Nicodemus Flips

I was supposed to give something up for lent, but I made a beat tape instead.

My thought process was that when I’m producing beats, I’m always in a state of hyper-fixation- which means that I’m unable to be distracted- and giving up vices for lent is supposed to help you cut out distractions from God1, so producing Christian music felt like a smart loophole. A whimsical conclusion, I know.

I called the tape ‘Nicodemus Flips’ after this bible passage, where a scholar named Nicodemus comes to Jesus to learn about his ministry2 and his ideas.

Just as Nicodemus made himself submissive to Jesus, allowing Christ’s philosophy to override his own intellect, I spent time fasting, doing regular bible study and prayer in order submit my own musical urges to God’s will. In order to keep it strictly Christian, I built this tape off of primarily Christian samples3 (some of which are field recordings of church worship captured on my phone). Just as Christ tells Nicodemus that all of humanity must be ‘born again’ in order to access the kingdom of heaven, I birthed these samples anew in my eclectic, groove-led rearrangements of them.

The result is a collection of ephemeral, abstract pieces that act as capsules for some things I’ve learnt on spirituality, faith and society. I hope that these capsules are stimulants for conscious discussion and righteous action.

I have presented them below alongside some thoughts inspired by the music; art pieces that reflect their essence; and a rigorous compilation of footnotes.

More and more, I feel like a radical pessimist which means that I believe we need to confront the most brutal, bleak and hopeless realities of the world if we are to ever solve its most urgent problems.

For example, if we’re to talk about solving wealth inequality in the UK, we need to address the fact that the current mechanisms of our economy (where the state offers cash- in the form of universal credit- to society’s most disadvantaged, but legislates deregulation policies in favour of wealthy business owners) hinders class mobility. This is because money loses value over time through inflation but deregulation allows wealthy people to accumulate assets (like property, stocks and shares, fine art, businesses etc.), which often increase in value over time. As a result, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. If I was to be really bleak, I would even raise attention to the fact that the disparities between the rich and the poor are becoming wider than ever before. In the face of that, we are seeing the disappearance of the middle class. This strata of society- which traditionally consists of teachers, nurses, civil servants and social workers amongst a number of other professions- are leaving the UK in droves because the salaries being offered here are not enough to own homes with, to start families with or build generational wealth with.

The radical pessimist therefore does not simply look to homeless charities, social media infographics or even voting as ways to solve this crisis. They ponder deeply on the roots of problems and imagine ways to construct long-lasting solutions to them; they understand that systems and infrastructures must be radically transformed to cater to the world’s needs.

Soren Kierkegaard, a 19th century Christian existentialist philosopher, advocates for something similar in his book ‘The Sickness Unto Death’. In it, he explained that we must all be like the biblical character Lazarus, who died from a mysterious illness, and was later resurrected by Jesus.

He says our illness- our sickness unto death- is despair. Just as pessimism is a state in which a person loses sight of blind hope and confronts the bleak realities before them, despair, he believes, is a state in which a person loses sight of themselves, their purpose, and in doing so confronts the senselessness of the world they live in.

In finding ourselves in this state, we are forced to either intentionally engage with a belief system or drown in disbelief. The first choice gives us the opportunity to personally identify what we believe in, a moral code that we can align our actions to. This gives us a purpose. It gives us meaning, hope and vitality. Altogether, this newfound direction becomes like the radicalism that mobilises pessimism. It is the enlightenment that transforms despair. Although this idea was co-opted by Atheist existentialists like Camus, Nietzche and Sartre, its foundation was the Christian writings of Kierkegaard4.

Whilst this imagery is hopeful, despair reveals the spiritual challenges that an active relationship with Jesus Christ demands (just as radical pessimism reveals the challenge of solving socio-political problems like wealth inequality)5. It shows us that, in the face of the world’s senselessness, we must fervently explore the meaning of God’s word; in the face of hopelessness, we must always strive to be light in the darkness; in the face of despair, we must never lose sight of our inner-purpose. It establishes a distinction between hopeless inaction and enlightened action.

This is important because, for many, faith is something inherited second hand from family, culture and even friends. It is inactive, latent, unaware. Despair pushes us to see how futile that second hand faith is and realise the vast possibilities of an active, personal faith. Just as pitifully, many don’t actually realise the realities of the problems of the world we live in: ideology- which is the second hand faith of politics- pushes us to use words like revolution, decolonisation, emancipation, blah blah blah without ever thinking about what any of this actually entails.

The sample used in ‘Make It Through’, an iphone recording of church worship captured during a service where I watched 21 people get baptised in one go, commemorates the active, passionate faith of believers in a world so defined by its inaction. The painting- a romantic, ethereal construction of a world that comprises mostly of colours that royal colours like purple, gold, silver- also celebrates this attitude of constructive enlightenment; it’s name ‘A Father’s Wish’ is a symbolic reminder that God, the father, seeks a personal and active relationship with all of us.

The synergy of radical pessimism and Christian enlightenment are that they are both systems of awareness paired with committed action. The bible summarises this best: ‘faith without works is dead’.

One of the earliest productions from this tape, ‘Amen’ reminds me of church hall parties in the late 2000s dancing to Castro and Sarkodie with the aunties. That being said, its underlying hiplife-inspired groove is completely vandalised by a chopped up Amen break, inflecting an N.E.R.D punk rock essence into the track’s atmosphere. Its seance of psychedelic arpeggios harken the empathic euphoria of 90’s club culture. It’s diverse, multifarious and eclectic.

Over the past few years, I’ve seen diversity- specifically intellectual diversity- fade from the Christian world. Since young Christians associate piety with reclusiveness and isolationism, many of them shun the unfamiliar and eclectic because they don’t want to associate with perspectives that look un-Christian6. That sucks. Evangelism is vital to Christianity, and true Christian evangelism harkens us to engage with the outcasts, sinners and weirdos of this world, showing them the unconditional, non-judgmental compassion Jesus taught us to embody (remember: his best friend was a reformed sex worker). Although Christians are called to not conform to this world, we are called to minister to it.

Isolationism, through which believers lock themselves in echo-chambers of their own beliefs and ignore the happenings of the world around them, creates dissonance between contemporary issues and Christian doctrine. But this is a problem because Christianity is supposed to be conscious of the issues of the day, its doctrine should not merely be responsive to culture, but seek to steer culture towards righteousness through its consciousness. One cannot successfully minister in this way within the confines of church walls. Christians need to engage with the world to change it. The specific images used to express this idea in the bible are light, which brings clarity to darkness, and salt, which brings sharpness to that which is dull. When those who are supposed to be beacons of morality divorce themselves from the world the way many Christians have now, they selfishly steal their light from it7.

Those who should be the salt of the Earth- offering disbelievers the opportunity to taste hope, purpose and togetherness- are too busy are swaying their hands in the air, worshipping with their eyes closed and praying for their own prosperity to be aware of the state of our world (despite the fact that God insists that we seek the welfare of the society we live in before we find our own8).

Some specific issues that God demands us to pay attention to are: poverty, disability9, worker’s rights, loneliness and inequality. One of the best examples of this social awareness I have ever seen was Notting Hill Methodist Church’s role in tending to the victims of the Grenfell fire. Whilst that was a dramatic example, the church did what all church folk should be doing: meeting the world at its point of need and offering it the autonomy to rebuild from moment of crisis.

The day of Pentecost- where Christians from all walks of life, ethnicities and cultures were able to understand and communicate with each other freely for the first time- sets a further example for how the church should always be: a realm in which inaccessibility and division are erased, allowing oneness to arise10. Our everyday, in mirroring the miracle of Pentecost, can be a place for the multifarious, diverse and eclectic to converge. Myriad experiences finding respect and understanding in vibrant community… Through this, we are able to confront each other’s realities and become better equipped in dealing with each others’ crises as well as find support for our own.

Newcomers to Christianity can find solace in this type of non-judgmental, non-hierarchical environment. It’s evangelism coming to fruition through interaction- just as light particles interact with space to bring clarity to darkness and salt interacts with food to manifest flavour within it.

We are supposed to be like the two white dots in this painting. Placed upon a black panel, they look inconspicuous and insignificant, but are described by the painter as cosmic points that represent the vastness of the universe: engaging with the world humbly and non-judgmentally, we are called to be cosmic points, that capture the immensity of God, in the hopeless monochromatic mundanity that is everyday life.

This was a fun, little experiment in which I pulled together a few pieces of music that would never co-exist elsewhere. When these disparate elements conjoin, they form a snack-sized bite of euphoria and neuroticism that is surprising and intriguing, which is what an active engagement with God feels like sometimes.

This painting, ‘Morning’, which is made to represent the calm piece of a clear mind in the early morning, captures the peaceful enlightenment that a simple routine can bring. Its neuroticism lies in its peculiar fascination with the mundane and its euphoria lies in its clarity.

Because the Christian faith is defined by acts through which you learn via direct experience (i.e. speaking to God regularly through prayer, engaging with your community- particularly its poorest- consistently, reading your bible regularly and feeling God’s spirit through frequent silence and meditation ), a committed Christian lifestyle is defined by the fruits of those experiences: steady surges of enlightenment pulse through the heart of believers, bringing them closer to God’s kingdom. This track kind of captures that.

But it also reminds me of being a child because the samples I used were a big part of my childhood.

Jesus did say that heaven is for kids haha.

The two biggest days in the Christian calendar are Christmas and Easter.

The miracle of Christmas- Jesus’ birth- is that God compacted his immense essence into human form, plunging himself deep into the frail form of a baby. In doing so, he established a theology that conjoins the abstract divinity of heaven with the embodied realities of the human condition.

The miracle of Easter- Jesus’ death- is that God took it one step further by bearing all of humanity’s trauma, its sins, and sacrificing himself in order to save humanity from it. Prior to his death, humans were paying sacrifices in temples in order to be absolved from sin, but Christ expunged this practice. By bearing the mantle of our sin and plunging himself into the dark hopelessness of death, he paid for our freedom.

Resurrecting from the dead three days later, Christ survived this sacrifice and triumphed over death. In accepting his gospel, we cash in on that victory and overcome death’s hopelessness too.

When I was making ‘Easter’s Ethos’, I had that three day period between Jesus’ death and resurrection in the back of my mind. It’s the only period in the Christian calendar where believers are actually compelled to feel hopeless, to not focus on the bright optimism of salvation, but the stark reality of despair. This painting represents this feeling in its imperceptible black shadows which shroud its protagonist in ominous mystery. He carries something- perhaps a weapon- symbolising strength, action and maybe even hope on the horizon. The hopeless Christ- tragically silent in the tomb- seems to us just the same during these three days.

Trying to capture that, I took a dancehall gospel classic ‘Hear My Cry O Lord’, then reduced it down to ominous cloudy static through distorted filters. I chose that specific song because its title reminded me of Christ’s dismal proclamation on the cross: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’. He felt estranged from his own divinity, becoming fully human in order to empathise with the hopelessness of our own existence.

The celebratory joy of Easter is alluded to by the melody that inflects child-like glee into the track part way through. It’s the interpolation of the 1873 hymn by Fanny Crosby, ‘Blessed Assurance’, which narrates her personal joy at accepting Christ and receiving his salvation.

Sultan Stevenson’s ‘El Roi’- a faith-inspired jazz piano album- is one of my favourite albums of this year so far, which I had the privilege of working on its release in March. I made this beat from a sample off of there whilst I was in the dressing room for its album launch at the Southbank.

My sole feeling in that moment was pride in Sultan because the project is a thoughtful, nuanced and tender commentary on Christian life. Even without words, it speaks eloquently to the prevalence of vibrant community, personal enlightenment and inevitable uncertainty within Christian faith.

Anachronistic in its influence from older more ‘purist’ jazz forms and contemporary black rhythms, these feelings are presented to us as universal and abstract, it captures a portrait of the human spirit that is timeless: its attention constantly oscillates from inward to Godward and its faith is vulnerable to pangs of uncertainty and over-introspection, but it constantly veers towards enlightening optimism.

By taking this mood and contrasting its contemplative piano solo against the pulse of syncopated percussions that pulse steadily and flurry frantically in equal measure, an urban landscape is evoked- one that is full of colour, culture and community. I envisioned the Barbican estate specifically because it’s at the heart of London’s Metropolis, absorbing all of its noise and vivacity into the hollow echoes of its isolated labyrinth. The painting, defined by rigid lines that connote to structure and order, embodies the geometric patterns of urban brutalism, but its colours- beige, cobalt blue, grey and dusk yellow- each correlate to some ambivalent ruminations under the surface.

The murky textures that characterise this beat are supposed to capture that. Altogether, it asks how our faith looks in the vibrant isolation of the metropolis: Which thoughts echo out from our heart to God’s? Which uncertainties do we reckon with on our path to optimism? How do we pierce through the noise of contemporary society to find God’s clarity again?

There’s a saying that I grew up with: ‘L’homme propose. Dieu dispose’. It translates roughly to ‘Man plans. God laughs’. This track is essentially an acknowledgement of that. Through euphoric string harmonies and high-pitched reverb, it captures the joy of letting oneself go and throwing caution to the wind. However, through aggressive drum loops that distort, echo and skitter, it evokes chaos and mania: the sentiments we feel whenever we feel the brunt of forces like fate, the economy and nature, all of which ravage ubiquitously through our lives and leave us helpless in the face of. The appeal of faith is supposed to be that we can trust in a higher power that protects us from this mania and leads us towards the best outcomes inevitably.

The appeal of monotheist faith (which is the belief in a singular God), is that it’s a faith in the specific entity that created the universe and holds dominion over everything within it. In having created everything in the world, he inherently knows how to confront everything that could ever overwhelm us in this life.

I was reflecting particularly on Psalm 98 when I was making this beat because it expresses in very clear terms the vastness of the universe whilst presupposing the vastness of the entity that made it. I was asked to read this psalm during a mass one day during sixth form and it took my breath away. I always go back to it in times of overwhelm.

If I were to create an image that best represents the ethos of this track, it would be a large music festival in which verdant greens, tall swaying trees and bright sunrays bedazzle curious and anticipant ravers as they pitch flimsy tents up in the early morning: so much could go wrong and so much could go right, and in acknowledgment of all of that, we venture on :)

I made this beat on a day where I was fasting. I spent much of it listening to sermons from one of my favourite churches, King’s Cross Church (AKA KXC), and Christian spoken word (in anticipation of something I’m planning for this June). A poignant reflection captured in one of those sermons was used in this beat.

I actually didn’t really understand the need for fasting until this year when I heard a sermon from KXC’s lead pastor, Pete, who explained that one of the demands of fasting is to relate the pain that we feel in our temporary hunger to the pain felt by those who don’t have a choice but to be hungry: when fasting, we must be compassionate towards society’s poorest, be mindful of them and give to them.

The bass patch on this track, through which numerous pitches resound at once into a distorted growl, reminds me a lot of the stomach pains of fasting in which the stomach itself seems to growl, hum and whimper all at once. The further you go into fasting, the more your intestines start to feel like they are being stretched apart, which is also represented by the time stretching technique used to distort the piano sample (which I pulled from an iPhone recording of a church service I was playing at in Upton Park).

Because of how uncomfortable fasting is, it’s imperative to pair it with some lucid reflection in that moment11. It’s a time of realignment, which- when done correctly- feels like a breakthrough of the spirit. Without the lucid reflection, it’s dull, painful and worthless, but with the lucid reflection, you realise that all of the vices we love (each of which keep us distant from God) are feeble in the face of the power of righteousness12.