The Ringer - "The Word of God: An Interview With Rakim"
"Q: Walk us through your writing process. What do you draw from, and how do you apply it to music?
A: Early on, I learned how to think like a writer, meaning all day, every time I see a phrase or sign or anything, I’d hold on to important words that stood out. I’m always absorbing and trying to figure out different rhyme schemes. I write notes down on the side of the margins while I’m putting verses together. That way, I won’t get sidetracked and can focus on what I’m writing that moment.
When it’s time to record, I have premeditated rhymes. And I’ll add words as I write along to the music. Sometimes the music tells me what to write. If the music has feeling, it gives me visions, and my head starts spinning, especially if the sample grabs me. Then, thoughts come [to me] in different rhythms. When I’m in the zone, when all the phrases and all the information starts coming, it’s hard to stop it. I hear concepts right away, and words are flowing. I also pay attention to the different rhythms of the words. That’s why I write those sidenotes, so I can come back to them later. It’s a pretty organic process, I would say."
New Yorker - "How the Fridge Changed Flavor"
"In 2010, the open‐data activist Waldo Jaquith decided to make a cheeseburger from scratch, using only agrarian methods. He and his wife had just built a home in the woods of Virginia, where they raised chickens and tended to an extensive vegetable garden. Flush with pride in his self-sufficiency, Jaquith outlined the steps required: bake buns, mince beef, make cheese, harvest lettuce, tomatoes, and onion. Then he realized that he wasn’t nearly committed enough. To really make a cheeseburger from scratch, he would also need to plant, harvest, and grind his own wheat, and raise at least two cows, one for the dairy and another to be slaughtered for the meat.
At this point, Jaquith gave up. The problem wasn’t labor but timing. His tomatoes were in season in late summer, his lettuce ready to harvest in spring and fall. According to the seasonal, pre-refrigeration calendar he was trying to follow, Jaquith would have needed to make his cheese in the springtime, after his dairy cow had given birth: her calf would be slaughtered for the rennet, and the milk intended to feed it repurposed. But the cow that provided his beef wouldn’t be killed until the autumn, when the weather started to get cold. If Jaquith turned the tomatoes into ketchup and aged his cheese in a cellar for six months, until the meat, lettuce, and wheat bun were ready, he could maybe, possibly, make a cheeseburger from scratch. But practically speaking, he concluded, “the cheeseburger couldn’t have existed until nearly a century ago.”
And, in fact, it did not. The cheeseburger is just one of many sensory pleasures made possible by a highly industrialized and refrigerated food system. More obvious ones include the delightful anticipation of pouring a crisp beer at the end of the day, the refreshing clink of ice cubes in a soft drink or a cocktail, and, of course, the joy of licking an ice-cream cone in summer. Brewers, such as Frederick Pabst and Adolphus Busch, were among the first to invest in mechanical refrigeration; without it, American-style lager beer was impossible to make year-round or at scale. David Wondrich, a historian of alcohol, has traced the cocktail back to a custom of drinking a blend of spirits, bitters, and sugar in Britain—but it wasn’t until such drinks met continual, affordable supplies of American ice, in the late nineteenth century, that the art of mixology was born. And though the ancient Chinese, Romans, and Persians all mixed snow or ice with fruit juice or dairy products to make chilled desserts, ice cream only became popular outside élite circles in the mid-eighteen-hundreds."
GQ - "The Memeing of Life"
By Will Welch (Global Editorial Director)
Back in June, I was sitting at a dinner event next to a young writer friend. This was during that extraordinary moment in American politics when President Joe Biden was still on the Democratic ticket but facing mounting pressure to step aside.
The writer friend is wickedly smart, funny, and popular. Plugged-in. The kind of cutting-edge young person who's in all the cutting-edge group chats with all the other cutting-edge kids.
We were talking about the increasingly plausible possibility that Biden might drop out of the race.
"It's gotta be Kamala," my friend said. "I think she can do it." He paused. "And just imagine the memes."
Something about that statement hit my brain like a bolt of lightning. This young person was doing things at once: expressing an earnest and very serious political perspective and expressing a deliriously craven lust for LOLs.
You see, in 2024, the two need not be at odds.
In fact, for a political idea to connect, it very much has to meme.
For whatever reason, this exchange finally made me accept a hard and very modern truth: Right now, the meme is the primary mode of transmission, and the most important currency of our time.
The implications of this are far-reaching. They affect politics, business, news, fashion, every form of culture. Basically, all public-facing communication at scale.
Just a couple weeks after the conversation with the writer that galaxy-brain-memed my mind, I was having dinner with another friend, this time a musician.
He told me that his latest album had yielded disappointing results, and he'd just returned from a tour on which he'd lost money.
He was frustrated because, with the new album, he'd made a rich and complex work of art that he was unwilling and perhaps unable to reimagine as "content."
He resisted cutting his headphone masterpiece up into chunks and pushing it through the social media pipelines.
As a result, the album did not meme. Which means it did not travel. And it did not accrue currency.
Now, it's important to acknowledge here that the concept of the internet meme is some three decades old. But all this is very much new. To be honest, most people still haven't caught on.
Which is why the long-simmering conversation about Joe Biden's age didn't get serious until after the president's infamously disastrous debate with Trump, despite a whole genre of "Joe Biden freeze" memes that had been racking up views and LOLs (yes, memes are unsparingly cruel) for months.
Until the debate we weren't quite ready to think like my writer friend and accept that the freeze memes were showing us the truth and delivering the laughs at the same time.
Once you go galaxy-brain you start realizing that all the biggest cultural juggernauts of the last 12 months or so have been meme machines: Zach Bryan. Elon Musk. Dune: Part 2. The Drake-Kendrick beef.
And, of course, nobody memes as effortlessly and instinctively as Donald Trump himself—although Kamala Harris is a formidable meme machine herself, which suggests the Dems might be competitive in November after all.
Despite all the daily ridiculousness on TikTok, X, IG Reels, and all of our group chats, I don't think the grave importance of this election is lost on America's citizenry. Every news hit and campaign ad makes it extraordinarily clear that the future of the global economy, several wars, the climate, women's reproductive rights, fundamental LGBTQ issues, and much more are all on the ballot. Every day we hear—from both sides, for different reasons—that democracy itself is at stake. This one matters a lot.
Yet in 2024 each day's battle will be won or lost in the meme trenches, with dumb-funny user-generated social videos that make the internet laugh-cry. What a time to be alive.
Meanwhile, I have been grappling with what all this means for me personally, and for GQ. Honestly, on the personal side, at age 43, the thought of mastering CapCut so I can throw myself on the sword of the TikTok algorithm feels equal parts exhausting and demeaning.
But here in the relevance economy, you can't succeed if you're too cool to meme. Dignity is a forgotten virtue and clout is king.
As far as GQ goes, I think we're in good shape.
George Clooney and Brad Pitt have stayed at the center of culture for four decades now, and when we asked them to put on white suits, hop in Brad's pool, and mug for the camera they didn't hesitate.
I think it's a classic magazine cover. I also think it's a good meme. Right now, it's gotta be both to make a splash.
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