does like the clearly likes to be given credit as one of the...
01:05:38
Speaker
founding fathers of German hip-hop, which I think is to some extent deserved. There was a lot of lyricism there that I think he was almost like a little bit early. And if he had had more examples of like conscious rap and things like that, I think he could have done even better.
01:05:54
Speaker
But yeah, ah In terms of musical style and so forth, he didn't have as big of an impact, I think, as he might like to believe himself. We will see some other examples of that that really shaped things a lot more when it comes to the musicality of it. But I think in terms of content and what he represented, he was definitely a huge force.
01:06:14
Speaker
But there are some weird later explanations of why he did what he did in what way. after so Very entertaining stuff. I appreciate it. And I'm glad this book is not available online. I can recommend it to anyone who wants a weird curiosity because who knows how long it's going to stay in print.
01:06:34
Speaker
That's a good point. I'm surprised it's still in print, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah, it's still in print. We will put a link in the show notes, 36 euros. I think it was worth it for the entertainment value that I got.
01:06:46
Speaker
Although I didn't expect it. I expected it to be a sort of rapper autobiography talking a lot about his life. And I basically, I know nothing about him still. I mean, not any more than I know from the interviews and his Wikipedia page, basically.
01:06:58
Speaker
But it Yeah. Speaking of the Wikipedia page, I'd just like to tack something on real quick. Okay, yeah. I think that it's super important and we need to let the listeners know and put this in the in the resources when we let them. He also released a wine by the same name as the album.
01:07:16
Speaker
Oh, yes. I forgot about that. I saw that early on in research. Yes. Actually incredible. I'd like to taste it. At some point in the future, we have to commit and get a bottle each.
01:07:27
Speaker
Honestly, we will record one episode in the same physical location. We will open a bottle of blue velvet. Exactly. And sip on the finest wine known to man. And honestly, isn't it, now that we know a bit more about this guy, it makes so much sense that he is a wine with an album.
01:07:45
Speaker
Not only is he the first first German rapper to re release a book with an album, he also the first German rapper or maybe rapper period to release book. wine with an album. yeah No, it was a vision. It was a vision he had and it's about 36 euro per liter. so Oh, we is it? It is. i just looked it up.
01:08:07
Speaker
So he likes the number 36 as well because that's the price for the book too. Maybe there's some significance. there There is a significance there. We just don't know it yet. okay yeah We'll see. In another 20 years he'll read another book about pricing his wine.
01:08:20
Speaker
i was also interested in figuring out this is kind of torture adjacent because linguist, the guy from advanced chemistry, which he was a part of, but is an actual professor now.
01:08:33
Speaker
I was wondering, I looked this up. I asked, mean, I'm sorry. I asked AI, are there any hip hop artists or rappers that are now full like tenured professors?
01:08:43
Speaker
And they did not know about linguist, obviously, but I also didn't really get a lot of examples from any English-speaking ones, because most of them, there are some, but they all got guest speaker at MIT or guest professor at MIT for music or something like that. But someone that's completely unrelated to music in their academic career, I don't think there is there that many. So...
01:09:06
Speaker
That's interesting, I guess. but That is interesting. He should be proud. Yeah. So yeah, they, so linguist, as far as I know, only, only hip hop artists who is also professor now.
01:09:21
Speaker
He's the greatest to ever do it. And by it, I mean, both hip hop and tenured teaching. Yeah, maybe Torch can still catch up and also become professor of something. think that's missing from... Professor b s of Professor of BS. Blauersamt.
01:09:38
Speaker
Blauersamt, exactly. Should be its own field of study, honestly. So much we haven't covered yet. fear Okay, I think that's where we'll end it. Thank you for listening.
01:09:52
Speaker
And until next time.