Month: November 2021

Although Will Smith is probably better known for his film work than his music these days, his decades-long legacy as one of rap’s foremost pioneers will likely always be too important to ignore. With the Verzuz series paying homage to and highlighting many of the stars of yesteryear, XM Radio host Sway Calloway checked in with the former Fresh Prince on Sway In The Morning to find out whether he had any designs on signing up for a battle.

Surprisingly, Will said that he had been contemplating an appearance — and had even already chosen a potential competitor in LL Cool J — but that he’s been too busy writing and promoting his upcoming book to lock down a date. However, despite both rappers’ 20-plus years of hits, Will maintained that he believed “L is going to body me” in a one-to-hit battle, despite being able to draw upon cultural cornerstones like “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” “Summertime,” “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It,” and “Men In Black.”

However, there was one situation where co-host Heather B could foresee a Will Smith victory. “What’s dope about Will though, Will and L was out when the era when it was the DJ and the rapper,” she noted. “Everybody had their DJ so don’t let [DJ Jazzy] Jeff on the turn tables.” Will agreed, “That’s my secret weapon right there.”

Watch Will Smith discuss a potential Verzuz matchup with the Sway In The Morning crew above.

By the time Chris Oh had hit thirty he already had a real estate company and a few successful businesses to his name. But it wasn’t enough. Oh soon realized that he wasn’t fulfilling the larger-than-life aspirations that had always been a key component of his personality,

“I was fortunate to achieve a lot of goals,” he says, “but when I turned 30 I just said to myself, ‘Is this it, is this what I’m going to do for the rest of my life?’”

Oh knew the only way to realize his true potential would be to dive into something he felt passionate about, which was crafting food in the kitchen. The dream was born from a love for food that grew out of enjoying the flavors of his mother’s home cooking (who Oh refers to as “the best chef in the world”), the responsibility of feeding his little brother while his parents were hard at work, and a steady diet of cooking shows. Just like that, Oh threw away the life he built in his twenties, selling his business and his house before moving to LA and fibbing on a resume to get a job at a restaurant. That’s the level of commitment that it took to truly forge a new path that aligned better with his true aspirations.

“I really took a leap of faith,” he tells us, later adding, “the rest is history!”

That determination and commitment to purpose is precisely why Oh was chosen as one of The Next 9 by Porsche. In the years since dropping everything to chase a dream, he has entered the culinary scene and speedily established himself as a true innovator and a vital voice in modern cuisine.

“I have always had a can-do attitude,” he says. “If I don’t know it, I can learn it, and I can learn it fast and probably end up doing it better than you. Relying on that resume just got my foot in the door, and then I went from there.”

That confidence and drive led Oh down a path that would see the young chef go on to own several restaurants across the country including Um.Ma in San Francisco, Chingu in Hawaii, and Kamu in Las Vegas. This while scoring multiple wins across several TV cooking competitions. Still, Oh strives to take things to the next level: turning his personal brand into an icon.

“I want to put my stamp on this planet in an iconic way, like when you think of a brand like Porsche, you think handcrafted, sexy, cutting edge,” he says. “I want to be that kind of person and I think I’m on my way to those goals.”

As his aspirations grow, Oh is looking beyond the work he can accomplish in the kitchen. His true goal is to push Korean food and flavors to be enjoyed on a mass scale, crossing cultural borders in an effort to bring people together through the communal act of sharing a meal.

“Food is a common love, it doesn’t matter where you’re from,” he says. “We can talk food all day long because food has the power to bring people together… Korean food isn’t just bicoastal anymore. I want people in the Midwest or people in another country to have a jar of kimchi in their fridge.”

Oh knows that the only way to make that happen is the same way he’s achieved his success thus far, with hard work and determination, parting advice he shares for anyone who also finds themselves chasing their dreams.

“Find what you’re in love with, what you’re passionate about, what you’re willing to sacrifice for, and just go. Your dream job, your dream career, it’s not going to come easy. You’re going to have to bust your ass to get there, but once you do, the champagne sure tastes sweet.”

It doesn’t take long speaking with this rising star before you realize: True passion mixed with hard work is Chris Oh’s recipe for success.
For more on The Next 9 series, check out our hub page.

The Wizards could be in a very different position right now.

After last season ended in a rather non-competitive first round exit at the hands of the Sixers, there were calls to tear things down completely. They could have chosen to trade Bradley Beal when pressure, at least from the outside, mounted for them to do so once Russell Westbrook put in his request to leave the nation’s capital a year after he arrived in a trade shipping out longtime face of the franchise John Wall.

That transition from Wall to Westbrook, with all of the financial burden attached to both players, felt like a desperation play, one last effort to salvage things before entering a rebuild. Instead, they managed to seize opportunity when it presented itself, appear to have nailed their coaching change from Scott Brooks to Wes Unseld Jr., and restocked the roster with talent and depth in a way few could have foreseen six months ago.

Similar positions have doomed other franchises, pushing them towards a full teardown and a long rebuilding process. The Wizards, in every sense, resisted that path and appear to have come out better for it. At 10-4, Washington is tied for the best record in the Eastern Conference, alongside the Nets, fueled primarily by the league’s third-best defense, according to Cleaning The Glass. It’s the franchise’s best start since 1974-75, which has resulted in contract extensions and promotions for much of the organization’s front office, including general manager Tommy Sheppard. It feels like a new beginning for a team that desperately needed one.

How the Wizards got here did require some luck. When Wall tore his Achilles in the middle of a massive contract extension, that could have been the end right there considering how important Wall has been to the franchise since 2010. Flipping Wall and a first-round pick to the Rockets for Westbrook was another risk that could have not worked out. At the time of the deal, Westbrook had three years left on his supermax contract, and when they traded for him, they had to at least expect — if not assume fully — he’d be a Wizards for the rest of the deal.

Westbrook’s brief tenure had its ups and downs, including a tear at the end of the regular season to drag Washington to the playoffs. That performance raised his value and the Lakers, desperate for a third star, provided them with an out, fueling a roster overhaul over the summer that has given Washington its best supporting cast around Beal in some time. Turning Westbrook into Kyle Kuzma, Montrezl Harrell and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was a coup. Add in being able to sign-and-trade for Spencer Dinwiddie, a more flexible backcourt partner for Beal, after dealing Westbrook, and it looks even better.

There was luck involved, for sure. They don’t get that chance in a world where the Lakers dealt Kuzma and Caldwell-Pope for Buddy Hield instead. There’s nothing that Sheppard really did to manifest this directly, but his recognition of the need to get a deal done and not get hung up in the weeds on draft compensation or whatever else when opportunity came knocking is the kind of initiative that can change the direction of a franchise. It’s the kind of deal that the Trail Blazers weren’t able or wiling to make to better support Damian Lillard this summer, and are probably paying for now as they struggle through this season.

The result is a team with depth, balance, and versatility that hasn’t been seen in Washington in some time. Under Unseld, Washington is playing connected team defense where everyone is playing in sync covering up each other’s weaknesses. This kind of scheme probably wouldn’t be tenable with Westbrook at the point of attack. He’s a gambler, often living in his own world on defense instead of playing within a defined role. The Wizards, as we know them so far, would not exist without the scheme they are playing, and the personnel to execute it.

Deni Avidja, last year’s top pick, developing into a legit wing stopper as the youngest player in the rotation has been key. Harrell’s energy in the frontcourt has been contagious. Kuzma and Caldwell-Pope were important cogs in the Lakers title team that defined themselves on the defensive end, capable and willing to fill the roles asked of them and work within the system. Daniel Gafford continues his development as an anchor in the middle, rewarding the team for putting their faith in him with an extension this offseason.

There’s also some reason to think the Wizards should get better on offense. Currently, they are 17th in offense according to Cleaning the Glass, and that’s with Bradley Beal shooting a career-worst percentage from the field (40.7 percent, down from a career average of 45.5 percent) and from three (25 percent, down from a career average of 37.4 percent). Beal is particularly struggling on catch and shoot three-pointers, where he’s shooting 21.2 percent on 3.3 attempts per game after shooting 38.7 percent on the same volume last year. He’s also seen his efficiency dip at the rim, falling from about league average to well below.

As he works his way back to normal and grows more comfortable with the new pieces around him, the offense is going to be better — that’s the benefit of holding onto an All-Star who averaged over 30 points a game last year, but doesn’t need to now. And whenever Rui Hachimura comes back, they’ll add more scoring punch to the rotation.

Avdija and Hachimura are two pieces worth considering in thinking about where the Wizards are. In another world, where they did decide to start over, they’d be pieces they’d be evaluating in suboptimal context as the team loses a lot and adds even younger talent over a few years. Instead, with the Wizards winning, they get to contribute to something now, play in roles more suitable to their current skillsets rather than being thrust into leading roles, and continue growing in a positive environment.

Not every team has the ability to emerge anew from a situation like the one Washington found itself in this summer, but credit to Sheppard and the organization for recognizing an opportunity for a reset rather than rebuild this offseason and pouncing. From the new coaching staff to roster moves, it’s hard to imagine a better offseason and the results are bearing that out early on the floor.

A hearing for the Senate Banking Committee should be a fairly drama-free affair unless you’ve got a senator like Republican John Kennedy on hand ready to embarrass himself with some tasteless remarks, which is exactly what happened earlier today.

Kennedy shocked a room full of lawmakers and members of the press while questioning Saule Omarova, Joe Biden’s appointee to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). Omarova is a law professor at Cornell University who previously served under the George W. Bush administration, but her nomination has angered some GOP members like Kennedy who seem more concerned with her childhood than her track record. Omarova was born in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan before she came to the States and became an American citizen. She’s also been critical of the U.S. banking system. Apparently, those two facts seem to be enough for Senator Kennedy to insult her during what should’ve been a routine hearing.

“I don’t mean any disrespect,” Kennedy began. “I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade.”

The insinuation came after Kennedy spent an inordinate amount of time questioning why Omarova was part of a communist youth group when she lived in Soviet-controlled Kazakhstan — because she was living under a communist regime that forced her to, obviously — and was met with audible gasps by those in the room. Unfortunately for Kennedy, Omarova took the opportunity to calmly mop the floor with him.

“Senator, I’m not a communist,” a visibly annoyed Omarova responded. “I do not subscribe to that ideology. I could not choose where I was born. I would never knowingly join any such group.”

(Via Mediaite & Reuters)

Because Ghostbusters has been so successfully franchised over the years, it’s hard to know what to expect from a new iteration. Maybe I’m dumb, but I didn’t expect Ghostbusters: Afterlife it to be what it is — which is, essentially, an 80s-style kids movie in the vein of The Goonies.

In retrospect, Finn Wolfhard from Stranger Things joining the cast should’ve been a tipoff. Ghostbusters: Afterlife, directed by Jason Reitman, whose dad directed the original, is more of a Muppet Babies take on the material, attempting to restart the franchise with both a younger cast and a younger audience. Reitman, the seemingly overqualified director of Juno, Up In The Air, Young Adult, etc., turns out to have a knack for 80s-style Amblin Entertainment-style filmmaking. Afterlife looks great, and I can imagine loving it if I was 9. As an adult it’s merely so-so, something you’d happily sit through with your kid and probably forget the next day.

Ghostbusters began, of course, as a strange, “supernatural comedy,” starring Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, and the gang. Aykroyd has always been a little kooky, and Ghostbusters felt a bit like his buddies all got together to humor him, partly indulging his obsession with the supernatural, partly just having fun with it even if they didn’t entirely buy-in. The resulting movie is very strange, but just amiable enough to work, a zany take on demons and ancient myth stapled together with wry smirks and, I assume, lots of cocaine. It was 1984 after all, and the climax of the movie involved a possessed marshmallow destroying New York City.

Yet it was kooky and fun, and because it was so easy to brand, with a catchy theme song and a perfect logo, it almost instantly became a phenomenon. So it was we got the sequel, the cartoon, 2016’s gender-swapped version, etc. Which naturally raises the question: what is Ghostbusters now? A comedy franchise? A Halloween costume? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Is it still in some way an eccentric Canadian’s drug-addled fever dream?

Before 2016 there was at least a decade of various people working on sequel ideas. Sony spent millions going to increasingly elaborate lengths just to cajole an apathetic and notoriously aloof Bill Murray into reading a script. At some point, he seems to have signed off, and with Murray, Aykroyd, and Hudson featuring prominently in the advertising for Ghostbusters: Afterlife, I guess I assumed it was going to be more of a direct sequel to the original, closer to the movie Dan Aykroyd probably wanted before he got talked into Ghostbusters 2016. Instead, Afterlife is more like a kids adventure film, beautifully crafted but also a bit confused.

The plot concerns Egon Spengler, who has died as a recluse on a ramshackle farm in the fictional village of Summerville, Oklahoma (it was actually shot in Alberta). He has bequeathed his crumbling house full of wacky ghost gadgets to his estranged heirs — daughter Callie, played by the luminescent Carrie Coon, grandson Trevor, played by Finn Wolfhard, and granddaughter Phoebe, a budding scientist and spitting image of the old man (by which I mean they wear the same glasses) played by McKenna Grace.

Evicted from their apartment, the Spengler heirs are forced to try to make a new life in this podunk town on the plains where strange doings seem afoot. Nerdy Phoebe soon makes a friend, in the form of “Podcast” (Logan Kim), an obnoxious kid with bouffant hair and too many layers of clothes whose shtick is constantly recording a podcast. Podcast seems like he escaped from one of those insufferable Nickelodeon sitcoms where the kids are all wildly overstyled and loudly snarky, like an OshKosh B’Gosh showroom possessed by the ghost of Joss Whedon. (85% of kids shows are like this now, please make it stop.)

Phoebe finds a mentor in her Summer school teacher, Mr. Grooberson, played by Paul Rudd. Meanwhile, Trevor — all sharp angles and shaggy hair, like Wiley Wiggins from Dazed and Confused crossed with a young Freddy Mercury — meets his crush while working at the local drive-in: Lucky, played by Celeste O’Connor.

The picturesque setting is a fresh twist and the best thing about Ghostbusters: Afterlife is probably Reitman’s flair for texture and tone. The ’80s gave us a bounty of goofy kids adventures shot with the care of seventies auteur cinema, and, at least texturally, Afterlife is a worthy homage. It has that Earth-toned analog tape deck sensibility that so many contemporary movies lack, where you can feel the dirt on your skin and the breeze on your face when you watch it.

Yet pretty quickly, Reitman slams headlong into The Child Actor Problem. Someday we’re going to replace most actors under 18 with older actors with glandular disorders and Andy Serkis in his mo-cap ballsuit, and then we’ll look back on headshots like this as strange curios from a barbaric age. Until then, we must suffer, pretending this is normal.

McKenna Grace, it should be said, is fantastic, and Celeste O’Connor is solid in a lesser role. but the rest of the young actors just aren’t quite up to the task. And can you really expect them to be? The original worked partly because it starred some of 1984’s most skilled comedic improvisors. You just can’t recreate that with a handful of little kids. The kids in the audience probably won’t mind, but their parents will groan a little on the inside.

With Reitman’s direction, Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd, JK Simmons in a blink-and-you’ll miss-it role, and even Coon’s real-life husband, Tracy Letts in a cameo, it’s hard not to fantasize about how good an adult version of Ghostbusters: Afterlife could’ve been. But why work hard to create a better one-off when your true goal is a long-running franchise and ancillary revenue streams?

Therefore Afterlife is mostly about the kids, and like virtually all iterations of Ghostbusters since 1984, it ends up slightly adrift in the swirling tides of corporate fashion. Whereas 2016 Ghostbusters got caught up in the gender-swap craze, Afterlife feels like an attempt at a kids-ified Bill and Ted: Face The Music meets the Marvel Universe.

It relies heavily on our familiarity with the material, never seeming to notice or attempt to explain just how damn weird that source material is. Again, maybe I’m dumb, but what the hell actually is Slimer? Afterlife never attempts to answer, skipping straight to Slimer’s successor, Muncher, a gluttonous ghost who eats metal and is apparently voiced by Josh Gad, though I don’t remember him using any English words. Is Muncher a demon? Is he the spirit of a dead fat guy? Why does he eat metal? Ditto Afterlife‘s army of vaguely demonic mini-marshmallow men. Which Ghostbusters would I need to rewatch in order to understand this?

Reviewing these modern franchise movies, I always feel a little like being asked to rate the phone support technician at the end of a call with my cable company. I just endured a Kafkaesque hell, screaming “OPERATOR” at a voice recognition system that only works in theory and waiting on hold for 40 minutes just to troubleshoot some software glitch, and now you want me to rate it all based on the politeness level of an individual Bangladeshi? That human isn’t the problem. The problem is the absurdist farce competing market forces have made out of something that used to seem fairly simple.

Did Jason Reitman do a good job directing Ghostbusters: Afterlife? Yes, he performed wonderfully. The problem is the contradictory corporate whims he’s been asked to satisfy here, asking him to create something that is simultaneously an homage, a sequel, an adult comedy, a kids adventure, a teaser for future movies, and a requiem for Harold Ramis. Is this even really the best way to make money nowadays? What if we just gave creative people money to tell stories, rather than forcing them to try to reanimate the ghost of dead IP?

Anyway, three and a quarter stars, solid B+.

‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ hits theaters November 19th. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can check out his film review archive here.

For years, players around the WNBA have been calling for the playoff format to be changed, as the single elimination format for the first two rounds, while exciting, has not exactly been a favorite of the players themselves. The 1-1-5-5 format, with best of five series for the semifinals and finals after two straight single elimination rounds, with the top-2 seeds earning double byes and the 3rd and 4th seeds earning single byes, will finally be changed for the 2022 season.

The league announced the changes on Thursday, as seeding will continue to be done regardless of conference affiliation, with the top 8 teams in the league earning playoff appearances, but no longer will top seeds earn byes. Instead, a traditional bracket style playoffs will be introduced, with the first round being a best of three series, followed by a best of five semifinals and a best of five Finals.

Rather than reseeding after each round, teams will be locked into their bracket, with 1 v. 8 and 4 v. 5 on once side and 2 v. 7 and 3 v. 6 on the other. It’ll be interesting to see what the overall reaction from fans is, as there have been some calling for a change like this, while others have grown fond of the chaos of single elimination. Players, though, will likely be pleased by the changes to have a series format for each round and while single elimination is gone, fans should be excited about getting to see the best teams in action from the start of the playoffs rather than sitting out with byes.

The new format also seems to create a structure that could more easily support breaking seeding into conferences once expansion arrives, as there is plenty of interest and hope for expansion in the near future, and if the league jumps from 12 teams to 16, it would stand to reason that they might weight conference affiliation more in the future for seeding should the schedule no longer be balanced the way it is.

The Eye is a video series that brings music’s finest up-and-comers into a simple studio space for performances that put the artist and their songs front and center. The latest talent to take part in the series is Welsh singer-songwriter Jamie Miller, who offered renditions of “Here’s Your Perfect” and “Hold On ‘Til We’re Old.”

Miller is actually already a familiar face for multiple reasons. He appeared on The Voice UK when he was just a teenager and was one of his season’s last contestants standing. After his run on the show, he got a co-sign from Khloé Kardashian, who was so impressed with his vocal abilities that she shared a video of him to her followers in 2017 (she had about 68 million of them at the time). That seemed to have caught the attention of Atlantic Records, as the label went ahead and signed him not long after that major bit of exposure.

Now, Miller finds himself on The Eye. He doesn’t have a huge pool of released songs to draw from yet, as his first singles just came out in 2020, but he still has some quality tunes under his belt already. He performed a couple of them here, including “Here’s Your Perfect” (which found top-five chart success in Malaysia and Singapore this year). The original recording is a grand and emotional ballad, and while the acoustic guitar-led instrumental takes on a more intimate energy, Miller still sings his heart out.

He also sang another one of his 2021 singles, “Hold You ‘Til We’re Old.” The performance takes on a similar energy as Miller keeps his vocal intensity sky-high to stand out over the sparse arrangement. It’s obvious he’s really feeling it as he sings, “Kiss me like the first time / Even at the worst times / Even whеn it hurts, I swear you keep me young / I’ll hold you ’til we’rе old.”

In an interview with Songkick, Miller speaks about his journey towards recording his debut album, saying, “It’s been three years of hard work and I feel like along the way, you just learn who you want to be, what you want to say. I feel like I’m finally at the point where I’m ready to tell my story. The story that I want to tell on my album… the songs I listen to are the heartbreak songs, and I feel like I had to get my heart broken, unfortunately, to write the music that I’ve always wanted to make. Now I listen to my music and I just can’t wait for the world to hear it, because I feel like I’m writing stuff that everybody can relate to.”

Watch Miller perform “Here’s Your Perfect” and “Hold You ‘Til We’re Old” for The Eye above.

Jamie Miller is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Some UPROXX Sessions performances are upbeat and fun, while others are somber and reflective. Then, there are those that go for a different vibe entirely. KenTheMan’s performance of her threatening song “No Name” falls into that category, as the Houston-bred lyricist steps to the mic like a seasoned slugger, looming and leering while she menaces her foes and asserts her impending dominance over the rap game.

Last year, Ken generated some significant buzz with her debut EP 4 da 304’s, telling Uproxx’s Cherise Johnson that she switched to writing more raunchy raps because “Sex been selling. Trina, Kim, Foxy, all them, they real grimy with they words and they really sell sex. I just don’t see why it’s such a shocker that people still selling sex… I just feel like power to us, power to the pussy right now.”

She followed up that project this year with “What’s My Name?” expanding the range of her writing with tracks like “I’m Perfect” and the motivational “Love Yourself,” as well as, of course, “No Name.” Now signed to Asylum and with her buzz building by the day, Ken is in prime position to live up to her name and become “the man” in hip-hop — as in the boss, the leader, the number-one. Stay tuned.

Watch KenTheMan’s UPROXX Sessions performance of “No Name” above.

UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, UPROXX Sessions is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too.

KenTheMan is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Is this the era of the crossover platform fighter? After two decades of success for the Super Smash Bros. franchise, we’re starting to see other companies with major licenses create their own crossover fighting games. Nickelodeon recently released their own with Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, and not long after that release, we began hearing rumors about a Warner Bros. themed game following the same formula.

Those rumors turned out to be true. On Thursday, Warner Bros. revealed to everyone their crossover platform fighting game, MultiVersus. It looks and sounds like Super Smash Bros., but it does have a few details that give it the potential to be something unique. While there haven’t been too many people publicly clamoring for a WB fighting game, there is a potential for this to be a hit thanks to the deep roster of characters at the company’s disposal.

The initial roster features a wide variety of characters across a variety of WB-owned licenses: Bugs Bunny from Looney Tunes, Batman from DC Comics, Jake from Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time, and Shaggy from Scooby-Doo all appear on the roster. It’s already an interesting cast of characters and one that has the potential to grow even further.

A lot of games are constantly seeking ways to stay in the news cycle and create interest. What Nintendo found over the last few years of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is that fans love to discuss roster decisions. There’s an expectation that the game will have DLC additions to the roster, and we can hope the developers of the game will look to generate excitement over their DLC additions. If this time next year we’re all discussing what character should join the MultiVersus roster next, we’ll know they were successful.

If ever there was a non-hater on this planet, it’s Selema Masekela. The longtime TV host is famous for using his various platforms to highlight people ripping, flipping, shredding, and just generally being awesome. He geeks out on boardsports like a kid and embodies Anthony Bourdain’s idea of living life as an enthusiast.

So you’d think that when Masekela — who’s been a respected voice in the action sports world for nearly 30 years — finally opened up about problems he’s seen with diversity, inclusion, and representation in the sports he loves so much, he’d get listened to. Not the case. In fact, he’s felt a wave of opposition from followers, some longtime friends, and many of the “dictators of what it all looks and feels like” at the corporate level.

How to battle against that sort of pushback? For Masekela, the answer is always kinetic. “Do something” could serve both as his mantra for exploring the outdoors and his method of problem-solving. The something, in this case, started with co-founding a South Africa-based surf-clothing brand, Mami Wata, in 2017. In 2019, came a goal-shattering Kickstarter for his book Afrosurf. A 3,000 copy print run for the project dropped in 2020 before it found a traditional publisher (Ten Speed Press) and relaunched in June of this year. Then, just last month, Masekela brought Mami Wata stateside with a drop of boardshorts, tees, hoodies, and button-ups that’s been covered everywhere from Variety to Cool Hunting to Afar.

As the chaos of launching his brand’s first US line mellowed just a little (mostly because everything had sold out in spectacular fashion), I spoke with Masekela about the Black surf movement, the African surf scene, and his goals for Mami Wata. Check out our full conversation below.

I’ve been tracking the Black surf movement with excitement. Obviously, it got that big profile in the New York Times over the summer. How has the conversation shifted over the past decade — and especially these past couple years — from when you were one of the only super visible Black faces in the board sports conversation?

I mean, it shifted a lot. When I take it back to the beginning for me — in the late ’80s, early ’90s — it shifted to a whole other solar system. I was very much used to just being an “only” 99.9% of the time. Even still, we’re down from like 99.9% of the time to like 85% of the time. But it sure feels like a whole lot more.

It’s great because I remember when I started having these conversations and being more vocal seven, eight years ago, I remember how very, very, very uncomfortable people felt when I would bring up the fact that, “Isn’t it weird that it’s just me?” And the ease with which people would say, “Well, you’re different. You’re a different kind of Black guy. You’re more like us. You do our things.”

Wow.

So, I’ve got a lot of my existence in an industry where, yes, a lot of people have come to respect what I do, and the storytelling, and the context that I put some of the big moments in these sports into. And they respected that I’m an active participant. But it was always hard to get people to understand how much different doing the thing is for me than it is for them.

One of the things that’s nice now is that I’m not the only one talking. And there were others that came before me, but we didn’t have social media. We didn’t have ways in which … I think if Tony Corley and Rick Blocker, who founded the BSA [Black Surfing Association] had done so, not in the ’80s. And done so in the aughts or the earlier part of this last decade, I think we’d be in a much different space and place because they were doing the grassroots work.

They were literally collecting people that would come down from San Francisco, and Central California, and San Diego, and Los Angeles to have these events where 50, 60 people would be together. It felt amazing that you’re on a beach with everybody that looks like you and then everybody goes off to their different ways. No way to really storytell that to the world. I think that what social media has done has allowed people that I like to call “onlys” to find each other so that they’re not “onlys” anymore. You’re able to create community, and shared experience, and storytelling via social media in a way where people don’t have any choice but to pay attention.

So, I do feel like we have come a long way. If you look at Textured Waves, and Color The Water, and City Surf up in San Francisco. At what Brick and Gage are doing with Black Sand, Un Mar de Colores. All these different folks that are doing a really beautiful job of storytelling experience and what it’s like in this shared commonality that everyone has in their stories of what it’s like to go and do a thing where you are the uncommon denominator.

It feels good. It feels really, really good. I dreamt of this day, but I never thought that this day would occur. So, it felt really nice to be a part of that New York Times piece, but not to have to be the focal point.

The “only,” as you say.

The only. To no longer be an only. If that piece happened without me, I would also have been fine and thrilled that our stories are being told in these kinds of places. I think it’s a larger conversation for the outdoors in general. I think, whether it’s mountain climbing, or trail running and hiking, or adventuring, obviously, the winter sports. In all these places, people are realizing, “Oh, there are definitive reasons why the only people who have been marketed to do these things or advertised to do these things look a certain way.” By addressing it, and helping to realize that there are barriers that have existed, and helping to create what access looks like, and opportunity going a long way, people are getting excited about, “Oh, we can expand this landscape and repopulate it in a way that’s far more reflective of what we look like as a society.”

I think people are also learning that for years and years and years, the idea of being able to find peace and joy in the outdoors, in the ocean, et cetera, has been an idea that white people have been very comfortable thinking it was just for them. So when they see Black or Brown and Indigenous people out there, they could be like, “Oh, we saw a such and such today. That was interesting.”As opposed to, “They were out in our space.” People have always felt really comfortable in coming up to me and saying, “Oh, that’s interesting that you’re here. That’s so cool. You do what we do. That you’re doing our thing.” And that’s what I’m hoping this whole time can be representative of ending, that being a thing.

Well, it’s interesting in the sense that surfing … I think that we think of ourselves in the community of surfers as very welcoming. There’s this hippie-ish bent. There’s loving nature. But there’s also, as you and I both know, a lot of territorialism in surfing. A lot of ego in surfing.

All this to say, have you felt like the surf community has welcomed this movement in the way that you’d like to see?

No, I don’t. I feel like elements of the community have, but the vast majority, especially when it comes to the front-facing core of the Orange County sort of “dictators of what it all looks and feels like” have not been very welcoming at all. And I think it makes them very uncomfortable that we’re having the conversation. It’s interesting, as you said, the individual experience of surfing is pure, spiritual, all the things that we already know. But the collective, and all the weird shit from land that leaks into the water that makes people feel like they have a sense of entitlement to be able to regulate who comes and goes. “And because I live up the street, I get to tell you what to do out here.”

We live in a country of stolen land and some dorks like to think they own a random Malibu surf break just because their parents live nearby.

Exactly. The shit is highly built around colonialism. While people would say, “Well, that’s not inherently racist.” Well, yeah, it might not be racism in its definition. But it sure as hell does plagiarize the playbook.

It’s definitely a shitty behavior that really smacks of a lot of bigger, very problematic attitudes.

The ease with which people practice it in water is because they know how to also do that on land. But everyone likes to pretend surf culture is super welcoming and a collective of free-thinking ideas. Sadly, it’s super, super tribal, wildly conservative in America, and has been for a very, very, very long time, dating all the way back to the ’60s.

I’m not surprised at all that the surf community’s response to diversity and inclusion is much like the triggered right-wing things that we’re hearing at school board meetings where, “My white child feels oppressed because all the other kids being made to be seen. Now my kids not seen anymore.” Which is wild, right? But that’s what the surf community is.

Everyone rushes to say, “The ocean doesn’t care. I’ve never seen it happen, so it’s not happening.” And it’s like, well, how many of us need to tell you what our experiences are for it to continue not to matter? Clearly, everyone around you in the water looks like you for a reason. Some of those reasons are because of shit we haven’t had access to.

Learning about redlining and learning how your community was kept from people who didn’t look like you getting to live there. That shit might be really hard for you to digest, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Learning the manner in which people can be aggressive towards people of color in the water, and specifically call out their race or color or gender as a way to try and dominate somebody. The idea that, hey, that shit has to change, that makes a lot of people uncomfortable because, for a lot of people in the surf community, that their whole identity is in being the person who runs shit in the water.

And there’s a history… You talked about Orange County. Board sports are entwined with Orange County’s neo-Nazi history. Board sports are entwined with, as you said, colonialism. There’s stuff that we need to be cognizant of, especially me as a white surfer, not saying “Well, it’s all good in the water, bro,” then dismissing someone’s concerns.

It’s hard because in a culture that looks at Duke as a golden God… Duke died penniless and a janitor. Most of what Duke was going out and doing was promoting surfing to the world, was based far more in the people who were leveraging him as the icon for tourism and business back home. Those people who were doing that were not Native and Indigenous. They were the people who had gotten there and set the shit up to make money. It’s very interesting that once surfing became cool in SoCal, the whole, “We’re going to lose the Indigenous Hawaiian story and just make it about Malibu and SoCal.” That’s how the story became told, as well as the Southern Coast of Australia, and I wanted to be like, “Are you motherfuckers crazy?” we will beat your whole entire asses, right?

It was this very interesting point where the Hawaiians said, “No, no more. If you’re going to come here, you’re going to come here and you’re going to walk with respect, because we are not going to have this last thing that we have also just be trampled over.” I think when you look at the resistance to even the Brazilian storm in the last 10 years. These guys had to go and win fucking four of the last world championships. Four out of six world championships in order for people to finally be like, “Okay, I guess it’s not a fluke and it’s not luck,” right? So, coming full circle, I have no surprise that a part of the surf community still feels very comfortable in keeping their heads in the ground.

And also taking very right-wing nationalistic perspectives in avoiding any sort of quote, unquote woke talk when it comes to surfing, like, “None of that shit’s going to take place here,” and we’re like, “Cool, you don’t have to participate.” But also like, “We’re here. We’re going to be loud. We’re going to enjoy this. And enjoy our ownership of the space just as much as you do.” It’s no longer going to be about you choosing to make room for us, because we’re here. And when I say we, I mean the various different forms of what “we” means other than “normal white coastal surf communities.”

I’ll cop to a classic white blind spot here — as the Black surf movement started to roll out and I spoke with people who were friends and who were in the movement, my knee jerk was like, “Oh, surfing’s kind of doing a good job with this, right guys? Right?” But I was saying that through, obviously, my very limited prism. And to hear from you that this is not the case is disappointing — though it also makes sense, for all the reasons we just listed.

If you saw my DMs, Steve…

Yeah?

The people who tell me how this is all a grift and how ungrateful I am, “Because it was, we — white people — who put you in the position that you are in. And this is how you repay us?”

It’s so wild for me to hear that is all being said to you, a man who has contributed so very much to surf culture.

The idea that I have friendships and deep relationships with white folk, yet I still speak out against white supremacy, infuriates people. There’s still such this idea that if I say “racism” or “white supremacy,” that I’m talking about all white people. That I’m talking to you. So obviously these people are so triggered that it’s like, “Well, it’s so clear that this is a hustle that ‘you people’ are on, because I see you with white people all the time.”

And I’m like, “God, what a fucked-up existence you must have in order to come to that deduction. That lets me know how many people who don’t look like you, that you do hang out with.” I realize for many people — because they say this in their messages — feel like, “I loved you, you were my guy, and now you’re not. You were ours. Now, you’re saying that you’re Black. I felt good because you were the one Black guy that I knew that I don’t even actually know. But I felt like you were ours. Now, I know I’ve lost you to… ” “Reality.”

Mami Wata along with your book, Afrosurf, is rooted in South Africa. In that way, feels like it ties up some connections between you and your dad [legendary jazz musician Hugh Masekela]. I remember crying tears of joy in Namibia as I worked my way up the Skeleton Coast surfing certain breaks alone for hours — surfing alone or in an uncrowded lineup brings the emotion out of surfers. Besides the J-Bay and maybe Durban, do you have some African surf memories that you’ve made that feel iconic or any spots there that you’ve just fallen in love with?

Obviously, there are breaks that are going to get, I don’t want to use the word “discovered” but certainly looked at as surf breaks for the first time in the years to come.

I have a list of places that I’m trying to go to because of getting invites from local Indigenous people there, who are like, “Oh, yo, you think you like going over there. Well, wait till you come to here.” So, I’m excited about engaging in more surf discovery in Africa that has to do with actual Africans showing me these breaks and their respective surf culture.

That’s different than the way it was always sold to us, which is, “it requires the best people in the world from X place or X place to go, discover, everyone gather on the beach, cheer and clap for these people.” And they came, they left, and, “Oh, by the way, we left a couple of surfboards there for the Natives.” I’m excited for an end to that. Listen, the coastline up both sides [of the African continent]. I mean, we haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s possible.

I remember being in Madagascar and seeing waves peeling out. And just thinking like, “Holy shit, some surfer better than me is going to ride some barrels alone for days.”

Yeah, I was in Kenya last March on the farthest and eastern end of the islands. I saw some setups and some waves that blew my face off. There was just no one around. Then, I started asking questions and one of our boat guys was like, “Oh, if you come here between X and X, and we get these wind swells from such and such, these points will light up for 50 miles.”

I was just like, “Wait, what?” I mean, I remember the first time that I paddled out in East London [South Africa]. I was on tour with my dad, and surfed Nahoon Reef and some places in PE [Port Elizabeth, also in South Africa]. And obviously, I have a very, very powerful relationship with the Durban Beach breaks because that’s the first place I ever surfed in South Africa. It was during a very, very volatile time as apartheid was in the midst of being dismantled. It wasn’t an all-positive experience for me. After a few days, the cops literally set up a sting operation to try and bust me for jumping off of the jetty at North Beach. Because they reached into their books for three days and tried to figure out, “How could we get this Negro to stop showing us what the future of South Africa will look like?”

So, they found an old antiquated law that said, “You’re not allowed to jump off the jetty,” when that’s how people have just been getting into the water for years and years and years. They accosted me. They assaulted me. And they found out what I was doing there, who my father was, and they let me go.

But the irony was that this was the first time I’d been to South Africa. My dad’s been in political exile for 30 years. I’m here with him on his homecoming tour, finally getting to discover my full heritage and family in what’s supposed to be the wake of apartheid. The same thing that caused him to have to leave for his life. I find myself in with surfing, which was essentially my music.

So, it was every time I go back there, to be able to see now what it is, where on any given day, the lineup is just filled with young Black South African kids ripping at every level. I mean, the last time I was there was in 2019 and I went surfing with the Surfers Not Street Children kids. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face for days. I just couldn’t believe I was in the same place where, 30 years earlier, I didn’t have any power without my name. If it didn’t hold the weight that it did in South Africa, it could’ve been a far a different situation.

That’s a fascinating story, and thank you for sharing it. As far as the lineup of clothes goes, you’ve got some fly stuff here. This banana button-up is fly. Sold out already. These board shorts are fire.

That’s nothing, man. Wait till you see this next shit in the next week. You’re going to flip your lid.

How involved have you been in the process of looking at samples, of talking about styles?

Oh, I’ve been in it for the last three and a half, almost four years, with Nick and Peet. Peet was just an incredible designer, graphic artist, and creative director. So yeah, I’ve gotten to be in it at the core. I’ve gotten spend a lot of time in South Africa and in Cape Town with my team. I’ve also had Nick, my main partner, here. We went and did all of, “Okay, here’s Los Angeles. Here’s what America looks like. Here’s what streetwear looks like. Here’s where the intersection of active sports culture and streetwear looks like. Here are all the things that we don’t want to do. Here are all the things that make us unique, coming from where we do, that we can bring to the table here.”

So, staying true to the genuine nature. Being in a position where you don’t have to invent and you don’t have to try to mimic anybody is fun in an industry, especially when you look at surf lifestyle. For the most part, everybody is doing a different version of the same thing. Insert logo here. And that is something that we look to definitely disrupt a bit. Hopefully, offer clothing that feels like an opportunity for self-expression and communicating a little bit more.

I just love this idea of African wearability because, think about it, man. People really just think of Africa as Discovery Channel, and Mount Kilimanjaro, and a couple of little things in between. But for the most part, people are not checking for the music, and the art, and the culture, and the history, and the ingenuity, and all the things that make these places so rich, and that make the continent so diverse. Which is why it’s so absurd that most people really think of Africa as a country.

It’s so funny, and just have no scope of the size of this continent, right? If you walk to the average person on the street and you say, “How many times do you think you could fit the United States inside the African continent?” I would predict that 90% of people would be way off. [Three.]

They’d be way off. I guarantee you, the number of people who would tell you that there are 10 or fewer countries on the continent would be overwhelming. So it’s nice to be able to have an opportunity with this brand to build a bit of a Trojan horse that builds genuine curiosity about the continent and what it’s given us, is giving us, and still has yet to give.

To do so through this uncertain lens that nobody would really see coming in surf culture. That’s my favorite thing about getting to be a part of Mami Wata at this base level. Look, a lot of it comes back to what we discussed earlier about my heritage. My dad fought for 30 years to get home. When he finally did get home, the thing that I think that dismayed him the most was that everyone on the continent was doing their best to be their best version of the West.

Like that’s the cool thing is to sound as American or be as down with American and Western culture as possible in a lot of parts of Africa. It’s only now, that with this big renaissance, especially from the electronic side of African music, that people are really beginning to understand like, “Oh, shit, there’s so much popping off.”

I’ve met so many people who talk about his music as an awakening.

My dad was just like, “Look, I love the rest of the world.” My dad wasn’t a cultural chauvinist. He was wildly passionate about Cuban and Brazilian culture, and all of South America and Southeast Asia. He could explain to you the socioeconomic history, the culture, and the politics of anywhere in the world. What made their music special and their food special. He just wanted Africa to play on the same level. He wanted people to be just as curious, and to have that bucket-list desire to touch, and feel, and taste, and take pictures with. Show off that these are the places that they’ve been to, as they have the rest of the world. That was the thing that he was advocating for the hardest, Africa taking pride in the fact that it influences the world harder than it thinks.

After I lost my dad, and you think about legacy. I found myself very, very lost, and being like, “Well, how do I even help to uphold that a little bit?” I came to realize that I didn’t need to invent anything. I had a natural pipeline where my passions already lie with surfing and with action sports culture as a whole. Why not try and help contribute to a bridge that’s already being built on so many fronts with tech, and art, and music, et cetera, to help join and get to work in continuing to build that bridge, so that there’s this natural flow and exchange between the West and the most exciting continent on the planet, in Africa?

Man, I love this. My temptation and my gut instinct is just to keep going for hours because, like the best interviews for me as a writer, you’ve shifted my own thinking. And pivoted any notions that I had, which I appreciate so much. Last thing, these surfboards you guys are making — I’ve seen some designs hit social media — are just incredible looking. Are those coming to the US ever?

Yes. The surfboards will come more in drops and small collections. But yeah, man.

I’m so excited. I mean, the way my email and phone have been blowing up in the last 24 hours from the biggest brands in surfing to be like, “Yo, how can we get down?” is really, really crazy. It’s further proof to me that, whenever I think that there’s no hope, and it’s very easy to lose hope in a country that is trying to … We’re in a vehicle that’s going down the freeway at like 90 miles an hour.

Every once in a while, not even every once in a while, every day, they’re trying to literally throw the thing into reverse while we’re going 120-miles-an-hour forward, right? You’re like, “Is the transmission just going to drop out of this thing?” because if that’s what happens, we’re all done. But it just reminds me that people … Well, as long as people don’t know something, it’s easy for them to brush it off and choose to not be curious. What they don’t know is good for them. Then it becomes undeniable, and they see it, and they can’t look away. Then everything they thought they knew is different now. Now they’re engaged.

That’s what it’s felt like just this the last three months or so. Or even going all the way back to when we launched a Kickstarter for the book. Which, for sure, never thought that we’d end up in a Penguin and 10 Speed distribution deal. We were very happy with the 1400 copies that we were able to make from the Kickstarter in the middle of a global pandemic.
We felt like, “Wow, we’ve achieved something we only could’ve dreamt of and probably wouldn’t have been able to achieve as well if we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic, because it forced us to really create it in a way that was super collaborative. Without any sort of highfalutin ideas of control.”

Then we enter into this partnership where the book gets to get real distribution. I love that my kids are going to grow up with surfing from a perspective of knowing that this is always what it is. Or for someone who is isn’t even in the surf community to be like, “This changes the way I look at the world now. I didn’t know that this was even a thing. What else are you doing?” That excites me because it’s just a matter of being able to share and offer something that this … The book is something that you can’t look away from. I think it makes you want to learn and know more. I hope that we’re able to create more of the same in this dialogue with the brand.