ONE NIGHT IN GUFUNES

GEOFFREY SKYWALKER

Geoffrey “Skywalker” pulls up in a Hertz moving truck in front of the FÚSK warehouse in East Reykjavík. He’s dressed in skinny jeans and white sneakers, wearing a black, longsleeved shirt featuring an ornery-seeming Rottweiler. (He’s a dog person.)

A fixture of the hip-hop scene in Iceland since he was younger, Geoffrey hustled his way up from glorified busboy at the coffeehouse-cum-nightclub Prikið – dubbed “the home of hip-hop in Iceland” – to the now owner of the establishment, prior to co-founding Sticky Records in 2016.

Stepping out of the truck, Geoffrey tosses a handful of fire safety signs onto a large wooden spool, which has been turned on its side in the yard to function as a table for concert-goers. He’s only just set the signage down when a balding fire inspector parks a white jeep on the gravel lot and exits his vehicle. Walking over, the man jabs an inquisitive finger at a large, black shipping container, open on both ends, that leads inside the warehouse.

“What’s this?”

As Geoffrey and his associate explain that the container is to serve as a tunnel into the concert venue, the inspector – half man, half iPad – shakes his head. And his head will continue to shake throughout his tour of the premises. By the time he returns to the car, smooshing a phone to his ear with a vexed expression, it appears as if the long-awaited release concert for rapper Birnir’s sophomore album Bushido will suffer further delays; it’s six hours till the opening acts are slated to take the stage.

Birnir, whom Geoff met through rapper Aron Can in 2016, spent much of the pandemic labouring over the album. (“The hardest working man in show biz,” according to Geoff). The pair hosted various smaller events in connection to Bushido but always aspired toward something bigger for the release concert.

Having followed the inspector to the parking lot, Geoffrey returns to the warehouse and apprises Birnir of the situation. “As it stands, we won’t be holding a concert,” he says. “But I’ll move Heaven and Earth before I give up.”

GUFUNES

The Gufunes peninsula is situated in east Reykjavík but sits somewhere between Chernobyl and earthly paradise; it’s the site of a former government-owned fertiliser factory, funded by the Marshall Plan in the 1950s, and looks out across the water to Viðey island – boasting a fine view of Esja mountain to the north.

The fate of the fertiliser factory was sealed in 2001 when a violent blast rattled the windows of neighbouring residents. One of the buildings was converted into a film studio in 2018. Below it, nestled within a horseshoe of green hills, is the FÚSK warehouse (the word fúsk is often employed to describe the handiwork of bungling repairmen): 13,000 square feet in total, made from concrete with a roof of corrugated iron. Thanks to an agreement with the City of Reykjavík, the warehouse now serves as a creative space for artists and a makeshift concert venue. (The first concert, a legal rave, was held there last summer.) There’s no image as antithetical to idyllic nature as that of the factory, but a fertiliser factory represents a kind of paradox: the sacrifice of nature for the sake of nature. This contradiction speaks to an essential quality of Birnir, whose addictive, self-destructive impulses fecundate his art. As he raps on the opening track of Bushido: I’m an infant, my darling Emerged a junkie from my mother’s womb

A FEW HOURS LATER (NARFI)

The Prikið food truck is parked on the gravel lot in front of the FÚSK warehouse: Ice Cube’s It Was a Good Day old-schooling from its speakers. Birnir – who looks like a young Channing Tatum with a plumper Adam’s apple and a physique less obviously conducive to striptease – orders a hamburger. He’s only just received the “go ahead” from the fire inspector a few hours earlier but remains “incredibly” relaxed: the general hubbub of the day impotent against his Zen-like equanimity. (He meditates often.) Sauntering over to a hefty bench, precariously balanced atop a few boulders near the shore, he takes big, meaningful bites from his burger while basking in the evening sun. He’s sporting green cargo pants, a white Bushido t-shirt displaying an MRI scan of his brain, a black neck gaiter, and white Prada sunglasses that may as well be a VR headset: Birnir entertains the notion that reality is “simulation.” As a testament to this intuition, he interprets the surprising foray of his acquaintance Rob Chronic – the founder of Iceland’s oldest hip-

Birnir entertains hop radio show – into municipal politics as proof that everyone is the notion that reality “playing the game.” As Ice Cube is “simulation.” reminisces on an impossibly fortuitous day in South Central LA (“saw the police, and they rolled right past me”), it appears as if Birnir is enjoying similar good fortune. After the inspector had driven off, Birnir and Geoff rallied their team of volunteers, insinuating metal rods beneath the black container and rolling it away from the entrance before rearranging the maze of scaffolding inside the warehouse to meet the inspector’s demands. Birnir communicates in short, stuttering sentences, replete with the shibboleths of youth. Sko. Bara. Þúst. But his halting manner of speech belies some clarity of vision. He could have held his concert in a nightclub in downtown

To elevate tonight’s set above regular performances (high-school dances, say, the bread and butter of popular Icelandic rappers’ performances), Birnir and his DJ-cum-producer Young Nazareth had decided to export live versions of the beats without the main vocals. This made for a much more genuine experience (compared, say, to Issi’s “Playboi Carti approach,” in which the rapper ad-libs over the master recording).

Reykjavík. Could have secured corporate sponsorship. Could have settled for a more conventional stage arrangement. But he’s got a tendency to go his own way – just ask his father, who used to look on in horror as his eldest son tempted death via various extreme sports.

As Birnir takes another bite from his burger, the artist Narfi, affiliated with the burgeoning artistic community in Gufunes, walks over. Few people have made as lasting a first impression on Birnir as Narfi, who left an impromptu tattoo, a heart-shaped jumble of threads, on his right thigh at an afterparty. (I was there when he got “mama” tattooed on his arm.) Mid-conversation with Narfi, Birnir is whisked away by a friend, and concert-goers begin to trickle in through the makeshift gate on the north side of the property.

On the pier jutting out from the peninsula, a few Poles are fishing.

OPENING ACTS

Birgir Hákon is a large man of questionable repute rumoured to have perpetrated unspeakable acts in fellowship with dubious men. His whole set is a versified threat imperiously sustained over trap beats. It’s immoral but interesting.

Before him, Issi – barely deigning to make eye contact with the hoi polloi – paced the stage beneath a blonde mohawk and, in between casual ad libs, belted out the occasional “let’s go!” (“Where are we going?”) The FÚSK acoustics are slightly subpar, the bass keeps assaulting the shivering corrugated iron, but the venue is undeniably fresh.

In the yard during Drengur’s performance (his music is best enjoyed on headphones, someone argues), an old acquaintance laments that his smartphone battery is in its death throes (2%): worried that the juice will drain before his booze dealer calls. He explains that he would charge his phone at Narfi’s cabin (christened “Narfastaðir”) – which the artist bought at an online auction and plumped down in Gufunes without much ceremony – only that electricity from the cottage is currently being diverted to the warehouse sound system.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he sighs.

But Bríet does.

She takes the stage by way of the supplementary scaffolding stage-left, opening with Sólblóm and interspersing her impressive catalogue of hits with a few covers. There’s a whiff of marijuana in the air, which, taken together with the building’s dust and all the machineproduced smoke – makes the warehouse’s various aerosols

impossible to differentiate. Later, while tuning her guitar on the scaffolding, stage right now, she puts her finger on that other quality of Birnir, equally endearing:

“Birnir’s the most unique person I know. The biggest sweetheart. The best hugger.” Bríet shivers. “Damn, it’s fucking cold,” she adds, entreating someone to come tune her guitar.

MAGNÚS LEIFSSON

There had been whispers throughout the evening that Birnir was planning on performing nearly 30 songs – a set list so sizable to be basically unheard of among local rappers. Director Magnús Leifsson, who often peppers his conversation with succinct English phrases, would later describe the rapper’s staminal feat as a kind of “rap Olympics.”

Standing in the back of the warehouse with his friends – including Arnar Freyr Frostason of the Icelandic rap duo Úlfur Úlfur and Hlynur Ingólfsson of the now-defunct rap group Skytturnar – Magnús looks on as ClubDub, the last of the opening acts, recite a slew of randy, teenaged lyrics, performed to an aggressive backdrop of upbeat Eurotechno: I went swimming today. I am Aquaman. There were one, two, three Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine Girls in the jacuzzi – and I was alone. I was alone.

Magnús, who has directed numerous music videos for artists ranging from Of Monsters and Men to Emmsjé Gauti, was approached by Birnir and Geoff during the pandemic. They sent him a handful of conventional Birnir songs before proposing that he shoot a video to Spurningar, a poppy earworm featuring gay icon Páll Óskar.

The acoustics are slightly With his characteristically anglicised compactness, Magnús observed that the subpar, the bass keeps collaboration was “the most shut-up-andtake-my-money” combo he’d ever heard. assaulting the shivering He proposed shooting Birnir on corrugated iron, but the venue roller skates – an idea that Birnir loved, for the rapper played hockey when he is undeniably fresh. was younger and was, in his own words, rather “good at skating.” When the script had been drawn up and all necessary preparations made, Magnús discovered that Birnir had somewhat overstated his adeptness. “Seeing him tottering around on the skates during rehearsal, I thought, ‘this is never going to work.’” Birnir

assured Magnús that he’d be quick to recall some old tricks, and over the next few weeks, he would send Magnús regular video updates documenting his gradual improvement. The upshot is one of Iceland’s great crossover videos (admittedly, there haven’t been many), in which the glittering world of Páll Óskar collides with Birnir’s rap-punk aesthetic.

Before exiting the stage, ClubDub perform one last song, an unreleased joint, utterly on theme, which inspires a sense of good-humoured disbelief from Magnús Leifsson’s beaming face.

THE GREY GLOW OF NORMALCY

There was the epiphany during the pandemic that certain things had been taken for granted, that standing in a crowded place listening to music was not a given – and that every underappreciated luxury could be snatched away at a moment’s notice.

After five opening acts and much idle chit-chat with acquaintances (not to mention a long morning with two young kids), my senses had been bludgeoned. As the sounds of the final intermediary DJ set faded, the crowd of people lingering in the yard outside began to move. Seeking to overcome my own listlessness, I pursued, by way of rather desperate contrivance, the instinct of following Birnir’s father back inside.

Sigurður Ólafsson entered the building and broke away from his wife and friends, drifting, trance-like, amid a throng of people towards the middle of the dancefloor. As Birnir bounced on stage like a man possessed – embodying all the qualities that the opening acts (aside from Bríet) could only have incarnated one at a time – Sigurður Ólafsson stood utterly transfixed. He did not appear to take notice of anyone else in the crowd, did not check his phone, and it was only after three or four songs that his gaze seemed to finally break; he just stood there in his brown leather jacket, taking the occasional sip from his beer – rather resembling Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – with the most touching of looks in his eyes.

Sigurður’s enraptured state, I later gleaned, had something to do with pride – pride in his son’s DIY attitude, which had moved him to hold this concert in this place (Sigurður had been there that morning, aiding in the preparations alongside three of his four other sons). It also had something to do with relief: Birnir, now sober (and assisting other young people in staying sober), had bought his own apartment and was engaged in a long-term, committed relationship. But, most of all, perhaps, his father’s rapture had something to do with the music itself. The confirmation that honesty, in all of its rawness, provides the vital spark for any worthy creative

AS BIRNIR BOUNCED ON STAGE

LIKE A MAN POSSESSED, HIS FATHER STOOD UTTERLY TRANSFIXED.

endeavour (“I walk the planet like a maniac, Telling the truth – of which everyone’s afraid,” Birnir raps on Maniak.) Honesty, along with hard work and talent, had brought these people together, singing along to deep cuts on the album. It is honesty, full-throated and vulnerable, which elevates Birnir’s music above that of other contemporary rappers in

Iceland. That and some excellent production. Bushido, according to Geoffrey Skywalker, is a culmination of certain developments in contemporary hip-hop in Iceland; one is inclined to agree. To put one’s finger on the appeal of the album requires, perhaps, some basic theorising on the phenomenon of music – and the power it exercises over a person’s emotions.

There is a cognitive component to emotion; to experience fear, it is not enough to unconsciously introduce a frightening stimulus to a subject – sufficient to inspire all of the physiological hallmarks of the emotion – because fear requires the conscious recognition of danger. This insight sits at the heart of modern CBT therapy (and stoicism, for that matter), which seeks to pacify strong, unwanted emotions by cognitive reframing. Music, on the other hand, achieves the opposite effect: good music intensifies mild, desired emotions, salvaging the strength of life-affirming passions from the inescapable wreck of prolonged existence (which ultimately renders a person unfeeling and jaded).

This ability of music (possessed most conspicuously by rap artists such as Sticky Fingaz, Eminem, and Tupac, to mention a few) is most poignant in Birnir’s Vogur (the name of Iceland’s addiction-treatment centre), the twelfth song on Bushido. Produced by BNGRBOY, Vogur is a celebration of the Rilkian mantra “Let everything happen to you.” I want to thrive, want to grow Want to be rejected, want to be told “no” Want to miss another person, want to cry Want to fall, want to rise Mama, look, I’m flying Mama, I promise I’ll stop lying

Better than bad weather, Than a good war I trust my family, We’re a fine team, for sure "Take a break from the substances, It’ll be good for you.”

That final line quoted above may have been spoken by Birnir’s father, who continued to look on with modest pride at a memorable concert – well after quotidian weariness, steamrolling my sense of joie de vivre, had dragged me away from the warehouse and into my car. Even before I was able to enjoy my favourite song on the album live.

Birnir's father, Sigurður Ólafsson.