Imaginary Worlds - Rappers with Arm Cannons

Episode Date: October 5, 2017

In the second of my two-part episode on musical worlds, I talk with Mega Ran and Sammus -- hip hop artists that create concept albums based on the classic video games Mega Man and Metroid. They talk about the challenge of creating an imaginary world in music from someone else's source material, and why they identify with the struggles of 8-bit characters that fight their way through the world with arm cannons.Also, please fill out Panoply's annual survey -- it helps the company know how to better serve our listeners. Thanks! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Find Secret at your nearest Walmart or Shoppers Drug Mart today. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. When Raheem Jarboe was growing up in Philadelphia, he loved playing Nintendo, like a lot of kids. His favorite game was Mega Man. Mega Man, of course, is a happy-go-lucky robot with an arm cannon who jumps around and shoots bad robots. But what really sucked Raheem into the game was the music.

And that was one of the first games where you could pause the game and the music would still play. I actually know a guy who said that Mega Man was the first video game character he connected with because Mega Man blinked. So because Mega Man blinked, that's awesome. That's so cool. I mean, that's a really interesting point. Next, the only other one I could think of that did that was Sonic the Hedgehog, you know, who stood and blinked and tapped his feet and, you know, things like that. That's a really, really good point, you know.

I didn't even think about that. But he did give a lot of thought to Mega Man's internal life. Like, what is this guy thinking? Although Mega Man did blink, he didn't talk, you know, and there was no dialogue in any of these games. That always made me as a kid

kind of fill in dialogue and imagine what he would write or what he would say. And so I used to write and draw in sketchbooks, and I would make comics and make up my own video games and I would draw the storyline out talking about what if Mega Man got fed up with having to save the world and he

decides to exercise his free will and like just walks away. Or he does something crazy like he shoots Dr. Wily. Dr. Wily is the bad scientist that creates robots Mega Man has to fight. Now he's a killer and he's on the run and he's trying to figure out who he is. So I think that was really what got me into it, the fact that there was no dialogue. And so therefore you had to imagine what the story was. Now eventually, as an adult, Rahim became a junior high teacher. But deep down, he missed the creativity of being a kid and imagining the world of Mega Man. So he combined his two passions, video games and music, to become the hip-hop artist known as Mega Ran, who raps about what it's like to be Mega Man. In my last episode, I looked at the challenges of creating a concept album based on original material.

But this episode is about a different kind of challenge. How do you create a musical world of your own out of someone else's source material? In other words, how do you create fan fiction with music? It's extremely difficult to create your own world, of course, but I think it's even harder to take an existing world and then twist it, spin it, turn it upside down and extend it because people are so accustomed to the way that world looked and felt for them. And so changing it can really upset people.

So you have to be very, very cautious and careful when dealing with an existing universe. I was curious, though, how he still identifies with Mega Man. I mean, I understand as a kid, who doesn't want to fantasize about being a robot and shooting other bad robots? But as an adult, like what makes him relate to this 8-bit video game character?

I do feel like Mega Man being a, you know, a creation, you know, being used for good by Dr. Light and being born in this really rough world, but yet having one mission to, to save people constantly and to be the best he could be. I felt that a little bit of that pressure as well, coming up as an only child and, you know, being raised by a mother who didn't finish college and had so many regrets and that she wanted me to be the absolute best that I could be in this world to make up for a lot of things that maybe she didn't

come through all the way on. So I've definitely felt a little bit of that, that overwhelming, you know, pressure to be, to be good and to make the world a little better. Mega Man is a character that is so inherently good, you know, and, you know, he's just a good guy, you know, he just does what he has to do. But he never stops to ask why. And, you know, sometimes I feel like that's myself. I feel like I just kind of do what I have to do. And there's a lot of times where I don't stop and figure out why. Like, what, why am I here? What's going on? Who created this? And why am I doing this? But he did need to ask how he was going to do this. At this point, when he decides he wants to become Mega Ran, he was still teaching. He hadn't quit his day job yet, although he does

eventually to pursue music. And so he does what any good teacher will do. He does his homework. I went back and I listened to Tommy a whole lot and a lot of other amazing concept records to try to figure out. You know, I do feel like we're in a singles world and people want a first song that can, you know, draw you in. And so you don't want to give them chapter seven of a 27 page novel first, you know, where they're like, wait, so what's going on? page novel first, you know, where they're like, wait, so what's going on? So trying to create songs that are, I guess, catchy, as well as telling a story, as well as working within the concept of an entire record is very difficult. But I was able to find a really good middle ground, I think, with Splash Woman. Splash Woman is one of the enemies that Mega Man faces in the game. Everyone loves a good love song and I think a love story is something that I don't do a lot.

And so being able to tell a love story that's also within the concept of this album and also catchy, also has a great beat, it was a huge challenge. Now, there's actually a whole genre called nerdcore, where people make albums based on fantasy worlds. Literally, when I started doing this, I would Google every day to find out if there was anyone doing anything like what I was trying to do. And there was none in hip hop, but definitely the closest were the Megas and the Proto Men. The Megas and the Proto Men are rock bands, but they are doing the same thing, exploring the world of Mega Man through concept albums. Luckily, they're all cool with having Mega Ran join the scene.

My very first weekend of performing Mega Ran stuff was at San Diego Comic-Con, and it was with the Megas. I got a chance to play with them. There's another problem with creating music out of somebody else's intellectual property. You might get sued. And Mega Man was always worried about being contacted by Capcom, the company that makes Mega Man. And eventually, they did contact him. But they did not serve him a cease and desist letter. In fact, it was the opposite.

They really liked what he was doing. And they wanted to know if he would create an alternate soundtrack to a new version of the game that they were putting out. soundtrack to a new version of the game that they were putting out. So I do give them so much, so much respect for coming to me and enabling me to continue doing what I do. Now when MegaRan is on stage, he doesn't wear the character's signature helmet or boots, but he does have a homemade arm cannon. I'll take out the arm cannon, then it lights up and does some cool stuff too. So it makes for a fun change of pace at a hip hop show.

And it turns out Megaran is not the only hip hop artist who is embodying a video game character or using an arm cannon in concert. He found a friend in Samus who models herself after the main character of the game Metroid. They even went on tour together under the billing Rappers with Arm Cannons. People really freak out when they, you know, the first few times that they saw me. And to this day, it's like this cool thing that I can do, even outside of kind of like a, you know, a Comic-Con or like a convention or something like that, that I can just do at any show. And there's going to be someone in the audience who, you know, who's excited or like a convention or something like that, that I can just do at any show. And there's going to be someone in the audience who, you know,

who's excited by that or recognizes it. Now, I was fascinated by the way Samus' story parallels Megaran's and deviates in interesting ways as well. But more importantly, it became clear that she and Megaran aren't just doing this as a fun exercise in video game nostalgia. Their albums are tapping into deeper issues around race, gender, and representation in pop culture. More on that after the break. at the altar, trying to bug a guy to talk with mama and my father.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, Raheem Jarboe used to be a junior high teacher before he started rapping under the name Mega Rand. And by coincidence, Enongo Lumombo Casongo used to be a high school teacher before she started rapping under the name Samus. In fact, she is still getting her PhD at Cornell. Now, one thing that I was really curious about is the fact that both of her parents are professors, because my dad's a professor, my mother is a teacher, and my mother thought that actually I would go into academia like my brother did. So I was wondering, how did Samus's parents feel about her pursuing music full-time? I think now they kind of understand it a little bit more. But initially, I think it was kind of a shock to them. Like I was kind of a shy kid. I

was pretty introverted. You know, I always was kind of a nerd. I was just, you know, kind of bookish. I was doing my work all the time. So I think this also kind of deviates from their idea of as a career path, like never in a million years would they ever have thought that I was going to grow up and pursue like nerd rap career. I mean, are they concerned like, you know, well, do you do you think you'll be doing this at 50 kind of questions or? Yeah, we haven't even had those conversations, those kind of like, you know, where do you see yourself in 20 years as a as a rapper? But I do think, you know, I had a conversation with my dad recently and and he said, you know, whatever you know, where do you see yourself in 20 years as a rapper? But I do think, you know, I had a conversation with my dad recently,

and he said, you know, whatever you do, just be the best at it. And that, yeah, it was really sweet. And I think that that's a shift from, you know, a couple of years ago, where it was like, do well in the academy, you know, get a job as a professor, move down that track. Her love of the character Samus was pretty deep. She actually discovered the game through her brother. When she was seven years old, he was playing Metroid.

In the game, Samus is wearing this full-body cybernetic armor. She rolls and runs and blasts through a maze while killing aliens. The game was actually initially inspired by the Alien franchise, starring Sigourney Weaver. But the first version of the game didn't let you know that Samus was a woman underneath that full body armor. It's not until you complete the game when she takes the armor off and waves at you. I do remember being surprised and I do remember also latching on to that character, latching on to Samus and really deeply connecting

with the fact that like, oh, there's this woman who can do all of these things. And even though I couldn't verbalize that, I just felt like a connection. I just knew that because I knew she was a woman that there was some relationship that I had with her that I didn't have with other characters. Now, eventually, when she became a teacher, she started developing a hip hop curriculum to get the kids more interested in the reading material. But after a while, she realized this project was really more about her own artistic development. She wanted to perform these songs herself.

I remember early on when I was starting to rap, I didn't even have like a rap persona at that time. I went to like an open mic situation and I played my beats and I rapped for them. And, you know, afterwards I said like, thank you. That was me. You know, I produced this and I got off stage. And this immediately this guy came up to me and was like, so who makes your beats for you? Like, you know, no less than 15 seconds after I had had that conversation. And that continued, that continued to happen, that continues to happen to this day.

Wow. Yeah. It's crazy. It's really, really strange. and that continued that continued to happen that continues to happen to this day wow still yeah it's crazy it's really really strange and then she went and vented about this kind of sexism she was always facing to a friend of hers

and the friend said you know you're a lot like Samus remember boys would play Metroid they wouldn't know she was a woman until the end of the game

and then you know some boys were cool with it and others were like ah I have cooties and Inongo thought that's it. I'm going to be Samus. I'm going to create concept albums about this character that I loved as a kid.

And she thought this was a wonderful thing to do in hip hop because hip hop has always been about repurposing pop culture. Yeah, I think that that can be a cool aspect of repurposing a character that allows me to feel like, yeah, I'm doing the right thing. Like that makes me feel like, okay, it's okay to repurpose the character instead of sort of creating an entirely new one just yet. But the whole idea of becoming Samus still felt nerve wracking to her. So I mean, I had a lot of anxiety about taking on the name Samus at first. I think, you know, the first thing that I did in my initial, even when I look back at my computer, so my initial beats, my name is still, Samus is still spelled the same as the character from Nintendo. And, you know, three or four months after that, when people started to listen a little bit more, I added an extra M because I got really stressed about Nintendo, like, you know, one day hearing about it. I think also at that moment was when I realized, you know, the kind of deep relationship that people have with the character of Samus and whether I started to ask myself whether I was prepared to deal with, you know, taking on the weight of this particular character and not just doing her justice in terms of, you know, being a great rapper or maybe doing a project about her. But like the dark underbelly of geek culture, I wasn't sure if I wanted to engage with like the trolls or the people who were going to,

you know, tell me Samus isn't black. Why are you taking on this character? Or, you know, even in in 09, 2010, I had some anxiety about that, even though it wasn't sort of the moment that I think it currently is around Internet spaces. And so then once you started learning more about the backstory, what were the points of connection for you where you're like, OK, I can identify with that or emotionally I understand that part of Samus's story and I feel like I could tell her story or she could tell my story? Yeah. I mean, it was a really like daunting kind of task. You know, there's not a crazy amount of dialogue. It's so much about isolation. It's almost puzzle-like and, you know, labyrinthian. You're just running around in different corridors for most of the game. And doing some awesome flips. And doing some very amazing flips as well and rolls and

throwing bombs and things. So I thought, you know, I took quite a long time to figure out how I wanted to approach the game because it's not, you know, I guess you could speak about it in terms of levels. Like, you know, there's different stages sort of, but it doesn't feel it didn't feel to me like that was the right way to approach the game. I connected deeply with the kind of like darkness and isolation that the game embodies through its music. You know, growing up in upstate New York, upstate New York winters are, they are so dark and deep and just cold and isolating. And so I, you know, I wrote some of the songs for this Metroid project during an upstate New York winter. And it was like perfect. And then, you know, the other part of it is I think embodying the character of Samus allowed me to do things in hip hop that I don't do with the rest of my my kind of canon so I don't have a whole bunch of songs where I'm just

like flexing about how awesome I am but this this project allowed me to kind of do that to kind of take on I think a more quote-unquote traditional like rap persona of like you know I'm so like look at my swag I'm so amazing because I was pretending to be somebody else. That is so interesting, right? You wouldn't be like, I have read, you know, all seven volumes of, you know. Right, right. It doesn't necessarily work as well. But to be like, yeah, you know, I'm blowing stuff up. I'm rolling around. I'm dropping bombs. Like that is stuff that I do feel kind of confident talking about, like the coolness of it. My last episode, I talked about how music has a unique ability to stimulate your imagination while you're listening, and the songwriter can be like a guide while your mind is wandering.

Samus thinks that Phenomenon takes on a different aspect with her music, depending on who's listening. People who love Metroid and love Samus, if they like my music, they have to engage with my blackness. They have to engage with my black identity. It's like so, it permeates every single, you know, stanza of every single thing that I've ever written, or my sort of feminism, my identity as a woman, my experiences, they're all part of the kind of storytelling that I do with the character of Samus. So I think that taking on this character while I totally understand the merits of creating new worlds and new universes has allowed the space for conversations to happen that I don't know would have happened otherwise. In fact, both Samus and Megaran have artwork on their albums that imagine their video game alter egos as being black.

Megaran says that at first, he didn't do that to be socially conscious. Initially, it was funny. It would get a laugh to paint Mega Man black. And I thought that was exactly what I was doing with the album, was literally beaming me into Mega Man's suit. And, you know, it's like a quantum leap situation. So I wasn't necessarily trying to reclaim it and, you know, and make it something bigger than it was. But over the years, I think it has become something that has become a signal and a beacon for the need for representation, you know, in games, comics, video games, music, whatever we're into. And I'm really happy about the growth that I think the scene has made since then. Another interesting parallel

between the two of them. Both Megaran and Samus began by worrying whether people would accept them in the roles of these classic characters. But now that they've both found success, both left teaching to pursue music full time, now they kind of want to move away from those video game characters and explore other ideas. But they're not sure if their fans will accept that. As weird as it sounds for me to say, hey, I want to move away from Mega Man and still have the name Mega Ran, it's still something that I feel like I want to build my own mythology and my own world and my own universe outside of being connected to someone else's copyright or source material. I really agonized about it for a long time, but I had this sort of realization performing at a festival called the Music and Gaming Festival, MAGFest. And I decided to perform, you know, some video game tracks,

but I decided to perform a lot more of my canon that's just about my lived experience. And people were so receptive. And that made me realize that I had been doing a disservice to myself and to my supporters in terms of thinking that, oh, you know, when I get in geek and nerd spaces, I can only perform my video game stuff, you know, as though my nerd and geek friends and even myself, that we don't go through the things that everybody else goes through, you know, depression or, you know, anxieties about whether we're doing the right things in life, relationship issues. Like these are things that all of us kind of scared at the academy I think that my parents are proud of me I just wish I knew how to be comfortable here I never feel like I'm allowed to breathe

Rubbing shoulders with these old nerds Rocking sweater vests in they office hours Eating hors d'oeuvres while I soul search Trying to make some sense of the ivory tower And I told Samus, you know, that's what my podcast has always been about. I mean, these fantasy worlds don't come from other planets or parallel universes. We made them up right here. They're always about about. I mean, these fantasy worlds don't come from other planets or parallel universes. We made them up right here.

They're always about us, whether the characters look like us or not. You know we all die. But the goal isn't to live forever, but to create something that will.

Here we go. Well, that is it for this week and this two-part episode on Musical Worlds. Thank you for listening, and special thanks to Megaran and Samus. You can like the show on Facebook. I tweeted Emelinski. If you could put a good word into iTunes, that'd be great.

It helps people find the show. And you can also support the show by clicking the Donate button on my site, imaginaryworldspodcast.org. You can't take it with you, and so I never intended to. Before my last interview, this is the gift I'm sending you. I'm never gonna die. No, I'm never gonna die. You can hear my words in this song. It'll play on after I go.