VIOLENCE is the interdisciplinary project of producer/multi-instrumentalist Olin Caprison, and on August 26th the multi-media artist will release his A Ruse Of Power LP via NON. The label, run by Chino Amobi, and fellow producers ANGEL-HO and Nkisi, seems like the perfect home Caprison’s challenging new work. NON bills itself as, “a collective of African artists, and of the diaspora, using sound as their primary media to articulate the visible and invisible structures that create binaries in society, and in turn distribute power”. Likewise, on a track like “Psycud“, Caprison turns the tried-and-true rap paradigms of machismo and braggadocio on their ear, cutting through these “accepted truths” to open up dialogue as to what it means to be a man in the “rap game”.
Caprison told the FADER that the lyrics to the track narrate aspects of a “failing masculinity”. He explains:
“There’s a kind of misery there, the place where these lyrics came from, that is so small and internal it’s often overlooked because it cuts into the order that the subject’s world is defined by.”
The video for “Psycud” was directed by Olin and his brother Jah and it uses provocatively styled imagery to illustrate this song’s inherent aggression and misogyny. Juxtaposing “Psycud”‘s demonic protagonist with its androgynous twin, gender is seen as a fluid and performative act–rather than the rigid stereotypes given voice to by this track’s main character.
