Books & & the Arts
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February 28, 2024
Vince Staples’s self-titled Netflix program is a penetrating take a look at celeb culture, Hollywood, and the mistakes of being just type of well-known.
Who is Vince Staples? In his music, the rap artist is the fearless griot of Long Beach, Calif. His tunes portray gang culture, intimate relationships, and star without love or pity, rendering his home town, and Black lives, with deactivating clearness. The arrogant single “Norf Norf,” among his signature tunes, records his cutting directness and acerbic wit. “I’m a gangsta Crip, fuck gangsta rap,” he sneers, condemning the attraction of street rap while boasting his hood ties. Even when he’s being saucy or incredibly elusive, Staples radiates stability. His music commemorates the delights of lucidity, enjoying the power and relief that follow from speaking openly.
Staples brings that perceptiveness to his most current venture into tv, an eponymous Netflix program in which he plays a variation of himself browsing a fictionalized Long Beach that’s extremely crazy and hazardous yet likewise down-home. Almost every episode of the surrealist funny includes the concern “Who is Vince Staples?,” however the program is more frequently a tableau than a research study of its star. Its droll jokes and cartoonish violence continuously pave the way to nuanced representations of Black individuals. In one scene, a Black bank burglar calls his white captives uncultured for not acknowledging Staples. In another, a happy Black mom decreases cash from Staples after he overhears her admitting monetary troubles to her kid. “Nigga, do we look homeless to you?” she scoffs. The humor is absurdist and dyspeptic, however constantly deeply observed. These characters aren’t simply cars for jokes; they are next-door neighbors, homies, kin, and banes with their own lives and programs.
At simply 5 episodes, The Vince Staples Showcocreated by Staples and Entergalactic authors Ian Edelman and Maurice Williams, do