photo via Facebook
Himanshu Suri, a.k.a. Heems, is probably best known from the now defunct Das Racist, but he's continuing to make "post-9/11 dystopian brown man rap" on his own. We briefly chatted with Heems in anticipation of the release of his first solo album Eat Pray Thug, speaking to him about some of his most defining experiences as a native New Yorker. He's currently living on Long Island after a lifetime in Brooklyn, Queens, and even a brief journey down Wall Street.
You're living in Hicksville now, right? Why did you choose to move back home... to leave Williamsburg and all that "white drama" you talk about on Eat Pray Thug? My lease ended at the end of April and I just didn't want to sublet or get an apartment again, which I had to do for like years. So I think since around May of last year I've been living on Long Island.
So how's living with the parents? Oh, I love it. It just so happens that my sister and her husband were also living there. I'm on my way back to them right now. [Last night] I had a show at [Aicon Gallery] where I have my art. I had a performance there with the Kominas and Riz MC, they're like this Pakistani punk band and this Pakistani grime artist.
Okay, let's talk about other collaborations. Talk to me a little about the Dev Hynes collaboration. What was it like for a "So NY" born-and-bred Queens kid to work with a guy who has such a deep-set love of the place as his adopted home? Yeah, I feel like he does qualify as "native." I was thinking about the production and I was like Harry [Fraud]'s from New York, Boody [B]'s from Washington Heights, Gordon Voidwell's from the Bronx and like Keyboard Kid and Bill Ding are not from New York, but I thought about Dev and I was like, he's basically a New Yorker. I've been bugging him for like three years to do this thing we had spoken about. We mentioned working together and it never happened and then Cupid Deluxe came out and I was like, "Great, now you're never going to work with me." But one day I got him to come by a studio and he banged that riff out in like a minute and then I wrote my lyrics in like 20 minutes and then in an hour we had the song.
You commented somewhere that there are no Indian samples on Eat Pray Thug, right? Why's that? Well yeah, the label didn't clear any samples. It's a budget thing. You have to clear publishing... But a lot of people, when the samples are obscure like '60s Bollywood, they would just risk it. But my label didn't want to.
Do you think that compromised the integrity of your album? I mean initially when it was happening, I was very upset about it, but looking at it in retrospect, I like the fact that I'm not relying on samples or relying on humor or anything like that. I guess the samples were almost like a defense mechanism. I can rely on them and it takes the pressure off of me.
So moving onto your experience of what it was like being a brown person in post-9/11 New York City... Yeah, it sucks. [laughs]
Yeah, in so many words. Can you tell me about that day and the days thereafter? I don't really want to do that... it's kind of difficult for me and I cry. Like basically I was close enough to see people jumping and hear their bodies hit the floor. Um... so it's quite a traumatic experience for me and I've never really come to terms with what it all meant, which I'm trying to do with the music. So that's kind of like... what it is.
Going to Stuyvesant was obviously an integral part of that experience, but what was the rest of your time there like? Did going there bring you back to the arts in some way? Since you worked on Wall Street before returning to art? Stuyvesant is just a super competitive place where like everyone was wanting to get into Harvard. But ultimately beside the proximity to 9/11, what the takeaway was learning how to manage my time better. There's good grades, sleep and social life and at Stuyvesant you can only have two out of the three.
Obviously "Patriot Act" and "Flag Shopping" are both incredibly personal powerful songs. Tell me about the writing process for those songs. I didn't go into the studio with this like idea of doing these 9/11 tracks. I recorded most of the album in India and then my label was like, "We couldn't clear all the tracks, we need two more songs." So I went in and "Flag Shopping" and "Patriot Act" just came out of me. You know, I'd been in India for a while and then I returned to New York, so maybe upon returning I just kind of remembered... But I had never thought of New York as this racist place until 9/11, you know?
Did you have a particular experience? Oh yeah. I mean I live out in Long Island and whenever a journalist cabs over to interview me, the cab driver dropping them off will make comments about my house... Because "It's one of these big Indian houses that doesn't fit in the neighborhood." But you know in Queens, that's totally common. And like the cab drivers will always say, "Oh yeah, the one that doesn't belong here" or "Oh yeah okay, the Indian one." Like one of the writers was an Indian girl and she told the cab driver the address and he said, "I don't speak your language," and she said "English?" So being on Long Island it's kind of cool because it grounds me in a way. Because if you're in Brooklyn or Manhattan it's like, "Oh, you're Indian, that's so cool, I love Indian food." But it's now like these guys think I'm moving in and building fucking Taj Mahals in the neighborhood, and I feel more comfortable with that racism than with like "liberal appreciation."
So then what was it like when you lived in Williamsburg for a while? I liked it at the time. I mean a lot of friends, we were all in bands and it was good to be around your peers. It was a good vibe. But eventually I was like, "This is not the New York I know, the New York I grew up with, that I cherish." That New York's Long Island now.
I was just reading your New York Times Q&A that came out and was curious about your statement that "Chicago, in rap, becomes Chi-raq. From a certain standpoint, it was about reclaiming that from hip-hop as a brown person." Can you talk about that a little more? It's not ultimately about "reclaiming" it. The intention was to draw parallels between the black body in America and the brown body in the world, and that intention was about unity. So I feel like "reclaiming" poses it as like "I was upset," but no, it's about unity.
Right, and that ties into another question about rap and hip-hop being integral components of NYC-based music, but how exactly do you navigate that strange in-between place? We're brown men who make black art that is marketed to white people. I feel weird about it, but it's fine.
But a lot of people think Queens hip-hop is all tongue-in-cheek now, it's considered quote-unquote smart. What do you think about those implications?...Oh, is that what I did? I don't know, maybe it is...
Speaking of my reading list, I know you've been retweeting some people who've had problems with the Village Voice's recent profile on you, starting with the title: "With Eat Pray Thug, Heems Moves Past That Funny Rap Group With The 'Dumb' Name." What are your thoughts on that? I was pretty happy with it. I mean the piece is a little snide, but it's fine. I think in 5000 words, you don't have to make everyone happy. I'm pretty proud of it. But yeah, the title's stupid, but that's not the takeaway. I liked the piece, just not the title.
I know you were really embedded in the predominantly Sikh Richmond Hill community. Tell me a little bit about that. Are you still working with SEVA? What kind of projects have you been pursuing? Oh, I'm not really working with them anymore. But I am working with the Punjabi Deli on the Lower East Side right now. Construction has affected business so we are petitioning for a cab stand so cabbies can patronize the deli without getting a ticket.
