June192013

Anonymous asked: im white and i was born in america. how do i become indian?

YOGA, NAG CHAMPA, RUSSEL PETERS, DEEPAK CHOPRA, SAAG PANEER, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, SUM 41, SOUNDGARDEN, MINDY KALING, HEEMS

5AM

Anonymous asked: so do you want to be like famous or are you just going to die in obscurity for realz? oh and whats ur view on like the colonization of like india, sweden, and ur moms yo?

OBSCURITY!!!! OBSCURITY!!!

5AM

Anonymous asked: Growing up I felt connected to Indian culture, eating meals mom prepared, watching Bollywood movies and the 500 award shows and enduring the same 3 film soundtracks in the car (pre iPod). Anyway then I hit my later teens and I started listening to hip hop more heavily, more American meals and no more trips to Bollywood theaters where u can get pre show samosas. I guess u can say i became Americanized and shunned the culture in a way, but I miss the simpler times. How can I re-engage myself?


I’ve thought about this countless hours. One of the downsides to observing your community in an objective, somewhat academic, way is having to step outside of that community. Trying to step back in is extremely difficult. I was hanging out with less Indian kids and going to a university with very few of them but studying postcolonial theory and learning more about Indian history and religion than I ever did at home or the temple I’d go to every week. I got really into it. Then I realized all that was nice but I was now fundamentally different from the cousins I grew up hanging out with constantly and even my parents. The way I re-engaged myself was making a point to go home as often as I could. I did this New York Times magazine interview once where I kind of talked about this. 

I like to go home, hug my parents, drink chai with my mom, watch Hindi movies and re-Indianize two days a week before I re-emerge into the filth that is progressive liberal white America in trendy Williamsburg.

I became particularly concerned with this in late 2011. Das Racist was constantly being called “joke” or “hipster” rap and it was assumed I grew up wealthy. I was even called “white” somewhere on the internet and probably in the real world life zone by people who don’t know me. Frustrated, I wanted to rap less about feeling weird about race at a white college like Wesleyan and in Williamsburg, which is what in a lot of ways Das Racist was, and more about me and the way I was raised. I wanted to rap about riding around as a kid in my older friend, brother of Adnan,   Adeel’s Acura Legend listening to Capone and Noreaga’s The War Report. I knew immediately I liked hanging out in cars, and would one day love driving, at night time while listening to rap music loudly. It was like, basketball. I knew I liked basketball. Then, I knew I liked rap and driving around in cars. But I digress. Around that time I was worried about how to re-engage my old “indian” self and do it naturally. How not to self-exoticize my ethnicity but also how not to put my family on blast in a way, my parents be like “dont talk about your dad driving a cab we came a long way from that”, in a quest for validation for some sense of authenticity. It’s kind of impossible to re-engage yourself fully but what I found which was much more helpful is there’s nothing to re-engage. You are yourself and you’re constantly changing. Our American version of Indian is one of 10,000 versions of “Indian” across the humongous country of numerous languages and cultures and religions and then, further, across the time-space continuum, son. When you go to India and hang out with kids who spent their whole life in Bombay but don’t speak a lick of Hindi and who speak better English than you, it helps puts things in perspective a little bit as a person who puts India on some kind of pedestal. In closing, the world is constantly changing and getting smaller and Lima, Peru seems like the place for me more than India every day.

— 
himanshu suri - @himanshu

4AM

Anonymous asked: would you move if a white family moved in next door to yours?

THE FUCK? 

4AM

Anonymous asked: heems i just thought i should tell you that your music has gotten me through a lotta tough stuff and so thanks for creating that beacon for me (this prob. sounds hella lame but idc it's the truth) thanks for being you my friend

KEEPING IT 100 ISNT LAME AT ALL EVER BRUH

4AM

Anonymous asked: In the "Soup Boys" video the way that you float in front of the green screen seems to suggest that you feel like a drone yourself. Do you think that feeling is connected to military drones?

YEAH THE FUCK WHY NOT BRO

4AM

Anonymous asked: How do I get out of a funk? I feel like I lost all ambition & hope in my projects

SPIN AROUND UNTIL YOU GET DIZZY AND THEN WATCH THE ROOM MOVE AROUND YOU AND THEN FEEL IT AND THEN THINK ABOUT THAT TIME BEANIE SIEGEL KISSED PEEDI CRAKK ON THE SHOULDER AND SMILE TO YOURSELF THREE TIMES IN A ROW 

4AM

Anonymous asked: If I ever meet you, I'm going to hug you

YEAH< DON’T DO DAT.

4AM

 Despot:  whoa you ever seen this?
 Sent at 4:26 AM on Wednesday
 me:  of course my friend
i have most definitely seen my friend
not based at all my friend
 Despot:  haha

4AM

Anonymous asked: can i send u nudes

YES, PREFERABLY OF DENNIS FRANZ’S BEAUTIFUL ASS.

4AM

Anonymous asked: YO Hima! Just wondering were you good at writing essays in college? Did you tend to procrastinate on doing work? And if you did could you still finish your work on time and do a good job? How did you manage partying/doing drugs with work? Loving this Kevin Lyttle cover btw and excited for the debut album!

I procrastinate all the time. There’s a Greedhead website I should get around to soon. I’m sorry about that. 

June182013

Anonymous asked: Can Dapwell fight?

NAH NOT REALLY HE MAD SKINNY BUT HE CAN GET INTO FIGHTS GOOD.

10PM

Anonymous asked: Where did you buy the shirt you are wearing in the "Soup Boys" video? I

ALL MY SHIRTS IS: SIDIAN ERSATZ & VANES

10PM

Anonymous asked: Do you ever feel like "omg the world is so fucked up and stupid and corrupt and everyone is stupid, I want to live on the Moon", but then realise that there's no decent internet connection on the Moon?

THE MOON DONT NEED INTERNET YOU CAN WATCH EARTH THERE

10PM

Anonymous asked: what do you think about capitalism?

WHAT COLOR OR FABRIC MATCHES BEST WITH CAPITALISM?

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