Himanshu “Heems” Suri, who goes by moniker Deepak Choppa these days, is celebrating his first solo album since his rap group Das Racist disbanded in 2012. He kicked things off with an exhibit at New York’s Aicon Gallery titled “Eat Pray Thug” after Suri’s upcoming album of the same name. The show, which opened on […]
Ordinarily, we wouldn’t encourage you to look at advertisements in your free time, but this Japanese-market Vitamin Water spot is an easy exception. Soundtracked by a goofily catchy new song about NYC by former Das Racist guy and all-around great rapper Heems (“New/plus York/equals New York!”), a dude with a weird turntable/boombox hybrid for a […]
India’s Advertising Standards Council has issued new regulations banning advertisements that portray people with darker skin negatively “in relation to being attractive to the opposite sex, matrimony, job placement, promotions and other prospects.” Skin lightening is a $600 million dollar industry in India, and though ads have become less obviously prejudiced in recent years, the advertising council […]
As the Israel Defense Forces continue its incursion into Gaza, it’s also fighting a PR war through social media. The IDF frequently posts updates on Twitter that include meme-like, propagandist illustrations, according to a left-leaning Jewish website critical of Israel. Mondoweiss.net argues that the illustrative missives are “being used to justify the killing of hundreds […]
When I get ahold of Alec Reinstein late on Monday night he sounds tired. It’s been a big couple of days for him. Reinstein, better known as Despot, the rapper from Queens who signed to El-P’s Def Jux label in 2004 and has yet to release an album due to his crippling perfectionism, put out […]
On Tuesday, ex-Das Racist member Himanshu Suri will release his debut solo album, Eat Pray Thug. Forging his own path, Heems departs from his former hip-hop group’s serious-not-serious style, digging into darker social and political commentary in raps titled “Patriot Act” and “Suicide by Cop”. But devout fans will recognize, all jokes aside, that Heems […]
You’ve likely seen his collaboration with Das Racist or his Internet hashtag and blog #WhitePeopleDoingYoga, but it was this is the image by Chiraag Bhakta, who goes by moniker *Pardon My Hindi, that recently caught ANIMAL’s attention: How is Columbus Day still a thing? A photo posted by Chiraag B. (@pardonmyhindi) on Oct 10, 2014 […]
Das Racist, the beloved Brooklyn hip-hop group, may be no more, but former member Dapwell is keeping busy and still hilarious. For just one of his many projects, he’s printing stop-and-frisk shirts featuring our former mayor and his infamous statement that the NYPD “disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little.” At the time, 91% of those subjected […]
A huge blow to independent radio today — the widely respected and popular New York station East Village Radio has announced that they will stop airing on May 23rd. EV Grieve reported that station CEO Frank Prisinzano lists financial problems as the reason for the shutdown. This is in part due to EVR’s large online audience, […]
In conducting the interviews for this piece, something became clear: The reason that so many people care so deeply about end of 285 Kent, is that 285 Kent was more than a room where bands played. At 285 we witnessed the collapse of genre barriers in real time, as internet rap stars mingled with hardcore […]
