Peace, Love, Unity, Jihad: The Return of Sam Spiegel and N.A.S.A.
Sam Spiegel, the artist formerly known as Squeak E. Clean, is a man who wears many, many hats. Producer, soundtrack scorer, DJ, opera writer, rabble-rouser, professional raconteur—it’s safe to say the man is prolific. But his best-known project, N.A.S.A. (North America South America) has been mostly quiet since their 2010 album The Big Bang, a series of remixes from their well-received 2009 debut, The Spirit of Apollo. Since its release, he wrote the psychedelic opera Stop the Virgins with Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (performed in Brooklyn and the Sydney Opera house in Australia). Then he scored the films Bad Grandpa and I’m Here for his brother, the eminent filmmaker Spike Jonze. And of course, there was Maximum Hedrum, a side project with Sepultura singer Derrick Green. But somewhere along the way, Spiegel caught Lyme disease while working in the woods of New England and was bedridden for well over a year while recovering.
Consider the recovery complete.
Early next year, Sam and N.A.S.A. will be dropping their follow-up album (title TBD), and they’re making sure we all know it’s coming, through a series of videos and singles that already have the internets buzzing. Today saw the release of the video “Meltdown,” featuring the growling staccato barks of DMX complementing the dulcet presence of Bollywood sensation (and star of ABC drama Quantico) Priyanka Chopra.
“If I didn’t put this shit out, part of me is going to die; I need to release this video. And I’m willing to fucking stand behind it, even if that means fucking some relationships up and maybe even pissing people off. I have to do it.”
But the track we really want to talk about is the radical “Jihad Love Squad”—a gorgeously directed, conceptually subversive video that has talking heads on both sides of the political spectrum getting dizzy. Featuring a Muslim woman dropping bombs of love and rhythm in a schoolyard, “Jihad Love Squad” challenges myopic mindsets with nearly every frame of its five-minute assault. Shot in Mumbai, India, the clip is the debut directorial effort for Spiegel, who superbly captures the dazzling choreography and kaleidoscopic explosions of empathy.
But it’s not all smoke and mirrors—seeing as it’s N.A.S.A., the track itself is pure dancefloor artillery: low-end bass, a perky trap bounce, chopped Middle-Eastern vocalizations, and the oral assault of rap legend KRS-One all combine for potent chemistry. Inspired by the Arab Spring, which saw youth around the world unite to effect positive change in their lives, Spiegel hopes to inspire some similar bombs of positivity in global youth consciousness.
Given its controversial subject and polarizing conceptualism, not everyone agreed with Spiegel’s message. In an open letter he wrote on his site, Sam goes on to explain that his own longtime management was so against the video, they issued an ultimatum: If he released the video, they were gone. How much did Siegel believe in the “Jihad Love Squad” message? He went with his gut, and they parted ways .
We wanted to hear more—to find out exactly what went on behind the scenes of making the “Jihad Love Squad” video—and to discover the primal conceptualization and realization of the track. Read on for our full Q&A with Sam Spiegel, aka N.A.S.A.
What I find most interesting about “Jihad Love Squad” is how scared your former management was with the idea of you releasing it. The amount of introspection that you had to go through to decide to put it out—if you’re going to break up with people you’ve been working with professionally for so long—that’s a sign of how much you truly believed in the video and its message. Walk me through that conflict within yourself a little bit. How close did you come to saying, “It’s just not worth it; maybe these people are right”?
“It’s a beautiful piece of art, and it’s telling a really important story, and it’s going to cause a lot of very important conversations around this subject that people are really afraid of.”
I don’t think I was ever going back and forth on whether or not to release the video. I mean, it definitely made me think like, “Oh shit, maybe I’m playing with something much more dangerous than I know.” And because I trust my manager—I had known them for so long—definitely it made me think, “Do I need to rethink the video?”
I had already been doing a bunch of research and talking to people, but I really dug in then. I was like, “Okay, I need to talk to imams, I need to talk to religious Muslims, I need to talk to people I don’t know.” Because people that know me know that I’m coming from this positive place, because that’s who I am. And I did that. I really dove into that for a good two or three weeks, where all I was doing was talking to Muslim experts and Muslims in the media. I reached out to a few big guys who go on CNN to talk when there’s a sensitive issue they’re talking about around Islam.
So, I spent some time doing a bunch of research like that, and it was fucking awesome. I love learning about the world and cultures, through my art and through my music. It’s how I create stuff, like okay, I’m just going to go dig in on space, or dig in on Brazil. And this record so far is about the Middle East and India, and if it weren’t for “Jihad Love Squad,” I would have never had all these great conversations with people that are really amazing. Everyone was so cool and so spiritual, and mostly everyone really supported it. There was one person that had an adverse reaction to it, but eventually she kind of came around, too.
You talked about her in your manifesto. What was her issue with it?
She had a bunch of beefs about a lot of the details in it, like if they’re in India, is she Muslim? Why is she wearing a Hindu outfit in a restaurant? It was a bunch of stuff like that.
I purposely steered away from sexualizing the woman, because I didn’t want it to be about a sexy Muslim. Instead, we wanted to make it about a liberated woman who is in charge, and that’s why I chose the main character to be a woman—because there’s a stereotype that we see when Muslim women are subjugated by their culture. And I love the idea of having a powerful woman, but I didn’t want her to be sexualized, because that wasn’t what the video was about.
When she saw the video, I asked, “What do you think it’s about?” [She said], “This is a video about a sexy woman who is going to blow up some kids.” I was just like, okay… shit. You just don’t understand, that’s not what I intended. I mean, I think eventually she got won over when she read my boring-ass letter that I wrote, and I think after she read that she was like, “All right, I feel you on that, I’m feeling you more.” And then she actually wound up being pretty supportive and helped me out with some press stuff.
Her comments were coming from a place of love, so I was thanking her. I was like, I know this isn’t easy to say to somebody, how shit you think their piece of art is. I was appreciative of how hard it was what she did, because she wanted to help, and it was a really awkward conversation. But I think eventually I heard her, and I really thought about it.
The other thing you asked about was how much it meant to me, and how much I was willing to sacrifice for it: I was sacrificing my management for it. That was really a factor. Because I was like, “I have to put this out, I believe in it so much.” It’s a beautiful piece of art, and it’s also telling a really important story, and it’s going to cause a lot of very important conversations around this subject that people are really afraid of. People don’t know how to talk about it, and I knew, because every time I would play it for somebody, they would just want to talk about it and dig in and call back with like, Hey… This just occurred to me, and you should play it for this person!
And I was like, man, I’ve never had a video that people reacted in such an immediate way; they just wanted to talk about it. This is going to cause a lot of conversations about something that should be talked about. It did mean a lot to me—like, if I didn’t put this shit out, part of me is going to die; I need to release this video. And I’m willing to fucking stand behind it, even if that means fucking some relationships up and maybe even pissing some people off. I have to do it. I have to stand behind this; it’s so important to me.
I could see how there could be some cultural discrepancies, but the protagonist is clearly not sexualized in it. She’s not like a stunning, sexual creature. She’s just an aesthetically pretty girl.
Yeah, when I was casting dancers, there was one girl that probably was a better dancer than the girl who ended up being the lead. But she was really sexy, and I was just like, if this girl is our dancer, then this video becomes about this girl being a sexy dancer. And it can’t be about that. There was a very specific intention behind not sexualizing her.
“The only adverse reactions I have gotten have been, for the most part, people that are super right-wing Islamophobes who think I’m making excuses for terrorists and suicide bombers. And they’re fucking nuts, saying like, ‘Why don’t you write a song about how it’s okay what the Nazis did during the Holocaust?’ Just ignorant shit.”
Have you gotten any reaction from people who think you’re just doing this because it’s a hot-button issue, and you’re doing it more for attention than for the altruistic meaning you claim?
You know, that’s not really something that’s come up. Everyone on my team was afraid I was going to offend Muslims, and that was a big concern for me. And the funny thing is that Muslims are the people that fucking love the video. We’ve barely started doing press on this, [yet] it just started going viral in the Middle East and fucking India and shit. And that was a really fun surprise, where it taught me a lesson about fear and expectation for what we don’t understand. And all these people that were afraid of the world of Islam hating the video and getting offended by it were, for the most part, not Muslim and don’t know many Muslims, so that was a really great thing.
The only adverse reactions I have gotten have been, for the most part, people that are super right-wing Islamophobes who think I’m making excuses for terrorists and suicide bombers. These are people from these websites that are just strictly dedicated to hating Muslims and hating Islam, and they’re fucking nuts. They’re like, Who the fuck is this guy who is a Muslim apologist? Why don’t you write a song about how it’s okay what the Nazis did during the Holocaust? Just ignorant shit.
I think if you got those guys’ panties in a bunch, you’ve actually done exactly what you wanted to do. That’s probably a good reaction.
It is! Like good, I’m going to piss off some idiots, awesome.
I can understand the fear, though. I think it’s a valid concern about how you’re well-traveled, exploring different parts of the world. So the last thing you want to do if you’re not really steeped in the culture is to put something out that you mean to be an homage, but then it’s interpreted as totally off-color or racist, or something like that. I can understand that concern.
It wasn’t so much a fear before I did the video. I was aware of it, but I felt so clear about the idea and all the details being kind of tied to this idea; so going into it, I wasn’t afraid of that. But when people reacted that way, I was like, “Oh shit, am I going to really piss Muslims off?” I don’t want to do that; that’s not the intention here.
Let’s talk about the track for a second. It’s actually a super catchy club song. At the end of the day, all politics aside, it’s based on an incredibly contagious bass/trap foundation. I don’t recognize the guy you produced it with, Kool Kojak—is he American?
Yeah, he’s an American dude.
Tell me how you put the song together. Did you tell KRS-One to do the vocalizing “dah da da da da” part, or did you just sample him?
Kojak and I were hanging out in L.A. I said I wanted to do a bunch of stuff that has some Middle Eastern flavors and some Indian flavors, and we started making a bunch of tracks. I’m pretty sure “Jihad Love Squad” was the first one of those series of tracks, and we took some prayer that Kojak had recorded when he was over in the Middle East, and started chopping it up. While we were making the track, we started thinking about the concept behind the song, which was: “Okay, lets do a song about a terrorist, a suicide bomber, but his heart is so full of love that he just explodes love on everyone around him”—you know, rather than hate and death, like most suicide bombers would do. Then we came up with the tag during that same session: “Jihad Love Squad.” And we were like, yes!
“Once we talked to KRS-One about it, he was like, ‘Wait, you don’t want me to write? You want me to rap your lyrics?’ He was kinda confused by that, because he had never done that before.”
I took that sketch, and I was in New York, kicking it with my homeboy Jams. I was working at Red Bull Studios on a bunch of shit and doing some writing with him, and played him the track and told him the concept, and he dug it. We kind of sculpted something together that was all the rest of the vocals, like the dah da da da da, and you know, we needed a “suicide vest,” and we kind of tweaked it as we went, but we came up with all that stuff. Then I reached out to KRS, and I was like, “I want you to be on this track.”
KRS seemed to be the right dude because he’s just, first of all, like one of my favorite rappers ever—and also just such a smart, righteous dude, and has a real legacy of being intelligent and very political and positive. Once we talked to him on the phone about it, he was like, “Wait, you just want me to rap? You don’t want me to write? You want me to rap your lyrics?” He was kind of confused by that, because he had never done that before. But I was like, “Yeah, your voice and the power, and the credibility and the passion that you bring to everything, I just want to feel that on the track.” I told him what the song was about and the concept, and he dug it and got behind it, like, “Okay cool, let’s do it!” So then he came through, and we knocked it out… and had some real interesting conversations, as you always do when you’re hanging around that dude.
Tell me a little about your inspiration behind going to India and putting this video together. You know you wanted to do it somewhere around the Middle East, I’m sure. Were you at all hesitant? I mean, India is super safe—was there any discussion of going anywhere that would be more hectic, or it was it India from the get-go?
I considered a couple other places—maybe Morocco, maybe other places where it would feel like there would be Muslims. But at the same time, India is one of those places that has interested me culturally for so long, and particularly musically. And it’s also just such an amazing-looking place, too, and the concept of having the Holi powder—it’s a tradition they do during the Holi festival. That’s like that colored powder that happened around the explosions. I was just like, “Man, I’ve got to go shoot this in India. That’s got to happen there.” I’ve been wanting to go there, and I’m already referencing their music a lot, and even reading—I just read a book set in India that I loved, called Shantaram, and I was and still am obsessed with India. It just seemed like the right move to go there and follow my intuition that was leading me to India.
Any hesitation in mixing those religious signifiers—like you said, the Hindu dress and the powder from the Holi festival—and mixing it with something of ostensibly Muslim origin? Or it does it really not matter?
For me, it’s cool; that’s how I make music. I would say—especially with N.A.S.A.—90 percent of the shit I do is seemingly adverse forces coming together and mixing culture, like a big fucking cultural smorgasbord. So for me, it’s just how I operate and how I feel a lot of people operate now, with everybody mixing everything all the time. It’s a very postmodern way of making stuff and thinking about the world. But to me, that’s like the coolest shit—that’s the place where it’s like dusk and dawn; it’s Tropicalia; it’s hip-hop—that place where a bunch of different cultures meet. Right in the middle, that’s the sweet spot for me. I didn’t have an issue with that at all.
Hip-hop elements, trap elements, Middle-Eastern elements, etc.
Exactly.
You talked a little bit about the kids there. Was there a moment to you that kind of brought the whole trip together? Was there any moment in the filming of the video that exemplified the whole experience for you?
Everything about the video was amazing… First of all, it was the first video I directed by myself, and going out there—which was terrifying, because I just went out there solo—and I met all these great people, all these super smart people. I was blown away by how everyone on the crew was a big brain—all these super well-educated smart people that were very good at what they did and were just in it and down for the cause. And we didn’t have a ton of money, but everyone was just trying to make it happen and trying to make it work. And meeting the kids was really awesome. A lot of these kids didn’t speak English too well, but when you can share that joy and make something with people—and not even having to speak, but just liking each other and getting along real well—that is a really special thing that makes you feel connected. Humanity, in a profound way.
The video definitely gave me that kind of satisfaction, and one really cool moment that happened was right at the end of the video. All these little kids came up, and they all started touching my feet. I was like, “Do they like my Jordans or something? What’s going on?” But that’s actually a way that they show respect to people, and it was a very humbling moment for me because all these kids were smiling and laughing at me and showing me respect in a really beautiful way. Of course, I touched their feet to show the respect back, but that was a really beautiful moment for me, especially because I didn’t know it at first. Then somebody explained it to me.
And the kids were dancing their asses off in the video.
They worked so fucking hard. That was a long, long day, and they were like, getting blown up and sucking all this fucking dust in, and it was messy. It was crazy hot, and they were dancing their asses off. They were so fucking cool and so fun, and there was just so much joy. It was really cool being around a bunch of kids that were just having a blast doing their thing. Those kids were hella young, and they were some of the best break-dancers I’ve ever seen! It was one of my favorite creative experiences I’ve ever had.
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