"Although I didn't write this song, it spoke to me in a way that made me feel as if it was my own story,” Brandon said. “I found myself playing it over and over again in my bedroom, remembering situations that I've been through.”
Check out the video for yourself below.
Now-local to the Lower East Side of New York City, that boy grew up to be Malkam with the occasional presence of an alter ego named Badman Babyboy. He has been making music for more than 10 years at this point. Curious as to what prompted this extrovert and lover of “the greater good” to start, he let us in on two specific moments.
“I've always been a huge fan of music and dancing but never thought of the idea of recording my voice until I heard Eminem’s “The Warning,”’ he tells us. “In a moment, I was like, I want to rap. Note, I had no idea how to rap and had no idea how to go about it... but shit I would just bump that song everyday on my way to school.”
Malkam continues, “I actually really started making music because my homie in high school thought he was a label executive and came up to me and was like, ‘Yo, Malkam you wanna sign to my label?’ And I was like, ‘Oh word! I need a rap name then.’ We ended up creating a rap group in the 10th grade, and we used to go to his nice ass crib on 5th Ave and record music after school. Shoutout Josh Galanter! That's his name. Truthfully he's the reason why I started making music. Yeah, man.”
One thing about Malkam is that he’s an artist who gives other artists their due credit. With deep respect for his home country and family, he’s brought it upon himself to use music as one of his tools to help people appreciate the beauty in “the jungle” he’s from. “People need my art because everyone is stealing it subconsciously,” he explains. “Not my work specifically but the culture, everything that's jumping, involves Jamaicans, involves our lingo, style, our attitude, just the way we act. It's a lifestyle that can only come from a Jamaican. But it seems like they are afraid to give us our credit.”
Confident and cool in his stature, the baddest bloodclaat breaks down the title and reasoning of Plandemic: “My new project is called Plandemic because dem-plan-it and now dem-a-panic... hahaha, but all jokes aside I want everyone to know the name of the EP has nothing to do with anything political".
He went on to explain, "Fire pon babylon. The name Plandemic describes how I went about this project. I had a blueprint and I executed it. Every aspect about this project was planned for the greater good, meaning every step and idea I had for it was carefully calculated".
"I don't want to explain it too in depth and give the sauce away," he teased, "but let me give you an example—I have a song and video called ‘Who You’ on this project." The video was shot in an empty Time Square during the pandemic, Malkham tells us. "Have you ever seen Time Square absolutely empty? Exactly. Only time I’ve ever seen an empty Time Square was in that movie Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise and they spent millions to get Times Square empty for like 2 hours. I paid free.99. My video for ‘Who You’ doesn't need to do numbers now for me to know it’s going to do numbers one day.”
The happy-go-lucky character within Malkam is obvious not just in the way he moves throughout his videos, but in the day-to-day. The honesty protruding from his deep tone comes from the struggles he is personally faced with. “I am trying to stay cozy at all times and observe human behaviours, so basically I have a nonchalant attitude to the world right now." Musing, he adds, "I don't think anyone knows what's going on, and the best guesses are lies".
The other day, Malkam tells us, he went on Instagram and saw a video of people firing automatic weapons at his mother in Jamaica. "Thank god she survived it, but now she has a brain tumor because of the trauma, so you can have an idea of what my attitude is right now during this pandemic. I don't care about anything really at this moment except my situation at hand. Everyone is afraid of Corona, I'm afraid of losing my mom, I'm afraid of getting killed by the police, I'm afraid of getting deported, it's getting to the point now where I'm afraid of living. The bad thing is I don't talk about this stuff, I'm always smiling and trying to make other people laugh.”
The fact that dance comes out so effortlessly, with the context of these horrific experiences, makes Plandemic that much more important. Important for the youth, the present, and the future. Expect Malkam to never stop.
office sat down with Kramar to discuss fantasy, veneer, and his latest projects.
Can you talk about your artistic journey for this project, both the EP and the photo series?
The short story is that I was working on demos in New York with this wonderful guy, George Albrecht, and then I was visiting L.A. and ended up meeting both a manager and meeting Chris Taylor from Grizzly Bear. Then he became my producer and we created this body of work together. I have a love for photography and styling. I visualize images photographically as opposed to in music video form, so I thought, let's do an editorial shoot for this body of work, as opposed to embarking on a hellish music video—which I have to say I really do not enjoy.
Does the editorial inform the direction of the music?
The music comes first, but as far as creating a visual counterpart for the music, I'm so much more interested in photography and inspired by photography than I am music videos.
Looking at the photo series, I notice a Freudian vulnerability in the use of childhood icons and signifiers. Was this intentional?
It's very much after the fact, you know, I don't set out to create visual representations of psychological reality or concepts. But when I was talking to this writer friend about that video, I mean, she was saying you're constantly coming back to these. Almost a nightmarish or adult unfolding or collapse of these childhood characters. Why is that? I don't know.
You choose the image of Pinnochio as the album cover—any reasoning behind that?
I mean, what I love about Pinocchio kind of relates to Stella Adler's—the very famous acting coach—line about junkies: “A junkie uses their body to signify to society that there is something wrong in a society. They use their body to basically have an alarm.” And that's what Pinocchio is. You know, he is wearing an alarm that indicates that he is emotionally transparent, whether he wants to be or not. So I thought that was a really perfect symbol for this music and for these two songs that I'm telling you something, whether or not I want to be, you know, I am revealing more than I think I'm revealing.
It’s about baring your delusions on your sleeve, presenting them unobstructed.
Exactly. I am still unsure of how full of shit I am. I've got to be full of shit to a degree, but if I am, I want that to be on display. Whatever I am, I want that to be accessible to other people and I want to be advertising that, you know. I don't know exactly what I'm trying to say and I don't know why it's important to dress up as Angelica or Oscar the Grouch, but it smells like truth. It sounds like the truth. And in an ironic way, it would be further from the truth if you were to try to create a formula for what each image is specifically supposed to represent, in a calculated manner. And I've never been interested in, you know, A plus B equal C, I mean, who cares. I don't know what my formula is, you know.
Maybe there shouldn't be a formula.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
What is your relationship to delusion and truth as it relates to your music?
I'm somebody who, you know, loves to do vocal impressions—whether it's Eartha Kitt or Johnny Cash or Tracy Chapman or Cher. I can listen, I can go through this record of my music or and and hear, oh, God, I was really running from this information and I can hear that, I can hear it. I mean, lyrically, but also in terms of, you know, the attitude of the voice and the singing, I can hear a desire to be perceived a certain way. And then maybe a year later, a month later, oh, I'm less hung up on being perceived this way, so I'm going to sing with a different sound. It sounds more like the truth, it sounds more like the acceptance of the self where the self is at.
What draws you to the characters you choose to perform?
It’s funny, you know, I’m definitely fascinated with our fascination with replicating the cartoon in the real world—in a literal way. Like, you know how on shitty blogs every few years there will be some hideous photoshop rendering of like a humanoid version of Homer Simpson that's super grotesque? But I don't know what that is exactly. I find that so fascinating and so rich in content. It's so childish, the thought, “What if Marge Simpson was real.” You know, like who cares? But somehow it's so thrilling at the same time. It’s so strange and disturbing.
It's not even a question of what she would actually look like, but more so, why are we asking these questions? Why are we creating these fantasies and applying them to our realities?
I think, you know, dressing up as versions of these characters, in a way, is inserting myself into a collective fantasy. I can actually enter this space that it's more than I can pretend to be a famous person. You know, it is a bit of that. You know, it is about entering this. What if I were so well known? What if I was ageless? What if I was beloved? It's almost like hijacking somebody's fantasies or hijacking somebody’s pre-existing relationship with a character.
Directed by Dana Boulos, the video shows Rainsford in a yellow Versace outfit and a pink bikini, creating a landscape out of her body, as she begins to find a place for herself in the landscape of the music industry.
Check out our quick chat with the budding musician, along with a glistening exclusive editorial, below.
How would you describe your new single, “Oh My God” in only a few words?
I feel like you're really setting me up here.... "Oh my god," but in a few different words: Silly, Sexy, Fun.
What was the song’s inspiration?
Usually most of my songs are deeply personal and somewhat heavy (even when the songs sound pop-y and light, I tend to write lyrics with an emotional undercurrent). I wrote “Oh My God” with one of my best friends. You can actually hear me laughing at the top of the track. I feel like there is so much doom and gloom in the world right now, so I wanted to put a song out for people to escape within even if its momentary.
And what about for the music video?
For the video, I worked with one of my favorite director/photographers and my great friend, Dana Boulos. We are always on the same page when it comes to the creative behind a shoot, and we both want to push the envelope beyond the conventional. We brainstormed about ideas together for a while and this is what we came up with. Plus I was able to get a bunch of my friends to be a part of it, which makes it even more special!
What can fans look forward to from you in the next few months?
I have another single and video coming out in October that I am very much looking forward to.
Name three of your favorite songs to dance to.
Dolly Parton: “Gonna Hurry As Slow As I Can,” Charli XCX: “party 4 u,” and Prince: “It’s Gonna Be Lonely”
