Guy Debord‘s greatest known essay, “The Society Of The Spectacle” posits that the commodification of interactions in society has reduced how we interact with spectacle rather than authenticity. This supports Marx‘s observation that capitalism causes alienation, but takes it further by saying that the whole of how we interact isn’t just with commodities, but with the imagery associated with commodities, that we relate to ideas and concepts portrayed through various media in lieu of relating to each other, so much so that we cannot see any alternative. This has been on my mind a lot given recent events, how brazenly abhorrent behavior and ideology has risen to the top of the leadership in the US and abroad.
We connect to each other, primarily through social media, filtered photos and highlights of people’s lives, memes, short videos, advertisements, sports teams, etc. Each spectacle of other people’s lives or the imagery that a given corporation or political party wants to sell is unquestioningly accepted and adopted, for the most part. All the while things are increasingly homogenized whether fashion, food, news outlets, streaming services, commercial art, or whatever else. Some people make the most of it, embracing their ability to shine to their peers, but for many, there is sense of emptiness and slow building trauma that comes from not only the endless push to consume and obey, but also the endless cycle of violence and disasters, equally commodified into another opportunity to disconnect from community and for advertisers to jump in.
This emptiness from success calcifies as a theme on Goyard Ibn Said, the debut album from Philadelphia rapper/producer Ghais Guevara, an album and artist seemingly well tuned in to Debord‘s ideas and how they relate to hip hop. Goyard Ibn Said is a concept album in two parts, an audacious challenge for any artist, let alone attempting it as a debut record, but Ghais has more than a handful of mixtapes and EPs already. So, not only is he well prepared for the challenge, but he knocks it out of the park.
The first half sees Goyard, the titular character Ghais plays on this project, rise to hip hop stardom. It opens with a comedic skit setting a literal stage presented as an opening speech to a play followed by “The Old Guard Is Dead”. This track features an indisputably cool beat built around a dusty opera sample with trunk rattling bass that effectively creates a wall of sound approach to Goyard’s braggadocious flow, confident in his success and prowess.
So follows the rest of Act 1 with busy, hard-hitting beats supporting Guevara’s witty, poignant, and diverse flow as he weaves tales of Goyard’s successes with money and women and violence against the opps. On “3400” he directly addresses his abandonment of his community, ‘superstar, so I can’t do these ****** no more favors/Superstar, so I can’t let this bitch know she my favorite,’ and later on the hook, ‘3400 miles from the hood, can’t get it out of me.’ Distance, isolation, and selfishness grow. Yet, Ghais lets enough of himself come through the character of Goyard, dropping geopolitical allusions and wryly letting the audience know that Goyard’s bragging and success isn’t celebratory. For all of his boasting, his cleverness and consciousness still shine through,
A round of applause and Act 2 starts with the opening skit’s narrator returning to recite a soliloquy about how slave masters were happy when the slaves were drunk, because they knew there was no chance of the slave revolting or escaping. Here, we begin to see the thesis of Goyard Ibn Said, that for all the fame, luxury, and superstar lifestyle trappings, tragedy and impermanence are inevitable. “Bystander Effect” immediately has a darker feel, gritty production that fits E L U C I D‘s guest verse perfectly. Goyard’s relationships become more strained and fraught with paranoia as he worries that friends and family will come for his success. ‘Every single promise feelin’ more like a threat/I understand, but I could never forget/numb to what we succumb,’ he repeats on the hook for “The Apple That Scarcely Fell”.
Violence informed by patriarchy, guilt, love lost, and addiction afflict Goyard throughout this second half, and while the subject matter and songs are darker than Act 1, Ghais Guevara flexes more complex and conscious bars here, as if Goyard’s descent from feeling on top of the world parallels an awakening from the spectacle, the realization that though the material conditions he lives in are extravagant, his loneliness is manifesting itself in harmful ways.
Like Gordon Gekko, Tyler Durden, or Joker, the hero we thought has become the villain. Sadly, media literacy is lacking in American culture which is why we see many idolize those aforementioned characters. To his credit, Guevara spells out the lesson with the final lines from the narrator and the album’s coda, “You Can Skip This Part”. This track is not a part of the story and, to my knowledge, is not in the Goyard character. It does finalize the thesis of the album, breaking down how white fans and white record executives have commodified the art form to the point that through its performance and spectacle it just as much a form of exploitation, ‘it’s a minstrel show if you makin’ music and steady winnin’,’ he raps, but also acknowledges the conflict of still being drawn to it.
Awareness of the spectacle is key, even if we cannot easily find a way out. Since we are bound to this system, for the foreseeable future, we still must find our own ways to survive, find whatever success means to you, through art, community, activism, hobbies, or whatever else. Ghais Guevara has crafted a cinematic experience, full of bangers and thoughtful lyrics that shines as a debut and comes fully realized as a concept album, cohesive and thought provoking, and whatever success he may have in what is sure to be a bright future, Goyard Ibn Said is a triumph.