Kyle "Guante" Tran Myhre
A few highlights from 2023, for people who are interested in my work but may have missed something here or there. It was a bit of a “between-projects” year for me (though I did mark the one-year anniversary of my book by making a section available to read online here), on top of the fact that self-promo has been the furthest thing from my mind over the last three months, but here are some links.
New music! 10 emcees, singers, poets, DJs & producers from 3 states RUNNING AMOK.
I’m excited to share this new project, helmed by production duo Scum & Villainy (two longtime friends and collaborators, SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE and Rube); I’m featured on six of the seventeen tracks, and it was so much fun to just share some verses (and a poem) and see how they ended up contributing to the actual songs.
The whole album is beautiful, in that it’s intentionally chaotic. The soundscapes, the multiple voices, the concepts—it all adds up to something that reminds me of my own entry point into Hip Hop: deeply collaborative, off-kilter, against-the-grain music from acts like Goodie Mob, Wu-Tang, De La Soul, and beyond. Not that this actually sounds anything like those groups, haha; it’s more about the spirit of it.
Get it on Bandcamp, and/or stream it wherever you listen to music.
A few personal highlights:
Thanks to everyone checking it out. More new music on the way…
Why does this apocalypse feel so familiar?
New song, our first in five years! Get it wherever you listen to music (spotify, apple music, etc.), or right here:
Official Blurb: In 2018, Minneapolis-based duo Guante & Big Cats released War Balloons, an album of anthemic, explicitly political, sci-fi-tinged indie Hip Hop. To mark the five-year anniversary of that project (and its reintroduction to streaming services after being missing for a time), they’re releasing an “extended version” featuring a brand new track, Roguelike.
My Own Notes: The new song is part of a re-released version of our 2018 album, War Balloons. It’s available NOW. Nothing else on that project has changed; the reason for the re-release is just some technical stuff on the back end, and the new song is free, so if you already bought the album, you don’t have to buy it again. And if you missed it five years ago (aka a million years ago), here’s an opportunity to catch it. Like a lot of artists, I tend to dislike everything I did that’s older than a month or so, but I’m still pretty proud of this one. It features some of my best songwriting, and Big Cats is always brilliant. Some extended thoughts on the new song below.
Quick, somewhat related note: If you’re reading this post today (Saturday, June 17, 2023), come see me perform at the Stone Arch Bridge Festival tonight in Minneapolis. It won’t be a G&BC set, but I’ll be sharing poems and songs over See More Perspective’s live production. 6-7pm on the Cities 97 stage.
There is no light at the end of this tunnel/ so it’s a good thing we brought matches.
I haven’t released any music of my own since 2018’s “War Balloons” with Big Cats (although I did appear on those two Fred Again songs; find them here). Surprise! Here’s something new, a remix of “Matches.”
This is a piece of writing that has meant a lot to me over the years, the closest thing I have to a personal manifesto. It was originally part of a side project, so I’ve pretty much always performed just my own parts solo (often a capella), and had wanted to build a solo version of the song out of that for a long time. I guess good things take time, because Dave Olson is a musician I’ve liked and respected for 20 years (!) now; someone who was part of the very first community of artists that ever nurtured me, and it really feels special to collaborate with him on this song. Hope you like it.
Listen via: Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple Music
Music, Mixing, and Artwork by Dave Olson
Words by Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre
Vocals Recorded by SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE at Luv ‘n’ Dedication Studio, St. Paul, MN
“Right now, I feel a need for all of us to breathe fire.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
With more and more discourse lately (online and in real life) about how corrupt and out-of-touch the super-rich are, I wanted to share a few thoughts and links related to this song. “You Say ‘Millionaire’ Like It’s A Good Thing” has been around for a few years– the original version of the song is available here, and the lyrics are included in my book. This remix, courtesy of Big Cats, is the song’s Final Form– a lean, focused burst of venom directed at the rich.
As a writer and as an activist, I’m really interested in the power of language to reframe issues. It’s important to write songs and poems that describe poverty, that tell our stories, and that call us to action toward economic justice; this song, however, was an attempt to do something a little more specific: to reframe the accumulation of wealth as something that is not just “an unfortunate side effect of the system,” but rather as something that is *morally* reprehensible.
There are caveats; I’m reminded of Jay-Z’s “If you grew up with holes in your zapatos/ you’d celebrate the minute you was having dough.” The argument here isn’t that all rich people are “bad” on an individual level (although many absolutely are!); it’s that a system that makes it possible for the distribution of wealth to be so extremely, so obscenely skewed is flat-out wrong. It is directly responsible for the death and suffering of too many people.
And sure, we can have conversations about how wealth is relative, how even working class people in the US “have it better” than x, y, or z other group… but that’s part of the point of the song too– there’s a point where that relativity fails. Maybe it’s not at a million dollars exactly; but somewhere on the wealth spectrum, earning becomes hoarding. Need becomes greed. Here are some articles that go more in-depth; I hope they can be useful, especially as so many of us are watching the 2020 candidates navigate this issue:
Christopher Ingraham: “Wealth concentration returning to ‘levels last seen during the Roaring Twenties,’ according to new research” (Washington Post): “American wealth is highly unevenly distributed, much more so than income. According to Zucman’s latest calculations, today the top 0.1 percent of the population has captured nearly 20 percent of the nation’s wealth, giving them a greater slice of the American pie than the bottom 80 percent of the population combined.”
Farhad Manjoo: “Abolish Billionaires” (NYT): “But the adulation we heap upon billionaires obscures the plain moral quandary at the center of their wealth: Why should anyone have a billion dollars, why should anyone be proud to brandish their billions, when there is so much suffering in the world?”
Sophie Weiner: “AOC: A Society With Billionaires Cannot Be Moral” (Splinter): “‘The question of marginal tax rates is a policy question but it’s also a moral question,’ Ocasio-Cortez said. ‘What kind of society do we want to live in? Are we comfortable with a society where someone can have a personal helipad while this city is experiencing the highest levels of poverty and homelessness since the Great Depression?'”
A.Q. Smith: “It’s Basically Just Immoral To Be Rich” (Current Affairs): “It is not justifiable to retain vast wealth. This is because that wealth has the potential to help people who are suffering, and by not helping them you are letting them suffer. It does not make a difference whether you earned the vast wealth. The point is that you have it. And whether or not we should raise the tax rates, or cap CEO pay, or rearrange the economic system, we should all be able to acknowledge, before we discuss anything else, that it is immoral to be rich. That much is clear.”
Charles Mathewes and Evan Sandsmark: “Being rich wrecks your soul. We used to know that.” (Washington Post): “As stratospheric salaries became increasingly common, and as the stigma of wildly disproportionate pay faded, the moral hazards of wealth were largely forgotten. But it’s time to put the apologists for plutocracy back on the defensive, where they belong — not least for their own sake. After all, the Buddha, Aristotle, Jesus, the Koran, Jimmy Stewart, Pope Francis and now even science all agree: If you are wealthy and are reading this, give away your money as fast as you can.”
Emmie Martin: “Here’s how much money you need to be happy, according to a new analysis by wealth experts” (CNBC): “‘The lower a person’s annual income falls below that benchmark, the unhappier he or she feels. But no matter how much more than $75,000 people make, they don’t report any greater degree of happiness,’ Time reported in 2010, citing a study from Princeton University conducted by economist Angus Deaton and psychologist Daniel Kahneman.”
Jesus, in the Bible: “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Once again, not a great year, in terms of the world. But I was able to be part of some cool stuff, and am endlessly grateful for everyone who helped make that possible. Here’s a quick recap (and you can find my other end-of-year recaps here) of some of the stuff of mine that people may have missed:
Thanks again to everyone who has picked this up, read it, used it in classes, etc. Still blown away by the response. You can still get it here, and an audio version is on the way!
Proud of this album. Ever-grateful to Big Cats, Lydia Liza, and Tony the Scribe for helping to make it happen. If you missed it, I think it’s some of my best work. You can listen to the whole thing here, and consider buying it if you like it:
Oh and for people new to our music (since this is the first project we’ve released in years), here’s a retrospective mix featuring some of our best older songs too. You can also order a t-shirt featuring some cool designs juxtaposed with my lyrics.
Some of these are brand new poems, written just this year; others are old favorites for which we captured some more polished footage. All of these performances are from my book’s release show, a sold out night at Icehouse in Minneapolis; thank you to everyone who came through.
This little booklet comes from asking that question in spaces all over the country (which is part of what I do for a living) and listening to the responses of advocates, survivors, activists, and educators.
With the help of some partners, we got this zine into the hands of thousands of people this year. Lots of concrete action ideas and resources for further study; read the whole thing online and/or download a PDF of the zine version.
The idea behind this project was to have an archive not just of spoken word poems, but of analysis and commentary that might be useful to aspiring/emerging poets. There just don’t seem to be an over-abundance of spaces to “talk shop” with regards to spoken word specifically, especially for people who may not have access to workshops and classes. I did some of these through Button, and some just on my own as a “Poem of the Month” feature, and the link is now full of fantastic poems, plus some thoughts on technique related to each one.
A few other things I wrote or where part of writing this year:
Thanks!
War Balloons by Guante and Big Cats
Happy release day. It’s available on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, and all that. Hope you like it.
And if you’re in the Twin Cities, please come check out the release party this Friday! You can get your tickets now.
Will be sharing more thoughts on the album in a while, but wanted to give people a chance to just listen first. Thanks!
We Are Waking Up In Our Caskets (Mix) by Guante and Big Cats
With the new album, WAR BALLOONS, a week away, here’s a free retrospective mix of songs pulling from the last decade of Guante & Big Cats’ collaborative work. Perfect for a quick workout, hunting vampires, etc. Featuring:
Stories | Everything Burns | Welcome to the Border w/ Chastity Brown | No Capes | Gifted Youngsters w/ Lydia Liza | With Great Power | To Young Leaders | The National Anthem w/ Haley Bonar | The Hero | Asterisk
The new album is something else. Be sure to get your tickets to the release show (Friday, September 21) here!
War Balloons by Guante and Big Cats
For Labor Day, wanted to make another song from the new album (specifically, this song) available. If you already pre-ordered, you can download it now; if you didn’t, pre-order now and you get this song (and another) right away. The lyrics are also available in that link.
Thanks to everyone who has already pre-ordered. Pre-ordering is one of the single best ways to support artists you like; it is definitely appreciated, and we’re excited to share the whole album with you.
The new Guante & Big Cats album, “War Balloons,” is out on September 18. The release show will be September 21 (get tickets now!). In case you missed it, another song from the project is available now: “Fight or Flight,” and features this beautiful design by the incredible Frizz Kid:
You must be logged in to post a comment.