Of hellfire and Spitfire
Maxo Kream struggles with loss, adding layers to his family saga. Mark Suciu skates too much.
Welcome to Low Impact, where I write about music and a skate video every other week.
Maxo Kream, “CRIPSTIAN”
If I can’t get in heaven, can I at least visit my brother?
In 2016, during my third year of college, I lived in the lower level of a pita-colored duplex. When I returned home in the evening, I listened to Mitski and Angel Olsen, decompressing, feeling the weight of the day, letting it go. But when I walked the half-mile to class in the morning I listened to Maxo Kream.
The Persona Tape had come out a couple months before the school year started, and the strength of the flow switches on “Big Worm” alone made me a fan. Then I went back and listened to Maxo187, and when Maxo released “Grannies,” I realized he had been building a Houston family saga for years. “Grannies'' added layers to the childhood Maxo sketched on “Karo” (“here’s a juug story ‘bout four trap brothers”), and he continued fleshing out the story on Punken and his major label debut, Brandon Banks. These album titles themselves are familial — “Punken'' was what Maxo’s grandmother called him; Brandon Banks was his father’s scammer alias.
So it was only natural for Maxo to release an album about his late brother. Money Madu has been a constant presence in Maxo’s storytelling, a frequent co-conspirator and assistant lean remixer, and last month’s WEIGHT OF THE WORLD mourns his recent death. The album cover is a photo of Maxo’s back, tattooed with a portrait of the two brothers, and though the rapper’s face isn’t visible, his head is in his hands.
On track one, “CRIPSTIAN,” Madu’s death compels Maxo to reflect on his own mortality, and he asserts once again that he would rather be killed than spend his life in prison. The music video that accompanies the song opens with gunshots, then shows a young man dying in an ambulance and waking up in a plush back seat. He is ferried down a country road to a mansion estate, where he finds his dead relatives all dressed in white and preparing a feast.
Pray at night like, “Father God, is there a heaven for a G?”/ Jesus Christ could walk on water, I’ma crip walk on the sea
While his brother arrives in paradise, Maxo raps that he’s been going through hell, detailing the trials of his grandmother’s pneumonia and his cousin’s death by suicide. Maxo’s relationship with his grandma has been a central pillar of his multi-album narrative — she let him move in after his mother kicked him out, and then years later his fans rescued her from Hurricane Harvey flooding — and the latest developments are bleak: when his cousin died, he couldn’t even tell her because she was in a coma.
There is a certain dread that pervades the track, with Maxo rapping that his health is getting worse but, if you ask him, “it don’t fuckin’ matter,” and revealing that he can’t trust the church or even other crips. But it doesn’t feel hopeless. Maxo told Apple Music that he made this song, which he described as “very serious, very mature, very on-topic,” to cater to his core fanbase. There are fun songs on the album too, but “CRIPSTIAN” shines as the latest chapter in the family epic Maxo has been writing since 2012. For us core fans, that’s all we can hope for.
Mark Suciu, “Spitfire”
When Verso came out in 2019, it seemed like maybe Mark Suciu had peaked. He had completed his magnum opus, his triumph of linear symmetry, the first skate video in the style of Wes Anderson. He had imbued his spotless skateboarding with his particular, thoughtful and — have you heard? — intellectual nature. In the words of one critic, “the study abroad company’s sensibility perfumes the whole thing.”
But no, he was not finished. Far from it. Having earned universal recognition as a pioneer of quick feet and rubber spine, Suciu now has his sights set on the only award in skateboarding that matters. He wants the trophy that wears shorts.
It can be easy to forget, if you spend enough time on #skatetwitter, that Verso enjoyed overwhelming acclaim upon its release. The crowd at Atlas in San Mateo gave the video a standing ovation when it premiered (the fact that there were no seats makes this only slightly less impressive), despite Suciu not having landed his ender line yet. He came out and showed us one of his near-makes after the first round of applause, setting off yet more uproarious praise. Afterwards, I watched a kid nervously slick back his hair and inhale deeply while waiting in line to dap up the local hero, sweating and overcome with emotion.
So how did public opinion turn? Ah, Mark Suciu. How do skaters hate on thee? Let me count the ways.
Is it because you’re too clean cut? Is it because you talk too much? Because many skate like you, but less so? The b-roll of your dark espresso?
One friend of mine said he liked Suciu — until he started putting out so much footage all the time. (This friend also said he looks like he skated right out of a Uniqlo catalog.) Another said he’s smug, and it bleeds into his skating. A third says his spots are boring.
A fourth theory is that Suciu has annoying fans who act superior about understanding his conceptual skateboarding. (I have not yet met any of these people, though I have met skaters who hesitate to say anything positive about Suciu lest they be judged as pretentious.)
And I think another thing is that Suciu is one of the most skilled skaters of all time, and he knows it, and people resent that. But that doesn’t make it less true. All three of the parts he released in the last month are, at the very least, wildly impressive.
Which brings us to the wheel sponsor part. Much of it is reminiscent of Verso’s New York section, as Mark continues to beat the shit out of Blubba (for anyone else to film there after his barrage would represent a real triumph of the human spirit), even connecting it with the courthouse drop across the street. There are long, light-footed lines, including an impossible one at Ruggles. There are unlikely tricks at the Max Palmer fountain. There’s even an uncharacteristic confrontation with security!
It’s one of his best parts to date. At the same time, I kind of get what my friend means about Suciu releasing too much footage. Supply and demand aside, there’s just something tyrannical about releasing three parts between late October and late November. It’s such a transparent exploitation of the SOTY recency bias.
It was exciting to watch Suciu evolve from a suburban YouTube prodigy to a LOVE Park local (my favorite era), then to a globe-trotting sensation and, finally, a sensible adult New Yorker. And it was exciting when he released Verso because it felt like a culmination of that evolution. But now that he has reached his final form, it’s not as fun to root for him. The carefree feeling of his kid parts, the thrill of progression, is somehow gone, replaced with concerted striving for an accolade. His ambition, which would be charming if he hadn’t already accomplished so much, is unnerving, almost un-skaterly.
The whole campaign feels tense. Like the switch firecracker off the curb after the back lip 270, it makes me want to say: Relax! Enjoy yourself! You have nothing left to prove!
But none of that is really important. The salient point is this: that hippie jump lacked tastefulness.