I’ve been especially looking forward to this interview with media theorist, cultural critic and hip-hop futurist Roy Christopher, author of one of my favourite books of the past decade, Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future.
A treatise on the common origins, concerns and themes of cyberpunk and rap music that takes in William Gibson, the CCRU, Rammellzee and The Bomb Squad, it’s a mythopoeic masterpiece of research and criticism.
We spoke for an hour about his origins in BMX zine culture, the life of a culture journalist, his journey into media theory, and his influences from Spike Jonze to Marshall McLuhan. Read on for links, recommendations, and a list of the key figures Roy and I discussed.
Show links and recommendations
Roy’s follow-up to Dead Precedents was Boogie Down Predictions: Hip-Hop, Time and Afrofuturism, a compendium of essays, interviews, poems, fragments and analysis of the ideas found in the roots and futures of rap. The book is available via the excellent Strange Attractor, a small press that has published some incredible books (check out their beautiful edition of Phil Baker’s quintessential biography of Austin Osman Spare).
We talked a little about Marshall McLuhan, whose media theory Roy explores and expands in his next book, The Medium Picture. I found this Marshall McLuhan profile from YouTube philosophy channel Carefree Wandering, which is a good primer on his ideas. I also found an archived online copy of his seminal and much-quoted essay, ‘The Medium is the Message’.
To explore Roy’s BMX zine days, find essays and interviews from his time making Front Wheel Drive and The Unexplained archived in his collections Follow For Now Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. Among the zines produced by Spike Jonze, Mark Lewman and Andy Jenkins, the most famous was Freestylin, which ran from 1984 to 1989. You can find archived copies of Freestylin Magazine at the fantastic site oldschoolmags.com.
The Beastie Boys’ magazine Grand Royal ran from 1993 to 1997. Here’s a link to an Atlantic piece on the history of the magazine (paywalled), and another by Flood Magazine. Some judicious searching will scare up some digital copies via Reddit and other places. He also mentions Dirt Magazine.
Mark Lewman’s history in BMX culture is explored in depth via this interview at Slam City. Andy Jenkins is still active as an artist and designer - check out his website here. Spike Jonze is Spike Jonze, and we’re all grateful for that. Scottish folks with a passion for zines or curiosity about that very much thriving subculture would do well to visit Glasgow Zine Library, where I hosted an event earlier his year.
Roy moved to Seattle in 1993, something I would very much like to do myself if I ever discover a time machine. He wrote freelance for The Rocket, a respected Seattle music paper whose run from 1979-2000 is archived here, featuring interviews with the likes of Nirvana and Mudhoney along with Roy’s writing on hip-hop and other topics. He also mentions Pandemonium (Tacoma’s equivalent paper), but the internet seems to have swallowed all digital traces of that one.
That led us into a discussion of modern publishing trends and Substack generally, both of us are great believers in its potential as a platform, and glad to see the resurgence of the traditional email newsletter. Here’s a link to Roy's excellent Substack. If you want a taste of the kinds of things I’ve been publishing here lately, check out my Cyberpunk Classics feature from last week (it covers a few SF writers mentioned in this episode too).
We talked about Mark Fisher, whose writing Roy admired, but who was less of a formative influence perhaps for Roy than he was for me. I’ve linked to Fisher’s books plenty of times before, but perhaps this is a timely reminder that it’s free to browse the whole k-punk archive, the bones of which contains some of Fisher’s best writing, and his seminal critical work on artists like Burial.
Fisher was of course a member of the CCRU alongside Kodwu Eshun. His seminal More Brilliant Than The Sun is hard to find in print, so if you’re curious, take a wander over to the Internet Archive, or find out what Eshun has been up to more recently with the amazing art project Otolith Group.
At one point Roy mentions a list of other writers, books and theorists who have influenced him. He says James Gleick’s Chaos: Making a New Science inspired him to write a book; Glick’s pop science classic was the first mainstream book to describe chaos theory. Roy has written about how Gleick’s book changed his life - read that essay here. He also mentions Howard Rheingold, who has some interesting ideas about the nature of online communities:
Next he tips his hat to Douglas Rushkoff, whose latest Survival of the Richest is essential reading. His podcast Team Human is one of my absolute favourites. I’ve been following his work since the 2006 Vertigo comic Testament.
Roy also mentions how much he admires the work of Annalee Newitz, an author, editor, journalist (and more! They wear many hats). Newitz’s latest science fiction novel is The Terraformers, and their latest nonfiction book is Stories are Weapons. Both look excellent, and I’m also fan of their culture writing for io9 and other places.
Other figures Roy mentions who you might want to dig into in more detail are Mark Dery, Steven Shaviro, Charles Mudede, Erik Davis, Tim Maughan, Charles Yu, and of course the great William Gibson (who has also endorsed Roy’s next book). The artist activist and author Kembrew McLeod also got a shout out, and I mentioned my long-standing admiration for the rise and rise of JPEGMAFIA as an independent artist.
We also briefly discussed some of the Boogie Down Predictions contributors, including Jeff Chang (author of Can't Stop Won't Stop and Total Chaos), Juice Aleem, who I spoke to for Episode 18 about hip-hop, afrofuturism, cultural archivism and much more, and Andre Sirois aka DJ Foodstamp, a purveyor of fine cut-and-paste mixtapes.
This led us into a discussion of Roy’s last nonfiction book, Escape Philosophy: Journeys Beyond The Human Body. Roy says this book grew out of a stalled project for the 33 and 1/3 series published by Bloomsbury Roy wanted to write about Public Enemy, but Christopher Wiengarten ended up taking on It Takes Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Instead, Roy wrote about the lesser-known but cult classic by Godflesh, Streetcleaner (from 1989). The album is just ten of your Yanqui dollars on Bandcamp.
I briefly mentioned two books that put me in a similar zone to Escape Philosophy; those were Thomas Ligotti - The Conspiracy Against The Human Race, and Eugene Thacker - In The Dust of This Planet. Roy also mentioned Thomas Kuhn’s The Essential Tension.
Discussing Roy’s fiction debut, Different Waves, Different Depths we talked about my old favourite Philip K. Dick. Roy’s stories reminded me a bit of Dick’s classic California counter-culture novels, the best of which is of course A Scanner Darkly.
The movie adaptation of Scanner from Richard Linklater is probably the best canonical adaptation of a PKD novel, not counting ‘unofficial’ but nonetheless authentic Dickian classics like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Southland Tales. As I pitched Roy, I think he’d be an excellent choice to adapt UBIK, Dick’s most ambitious novel. Roy, if you’re reading this, let’s talk. We’ll get Spike on board and call Hollywood.
Incidentally, I recently watched the extended ‘Cannes cut’ of Southland Tales, and it’s definitely worth seeking out if the offbeat psychedelic weirdness of the original didn’t leave you cold, as it did many critics at the time. I stand by my assessment of this movie as a PKD classic, which contains the finest cinematic performances ever elicited from the actors Dwayne T. Rock Johnson and “Just” Justin Timberlake. I learned after we spoke that Roy and I share a love for Southland Tales; in fact, he wrote a deep dive into the movie back in 2021. Have a read of that below:
Roy’s fiction also put me in mind of the great American master of the short story, Raymond Carver, whose work was brilliantly adapted in the 1993 film Short Cuts. That was directed by Robert Altman, whose cinema verite style went on to influence another, more surrealist filmmaker, Jim Jarmusch. I like anything that puts me in mind of their particular brand of outsider Americana, so I’ll be looking forward to Roy’s next foray into fiction.
Check Roy’s Substack recommends for some more brilliant writing, including Rushkoff and others. Finally we circled back to hip-hop. The academic and rapper I mentioned is Professor Dave Hook aka Solareye. Check out his project The Hip-Hop Studies Listener, his video Rap Academics, and his show A Giant on the Bridge, which is coming to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer.
I also mentioned the subject of my (year 2000!) dissertation, Chester Himes - his detective novel sequence The Harlem Cycle was re-published in collected editions by Scottish imprint Canongate in the 1990s, but those are somewhat hard to find now. Individual novels like A Rage in Harlem can be found more easily (and the 1991 film adaptation, directed by Predator star Bill Duke, is excellent - if liberal with the plot).
Up next…
Thanks for joining me for another episode of Strange Exiles! Episode 27 is already in the can, so I’ll be back in a few weeks time.
In the meantime, if you’re in London, you can catch me reading from my new book The Darkest Timeline in Haringey (N8) at All Good Bookshop on 10 August. There’ll be a short Q&A, then we can hit the bars. I hope to see a few friendly faces.
Read the posts below for more details.
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Thanks for listening. Take care of each other.
-Bram, Glasgow, July 2024
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Episode 26: Roy Christopher - Freestyle Media