Lxlita Dances With Demons

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When Lxlita reached out to me on Instagram a year ago, one of the things she asked me in that conversation was what was my favorite song of hers. That track was “Mindfuck”. The reason it was my favorite, I explained to her, was because despite having been released in 2020, it sounded like 2023. It was a stupid response, but it was honest and spontaneous. While I still think it’s a great track, it’s no longer my fav. It has been replaced by ‘Monster’, the first track off of her new album, “The One”. It’s the perfect song to start off the album with, since this one holds more weight, and sounds stronger than her previous offerings. Lxlita makes club music, the kind that won’t allow you to leave the dance floor, and will leave you pleasantly exhausted at the end of the night. But “The One” takes it further by turning up the bass and dimming the lights a bit more, so that The Predator can see better with its infrared sight, targeting and zapping unyielding asses into motion.

The day I began listening to your music, you were using the “Lolita” moniker. Was it changed for obvious reasons, or because your music was listed in streaming services with other musicians of the same name?

It was changed because there were artists of the same name, so I found it difficult to stand out online. The “X” also symbolizes the unknown, which could be intriguing.

Your new album, The One, was released on March 22. How would you compare it to your previous efforts?

Creatively, I felt much more free this time around due to the fact that I had taken a long break to experience life and truly figure out what I wanted out of it. I had a much better idea of the direction I wanted to take with my music and the different facets of my personality I wanted to reveal through my songs.

As for the technical aspect, I spent a lot of time learning new production techniques and improving my mixing and mastering skills.

The first single off of your new album, Monster, is a different kind of beast. It has “muscle”, and evokes a predator stalking its prey. What were you feeling when you composed it?

I wrote and recorded “Monster” at the height of the pandemic. Spending so much time in isolation made me reconsider a lot about my life, but also gave me the time to look within myself and analyze everything. Although the whole world was shut down and there was so much confusion, my future started to become very clear. I felt like the creativity I had pushed down for so long was dying to pour out of me again — almost like a monster inside of me ready to take control (laughs). I think the few years spent away from music were just brewing up a musical beast.

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The earliest Lxlita track that I can find is “Driving”, which was released in 2013, around the time that hyperpop became a thing. That song is, I think, clearly a hyperpop song. So, on that point, my questions to you are: was it by happenstance that “Driving” possessed the sound of what would soon become the hyperpop subgenre, or were you aware of the existence of this style of music, and chose to incorporate it into what you wanted to do with that song?

I don’t recall hearing much hyperpop when “Driving” was created. I was listening to a lot of underground electronic dance music at the time. Hyperpop was a lot harder to find, and it was a much smaller circle of artists than it is now.

On the surface, your music may seem to some as sex-focused, but it’s much more than that. You sing about love, romance, and heartbreak as well. But apparently, you don’t care much for labels, or being pigeonholed, when it comes to your music. Is this what you’re trying to convey in “No Labels”?

Definitely! Now that I want to expand on more topics within my music, I needed to convey this important message: I’m not interested in being labelled or put into a box. I want “No Labels” to speak to those who have been labelled or pressured into labelling themselves by society, but crave to break free from that mold and just be themselves unapologetically. I feel ecstatic at the idea of a world where we no longer have a concern or obsession with someone’s identity, sexual preference, physical attributes and so forth. I dream of a world where humanity can just see each other for our souls and nothing else.

The title of your album, “One Girl Show” as well as the title of your latest release, indicates to me that (remixes aside) you handle everything in the studio yourself. Or do you have a little help in the studio when you’re recording?

Yes, I handle most things myself. I am grateful to have a home studio that allows me to be a control freak (laughs). I taught myself production by watching tons of tutorials and experimenting with different programs. Sometimes I exchange production tips with other artists I meet online. On my latest album, I had a couple co-productions with Adam Tease where we sat on calls and bounced files back and forth or worked on some of the sound design together.

You have such a solid body of work with your songwriting, song structure, and production values. It’s apparent to me that you have a disciplined approach to making music. Would that make you a perfectionist?

Yes, I would consider myself to be a perfectionist. Especially in recent years, I have a system where I put some songs away for months, so I can come back and listen to them with fresh ears. Since I do everything myself, I have to hear the same song hundreds of times, which can cloud my judgment. I find taking a break from it can almost give me a “reset”. I also like to go layer by layer and pick apart each sound until it’s perfect (or close to it).

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Looking back on the early days of your career, your output was tremendous. How did you find the time for all of that recording?

One thing I’ve always been pretty good at is time management. I always made sure to set aside a couple of hours for music every single day. I also spent a lot of weekends working on music and pulling all-nighters, especially if I was determined to get an idea down or finish a song.

What’s your state of mind when you’re in the studio?

Sometimes I come into the studio with a lot of inspiration and ideas that I’ve gathered into my notes over time, other times I just like to let the creative juices flow naturally and see what happens. I often try to unravel feelings about things that have happened in the past, although some of it can be painful — it gives me great drive to work on new material.

Many of the recording artists I’ve interviewed have loads of collaborations on their albums, but you’re an exception. The only collabos I’ve seen in your music come from Adam Tease. Are you averse to such collaborations with other musicians?

Not at all! Collaborations are definitely something I want to focus on more going forward, now that I’m fully committed to music. I already have some artists in mind that I’d love to work with.

Have you ever heard your songs played at clubs or radio (if so, how did it make you feel the first time)?

One of my songs, “Bimbo” was played at a couple DJ sets in NYC last summer. I wasn’t there, but I received some videos in my DMs, and it felt exhilarating to say the least. It has driven me to want more.

Making dance music is what you do, but do you dance? How well, and how often, can you be found beating the floor at a club?

I love dancing, and it’s always been such a huge part of my life. Sometimes I plan out choreographies for my songs as I create them. I’m pretty much on a dance floor almost every weekend, I think I would die without it (laughs).

There are references to biblical themes in some of your songs, and inverted crosses appear in your social media. I’m not one to make assumptions, so I’ll just ask you what’s all of that about?

Growing up Roman Catholic, and having it shoved down my throat by my Italian family, definitely pushed me to look into religion further. In a way, it is my rebellion against an institution that in my opinion is full of hypocrisy, however the inverted cross is actually a symbol of humility. St. Peter was crucified just like Jesus Christ was, however he wanted to be crucified upside down because he thought he wasn’t worthy of being executed the same way Jesus was. For some reason, that story has always fascinated me.

Did your desire to be a musician begin during your formative years, or later in life?

I was always enthralled by music growing up. I remember sitting in the car with my parents trying to pick apart the different layers and instruments of songs that would play on the radio. I spent most of my childhood watching music videos and concerts on repeat, and I just knew that’s what I wanted to eventually do. I didn’t know I would take it as far as doing music production, though.

What do you enjoy the most about being a musician?

What I enjoy the most is the ability to be able to conceptualize my songs into performance and feel the response from the crowd. The energy exchange is the most enjoyable part of being an artist. To me, that is the moment when the music fully comes alive, and I’m able to tell the story behind the song in the most raw and authentic way possible.

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Who were some of your musical influences?

My first musical obsession was the Spice Girls, and then later on Britney Spears and Madonna. I’m also influenced by Kylie Minogue, Robyn, Marina, Tinashe, and Nadia Oh.

Which recording artists are you into these days?

Right now, I’m loving horsegiirL. I also really enjoy Poppy’s discography — there’s so much variety.

Have you had the opportunity to perform live, and if so, what are the crowds like?

Yes, I’ve done a few local shows in Toronto that were generally at festivals. Although the crowds didn’t really know me beforehand, they were very receptive to my performance, and the younger people in the audiences seemed to love it the most.

You mentioned to me previously that, though originally from Toronto, Canada, you spent some time in Italy. In which of those places did your interest in making music begin?

My interest in music definitely began while growing up in Toronto, watching all my musical influences take over mainstream music, but I started to experiment and learn how to produce while living in Italy as a teenager.

Considering the frequency and volume of music you release, do you plan to take a break from recording for the rest of the year?

I most likely will start recording some new material towards the end of the year, but there’s a chance I will have a couple collaborations before then.

Stream Lxlita at Spotify, Apple Music, and SoundCloud. Follow her social media on Instagram and YouTube. Shop Lxlita merch here.

Hawt T-Girl Korra Rain Rawks the Mic

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Photograph by Anthony Vanity

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I didn’t know it at the time, but my neighborhood is full of talent. Bushwick, Brooklyn in New York is the second most interesting place I’ve ever lived. There’s a large LGBTQ+ community here, and there are probably more creatives in Bushwick than any other part of New York. When I started talking to Korra Rain, I didn’t know she was part of the hood I had just moved to at the time. We met for drinks at my regular hangout spot on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, had a pleasant conversation that night, and, in no time, I was eager to hear more of Korra’s music, and do this interview.

To start off, I’d like to congratulate you on the release of your first album, “Hawt Rawring T-girl”. How are you feeling about that? You must be beside yourself.

I’m beyond thrilled! I had worked on it since April of 2021 when I barely knew anyone besides my best friends Nitrah Neon and luvsikgrl to give me musical insight, now here I am with basically a full row of people I’ve met since getting my feet off the ground and had the pleasure of working with to make my dream passion project become a reality.

It’s really an existential body of work for me, with the album itself being about the different transitions in my life from middle school to now, because every track is in a specific order for a reason. Scene culture honestly awoke my eventual transition years before it actually happened, I remember being barely out of the closet when I still thought I was just a gay boy and went down a rabbit hole of watching hot emo dudes make out on YouTube (laughter) and heard ‘Freaxxx’ by brokeNCYDE playing in the background and thought, “Damn, the music is harder than the guys in the video”

And the rest is history, I still listen to BC13, Millionaires, Dropping A Popped Locket, and Geoffrey Paris to this day, and I really wanted to give full homage and love to the genre that in its own way lead me to where I am now. The whole vibe of the androgynous fashion was drugs to my brain! I had entire albums of pics I collected on my phone of what I wished I could’ve looked like had my parents let me, so it all feels really full circle to be able to say I’ve made my mark now.

Because thanks to the subculture itself I found my best friend, a clique of artists that all ended up being a part of this project almost a decade after we first met in a Facebook group chat, and a path for myself to truly find comfort in that I had never gotten to before. I really couldn’t be more satisfied with the rollout, which is why I’m doing an extension and making a remix album of it very soon!

You’re a long way from Greencastle, Indiana. Did your pursuit of a career in music bring you here to New York?

Yes and no. I knew if I wanted big things for myself I had to go somewhere, and a town in the Midwest with a population of ten-thousand was not it, but also I was going through a lot of personal struggles at home that are slightly touched on in the first verse of my song, ‘Remember the Face’. New York really was the only option for me considering it was the only big city I had been thoroughly exposed to, I had an ex from Union City, New Jersey that despite us being broken up for almost a year, understood my situation and let me stay at his place for a few months until I finally managed to find my first ever apartment in Bushwick back in December of 2020, and now the rest is history!

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To the best of my knowledge, your city has had one musical celebrity, Bob Flanigan, who played with The Four Freshmen. I’m almost certain that your music wasn’t influenced by the quartet (laughs), so who or what inspired you to become a musician?

Can’t say they did, but I did grow up with an artist in my family, my Papa (grandpa) is in a bluegrass hippie band called The Jugbusters, he’s the vocals and lead guitar! The one song we bonded over was an old song called, ‘I Am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger’. I chose it for a solo when I decided to partake in a state choir competition when I really was gaining interest in trying to mold my singing voice, we practiced a few times and to this day he’s asked me about it, I might sing it for him next time I see him, because he was with my mom when we went upstate for the competition, and only recently I found out he could hear me singing when I was alone in the room with the judges and was actually tearing up. He has a barn our family used to have nights out and dance in. I was thinking how I’d love to perform the songs with more singing in them off the album a cappella for him as a thank you for being a support in my path from the start, he even once gave me a whole book to read on navigating the industry, I might need it more than ever at this point, so I’d say maybe it’s time for a full-read.

But what got me invested, really, was just watching artists who were able to blowup off of songs they made on their computer during the MySpace era where things were way more difficult compared to now when we have TikTok at the touch of our fingertips. The Millionaires’ overnight come-up to this day fascinates me with how they made the most simple beats on GarageBand out of pure fun and vibes not expecting anything to happen, and then getting millions of plays overnight, no strategy or plan to it at all, that’s crazy to me and I love it! And really goes to show how just really being 100% with how you go about your music and what you do with it pays off, authenticity really is everything, because I do think nowadays especially people will sooner or later point out a fake persona or image, and for three girls to just be making fun music and working their way into the industry to eventually touring across the country multiple times and even getting themselves and their music on TV, I love it, it’s an underdog story in the most perfect ways. Plus there was a somewhat prevalent crunkcore and emo rap scene back in the day in Indiana, with bands and artists like: Dot Dot Curve, Scene Kidz, Dropping A Popped Locket, Hair Jordan, Crazy Crazy Awesome Awesome, Horrifically Me, and even lil aaron!

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Photograph by Justin Belmorodo

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Did you record any music while living in Greencastle?

No, I had all the equipment, but had no clue where to start. When I was in high school, my mom did get one of her friends to guide me a little, and we made some basic GarageBand beats, but it didn’t go much beyond that in terms of the studio. Although I did stay writing, the first song I ever wrote was when I was sixteen after a choir trip where we performed at the top of the Empire State Building, it was my very first time ever coming to New York and I felt so inspired on the bus ride back to Indiana, I wrote a whole remix to Fergalicious called, ‘Korralicious’, it was nasty, but I was so proud! Maybe one day she’ll get a proper recording session (laughter).

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Photograph by Anthony Vanity

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How long after you moved to New York did you begin recording?

I officially moved to Bushwick from New Jersey in December of 2020, after I finally got settled, four months later in April I flew out to LA to have a girl’s trip at my bestie luvsikgrl’s place with my other best friend Nitrah Neon! It was such a cute week and what I needed, and honestly the trip was what fully awoke my transition and made me realize I wasn’t non-binary, a gay dude, none of that. We did my first photoshoot in a black and pink-striped sweater with pink-plaid Tripp pants, I had the blotchy raccoon eyes and I felt like my third eye finally opened and something was unlocked at that point, and afterwards, we recorded the first song I ever made which came to be Ri¢h B!tch Thing$! VZE had just recently made the beat, and it was a remix to, ‘I Like Money’ by the Millionaires, so the flow and energy was easy to master, but no matter how many takes I had to redo, I was so in my element and had it on lock that night, Nitrah was an incredible guide to teaching me the basics of recording vocals too, so it couldn’t have gone more perfectly.

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Photograph by Nitrah Neon

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Where do you typically record, and do your recordings require a lot of hardware?

It normally is a lot of vocal tuning and vocoding, but the end result is always satisfying for me.

At this point the person who I primarily record with is my friends Bennett Lin and Governor Vomit in both of their individual studios, my friend Groove Temple also played a big part in being the very first person whose home studio was the very first I ever consistently worked in.

Bennett from the start when I met him with my friend Lex (unpolarize) has been professional and can guide a studio session in a way that elevates the track itself. He’s helped me with making note chords sound better than they would’ve initially by giving me vocal guidance, given me some of the cleanest mixes and masters I’ve gotten back on tracks, and most of all stayed consistent and has delivered every single time I needed him to, even when I’ve told him he could take his time he will just ace through it way sooner than most people I’ve worked with. I was even feeling frustrated on the mix of my single Hello Kitty xD not being up to par to what it could’ve been, so I asked to see if he could work with it, and surely enough it sounds ten times better than the single version. Seriously am lucky to have discovered him and his services, otherwise I don’t think I would at all be as satisfied with the album rollout the way I still am now.

Governor Vomit is a wizard to work with in his studio because the ideas we make up are always on the same level and elevate the track to new heights to where I get even more hyped for the track than I already was when we both dig our brains into it. Having him help write the chorus on HRT was a magical moment because we were just turning up and feeling our full fantasy with it together, because that’s truly my brother who thinks on the same wavelength as me. Not to mention he’s always helping me figure out the best characters and roles to get myself into when recording depending on the vibe of the track, I’ve never felt disappointed in anything he’s voiced his ideas in, and they always end up being my favorite parts of the songs! Not to mention the album he just dropped in itself displays the ideas and delivery he has, and it’s only been a week and to this day I’m still binge-listening!

Groove Temple is just a talent in himself with how he comes up with melodies, mixing, and production. The first song we ever recorded together was Hello Kitty xD! But the song I’m the most proud of and this time he took part in mixing and mastering the full track was Before I Break, he even helped me and Lex with melodies and deliveries on it, it was a beautiful session, and I even got to see him after he moved back to Long Island mixing and mastering the track and was such a hypnotic process because he’s so engaged and precise with his work every time, and no matter what everything he touches is gold, especially his own music.

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How did your collaborations with other musicians come about? You’ve snagged some great artists.

Every relationship is different, but I always at the end of the day want there to be a chemistry with our ideas and meshing together to create something that really pops. Nitrah Neon has been my best friend ever since 2016 after I found her on YouTube a week after she first started dropping music and our ideas just flow really well considering our music taste is pretty aligned but also has distinctive differences at the same time, we’re in a girl group together called Cokettish and finalizing our debut EP together, songwriting despite being on opposite sides of the country is always easy because we just bounce ideas off of one another and try to bring out the best in what we deliver.

Governor Vomit and I actually met at a ChaseIcon show at Elsewhere, I remember one of our first convos I was feeling myself a little too much and tried bragging that, “My album’s coming out in two weeks :3”… Two years later and here we are (laughs).

We first had sessions in Pirate, I remember my first challenge to his production was asking him to remix one of my favorite songs, ‘Kill Bill’ by Vicious Bunny, now we’re at the point where we’re planning an EP together based on the goddess of rain!

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With Governor Vomit

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While I’m sure you’re proud of Hawt Rawring T-girl in its entirety, I’d like to ask you to list some of your favorite songs off of the album, and why they’re your faves.

Before I Break is a standout, and not just because so far it’s the most popular song on the album, but because the day I recorded it, before I went over to Groove Temple’s studio, I by chance went to the Marsha P. Johnson Park in Williamsburg. I have history there, it was where I met an old friend of mine named Cassie back in 2019 for the first time, the week I met her I was going through one of the darkest times of my life, but she stood out to me as one of the few things on that trip that was positive, and I could find comfort being around in all the chaos I found myself wrapped in, and we stayed in contact for the next year. She’s no longer with us now, and when I wrote ‘Before I Break’ I dedicated the first verse and chorus to her. I had a complicated relationship with drugs, I was doing sex work at a couple of points when I had no job, and was so miserable with what I had to do and how I felt about myself coke and ketamine became what I used to numb everything. When you have someone in your life who has passed away due to drugs, their drugs being laced specifically, there’s something that looms over you when you make the decision to start doing them yourself. It’s this feeling of guilt that hangs over you wondering if you’re letting them down or hurting their heart with that thought in the back of your mind you could very much end up in the same situation they had lost themselves to, and you need to escape before you really find yourself going beyond over the edge. I had never fully processed losing Cassie, but that day I was supposed to meet up with Groove Temple when I found the Marsha P. Johnson Park after forgetting where it was and the name of it for so long, I scoured every inch of that park for the specific spot me, Cassie, and a few other friends sat at the day we met. In the park by the water, there’s a bench on the rocks, we sat on it for what felt like an hour staring off into the sunset, baked, with a view of the sun reflecting off the water as it disappeared behind the buildings in the city, it was beautiful, and finding that exact spot healed me in a way, but what really made a difference was finally recording the track itself. After I heard the demo that just had the first verse and chorus, I bawled my eyes out, after what had accumulated over the entire day I finally had gotten through the final stage of grief, and making this song helped me get there and heal. Not to mention, the last verse I did on it was dedicated to a friend of mine who’s still alive, but at the time had relapsed back into heavy addiction, so I dedicated it to him as a sense of possibly giving a perspective for him. I eventually showed him, and after we reconnected a month ago, he told me the song got him through that really ugly period in his life, and now he’s on the path to finally being sober after dropping everything he was doing. This song made a difference in me, and it made a difference to my friend who I thought I would have to start preparing for the worst for, I could never get tired of Before I Break, absolutely getting performed at every show.

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With unpolarize, photograph by HauntHer2000

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What does it feel like when you put the finishing touches on a song, and you put the “baby” to bed?

I’m always the friend who has to make it super sentimental with whoever is helping me finish it, but it genuinely feels like I’m getting a Pokémon gym badge! This album was the Kanto Leage, onto Johto!

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How have your shows been received since you started? What was it like being up on stage performing for an audience for the first time?

The first time I performed was when I got into contact with Charlie Yates through our mutual friend Quinn, she booked me at her college Simon’s Rock in Massachusetts alongside the Frost Children! We took the Grand Central train all the way upstate, where she picked us up and drove us to the college. It was super cute and a lot more trans people than I was expecting were present, but I had fun, plus I even got paid $850 for a thirty-minute set, I mention it in my track ‘HRT’! I didn’t have enough songs that filled that time slot, so I ended up just finding random obscure tracks that sounded similar to what I did and played it off like they were mine. It was chill, I was nervous as Hell when we were waiting for everything to start, meanwhile Lulu & Angel were watching YouTube Poops. Charlie started with a DJ set, then I finally came out and performed outside in the dark in an open field, plus Angel & Lulu killed it with their set and got everyone hype! Not to mention I even made out with a cute douchebag after my set (laughs). I also got to meet Ham Cockett, who ended up shooting my very first music video for my song 1 N Only!

Overall, I’m not much of a dancer, but people like my stage presence and how I interact with the crowd. You just gotta be able to be part of my routine with me, have a lemon drop, mosh and epically face plant, and get your titties signed! What else could you want from a show?

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Now that you’ve released your first album, what are your plans for the near future, and what do you have planned for the remainder of 2024?

Right now, I want to focus on the side projects I’ve been planning with Nitrah Neon and Governor Vomit, both very different from one another. But I also want to prioritize making a visual experience out of the album, my goal is to have a music video for every song shot by a different videographer. I’m also in the process of doing a remix album for Hawt Rawring T-girl that should be out this summer! Besides that, I have begun the first steps to my second album, it’s very much leaning to be my pop girl era, much more polished and more singing with a darker story compared to Hawt Rawring T-girl. Where Hawt Rawring T-girl is about rising up and truly finding your peak, this next album is about what happens when you’re struck after feeling like you’ve shed yourself of all the grief you’ve been chained to, and the path to picking yourself back up. I can’t give out the name yet, but I will give the initials!

UTS

I’ll let y’all decipher (winks).

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With Nitrah Neon (l)

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Stream Korra Rain on Spotify, Apple Music, and SoundCloud, follow her social media on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

P-Funk Propagandist Pedro Bell

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Artist self-portrait

The first time I had heard of either Noam Chomsky or the Trilateral Commission was within the liner notes and art of the Funkadelic hit album ‘One Nation Under a Groove’. Many of the funk band’s album cover art contained subversive content hidden within their psychedelic magic marker-rendered masterpieces. The band itself, founded and led by George Clinton, recorded subversive music with lyrics that disguised their political leanings, much of it informed by the work of Chicago artist Pedro Bell. It was his artwork that pushed the “-delic” (psychedelic) of Funkadelic to another plane of WTF-ism.

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Gatefold album cover for Let’s Take it to the Stage

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Pedro was my friend and big brother (as he was, I would one day learn, to many young aspiring artists). We would talk for hours while I listened to his stories about his (mis)adventures during his time with the P-Funk family. One day I received a package in the mail from him and when I opened it and removed the items from within, it felt as though I had opened a time capsule. There enclosed were buttons, posters, comics, stickers, newsletters, and more from the seventies. The feeling of holding something in my hand from a time I often romanticized but never experienced was immediately electric! We were friends for several years, but I lost track of him sometime in 2008. He had become color-blind in 1996 and eventually blind altogether. In his last correspondence to me, the only thing I can recall him saying is “I’m only rich in theory” (though I don’t remember what his comment was in reference to, nor the conversation itself). Sadly, Pedro Bell died in poverty on August 27, 2019.

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Inner album cover, essay, and liner notes for Let’s Take it to the Stage

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Shortly after Pedro’s death, a statement released by P-Funk bassist, Bootsy Collins, spoke about Pedro’s influence on P-Funk music and culture.

“The wild and bizarre artwork gave our early audience a sense of seeing the visual side of the music and the language. He had a way of translating and communicating what all the weirdness was about, and that you, the consumer, really wanted to figure it out, because it truly was otherworldly. Every time the two were done together, it would create The One. They there would be another satisfied customer! Thanks to our Captain Draw, the Clone Stranger of Artistic Gratification to the Nation, Mr. Pedro Bell. The Funk got Stronger. Your service to this world can never be calculated.”

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Funkadelic band members from Let’s Take it to the Stage

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But for his failing health, Pedro would have been able to pursue opportunities that would have earned him more than the pittance he received for album covers. He not only inspired artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, his artwork laid the foundation for Afro-futurism. One look at the pages in DeviantArt will tell you that Pedro’s art would have fit right in amongst many of today’s young subversive artists, and I’d like to think that some of those young artists were perhaps influenced by Pedro’s art. The executives at Warner Brothers Records, however, knew how invaluable his art was because, as Pedro once claimed, they stole some of it (they were hostile toward the whole P-Funk organization, according to rumors). Pedro designed the Funkadelic logo, and for more than a decade (from 1981), Warner prevented George Clinton from using the “Funkadelic” name., Many years later when they returned the band name to Clinton, he was prevented from using the skull in The Funkadelic logo that served as the dot over the “i” (petty as fuck, but the “i” has since been returned). Apparently, they didn’t hold onto it for long, since almost all of Pedro’s art somehow ended up in museums in countries outside the U.S.

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Inside gatefold cover

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When Pedro Bell died, I had the intention of composing something of a memorial to pay my respects, but I stared at an empty page for months, until the COVID -19 pandemic hit, and I eventually forgot until now. The reason for my timing is that I think Pedro would love Neuerotica. He would have dug my luxury e-magazine, but he would like to think he would have been impressed with what I’m doing now. He would notice his influence in the kinds of content I publish within the virtual pages of Neuerotica. Our fusion of subversive art, music, fashion, culture, and politics is a concept I borrowed from his writing and art. If he were still alive, this would have been an interview rather than an article.

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Gatefold album cover for Hardcore Jollies

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It can not be overstated that Pedro Bell is one of the most overlooked artists in African American history. In an interview with the New York Times, Rebecca Alban Hoffberger, founder of the American Visionary Art Museum, calls Bell “a real unsung hero”. Historians of African American history and art should hasten to include Pedro’s art and legacy into their classrooms and publications. Pedro’s work has earned the honor of being worthy of examination and study. His scathing commentary on race, politics, corrupt business practices within the music industry, and more concealed in both his wordplay and art is, to this day, unparalleled.

Below is an essay (edited solely for grammar) published on the George Clinton website. Unfortunately, no attribution can be found anywhere on said website, and the contact link only links to their newsletter subscription form. I have republished it here with a link to the original article, and there are links to where the article originated, as well as other sources of information about Pedro Bell.

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Pedro Bell in art gallery, photo by Jean Lachat/Chicago Sun-Times

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Funkadelic had been alarming/converting audiences for around four years before he showed up. Hindsight shows that in those years, between 1969 and 1973, they were trying anything and everything like they had nothing left to lose. Which they didn’t since they were on an obscure label, an erratic circuit, and haphazardly building an odd cult of fans while being run out of towns.

Pedro was, like many of those fans, a young person into the hothouse explosion of hybrid musics that gushed over from the expansive late 60s. Like the deepheads, he loved Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Sun Ra, Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles. He particularly liked the distinct and disturbing packaging of Frank Zappa albums. It gave a special identity to the artist and to the fans who dug it. It plugged you into your own special shared universe. So he sent elaborately drawn letters to Funkadelic’s label with other samples. George Clinton liked the streetwise mutant style and asked him to do the “Cosmic Slop” album cover in 1973.

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Gatefold album cover for Cosmic Slop

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That was the moment Funkadelic became everything we think about them being.

Before, Funkadelic used shocking photos of afro-sirens along with liner notes lifted from the cult, Process Church Of The Final Judgment. Very sexy, very edgy. But looking a bit too much like labelmates The Ohio Players’ kinky covers, and reading like a Charles Manson prescription for apocalypse. A more cartoonish cover for the fourth album “America Eats Its Young” (1972) along with more coherent production and song structure was a new start. But Pedro crystallized their identity to the world with that next LP.

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Uncensored album cover for Electric Spanking of War Babies

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In 1973, there was no MTV, no internet, no VCRs, no marketing strobe in all media. An act toured, they put out an album once a year, and they were lucky to get a TV appearance lip-synching a hit. You couldn’t tape it, and you were lucky to even see them. As a fan, almost your whole involvement with the band came through the album cover. It was big, it opened out in a gate fold, there were inserts and photos and posters. Sitting with your big ol’ headphones, you shut off the world and stared at every detail of the album art like they were paths to the other side, to the Escape. Who were all those people in the “Sgt. Pepper” crowd?; what alternate reality were artists Roger Dean (Yes) and Mati Klarwein (Santana, Miles Davis) from?; why are the burning businessmen shaking hands?; is it an African woman standing or a lion’s face?; does it say “American Reality” or “American Beauty” or both?

This was an art era for an art audience. Posters, T-shirts, LPs. These were your subculture badge of honor, your spiritual battle cry, your middle finger to mediocrity. They took every cent you had saved and were even harder to come by, which made it even more personal, more rebel. Your LP was a shield, your T-shirt was armor. They got you expelled, ostracized, beat up. They scared the living hell out of the straights around you…and you loved that. It reaffirmed your faith that you were into something good, something unique.

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George Clinton’s Computer Games album cover

What Pedro Bell had done was invert psychedelia through the ghetto. Like an urban Hieronymus Bosch, he cross-sected the sublime and the hideous to jarring effect. Insect pimps, distorted minxes, alien gladiators, sexual perversions. It was a thrill, it was disturbing. Like a florid virus, his markered mutations spilled around the inside and outside covers in sordid details that had to be breaking at least seven state laws.

More crucially, his stream-of-contagion text rewrote the whole game. He single-handedly defined the P-Funk collective as sci-fi superheroes fighting the ills of the heart, society, and the cosmos. Funk wasn’t just a music, it was a philosophy, a way of seeing and being, a way for the tired spirit to hold faith and dance yourself into another day. As much as Clinton’s lyrics, Pedro Bell’s crazoid words created the mythos of the band and bonded the audience together.

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Funkcronomicon album cover

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Half the experience of Funkadelic was the actual music vibrating out of those wax grooves. The other half was reading the covers with a magnifying glass while you listened. There was always more to scrutinize, analyze, and strain your eyes. Funkadelic covers were a hedonistic landscape where sex coursed like energy, politics underlay every pun, and madness was just a bigger overview.

Pedro called his work ‘scartoons’, because they were fun, but they left a mark. He was facing the hard life in Chicago full-on every day with all the craft and humor he could muster.

Pedro’s unschooled, undisciplined street art gave all the Suit execs fits, as when the cover for “Electric Spanking of War Babies” caused such a scandal that it had to be censored before release. It also opened the door for all the great NYC graffiti artists of the late 70’s, for the mainstream success of Keith Haring’s bold line cartoons, and James Rizzi’s marker covers and “Genius of Love” video animation for The Tom Tom Club.

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Album cover for United State of Mind by Enemy Squad

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When Parliament and Funkadelic went on hiatus in the 80s, it was Pedro Bell’s art that gave the P-Funk identity to George Clinton’s albums like “Computer Games” (1982), “You Shouldn’t-nuf Bit Fish” (1983), “Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends” (1985), and “R&B Skeletons In the Closet” (1986); as well as spin-offs like Jimmy G & The Tackhead’s “Federation of the Tackheads” (1985), and his clay figure art for INCorporated Thang Band’s “Lifestyles of the Roach and Famous” (1988).

By the early 90’s the game had changed and not to Pedro’s favor. MTV had turned every song into a jingle, and every album into a quarterly marketing plan. Every star’s face was in your face every place all over the place, milking an album for three years until the next committee go-round. CDs shrunk the album cover experience into a coaster. The days of swimming in your LP cover were gone. (But conversely, Rock concert poster design exploded, as fans were desperate to have some great art to fill the void.)

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Flyer for house/dance group Deee-Lite

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During the decade Pedro continued soldiering on with the CD covers for P-Funk-inspired bands like Maggotron’s “Bassman of the Acropolis” (1992), “Funkronomicon” for Bill Laswell’s all-star funk collective, Axiom Funk (1995), and Enemy Squad’s “United State of Mind” (1998). And of course for George Clinton’s “Dope Dogs” (1994),”TAPOAFOM (The Awesome Power of a Fully Operational Mothership)” (1995) and “Greatest Funkin’ Hits” (1996); and P-Funk’s “How Late Do You Have 2 B B4 U R Absent?” (2005).

In the meantime his style was homaged/appropriated/bit by other artists designing for Digital Underground, Miami Bass groups, and dodgy Funkadelic compilations. But he received better due with a great write-up in the countercultural art magazine Juxtapoz (#16, Fall ’98). He also had a couple of his Funkadelic covers in Rolling Stones’ “Greatest album covers of all time” issue.

Below are links to more articles about Pedro Bell, as well as a link to the P-Funk website.

George Clinton, Lambiek Comiclopedia, Rolling Stone, New York Times