Image via Radamiz/Instagram
Staley Sharples says that writing is telling yourself you’re worthless and a God at the same time.
Less than a week after Radamiz and I had a poignant conversation about spirituality and his full-length album El Duende!, I stepped off of a plane and went straight into an emergency room. Our discussion on mortality and artistry suddenly became interlaced with my highly personal health scare. To revisit that moment was to stand face-to-face with life’s fragility.
It took me nearly a year to fully confront my traumatic experience and embrace the resulting emotions in all of their darkness and discomfort. Finally revisiting my dialogue with the Brooklyn-raised rapper and poet, I found myself even more drawn to the conceptual fire behind his project. As introduced by Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, the Duende “is the dark matter that makes great art incredible. It absolves itself from form and is solely attainable when mortality and sacrifice has properly been addressed and executed, respectively.”
Radamiz discovered the Duende concept following a panel at Harvard University, when future album narrator Rafael Moure-Eraso introduced him to Lorca’s century-old idea: “I was enamored by the idea of bringing awareness to a pivotal detail of all great arts. Duende is just as illicit as it is dependent on the show, the public’s witnessing. To me, Duende can only be earned through the work done invisible to the public: the work that hones the inability to distinguish art from artist from inhumane influence.”
El Duende! deconstructs the power, pain, and glory that inform a life dedicated to creative pursuits. Receiving a co-sign from Eminem, the album marked Rad’s first foray into textile design, as well as longform film projects with the concurrent release of Not The Angel, Not The Muse, a 31-minute documentary directed by Kento Komatsu and Radamiz. The doc captured the creative process surrounding El Duende!.
“When you’re creating—whether you’re writing, or whatever it is, when time starts to stop existing, that makes sense, because heaven is timeless,” the now Los Angeles-based artist muses in the opening of the documentary. Much of Radamiz’ art stems from this philosophical approach, as he seeks to tap into a frequency that is both challenging and freeing.
He’s most recently unveiled a music video for “Thin Ice,” produced by and co-starring Oscar-winning actor and musician Mahershala Ali, and unleashed an electrifying freestyle with his solo return to On The Radar.
Radamiz has shared his poetry at the NYC DOE Arts Hub, and launched his On Track events series in collaboration with Big Enough Home & More Justice. He’s leaning into his dream of a more positive, connected, and creative-centered industry. Reflecting on his collaborators’ impact on his work, Radamiz has a simple, profound mission as an artist: “You do your work. I do mine, but we’re doing this together. That feels like the kind of artist I am. I see no limits. But now I realize it. Before I was jaded. Now, [I feel like] I have to do this or nobody else will.”