The Next Next Level: A Story of Rap, Friendship, and Almost Giving Up - Couverture souple

Neyfakh, Leon

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 161219446X ISBN 13 : 9781612194462

Editeur : Melville House, 2015

Synopsis

In the tradition of Carl Wilson’s Let’s Talk About Love, an unforgettable account of fame, fandom, and the problem of making art in the twenty-first century

In his multi-hyphenate ambitions, the musician who calls himself Juiceboxxx couldn’t be more modern—you might call him a punk rock-rapper-DJ-record executive-energy drink-magnate. Journalist Leon Neyfakh has been something more than a fan of Juiceboxxx’s since he was a teenager, when he booked a show for the artist in a church basement in his hometown of Oak Park, Illinois.

Juiceboxxx went on to the tireless, lonely, possibly hopeless pursuit of success on his own terms—no club was too dank, no futon too grubby, if it helped him get to the next, next level. And, for years, Neyfakh remained haunted from afar: was art really worth all the sacrifices? If it was, how did you know you’d made it? And what was the difference, anyway, between a person like Juiceboxxx—who devoted his life to being an artist—and a person like Neyfakh, who elected instead to pursue a stable career and a comfortable, middle-class existence?

Much more than a brilliant portrait of a charismatic musician always on the verge of something big, The Next Next Level is a wholly contemporary story of art, obsession, fame, ambition, and friendship—as well as viral videos, rap-rock, and the particulars of life on the margins of culture.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

LEON NEYFAKH is a reporter for Slate. He was previously the Ideas staff writer for the Boston Globe and a reporter for the New York Observer. He has written for The FADER, the New Republic, Rollingstone.com, NewYorker.com, and a number of other publications. Born in the Soviet Union, Neyfakh was raised in Oak Park, IL, and now lives in Brooklyn.

Extrait. © Reproduit sur autorisation. Tous droits réservés.

INTRODUCTION 

When I saw him this past January, I asked Juiceboxxx directly if I was right to suspect that I had inadvertently ruined everything. I laughed as the words came out of my mouth, because the possibility that he would say, “Yeah, actually,” or even, “Yeah, kind of,” was too horrible for me to fathom with a straight face. Juice had been a free man before he decided to let me be his friend; he may have been living an uncertain, not very comfortable life, but at least he was in his own lane, his hands gripping the wheel even as he swerved, skidded, and stalled. Then I came along and made the myopic assumption that what was best for me, a journalist with a wife, a dog, and a savings account, was also best for him, a turbulent and ambitious artist with dreams I never had a chance at understanding. True, he had asked me to tell him if I heard about any job opportunities. Nevertheless, it was because of me that he ended up pursuing one, and in the process, became a participant in something almost unthinkably ordinary.

On paper it didn’t sound so bad: I had given his name to two former colleagues of mine, who had e-mailed everyone in their professional network saying they had just taken over a fancy magazine about contemporary art, and were looking to bring in new people who could work a few days a week for not very much money. Juiceboxxx, at this time, was making ends meet by writing TV jingles and DJing parties, and living in the basement of a house in Far Rockaway where he paid two hundred dollars a month to sleep on the floor behind a bar. A weekly paycheck, it seemed, would be useful to him. Among other things, it would allow him to finally pay the guy he had hired to put the finishing touches on his new album. 

I thought I was helping. What I didn’t think about was the possibility that having an office job for the first time in his life, and spending his days writing articles and blog posts about other people’s art, could throw Juice into a seriously dislocating existential crisis. I began to worry, after he was hired and started going in to work, that the simmering sense of panic that had always infused his entire being, not to mention his music, would thin out, evaporate, and float away. 

Among other things, the job meant doing work under his legal name instead of under “Juiceboxxx” for the first time in his life. It also meant that he soon had a room of his own in a decent Brooklyn apartment, and could predict with almost 100 percent reliability where he would be at any given time of day. 

“Did I destroy you?” I asked as we sat down to dinner in Soho, both of us coming from our respective offices. Juice smiled and looked down at his food. It took him a minute to answer. 

This little book, as you’ll see if you keep reading, is about the difference between being an artist and not being one, and the confusion many people feel as they try to figure out which one they are, or should be, or wish they were. It’s also about two guys colliding with each other at a crucial moment, and despite having roughly nothing in common, using one another as mirrors both for better and for worse.

During our early meetings in New York about two years ago, I spent half the time contorting myself in order to impress Juiceboxxx, and the other half resolving to present myself to him without fear or self-loathing, as the person I really was. The story here is about the ungainly and confusing grind that inevitably comes with shifting between those two gears.

More than anything else, this is a book about people trying to figure out what it is inside of them that makes them special, and then devoting themselves to the hard work of making it legible to the outside world. It’s both a portrait of my idol—a talented outsider who has spent his life, figuratively and somewhat literally, running away from home—and a memoir about defining yourself through your taste, only to discover that the things you love don’t easily fit with who you think you are, or who you were supposed to be. Juiceboxxx leveled with me, sometimes deliberately and sometimes by accident, during the months I spent following him around and interviewing him. In the subsequent pages I will level with you, and with him.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Melville House
• Date d'édition: 2015
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 161219446X
• ISBN 13: 9781612194462
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 192
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible