Artist News

Das Racist split, moneymaking scheme foiled

By | Published on Tuesday 4 December 2012

Das Racist

New York rap trio Das Racist have split up, it was announced on Saturday. And as break up announcements go, it was slightly unusual.

The group had been booked to play the On3 festival in Germany, but only one member, Heems, arrived for the performance. Organisers were told that the other two members, Kool AD and Dapwell, had missed their flights, but when he took to the stage, Heems told the audience: “You guys wanna know the secret? OK, so, I’m gonna do some Das Racist songs, but Das Racist is breaking up and we’re not a band any more”.

Kool AD then tweeted: “For the record, I quit Das Racist two months ago and was asked by our manager not to announce it yet. Apparently [Heems] wanted to do it though”.

Dapwell, meanwhile, spoke to Spin, expressing frustration at his group splitting so soon, because being in Das Racist was an easy way to make cash, and he’d thought the plan was to make a little more money from it all before properly calling it a day. He said: “I was bummed when we actually broke up, mostly because it [the group] was a way to make money really easily. Now, I probably won’t be able to make money that easily ever again. We had a plan to break up around [next] May. We had just signed this record deal and we were going to put out one proper album and then go on a farewell tour, release a proper breaking up statement that could have been really funny, maybe a weird, stupid video. Now, all of that has gone to shit”.

Explaining what led to the split, he rambled on: “When we started in 2009, 2010, there wasn’t a New York rap scene. All that shit wasn’t around. And now there is all of this stuff that, when I see it, I’m like, ‘Man, that looks like more fun than what I’m doing’. But we kinda checked out and it was just about money, which some people can do, but apparently, we’re not good at doing things we don’t want to do any more. It made everyone go crazy and get angry in such typical band fashion: guys arguing and then drinking. It’s just stupid. Because in the beginning, it was just us. We’d all hang out all the time, we all lived in this apartment together. Not that we were super friends, but sort of, you know? Really, it’s a huge opportunity squandered”.



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