After announcing the return of No Label Academy (with the support of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research and Harvard Art Museums at Harvard), IDK gives a masterclass on how authenticity makes for quality content with “Tele Couleur.” Watch above. Where conscious rawness sits next to layered boom-bap production, the Maryland rapper uses all avenues available to explore where he comes from, and his life as one of hip-hop’s next superstars. The subtitled video finds him parading through New York City as he revisits the many moments that made the man born Jason Mills.
About IDK:
Short for Ignorantly Delivering Knowledge, IDK is as much a moniker as it is a mission. The Prince George’s County, Maryland, artist has long dedicated his life and art to presenting big ideas in accessible ways. Using witty lyricism, percussive flows, and a chameleonic musicality, IDK turns life lessons and philosophical musings into utter bangers. In the process, he’s become one of rap’s most inventive practitioners. USEE4YOURSELF (2021) is his richest work yet, a sprawling meditation on love, materialism, masculinity, and the effects of a troubled upbringing. Loaded with unpredictable features and recollections from childhood, it’s a character study framed in fierce beats and blockbuster productions. It’s also a culmination for the man born Jason Mills, who began his musical journey behind bars about a decade ago. Through albums like Subtrap (2015), IWASVERYBAD (2017), and Is He Real? (2019) IDK built a proper body of work. And he using that foundation as a jump-off point for not just music, but action that enriches the world: his inquisitive Radio Clue Apple Music radio show; No Label Academy, his music biz course in collaboration with Nike and Harvard University; and his Clue Records, which in 2020 released IDK & FRIENDS 2, a soundtrack for Kevin Durant’s Basketball County: In the Water documentary full of DMV-area artists. As IDK puts it, with that trademark mix of flex and humor: “I’m in competition with myself and only me. And I’m whooping my ass every time.”
