The Chicago-based rapper on DIY public health, clean air in venues, and the discipline of masking when most people won’t.
Positive Deviance: As an artist and as a human, how has the pandemic shaped the art you create and the work that you’re doing?
CRASHprez: It’s so depressing for real. I think about the logic of how public health is kind of just left to be an experiment amongst ourselves. We got to DIY this shit amongst ourselves, because public health is crumbling further and further. I tour through other cities and play shows. I be outside all the time, basically every other day. It’s just a part of me working and me creating, and me fulfilling my purpose and being alive. And it’s like the whole world’s functionally turned into a super spreader. I feel really ensnared in it. I’ve seen people’s eyes glaze over when I try to talk to them about the pandemic. It’s like you have to dissociate every day.
The material conditions are fucked up. You could go to work and mask every damn day and go home and your family members don’t care, your roommates don’t care, and it’s a wrap. You could get vaccinated 17 damn times and wear a mask every damn day and it takes the wrong person breathing on you on the train on the wrong day.
