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In Rob the Universe’s audiovisual Matryoshka trilogy, a man discovers a rabbit hole of universes leading all the way down to who knows where, each with its own version of Rob, and he notices these döppelgangers aren’t doing so well. Determined to help them, he sets out on a quest to find the USB for the perfect copy of the universe.
“There’s healing involved, where he’s able to reconcile with the parts of himself he doesn’t like,” the Portland rapper and producer, born Rob Chrisman, says. “He’s able to see what his greater place in the universe is, and he realizes that not only is he a character inside of the simulation, but he’s not separate from the simulation itself.”
Parts one (“Matryoshka”) and two (“Perpendicular”) have already been released, while Chrisman is celebrating the release of part three (“Outside of the Clock”) with a free, all-ages screening of the entire trilogy and a performance with his backing band at The Haven on Friday, Nov. 7.
As outlandish as this story sounds, it’s fundamentally a story of personal and artistic self-discovery, not unlike Chrisman’s own journey. Born in California and raised in Hood River, the 41-year-old spent almost a decade as an English teacher in Busan, South Korea, before deciding to pack up and move to Portland in 2017.
“I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing anymore,” he says. “I was treading water professionally, I was in a relationship that wasn’t working, I was partying too much. Coming up to Portland, a lot of things lined up at the right time, and I feel like I got on a better path.” (Chrisman now works in medical education.)
Around this time when he returned to the States, Chrisman began refining his rap style. He’d been rapping since 2005, and he’d even had some success in South Korea as part of a duo called Robscenity with another Rob, Rob Evong. Yet he felt he’d always been rapping with an idea of “what I thought rap was supposed to sound like—sort of an aggressive tone, talking about things that weren’t really true to me.”
Adopting the name Rob the Universe, Chrisman drew on his affinity for authors like Octavia Butler, Philip K. Dick and Ted Chiang to pose the same fundamental questions about the universe so often teased in the best sci-fi novels.
“My writing style started to change quite a bit, and I started writing more about these philosophical topics and questions about the mind and existence and death,” he says. “It took me a while to really find my voice, and when I did, I got to dive deep into myself as an artist.”
He released his first EP, Yes., under his new moniker in 2018, and a full-length album, The Gathering, followed in 2021. Chrisman unfolded his words in thick tangles of philosophical koans and sci-fi jargon, dense with internal rhymes and heady allusions, like watching Carl Sagan on fast forward. He produces all his own beats, continuing the emphasis on acoustic guitar loops and folky, organic textures already evident on his recordings with the other Rob in South Korea.
Chrisman cites the Wu-Tang Clan as a formative influence (“they tickled my brain in a way that’s hard to explain”), and there’s a hint of some of that collective’s headiest work—Ghostface Killah’s Supreme Clientele, GZA’s Liquid Swords—in how Chrisman seems single-mindedly devoted to yanking the medulla in some of his densest rhymes.
But it’s ultimately Chrisman’s wholehearted commitment to his peculiar subject matter and interpretation of rap that makes his music distinctive. “I tend to lean towards a nondual idea of reality,” he says of his cosmic approach. “I like the idea of a conscious universe, a universe that is all sort of one thing, and alive.”
For all the ambition on display in his earlier work, Matryoshka might be his grandest project yet despite clocking in at just 12 minutes in total. Each track in the conceptual suite is accompanied by a music video, co-directed by Chrisman and Ben Steeper.
In the meantime, he’s working on another project, whose final form has yet to be determined. “If I’m working on a song,” he says, “I just feel like my mind works better.”
SEE IT: Rob the Universe at The Haven, 2505 NE Pacific St., thehavenpdx.com. 6 pm Friday, Nov. 7. Free.
