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The GW Hatchet

AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Officials name senior vice president, chief of staff
By Fiona Riley, Assistant News Editor • March 26, 2024

SXSW: Thus spoke Doseone

Adam “Doseone” Drucker is one of the founders of anticon. Records, a label that specializes in music that falls somewhere between hyper-confessional poetry and avant hip-hop. Over the past 10 years he has produced paintings, spoken word albums, board games, electronic music and rap under a variety of names, including Subtle. At South By Southwest he played a number of shows with his more traditional rap group, Themselves, with Jeffrey “Jel” Logan.

GW Hatchet: With so much built around and into the Subtle mythology, why have you returned to Themselves?

Doseone: We put everything we had into Subtle. Our hearts, Dax [Pierson’s] body [the multi-instrumentalist of Subtle who was paralyzed in a car accident while on tour] – but the world was indifferent to the music of death in an uncertain genre. And it’s like fuck your indifference, your ambivalence. But, you know, six people had their lives on the line for this and we, we just couldn’t. So Jel and I decided to just be what we are.

GWH: Does that mean Subtle is done?

D: The world didn’t want it. We made no mistake in pursuing music that had never been made before, but people downloaded it or didn’t care.

GWH: Subtle was always more metaphorical than your other projects. Will this style of lyricism go too?

D: My block, the slang from Subtle, never goes away. Subtle was about choice and the absence of choice. We’ve been working on this [Themselves] record quietly for awhile and all of that is still there. The meaning is that this is human, it’s the overlying metaphor.

GWH: But why are you returning to a rap project?

D: Rap is where this started. I wouldn’t paint if it weren’t for rap. I wouldn’t write prose if it weren’t for rap. [Jel and I] always come back to something we love. We grew up loving rap, but so many rappers are . we created a reality that never existed. We never realized that so many rappers were fake. That rappers were backup dancers. And it’s like, people used to come up to the merch booths after shows, back when we just started, and would say, ‘Hey man, you know I’m an artist too and I really appreciate what you’re doing,’ and we would talk. Now people come up and are like, ‘Yo, I’m DJ Franztap, this is my MySpace.’ What the hell does that mean? Do you, do you like what I am doing? Am I supposed to like you now?

GWH: Even with that you’re still pursuing rap?

D: We’re starting again. I’ve actually been teaching kids in Oakland how to battle and I’m going to go back to it too. I think we’ll do this until we die.

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