Those interested in knowing examples of the best interviews in history have in Nardwuar a mandatory example and an absolute reference. And not only in the cultural field. The 2008 interview with Pharell Williams is still his biggest hit today. after seeing her, in the viewer's mind the question becomes mandatory: who is Nardwuar? The main difference between the Canadian Nardwuar and the rest of the journalists is that this question will also flourish in the mind of the interviewee himself: who is Nardwuar? Where did this character come from and what does he want from me? Nardwuar is not interested in the latest release; he is interested in the person.
Nardwuar interviews
What we show you below in Postposmo is, surely, the greatest mystery in the world of musical information (even greater than the artistic trajectory of Kanye West). Candidate, by the way, to be one of the greatest mysteries in the journalistic world. Where does Nardwuar get the information on him for the rare but great interviews of him?
The list of victims is counted by hundreds, spans three decades and includes the likes of Iggy Pop, Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, Skrillex and Nirvana (extremely rare find in your backstage in 1994). Beyond his quirky look, his eccentric personality (real or fake?) and his hypervitaminic tone of voice and touches on psychological imbalance, what differentiates Nardwuar from the rest of cultural interviewers is the kind of questions he asks (sometimes, they are not even questions, but keywords followed by ellipses). The rest of the magic (the frosting on the cake) springs from the items he brings to his encounters and most often gives to his victims. Nardwuar's investigative capacity is something for which there are no comparisons or examples that come close. Lil Uzi Vert came to literally run away:
Pharrell Williams: "Seriously, this is one of the most impressive interviews I've ever had in my life"
In his encounter with NERD, Nardwuar took out of his bag a vinyl of the rumshaker, which is neither more nor less than the first professional production in which Pharell Williams could see his name in print at the age of 16. to the rapper Kendrick Lamar He asked him about certain friends from his childhood (with names and surnames) or about the bulletproof windows of a certain restaurant that the rapper used to frequent before being known worldwide. Kendrick's face upon hearing the question is one of those faces that one cannot fake.
We are talking about information that does not exist on the Internet until Nardwuar makes it public. We are talking about Wikipedia pages that are updated with Nardwuar's research.
Nardwuar practices a type of interview that combines intimate inquiries with the display, Doraemon-style, of a carousel of objects that influenced the interviewee in the earliest stages of his artistic career. "If I had this, it would possibly be among my three most prized possessions," he went on to say. Drake when Nardwuar showed him a vinyl of Star walk, by Larry Graham.
Snoop Dogg, who meets with Nardwuar at least once a year, recovered the first edition of a pornographic video produced by him and that not even he had anymore. Nardwuar had it. Snoop Dogg is the artist who has appeared the most times on Nardwuar's YouTube channel with a total of nine interviews. The first dates back to the year 2000 and was uploaded to the channel after the event, since YouTube did not even exist. It was created in 2005.
Drake: "Nobody has done this in life" (...) "This is the best interview I've ever had"
It's not breaking the ice: it's knocking down the wall with a hammer
If today what is praised in an interviewer is his good work to create close ties to the point of making the interview a conversation (Carson, Letterman, O'Brien, Fallon, Buenafuente, Broncano), Nardwuar chooses to annihilate that link and get something unprecedented out of the destruction. Although he has interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev, the Canadian Nardwuar's favorite genre for his interviews with celebrities is that of North American rappers. And it is in this drawer where the ultimate beauty of their encounters resides. Thanks to his capacity for surprise (combined with the harmless grotesqueness of his appearance, manners and diction), this Canadian achieves the impossible of break the ice, knock down the facade of the famous and pull out of the rubble a new human being that we did not know.
Ludacris: "How do you know that? What's going on here?"
The journalist is not even close to feeling intimidated by the tough guy facade of 99% of rappers USA. The result is being able to see the human being behind the casing. To the person behind the rapper, with his authentic interests, his fears, phobias and hobbies. Marketing imposture knocked down with a hammer.
Is Nardwuar real or a character?
That the doubt about the imposture or not of the character of Nardwuar is still valid shows how atypical this Canadian is, who began to dedicate himself to music journalism in 1986 through a tiny radio station. Nardwuar, whose full name is Nardwuar The human servant (the human napkin), was born in 1968 in Vancouver and has even officially changed his birth name, John Ruskin, to Nardwuar.
Classic outline of the typical Nardwuar interview:
1.Nardwuar asks "Who are you?"
2. If the interviewee has not said so, Nardwuar asks «from?» (Where are you from?)
3-A. Nardwuar shoots with a series of questions with intimate and unknown details of the artist's life.
3-B. The journalist takes out of his bag an object that belonged to the interviewee or that was influential in his life. The value is such that it does not always end up being given away. Snoop Dogg came to osign one auction for a stuffed animal ("How much are you asking? 8 dollars, 16, 32, 40...come on man")
4. Combination of 3A and 3B for several minutes.
5. In case the interviewee asks «how do you know that? Nardwuar will always answer "You are X, we have to know that kind of thing".
6. Delirium of the interviewee.
7. To say goodbye, Nardwuar sings «DOOT DO LO LOOT DO…» to let the interviewee finish the melody «DOOT DOOT».
8. Nardwuar looks at the camera, smiles and freezes for a very uncomfortable number of seconds, which gives rise to a final revelation: How will the interviewee react to this unexpected closure?
If his identity and personality are pure pose designed for the world of entertainment, Nardwuar certainly has not given proof of it. He has never left the character in his more than thirty years of career. This has made artists like Nas uncomfortable. It has also been mocked by Blur. Englishmen humiliated the reporter in a 2003 interview for which Dave Rowntree apologized in 2011 assuring that it was not right that they did bullying to Nardwar.
The simple fact that Nardwuar does not enjoy overwhelming global fame says a lot about its mysterious idiosyncrasy and the very nature of the gears of show business. Within the postmodern society in which we find ourselves, where all reality, character and headline belong to the sphere of the interpretable and obey (most of the time) a hyper-capitalist and consumer logic, the existence of someone like Nardwuar is a breath of rare authenticity. Nardwuar's existence only raises more and more questions. His victims know it well.
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