Lee AdcockIn the back of the hall, Michael Schwartz paces back and forth. We’re in the Bakery’s smallest venue space, so no raised platform separates us from the prolific MC or his minimal set-up, all laid out on a card table—laptop, blow-up alien, Aveeno lotion, banana. He grabs up the latter, downs a chunk, keeps pacing. A dude up front shoots a quick clip of this for his Instagram with his own mug in the foreground. “Pre-show warm-up is doing great!” he announces. (For some reason, I want to punch him.) Then someone asks about the bladeless Dyson fan on the floor; without missing a beat, Schwartz breaks from his pacing completely and recites a full rundown of the machine’s specs.
It’s funny. A few minutes earlier, as I waited for the crowds just outside the door to part, Schwartz (who was, yes, holding down door during his own release show) warned me that his anxiety had just peaked. “This is the point when I can’t talk to anyone,” he said.
So now, as the 26-year-old tosses off a few harried jokes while the punters outside filter in, I still detect traces of his nerves. But the crowd embraces this small talk, and so the real routine begins—and I realize, as he introduces us to CC the alien, his first track, and his foot fetish within the same monologue, I realize that the Michael Myerz persona is simply Schwartz on overdrive. Within the span of an hour, our protagonist would spit bars, lick Aveeno straight off CC’s sweaty skin (actually, it may have been a bit more than sweat—guess what else happened to the blow-up doll?), and compel us all to dance and sing. And yet, regardless of whatever mad hijinks Schwartz pulled, he’d remind us almost every time that he loved us all. “Everyone in this room is equal,” he insists. “And if you ever need someone to just hang with, let me know.”
Now, here’s the kicker: even before I sat down with Schwartz a few days later, I already knew that pledge was true.* There’s a line in his latest and 22nd album, Omega Mall (told you that Myerz was prolific): “Gotta treat the woman right cos, that’s the motto.” As fate would have it, I visited the Bakery about a month ago, on the same night that Schwartz worked his first time at the door. Fate also deemed that I would mistake a weed edible for an innocuous key lime pie bar, and that, when I staggered out of the gallery later with shallow breath and a thumping heart, Schwartz would be the first person who asked if I was OK. Even a week afterwards, when our paths crossed again at the EARL, he approached as soon as he could to check in on me.
Mind, the Jewish rapper appealed to me as an interview subject for myriad reasons. The dude had vowed to make 100 albums by the time he was 50, was plotting to helm a new label that also supported VHS releases, and also (gasp!) actually read the local music press. But what really sealed the deal was fate, and irony: when I slipped Schwartz a fiver and my card at the merch table, now his hands were shaking.
Photo courtesy of Michael Myerz
“The Rapping Jewish Kid”
Where does anyone begin with the Myerz? For years, the Georgia native refined a decisively old-school sort of hip-hop, somewhere between the boisterous antics of Eazy E and the jazz-splicing mischief of A Tribe Called Quest or latter-day Beastie Boys. Yet, while the goofier quips do make you wince sometimes, Schwartz has a knack—particularly in his later albums—of laying bare thoughts that you’ve certainly had, but would never dare share. Some are rather innocuous (like from “Folds Into Itself,” on album #20 NewJubes: “I drink a coffee, going take a nice poop”), while others, like the snarky jingle that epitomizes the hive mind fandom surrounding local bands (“King Kyle,” from album #21 Café Candyheart), are downright savage. With a compendium of obscure ‘90s references, colorful skits, and jabs at his own Jewish upbringing, young Myerz flew briefly into the radar of Vice, and even supported his hero MC Chris a few years back.
When I sat down with Schwartz, though, we started at the very beginning. While born here in Georgia, his entire family hailed from New York, which marked him from the onset as more of a “Northern boy” (“I wasn’t introduced to Waffle House until much later in life,” he jokes). And for as long as he could remember, he wrote fantasy stories and nerdy fan fictions. In fact, by Schwartz’s account, writing was his primary talent. “I sucked at every sport imaginable,” he recalls. “My parents tried so hard: soccer, fail; t-ball, fail; karate, honesty, fail. Skateboarding was the only thing that I was good at.” (We could likely argue at this venture, though, that Schwartz certainly must’ve honed some mad gaming skillz. More on that later.)
With skateboard culture came a deluge of hip-hop, and so, as sixth-grade Schwartz continued to write, his pen turned toward lyrics. Within two years, he had his first “album,” Live in Jewrusalem. That’s his quotes, not mine. “I put album in quotations, because [while] it was an album, I wouldn’t consider it an album if I was to hear it now,” he says. “But for a little eighth grader to record an album on his parents’ computer and burn it onto a CD required some effort.” Before long, Schwartz had made a name for himself; at parties, his peers would single him out as “the rapping Jewish kid.”
To some extent, though, that’s what Schwartz was subconsciously aiming for—a new persona. Just as authors can chart entire worlds parallel to reality, so the hip-hop artist could invent several skins to occupy. “If you say, ‘OK, I’m going to start a rock band, and we’ll sound like Deerhunter,’ well, then you’re probably going to sound like Deerhunter, and that’s it,” Schwartz explains. “But if you’re like, ‘I’m a rapper,’ [you] can do whatever the hell you want. There are people who [ask me], ‘Well, what are you?’, and I’m like, ‘I’m a rapper.’ But with 22 albums, I’ve kinda broken a lot of genres.”
Photo courtesy of Michael Myerz
Stepping stones
By now, you’re likely wondering about all those albums. Why does anyone write so much? Of course, Schwartz is hardly alone: Australia’s King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard manage about two a year, avant-blues institute Jandek has about 90 albums down in his catalogue, and beloved indie cult leader Mark E. Smith of the Fall reached about 70 in his lifetime.
But our protagonist aims to surpass them all—100 by the age of 50. That’s not just for the bragging rights, either. “I look at every album as a stepping stone, of what I was capable of at that time,” Schwartz tells me. Even the missteps, he says, are worth keeping, since the artist never knows what the public will gravitate to. “I don’t see the point in working on, let’s say, 300 tracks, and only releasing five of them because the other 295 weren’t 100% to your liking,” he reasons. Granted, he can take that position, because he’s never been signed. Greta Kline of Frankie Cosmos once held the same attitude, until her first label urged her to stop so they could push Zentropy.
From a non-capitalist perspective, though, Schwartz has gained plenty from his non-stop output. For one, the rapper has committed to some degree of maturity, which might not seem obvious when he’s cavorting on stage with a blow-up doll, but a glance across the socials reveals no petty flame wars or shit-talking. “The days of me saying vulgarity, or doing things to just get a rise out of people, are so fucking long gone,” Schwartz vows.
That’s quite the revelation for Myerz. Back on album #9 Mashugana Holiday, he defended his foul mouth: “Well, I can say whatever I want, buddy / Because this is my only form of clarity” (“I made You”). Four years later, on album #19 Jewnami, the Myerz made a point to not swear once, and even announced his intent out loud just to hammer the point home. Omega Mall keeps the positive vibes rolling, as fuzzy R&B smothers the listener in soft and perpetual lust for sweet babes—no beefs, no aggression, and almost no cursing. “Literally the worst line is, ‘That ass looks good in your jeans, I might grab it,'” Schwartz notes. “Even there, I’m catching myself. It’s one of those things, with where I’m almost impressed with myself, where I’ll write something, and immediately delete it, because I’m like, NOPE.”
For Schwartz, positivity has become something of an imperative lately. Until about a year-and-a-half ago, the rapper saw himself as “the most angry person” he knew, stuck in a corrosive relationship (which later informed Café Candyheart, his “post-breakup” album). Granted, as he’s quick to point out, even the younger and scrappier Myerz never uttered any misogynist or homophobic slurs (unlike, say, Tyler, the Creator). But today, after seeking help and therapy, he’s taken that nice guy approach to the next level. “It’s the only option at this point,” Schwartz insists.
At the end of the day, motivational slow jams drive Schwartz closer to the goals he’d set out for Michael Myerz in the first place. As the quest towards album no. 100 moves on, our protagonist seeks neither fame nor money, but the favor of two entities: his former fifth-grader self, and “whoever the art god is. It’s probably a giant macaroni painting. That’s what art god is, just a five-year-old-made god out of macaroni. And that’s who I aspire to please. Macaroni Art God, please… please love my art.”
Photo courtesy of Michael Myerz
No more internet excess
Even with that stated intent, Schwartz has tried to land several albums onto labels, with no luck. Thanks to one of his friends, Omega Mall was almost released by a certain internet-only collective; that same friend, however, soon advised Schwartz to jump ship, as the label had recently absorbed hundreds of artists into the roster.
And so, exasperated by rejection and “money crap,” he decided to form his own label: Booger Boiz. The name stemmed from Schwartz’s first album on VHS, a version of NuJewbes dubbed Booger Boiz: The Lost Files. “The whole joke on the back of the cover was, Booger Boiz is not just for boys, it’s for anyone,” Schwartz explains. “You can be whoever you want, but just know you’ll always be a booger boi.” Ideally, the label would support anyone that Schwartz believed deemed cool; thanks to Kansas City vaporwave OG air Jordans (who also produced much of Omega Mall), any future Booger Boi could see their album on cassette or, yes, VHS. And with a relatively stable stint in “corporate America” (i.e. Dyson, hence the salesman’s pitch for the bladeless fan at the show), Schwartz could easily absorb the costs.
Besides, just like with his Myerz output, Schwartz doesn’t aim to turn profits with Booger Boiz. “I feel like there’s so many people who are killing it right now, that don’t have someone who’s willing to put out their tape,” he tells me. “I don’t see the point in that. I don’t see the point in making music to only live on the internet.” That leads us, of course, to discuss the general resurgence of physical media, a phenomenon that almost every music news outlet has discussed, explained, or even discounted over the past decade. Most of those thinkpieces honed in on the steady rise of vinyl sales; at last count, about 14.3 million records were sold in the US last year, a 9% increase from 2016. But you don’t have to dig far underground to find cassettes and CDs too, as you the reader should know if you’ve marched up to any DIY band’s merch table lately.
Why VHSs, though? Schwartz has some ideas. “Even with all this internet excess, people want tangible stuff,” he tells me. “They want to touch their childhood again, and they can’t, because the internet has oversaturated it. People are getting sick and tired of essentially letting their individualism rot because of something like the internet.”
At any rate, only one artist has joined the good ship Booger Boiz thus far: Delorean Gray, the sci-fi lounge pop act of Jacob Chisenhall. That’s hardly a coincidence. The flamboyant band leader is one of Schwartz’s pals, and actually produced the last three tracks on Café Candyheart. Granted, before the two formally met in 2016, our protagonist hated his guts. “I used to see [Jacob] walking around Georgia State campus, with his magenta-colored hair,” Schwartz confides. “And I was like, ‘Who is this guy? I wanna fight him. I don’t like him. I don’t like this guy.'”
And he probably would have continued to loathe Chisenhall from afar, until another friend joined the stranger’s new dreampop band Fake Flowers. So when the two crossed paths at Videodrome on the day of Trump’s election, Schwartz finally resolved to bridge the gap: “I walk in, and Jacob walks in there, and I look at him, and I point at him, and I go, ‘Give me a hug.'” The two have been working on music together ever since.
With Chisenhall on board, Booger Boiz already has about five albums lined up in the catalogue. Granted, four of those stem from the Myerz; on Packard Bell 96, however, Schwartz will join forces with Delorean Gray, while Love Power (“Omega Mall 2.0,” as Schwartz describes it) will summon the hazy talents of air Jordans yet again. And his first live album, tentatively called Myerz and Meatgrinder, features some folks from Material Girls. For a label born of rejection, then, Schwartz has found plenty of company outside the world wide web.
Good luck, Perfect Dark
We talked for quite a while that evening—about unsettling dreams, the fickle music press, our tastes in video games (Schwartz’s favorite system, FYI, is the Nintendo 64. “All of my favorite games are all made by Rare,” he says). And, of course, we discussed the show, and my theory that the Myerz persona only projected the inner quirks of the man himself. Schwartz agreed. “Before a show or after a show, if I seem nervous, it’s because I know I’m subconsciously milking it. But it adds to a better performance. [I’m] psyching myself into thinking that I’m actually kinda losing my mind.”
Indeed, in a classic Myerz move, Schwartz likens his live antics to an episode of Rugrats. “Chucky and Tommy see this mirror, Didi brings it in, and they’re like, ‘What is this thing? Why is it here?’ [Didi] is like, ‘Oh, you know there’s another world behind this mirror.’ So they go into the other world, but really the other world is just everyone in the house putting on stuff from a vintage box that they found in the attic. So everyone looks different: the grandpa has hair, Didi’s in a ballerina outfit. And so they’re convinced that there’s this other world, where everyone is the same, but different. And that’s essentially what I am [on stage], Mirror Michael.”
Something else had been nagging me, though. When Schwartz led into his first song that night, he announced that he was “never going to tour.” And I frowned at the time, because I thought Schwartz was underselling himself. Turns out, that was a running gag. “The joke is, at a lot of the shows I’ve done, a lot of people come up to me,” he explained. “And if I’m opening for a national act, [they ask,] ‘Oh, so when does your tour end?’ I’m like, ‘What do you mean?’ And they go, ‘Well, you’re on tour, right?’ And I’m like, ‘No, I live down the street.’ I get that a lot.”
Which means, thankfully, that the Myerz would definitely be down to tour out of state in the future; in fact, he’s already hit Florida a few times. But until Schwartz can line up a proper and profitable trip, the big national odyssey will have to wait. “I just make fun of people who ask me, ‘Well, when are you gonna go on tour?'” he says. “Well, when shit starts working out!”
Nevertheless, the near future looks pretty rad for Michael Myerz. With its current lineup, Booger Boiz can bring the noise until next June; more local shows have lined up this year; Schwartz has quenched his old destructive self with positive vibes for everyone. And as for the long haul, the rapper doesn’t intend to cease his libations to the Macaroni Art God any time soon. “When I see bands in Atlanta, and they play maybe four times a year, and they get huge crowds,” he says. “But it’s like, these are just your friends, and that’s it. You’re not doing this longterm, you’re not going to be doing this when you’re 43. You’re going to do this until it’s not cool anymore, and then you’re gonna get married, have some kids, then you get to brag to your kids about how you were the ‘cool’ parents. I’m not about that. I’m literally in this art shit until I’m dead.”
Michael Myerz will perform on Sun., July 29 at the Bakery alongside Terror Pigeon, MonteQarlo, Sequoyah, and DJ Polar Pop. Doors open at 8 p.m. Admission is $5.
More Info
Bandcamp: michaelmyerz.bandcamp.com
Facebook: @MichealMyerz
Instagram: @mrmyerz
SoundCloud: @mich4el-myerz
Twitter: @MrMyerz