MoMA Mixtape: What Would Jay Z Meeting Ellsworth Kelly Sound Like?
Photographer Chris Chu creates an ode to hip-hop.
Chris Chu
Jan 31, 2024
My only visits to MoMA have been during the First Friday openings. It’s a night-and-day difference compared to a personal invite. On this quieter trip, I was able to take my time to stand in silence and comfortably struggle with understanding and feeling the artwork around me. Pairing pieces with music was an added bonus—and a thought-provoking challenge.
Chris Chu with Sam Gilliam’s 10/27/69 (1969)
Sam Gilliam’s 10/27/69 + Lupe Fiasco’s “Mural”
Gilliam’s canvas reminds me of raindrops rolling down the sides of once beautifully painted houses, their color bleeding across boundaries and form. As Gilliam would say, the message isn’t literal and simple in the hanging art, but neither is the message in Lupe Fiasco’s “Mural.” Like the blending of abstraction that these two works share, “Mural” is a lyrically dense monologue of Fiasco’s perspective on and feelings about society, and the industry that perverts art for profit. In total, the song has 153 bars, 1,373 words of mind-numbing complexity, but it’s all laid out over a robust ostinato, or repeating piano loop. It’s as though the infinite complexity of Lupe Fiasco’s song is contained on its own finite canvas, like Gilliam’s work about the world at war.
Jay-Z’s lyrical skill has always felt refined, like quill ink on paper, which is ironic because he never writes down his lyrics.
Chris Chu with Ellsworth Kelly’s Study for Rebound (1955)
Ellsworth Kelly’s Study for Rebound + Jay-Z’s “Marcy Me”
Jay-Z’s lyrical skill has always felt refined, like quill ink on paper, which is ironic because he never writes down his lyrics. On “Marcy Me” he blends his smooth lyrical form with a stripped-down piano loop. This creates a roundness to the track, which is a dedication to the Marcy Housing Projects in Brooklyn, where he’s from. Ellsworth Kelly achieves a similar roundness in Study for Rebound, a squeezing of two curves over a neutral colored canvas; its elegance lies in its simplicity.
Ellsworth Kelly. Study for Black Ripe. 1954
Ellsworth Kelly’s Study for Black Ripe + Jay-Z’s “4:44”
Study for Black Ripe is also elegant in its simplicity. Instead of two curves fighting for space with a kiss in the middle, this piece shows the aftermath, when conflicting forces become one. The design of this piece reminds me of the cover art of Jay-Z’s 4:44: a simple black title with a light, earth-toned backdrop. The title track is about Jay’s apology to his wife and children for his infidelity and mistakes he made as a man, husband, and father. The song could be seen as a collision between his sins and the purity of his family: a joining after one side has chosen to release its pride to become one with the other.
Chris Chu with photos by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe
Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe’s Robert Sobukwe’s Funeral: His Coffin Descends but His Spirit Remains + Kendrick Lamar’s “The Heart Part 5”
Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe’s documentary photograph is a beautiful depiction of Robert Sobukwe’s impact on South Africa’s anti-Apartheid revolution. The subtitle, His Coffin Descends but His Spirit Remains, Graaff-Reinet, South Africa, relates to the theme of Kendrick Lamar’s “The Heart Part 5,” in which the rapper puts on the faces of Black Americans who impacted society both positively and negatively. The video for the song concludes with Lamar donning the face of the late Nipsey Hussle, imagining what Hussle would’ve said to his assailant and family if he could speak from beyond the grave.
Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe. Robert Sobukwe’s Funeral: His Coffin Descends but His Spirit Remains, Graaff-Reinet, South Africa. 1978
Keiji Uematsu. Hand Grasp I. 1976
Keiji Uematsu’s Hand Grasp I + In Love with a Ghost’s “We’ve Never Met but Can We Have a Cup of Coffee”
The second image in Uematsu’s Hand Grasp I is photographically ambient. It’s hard to explain. In Love with a Ghost’s album is composed of ephemeral voices and sounds we recognize from everyday life, like drips of water and steam from a pot. This opening track is full of atmospheric sounds. This photo reminds me of those sounds.
Kazuo Shiraga’s Untitled + Kendrick Lamar’s “Mortal Man”
Anger, frustration, and—almost—mortality are strongly present in this painting. Kazuo Shiraga painted it with his entire body, thrashing and rolling. The closing track on Kendrick Lamar’s album To Pimp a Butterfly is a lyrical conversation about becoming a leader of Black communities while acknowledging the fear and tribulations that come with being Black and a leader. He enumerates the dark, violent history of his ancestors, and the fate of those who faced the challenge head-on, like Martin Luther King Jr., Huey Newton, Malcom X, and Nelson Mandela. “Mortal Man” pulses with fear, violence, frustration, anger, and anxiety over a beautiful instrumental jazz backdrop.
Chris Chu with Kazuo Shiraga’s Untitled (1958)
Yves Klein. Anthropometry: Princess Helena. 1960
Yves Klein’s Anthropometry: Princess Helena + Lupe Fiasco’s “GHOTI”
This painting looks like two things at once: a single stroke and many, upstream and down, a start and a finish. Unrelated, I can imagine Klein creating this piece in a room surrounded by other loud rooms that added metaphorical vibrations to the thought process. Through the walls I’d imagine drums and trumpets, like the production on “GHOTI” by Lupe Fiasco, another song with lo-fi instrumentation but messages that have double entendres.
Park Seo Bo’s Writing 59-74-77 + Black Thought’s “Conception”
Some say the greatest artists weren’t great at birth, but rather attained greatness through constant repetition. Park Seo Bo’s Writing 59-74-77 is a literal and metaphorical representation of just such an acquired talent. Black Thought’s lyrical composition is otherworldy, a skill that I can only imagine he attained through experience and relentless practice. His song “Conception” is one of the most beautiful examples of hip-hop, an artful description of a Black man’s experience in America.
Park Seo Bo. Writing 59-74-77. 1974/1977
Born in Daly City, California, Chris Chu channels themes of redemption from his childhood, and his love for hip-hop storytelling, in his documentary photography and filmmaking. His work has taken him to Europe, Africa, and South America, but it’s the human-interest stories of local New Yorkers that resonate with him most.
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