Nardwuar: Best Music Journalist?

One of the strangest looking dudes ever also happens to be one of the best music journalist alive. His name is Nardwuar, and he a Canadian celebrity interviewer and musician. Most of you probably are unfamiliar with the guy, but its time that all changed. I guarantee if you fancy yourself a fan of music you are gonna love his interviews.

He is the like the Billy Hoyle (think Woody Harrelson in White Men Can't Jump) of musical knowledge. He comes into every interview looking like a joke. Then, within seconds, he perplexes, surprises, and seriously impresses his targets with unprecedented musical knowledge. Nardwuar's guerilla style interviews follow a format intended to flabbergast targets by presenting meticulously researched gifts designed to bring up little-known tidbits of a musicians personal and professional past. There really is no better way to explain this than to watch it happen, so I put 4 of his interviews below. The artist's reactions to the unexpected interviewer are priceless. The best part of each is how Nardwuar ends each interview. Awkward, hilarious, and brilliant. Make sure to watch these all the way through.

"You Oughta Know" & "Rainbow in the Dark" - Das Racist

My buddy E. Claudio is always good for music suggestions.  His latest recommendation has been stuck in my head all day.  I figured I should post it so as to at least make sure I'm not the only one going around Chicago singing strangely to themselves.

Das Racist is a hip hop group out of Brooklyn, NYC that own a wickedly strange style highlighting deep knowledge of 90's Americana, old-school hip hop, and New York culture, among a variety of other odd throw-back and comedic influences.  Consisting of Heems (Himanshu Suri), Kool A.D. (Victor Vazquez), and hype man Dap (Ashok Kondabulu), the cultural make-up of the group (including members of Indian, Italian, and Afro-Cuban descent) is as atypical to the hip hop world as their music.  While critics can't seem to decide if Das Racist deserves "kind-of-a-big deal" or "joke" status, the group seems to embrace the whacked out dorkiness of it all.

I liked this quote...

Himanshu Suri stated in an interview:

“

I think being minorities at a liberal arts college and that type of environment had an impact on both the way we view race and our sense of humor, which people often use as a tool to deal with race. I always felt like Wonder Showzen was a television show that captured that type of thing perfectly. When I saw the little kid yelling "THAT'S RACIST" it blew my mind. And then it became a game ... to take all the seriousness out of making legitimate commentary on race, because that can get very annoying. So when something veering on racially insensitive would pop off in a commercial on television or something it would be like, who could yell "That's Racist" first. And then we thought it would be a cool name. Das EFX may have been an inspiration. <iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MzWxf7tf3Qo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>