"Energy Can't Be Destroyed": The Remixed Streetwear of Justin Mensinger

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  1. 1. Intro to Energy
  2. 2. Clothing Samples
  3. 3. The Energy of Execution
  4. 4. A Stickiness in the Mind
  5. 5. Cut and Sew -> Look and Feel

Intro to Energy

Justin Mensinger
Joe Jarvis
Justin

Clothing Samples

If sampling is the first level of hip hop aesthetics, how the pieces or elements fit together constitute the second level.
     — Richard Schur, "Hip Hop Aesthetics and Contemporary African American Literature"
 

"Upcycling," "reuse," and "sustainable" only indicate an approach to sourcing. What the designer does with the material is what matters.
     ―from the Someone Else story on Julia Kordiukova

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In the Someone Else story on Julia Kordiukova, I described Justin in passing as "streetwear's Kool Herc." I should have compared him to the Bomb Squad; that would have been more accurate. DJ Kool Herc is known as "the godfather of hip-hop." Starting in the early 1970s, he isolated drum breaks from existing songs and then played those breaks on a loop, using copies of the same record on two turntables. This created a sustained beat for breakdancers to dance to―and for MCs to rap over, creating a new form of music. Eighteen years after Kool Herc set the blueprint for rap with his self-described Merry Go Round technique, the Bomb Squad sampled 21 tracks on the Public Enemy anthem "Fight the Power." Most of these samples were less than one second long, but the Bomb Squad looped them, creating a lush but agitated soundscape that invigorated marginalized America and jangled white nerves. Describing production of the track to Keyboard magazine in 1990, Chuck D said:

  • "Fight the Power" has, like, 17 samples in the first ten seconds. For example, there's three different drum loops that make one big drum loop: One is a standard Funkadelic thing, another is a Sly thing, and I think the third one is the Jacksons. Then we took some sounds from a beat box. The opening lick is the end of a Trouble Funk record, processed with doubling and reverb. And the chorus is music going backwards.

The song also incorporates three Branford Marsalis saxophone solos, recorded in studio by the Bomb Squad. These solos, along with turntable scratching from DJ Terminator X, are the only original sounds on the track. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Marsalis described the layering of his solos within the context of the larger sample-scape as "a Wall of Sound to accompany a Wall of Sound."

Despite its reliance on existing music, the production on "Fight the Power" is wholly original because of what the Bomb Squad did with their source material.

The Energy of Execution

"We approach every record like it was a painting. Sometimes we have to have a separate sheet just to list the samples for each track."
     ―Chuck D

"This is my version of paint."
     ―a caption on Justin's Instagram, describing an image of piles of fabric organized by color

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Joe
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Justin executes it exceptionally well.

For his Tommy Olympic Mosaic hoodie, he cut up around five sweatshirts and one sweater into squares, rectangles, triangles, and irregular shapes, and then remixed them into a new garment. He withdrew a similar variety of shapes from two vintage Gibraud tracksuits, resulting in a mini-capsule of four sweatshirts. Justin has turned denim into accessories including duffles, cross-body bags, and backpacks. His Illinois / New York sweatshorts came from around 10 different sweatshirts. Each garment takes up to 14 hours of work, not including the time Justin spends sourcing material.

On the street, the original Tommy sweatshirts and Gibraud track suits would be unremarkable, just a few more literalist 1990s revival pieces. But you could spot Justin's remixed Olympic mosaic a block away, from the back, without seeing any of the front logos. The same goes for all of Justin's sweatshirts. His geometry serves as his own distinct, immediately recognizable design signature. He turns the same-old, same-old into the never-seen-before. 

A Stickiness in the Mind

We played samples like a drum. We were piecing together a quilt of noise.
     ―Chuck D, re: “Fight the Power”
 

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Cut and Sew -> Look and Feel

They're selling hippie wigs in Woolworth's, man. The greatest decade in the history of mankind is over. 
     ―Danny the drug dealer, in Bruce Robinson's classic movie "Withnail and I"

They're selling Nirvana t-shirts in Urban Outfitters, man. The Smiley Face and "In Utero" angel appear pixel-for-pixel as they did a quarter-century ago. I'm genuinely happy for folks who find inspiration in the 1990s. It's just that, in general, revivalism often feels like naked imitation. It calls to mind syndicated reruns, or a push-play DJ fist-pumping his way through a playlist. At best, Urban Outfitters is a translator. Currently, the Smiley logo appears on a dad hat. When Smiley first appeared in the 1990s, dad hats did not exist as such; they were simply hats. So, maybe the dad-hat application of Smiley bridges a 1990s music vernacular with a more recent normcore vernacular, and maybe that's interesting. But Justin, like the Bomb Squad, is not an imitator or a translator. He is an interpreter. And what his design work is telling us, about the past and our possible futures, is worth listening to.

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Justin
Joe
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You can purchase Justin's remixed streetwear via his website.
To stay up on his latest drops, follow his Instagram.