Can you name all of these queens? If you can, well done. But for the rest of us, it’s exhausting. (Image: Tina Tiller)
Can you name all of these queens? If you can, well done. But for the rest of us, it’s exhausting. (Image: Tina Tiller)

OPINIONPop CultureJanuary 24, 2021

Is there too much Drag Race?

Contributing writer
Can you name all of these queens? If you can, well done. But for the rest of us, it’s exhausting. (Image: Tina Tiller)
Can you name all of these queens? If you can, well done. But for the rest of us, it’s exhausting. (Image: Tina Tiller)

We’re only a few weeks into the year, and already there are two new seasons of Drag Race. Are we in danger of reaching peak Drag Race? 

In the first month of this year, there’s been more RuPaul’s Drag Race than ever. The 13th season of the flagship US version debuted on January 2nd, the second season of Drag Race UK premiered on January 15, and it was just announced (though long rumoured) that Drag Race Down Under is filming here, and will launch later this year. That’s to say nothing of the rumoured sixth season of All Stars, and the countless spinoffs, after shows and podcasts that discuss the show. 

It’s all quite exhausting to keep up with, even as someone who likes Drag Race. It feels less like entertainment and more like sport at this point; where keeping up with everything around the game is equally as important as the game itself. Moments from this show occupy parts of my brain that surely could be occupied by more valuable things. To be frank, I’m part of my problem – exhibit A: every lip-sync (up until that point) ranked. Content produces reactions, and reactions become their own content as a result. The snake eats its own tail, and then posts a video on YouTube about it.

Let’s be clear here: Drag Race is still a hell of a lot of fun to watch. Season 13’s slate of queens is one of the overall strongest yet, and justifies the shake-up in format that has lead to not a single queen being eliminated in the first three episodes. Even Drag Race UK, despite an inexplicable first week elimination (justice for Joe Black!) feels like an integral addition to the franchise, showcasing a drag culture that’s a bit more radical than the relatively homogenised picture shown us by the flagship US version. Drag Race is also one of the most inventive, progressive reality shows out there, and is consistently doing its best to keep up with the culture it dominates, especially after dragging its high heels regarding trans contestants for far too long.

The group performance from season 13, episode three of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

But… there’s still a lot of it, whether you’re looking at it as a fan or as a producer. There are only so many hours in the day, and Drag Race is not the only thing that’s out there. You can’t deny the show’s strange healing factor: it’s queer, and it’s largely progressive, even if it’s a three steps forward two steps back kind of progressive. The most toxic thing about it is the fandom, which you could say about pretty much any fandom; they inhabit toxic parts of the internet where everybody is constantly drinking the same poisoned Kool-Aid, and just, not, dying.

The problem from a production standpoint is that eventually, well, you might run out of winners. Drag is a specialised artform, and there have been nearly 150 competitors on the US Drag Race alone. That’s a lot of drag queens, and as anybody who has watched the first few episodes of any season knows, you need a few fillers to round out the team. Eventually, they’re going to run out of drag queens, and going to run out of winners. But that’s never stopped other reality shows (until it literally does, as the many now-defunct X-Factors demonstrate), and I imagine the Drag Race train will run as long as people keep jumping on for the ride.

This isn’t unique to Drag Race, though. Although the show has travelled to a fascinating midpoint between its countercultural beginnings and its undeniably mainstream current form, it’s just one franchise of many that are doubling and even tripling down on production and content. Hell, look at the seemingly billion shows that Disney+ has announced for the foreseeable, and even unforeseeable, future. Although Drag Race might be experiencing an uncommon level of saturation right now, and its fandom is louder (queerer) than many other fandoms, none of that fandom is clamouring for less Drag Race.

So, this is less about the world having too much Drag Race, and more about the world having so much content in general, all available at our fingertips.

Lawrence Chaney in the first episode of Drag Race UK season two.

Think back, if you will, to the days where all you had to watch was what was on your TV. You could count the channels on one hand, and there were limited hours in the day. If there was, for example, five hours of cricket programmed for a Saturday night, that’s five hours of programming that wasn’t a movie or TV show. For a non-cricket fan, there was absolutely too much cricket, because it was taking up what limited space was available.

The idea of ‘too much’ comes when there’s some limitation; there can only be too much water if all you’ve got is a bucket. Not quite the same thing when it comes to an ocean, though. We used to just have the one bucket. Now we’ve got an ocean of content to swim around in. Unless the thing you love is well and truly done – we’re never getting more Freaks and Geeks, to name one example – then there’s as much stuff as you could possibly want to consume, with almost no limits on it.

Content’s not ice cream, though. If you’re a fan, there’s never too much of it. Of course, you can make your brain sick with too much of the same content just like you can make your stomach sick with too much ice cream. God knows, I’ve watched videos of Blackpink performing the same song, with the same choreography, on similar stages, at least 10 times in a row, and that can’t be good for my brain (Blackpink is the revolution).

More Reading
In trying to save its life, has Shortland Street lost its heart?  New Zealand’s favourite soap returned this year with a new look and a new attitude – but is it working?
‘I enjoy playing in the dark’: Inside director James Ashcroft’s latest nightmare New horror The Rule of Jenny Pen takes us inside a rest home full of deep unrest – and it’s already found a fan in Stephen King.

Similarly, the way a lot of us consume this kind of content – especially something as memeable, gifable and highly self-referential as Drag Race– has expanded to fit the new reality. Once you’d watch once, in a bar, or gathered around the TV set with like-minded people. Now, that process happens online, over a series of days and weeks. We see the same clips replayed over and over, with witty captions or observations, until it’s all played out. It’s mentally exhausting. (Stress on mentally: It’s not like we’re in the mines here.)

In saying all this, it’s a choice. In this modern age, you have to choose to engage, and any obligation is self-imposed. The flipside of having so much content to engage with is that it’s your choice as a consumer whether to engage with it or not. The internet is functionally unlimited, with 500 hours of video being uploaded every minute to YouTube alone. The beauty of so much stuff to consume is also the horror: there’s so, much, stuff. But you can always close your laptop and take a walk instead.

So, yes, there might be too much Drag Race for me, personally. But for you? There might not be nearly enough. We live in beautiful, disgusting era where, if you look hard enough, you can watch more content than you could possibly watch in your lifetime, that seems catered especially for you. Make hay while the sun shines, they say: if you love it, enjoy all the Drag Race you can, while you can. I’ll make my own hay under some other sunshine.

Keep going!
Andy Murnane aka YDNA and Danny Leaosavai’i aka Brotha D, founders of Dawn Raid, New Zealand’s first hip hop label. (Image: supplied)
Andy Murnane aka YDNA and Danny Leaosavai’i aka Brotha D, founders of Dawn Raid, New Zealand’s first hip hop label. (Image: supplied)

ĀteaJanuary 23, 2021

Reviewing the Dawn Raid movie, and our lost youth

Andy Murnane aka YDNA and Danny Leaosavai’i aka Brotha D, founders of Dawn Raid, New Zealand’s first hip hop label. (Image: supplied)
Andy Murnane aka YDNA and Danny Leaosavai’i aka Brotha D, founders of Dawn Raid, New Zealand’s first hip hop label. (Image: supplied)

Duncan Greive and Leonie Hayden were young hip hop heads and music journalists during the era captured in a new documentary about the rise and fall of South Auckland hip hop label Dawn Raid. Here they discuss the film and their memories (what’s left of them) of that time. 

Duncan Greive: It’s great to see them get their dues as entrepreneurs here. The thing that hit me in the chest from the start is the entrepreneurship, how driven and creative they were across so many different disciplines. Those t-shirts were everywhere in South Auckland at the time, and if they’d just stayed with that they might still own the houses. But they dreamed huge and never stopped running: the retail store, the studio, the office, the barber shop. Doing all that essentially before they’d even started releasing music – it’s just incredible. You can see why they eventually fell, but the audacity is dazzling.

Up until now, I think there was some sense from NZ’s cultural elites that this was a gaudy label that had a few hits then got felled by tax trouble. That’s why it’s so great to have this thing out – I feel like director Oscar Kightley has done an extraordinary job laying out the case for Dawn Raid as a landmark achievement, not just cultural, though its impact is immense, but a business too, as a South Auckland conglomerate with limitless ambition.

Leonie Hayden: There was so much I didn’t know about them that I’m totally inspired by. I knew about the t-shirts but honestly, I thought the chronology went “selling t-shirts at Ōtara markets, Deceptikonz blowing up, Boost Mobile Tour”. I’m actually pretty humbled to learn about the empire they were building out South. They made phone cards! I forgot about those. Like you say, had they been blessed with a bit of hindsight, it could still be a humming community empire. Oscar Kightley told that story so damn well – the first line in the film that made me go, alright this is gonna be a ride, was Andy Murnane saying “Millionaire… what a wonderful word”. Such a cocky thing to say, just filled with potential for things to go wrong. Actually the first line I laughed out loud at was young Mike McRoberts doing a report on them and saying “…when these two bad boys hooked up together” like a big dork. Any stand out lines for you?

DG: Honestly, the line which really hit me came right at the start, and (I think) repeated near the end. “How can we do that?” said [Dawn Raid co-founder] Brotha D. “They shouldn’t allow us to do that, we’re from South Auckland.” It’s so poignant because, as they allude to at various points, media coverage of South Auckland has always used its name as a shorthand for poverty and crime. That they overcame such extraordinary antipathy to become the single most powerful cultural force in the country is stunning. There should be statues of them at the site of the first store. For it all to fall away for the want of some accounting discipline, during a notoriously punitive era from the IRD, breaks your heart all over again.

It’s such a big, complex story, it feels like something brewing in Oscar for a decade or more. He should be so proud. Did any scene in particular leap out for you?

LH: So many! The introduction of the Russian sound guy, Adeaze talking about when they figured out that their mum had slowly paid off all those instruments for them. Andy not knowing what a publishing company was, but copying Def Jam and printing “Dawn Raid Publishing” on all the CDs. Mareko in jandals in the snow in New York. Mareko all wide-eyed in the studio with Inspectah Deck! So many beautiful vignettes that perfectly captured where they came from. There’s a super charming naivety to those scenes that makes it all the more heartbreaking when it all comes crashing down. But then [Dawn Raid co-founder] Andy Murnane’s natural chutzpah kinds of buoys the story again. Honestly, the cajones on that guy…

Andy Murnane, the “chubby red haired kid” that found a place to belong among Pacific Island culture and hip hop. (Image: supplied)

DG: Charming naivety is so right – what they did was incredible, and you can imagine the response of a careers counsellor in school had they floated it. And it seems ineffably sad to me that despite all the money the government poured into the likes of NZ Trade and Enterprise (because they were huge export earners) at the time that no one reached out to try and help them through a period of ferocious opportunity and growth. But the thing that stays with me, more than that, is the music and overall aesthetic. I remember so well that era, all these Black-owned labels like Cash Money and Death Row coming out of the US, and it’s so clear that the power of hip hop is that it convinced two dudes who were really on a tough path that they too could take on the world.

I also remember interviewing Savage for my first Real Groove cover story. It was in the Universal offices, and I brought in this giant tape deck I’d bought from cash converters for $20. His speaking voice was so soft and low that transcribing it took a whole day. But I remember feeling certain that the guy was going to be a star – his tone, his force, his sense of fun. What are your memories of that era?

LH: My flatmate’s girlfriend who worked at Soundz had left the Deceptikonz Elimination CD at our flat and we had it on all the time. Like, for months. It still fucking goes. I went to one of the Boost Mobile Tours but I actually couldn’t tell you which one. It’s a… hazy period, memory-wise. I do remember having that moment, when Dawn Raid and Scribe really hit in 2001/2002, where I was like, “oh shit being brown is finally cool!” Growing up on the Shore I had spent so much of my life assimilating it was like taking a breath. This innate way of dancing I had was cool all of a sudden, and after the Kate Moss heroin chic years, being a bit curvy was finally cute. I’m not claiming I was a massive b-girl or anything, but I never felt out of place at a hip hop show. And there were so many shows too. It was kind of a boom period for internationals coming through. My ultimate shame was getting up on stage at Tha Alkaholiks and getting booted off for “the real dancers”. Who do you remember seeing live in the early 2000s?

Early photo of Deceptikonz at Dawn Raid Studios. L-R: Devolo, Mareko, Savage & Alphrisk

DG: It was such a golden era for rap shows, particularly those St James ones – RZA, Gang Starr, Kanye doing College Dropout are three which will stay with me until I die. Between them and those early hip hop summits there were so many opportunities for Dawn Raid artists to play in front of large and receptive crowds. Deceptikonz and Aaradhna in particular really took advantage of those stages, and those songs were so hooky that they often outshone the headliners. I so take what you mean about that validation, about being brown and from NZ being cool, and not just a predictor of social statistics or a reason for suspicious looks from palagi. Dawn Raid made it cool on a national level, and very much on its own terms. It was such a blast of Pasifika culture, unmediated and with many of the usual gatekeepers routed around.

The film ultimately scans as a love letter for that period, when all this ambition, entrepreneurship, music and culture could blast from South Auckland out into the world. So cool to think of Jawsh685 doing it again, nearly two decades later. And while it might gloss some of the financial mismanagement, and the concerns of some artists, notably Adeaze, sound valid (and very similar to those levelled at Flying Nun during their peak), I think the balance between reflection, recrimination and celebration is perfectly struck. I really think it’s one of the most compelling documentaries I’ve ever seen out of this country, and expect that it will lead to a full-blown revival and embrace of Dawn Raid in Aotearoa in 2021.

Nainz from Adeaze, who features heavily throughout the documentary, has posted a heartfelt Facebook message saying stating he’s ‘fighting a personal battle with this movie’, saying it’s not the ‘whole truth’. (Image: supplied)

LH: Oh man that 2006 Kanye show was so great, RIP. For sure there’s probably a lot this doco isn’t telling us. Adeaze have already come out about how upset they are about what got left out of the documentary, Aaradhna too, which is such a shame. They’re on the poster ffs. Also, as much as I found it liberating that hip hop was coming out of the margins, I also felt very keenly how much of a dude’s game it was. As well as there being no women rappers on Dawn Raid or Dirty Records‘ books, I remember the dancers and extras in a lot of NZ hip hop music videos back in the day were white women and that really used to get me. You could tell it was a decision made for a certain audience and it sucks feeling like even though this art form is made by people who look like you, it’s not for you! Ironically, the documentary talks about that being the reason ’Swing’ ended up being a viral hit among white college kids in the US – cos the girls in the video were light-skinned and had no ass! If they could do it again, among all the things they’d do different, would Dawn Raid try and bring more women through, I wonder?

Regardless, as a film it’s a beautiful balance of oral history, archive and storytelling. And the heart of it, that massive love for South Auckland that Brotha D and Andy poured into everything they did, doesn’t seemed dulled in any way. A detail I loved was that at the top of their game, when he finally made his millions and Andy actually got to buy the house with the pool, it was still in ‘Rewa. Respect!

Pop Culture