Rhys Langston is a freelance eccentric, using music, visual art, literature, and performance to bring forth critical assertions on identity, cultural reproduction, and education in digital media.

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Education  

Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT  (Aug. 2012- May 2016)​

 

Exhibitions

• 2019 Solo Vernissage for T.C. Wash Suite, MuzeuMM, LA, CA

• 2017 Aggressively Ethnically Ambiguous Album Release, 2234 W. Temple St., LA, CA

 

Collections

• Private Collection, New York, NY

• Private Collection, Los Angeles, CA

• Private Collection, Roanoke, VA

• Private Collection, New Orleans, LA

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Selected Discography

Stalin Bollywood  (Mar. 2018- May 2021)

Writer, Vocalist/Performer, Producer/Composer, Sound Engineer

• A musical album utilizing the modalities of post-punk and alternative rock music to encase a more flagrant rap ethos; one that rhythmically plays with a dadaist prodding at society’s present golden age of controversy. 

• A rock album made on a computer with hip-hop sampling techniques; an explicit demand to reconsider what is Black music in a “post-post-appropriation” cultural paradigm.

 

Language Arts Unit: A Rap Textbook  (Sept. 2014- Feb. 2020)

Writer/Author, Vocalist, Producer/Composer, Sound Engineer, Painter

• A project which explicitly seeks to exalt a rap album as a piece of literature; to blur the distinction between a written text and a spoken one.

• Successfully crowdfunded $2,155 to aid in the completion of the endeavor, for finishing measures of the written, musical, and multi-media web components.

 

The T.C. Wash Suite  (Aug. 2018- Oct. 2019)

Writer, Vocalist, Producer, Sound Engineer, Actor

• A visual EP, in the form of a 10 minute short film and 5 track endeavor, collaboratively executed in a DIY ethos between three directors/editors (the artist included).  

 

Aggressively Ethnically Ambiguous  (Dec. 2014- Sept. 2017)

Writer, Vocalist, Producer/Composer, Graphic Designer

• Written between Yucatán, Mexico, Los Angeles, CA, New York, NY and Middletown, CT; a treatise and musical album, reflecting on race as form and content through left-field hip-hop.

• Paired with a lyric book, which incorporated a collaborative photographic series of portraits with world-renowned photographer and artist Parker Day.

 

Publications

Language Arts Unit: A Rap Textbook  (Sept. 2014- Feb. 2020)

Published by Black Market Poetry

• An exploration of rap as theory and praxis, race as form and content, music as social mobilizer and opiate. Utilizes a biting, absurdist humor to seriously appraise the power of words, music, and all manner of extra-lingual connotations in the age of rapid-transit information technologies. Included are lyrics from his accompanying LP, written as poems with the clever enjambment of Rhys Langston’s idiosyncratic wordplay.

• Also exists as a free-to-play interactive e-book which allows listeners and readers to reference the theoretical text of the long form essay alongside the poetically driven lyricism of the music.

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Selected Filmography

• 2021, Magnified Voices with Muckraker Jones, Episode Two (directed/edited by Rhys Langston Podell)

• 2020 Magnified Voices with Muckraker Jones, Episode One (directed/edited by Rhys Langston Podell)

• 2020, Nebbish Frederick Douglass (directed by Sammy Bass, edited by Kevin Ulibarri)

• 2019, The T.C. Wash Suite (directed/edited by Charlie Martin and Piers Dennis)

• 2017, Underclass Design (directed by Rhys Langston, edited by Ryan Calavano)

• 2016, parallelsyntax (directed/animated/edited by Rhys Langston Podell)

• 2013, Calculus Johnson (directed/edited by Ryan Calavano)

 

Selected Press

• A Glowing Review of "Progressive House, Conservative Ligature" by Jon Pareles in the NY Times

• Interviewed by HYPEBEAST about the future of art, economics, and social media

• Given an "Artist to Watch" feature with AFROPUNK

• Recipient of warm words by the Los Angeles Times Sunday edition (print and digital)

• Lauded by SPIN for the “Nebbish Frederick Douglass” Short Film/Music Video

• Declared the “Next Great Los Angeles ‘Art Rapper’" by DJBooth

• Featured as the Cover Story of the Winter 2016 Edition of LA Record

• Profiled for LA Weekly

• Language Arts Unit Named a Notable 'Los Angeles Book' in the L.A. Taco

• Given a Generous Biographical Feature by Tablet Magazine

 

Notable Awards and Opportunities

• Recipient of a 2021 Lightning Fund grant from LACE and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

• Commissioned by LA Metro to write a poem for a book publication, which is to be released in conjunction with the opening of the Crenshaw/LAX Transit Project.

• Subject/interviewee of LA Metro’s community artists video series.

 

Selected Performances

• Official performer at SXSW 2019.

• Musical guest for Open Mike Eagle and Baron Vaughn’s The New Negroes (Live) in February 2020.

• Performed at the world-famous Low End Theory in October of 2016.

• Has shared the stage with Amanda Palmer, Bardo Martinez (of Chicano Batman), billy woods, Doja Cat, Tina Guo, Fred Warmsley (fka Lee Bannon), Heems (of Das Racist), Homeboy Sandman, Open Mike Eagle, Post Malone, R.A.P. Ferreira (fka milo), Serengeti