Heems: Wednesday, July 22

Himanshu Suri has stories. Stories that, for years, he never told. His formative years were spent in post-9/11 New York. Xenophobia was high, and for an Indian-American teenager living in a South Asian community, racism was an everyday occurrence. Instead of talking honestly about those experiences, Suri for a long time preferred to joke, crafting tracks with his rap trio, Das Racist, that poked fun at the arbitrary inequalities of American life.

"I made a playful song about drones and racism against brown people on a global level," says Suri, who raps under the moniker Heems, referring to a track from his solo 2012 mixtape, Wild Water Kingdom, "and it was seen as just that: a playful song. It didn't really raise a conversation."

In the three years since that mixtape, and the breakup of Das Racist, Heems moved from Brooklyn to suburban Long Island. He lives modestly with his parents, siblings and nieces. He's acting, writing, campaigning for a friend's city council bid in Queens and lecturing at Ivy League universities. Suri's life is different now. And so is his music: Eat Pray Thug, his debut studio album, is undoubtedly his most raw, vulnerable work yet, a confessional screed against substance abuse, racism and depression that earned enough attention to land him on NPR and the cover of The Village Voice. Consider the conversation raised.

"I'm almost 30," Suri says, "so for me, now, it's about giving back."

For four years, Das Racist bent rap boundaries and threw stones at white American ideals in matchless smart-ass fashion. As hip-hop outliers, the trio rapped about their lives through pointed quips and self-deprecating punch lines. Irony was their art. But as Suri got older, he found ironic distance wasn't keeping the pain away.

"For me to progress as an artist, I felt like I had to let people see who I really am without the façade, without the humor," he says. "I tried to joke about it so it wouldn't hurt. But, you know, it was still hurting."

Despite its title, Eat Pray Thug is, in essence, a protest album collected from Suri's experiences as a South Asian, who as a 16-year-old living in Queens watched the twin towers fall in 2001. The song titles almost speak for themselves: "Al Q8a," "Suicide by Cop," "Patriot Act."

"We're going flag shopping for American flags/ They're staring at our turbans/ They're calling them rags," he raps on "Flag Shopping," a harrowing depiction of life for the South Asian community across America after 9/11.

Heems is reaching beyond the beat, too. Last February, he curated an art exhibit at New York’s Aicon Gallery, also titled Eat Pray Thug, largely consisting of South Asian artists. “I get notes from kids in the middle of the country who are growing up South Asian and confused—kids whose parents don’t want them to pursue creative endeavors,” Suri says. He’s dabbling in multiple mediums with the purpose of offering those young, creative kids, whose backgrounds mirror his own, a voice and a face. “There are so few shots that South Asian people get. So the gauge for me isn’t really record sales as much as it is whether my audience felt like they had a voice in pop culture, in Western media.” Does he feel successful so far? “I feel like, yes, that was done.” 

SEE IT: Heems plays Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave., with Spank Rock, on Wednesday, July 22. 9 pm. $13. All ages.

WWeek 2015