Fragile and dangerous is the rope from which the batch of new artists like Die Antwoord, Little Big or Tommy Cash are juggling from. Sometimes it seems like what they do is purely a boutade, which is perfectly acceptable. But then a shadow of doubt appears: are they serious when it comes to the exaltation of the ugly lumpen, that outlying aesthetic and that second-rate criminal imagery? Then it doesn’t seem to be as purposeful. Fortunately, they all continuously take part in destabilising the scale towards the more prankster side with actions as interesting as the ones from Tommy Cash and his Kanye East persona.
KANYE EAST, THE LIFE OF PAVEL
Tommy Cash has always stated that his greatest artistic inspiration is Kanye West… So it should come as no surprise that, in the end, Cash pulled an alter ego of his out of thin air called Kanye East who owns a fashion brand that encourages to live “The Life of Pavel” and whose motto couldn’t be any more categorical: Make Europe Great Again.
We got to know of Tommy Cash a few seasons ago with a music video, called Winaloto, which he presented in society a kind of Eastern European version of that South African zef vibe from Die Antwoord. The song was huge, but many started to question whether this was extremely serious when, sometime after, he presented the track Pussy Money Weed produced by A.J. Cook with a hyperviolent music video in which girls even appeared with blades implanted in the stumps of their limbs. That could have been the end of Tommy Cash if the existence of Kanye East hadn’t been there to compensate it.
Because, after all, in the creation of the Kanye East character is precisely where this rapper from Tallinn (Estonia) born in 1991, shows us that you can’t take anything too seriously. The matter is that Cash has always been very clear in saying that his artistic father is none other than Kanye West: as an illustrious representation of the breakdown of the Soviet empire, many of his songs are true reflections regarding the tension that exists around the bling-bling life that is sold in the West and the only version that those from Estonia can afford for themselves: a fake flea market version, the one that turns adidas’ lettering into adidash. And people fall for it.
And so, sometimes, and only sometimes, Tommy Cash transfigures into Kanye East. And it’s this kind of Kanye from Eastern Europe who owns a fashion brand that is a purely ironic vision, almost sardonic, of all of those shams that we’re blindly buying into from Western Fashion as the epitome of cool. Kanye East sells paper bags at affordable prices, and he has a version of that IKEA bag that you’ve surely seen in more than one occasion in your grandma’s kitchen. Do you remember the MAGA (Make America Great Again) hat? Well, he has the MEGA (Make Europe Great Again) version. He copies Off-White’s obsession of labelling a thing with its own name, whilst he takes from Yeezy that Kanye-like grandiosity that is able to sell a sweatshirt for horses. With a hoodie. And holes in the hoodie for the horse’s ears
Kanye East says it loud and clear: you might never be able to afford “The Life of Pablo”. But, you know, you can always get “The Life of Pavel”, which is far more attainable.
