The elephant in the room
The DJ's, Venus X and Boima, talk about their approach to music, but also about their run-ins with tastemaker Diplo, who has shaped popular music tastes globally.
Chief Boima and Venus X at Open Arti in Milan, Italy (Screen grab).
Chief Boima (government name: Boima Tucker; and member of the Africa Is a Country member) was invited to OPEN ARTI in Milan recently to talk about art and politics and also to do a DJ set. In the video of the event, below, Boima is joined by fellow DJ, Venus X (profiled here in The New York Times) as well as Simon Bertuzzi of Palm Wine collective in Milan.
Africa Is a Country gets proper some shout-outs, both in Italian and English. A lot of things get talked about: music and race, how we listen to music, Shakira, cumbia, hard style, LMFAO, David Guerra, Rihanna, etcetera etcetera. But the elephant in the room is Diplo, the famous DJ and tastemaker.
Venus speaks frankly, and openly, about her run-ins with Diplo (he attacked her on Twitter after she objected to him recording her set and then bringing out a mixtape drawn from that set).
Boima discusses the implications of the Venus-Diplo feud in this AIAC post.
At the time Diplo felt compelled to comment on the post. In the video, Boima also gets to talk about that meeting with Diplo set up by writer Eddie ‘Stats’ Houghton (of Okayplayer and Large Up) in the wake of our post. This new video filmed in Milan, about 40 minutes long, given the viral quality of the web, will sure ignite this debate again.
As a bonus, here are two other videos from the event from Boima’s DJ set: one and two.
