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TRANSCRIPT
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In this brief spotlight episode I’ll be featuring the story of Supaman, an indigenous rapper from the United States. Supaman whose real name is Christian Parish takes the gun, is also known as Billy Ills and is a member of the Crow people that live in Montana. I learned about Supaman from a previous episode I did which featured Whitey Don and his involvement in a track called, "Turtle Island" by David Strickland.
Supaman began his DJ career in the 90s and he took the name Supaman at the spur of the moment in a DJ competition. Supaman began rapping in a more original style until he had a spiritual encounter that told him to live a better lifestyle and rap about more meaningful and
inspirational topics. In the spiritual encounter he had, Supaman said, his creator let him know that he was to do everything on his own. Supaman has dedicated his life to empowering people and spreading a message of hope, pride and resilience through his original art form. Supaman is known for his innovative performing style, he plays his music while wearing his traditional dance outfit & he started doing this by accident when he was forced to do his musical performance right after he had performed a fancy dance while at a show for a school. Supaman typically fuses spiritual concepts and ideas with his rap music and he creates all of his albums by himself, doing everything from singing and writing the music to creating and designing the covers.
I'm going to play a few tracks from Supaman's music catalogue:
The first track is called "Gorilla"
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The next track is titled “You can trust the government, yeah, just ask a native”.
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Supaman states that sometimes when he's producing a beat, the vibe will motivate
and push him to write to it, then and there, which was the case with this particular beat. Supaman said the track expresses the times we're living in and that he wishes peace and blessings to all and to stay resilient.
Before we finish off with the rest of Supaman's tracks I wanted to give you a brief music history of who Supaman is and how he got to where he is today. At the beginning of his career, a record label in Seattle took interest in him and Supaman started touring, leaving behind his wife and baby. At a certain point while enjoying success and all that goes with it, fans, fame etc, Supaman had a spiritual conversion, an encounter with God and this happened due to the path he was on and decisions he made. Ever since that day he dedicated his life's mission to rap for God and this is apparent in his lyrics and message of hope justice and forgiveness. As time moved on, he walked away from a deal with the record label and returned to the reservation to weave a new message into his music. He knew he couldn't be too obvious about it though otherwise his fans would turn him off so he cloaked the message under a tough exterior of rugged beats and heavy hitting metaphors. Supaman says his conversion has allowed him to look at his life and the reservation with different eyes, to see beyond the bad things and focus on the beauty and humor that are there as well. Supaman states I talk to a lot of kids, I go to schools and everything and I tell them, man, you don't know who you are, you don't know what you have…you can go to Europe, Japan and these people love you because you're Native American so you should value that, he says, you should value that and know who you are. It's a lesson, Supaman says, he learned the hard way. We're going to finish off with two more tracks and the first one is titled “Stay connected”
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The video shows Supaman performing a native dance in his traditional outfit and superimposed over that is the same dance being performed with his regular street clothes - it's a really interesting visual display…. and the last track is called “The prayer” …..
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You can tell that Supaman has a special mission in this life, an important mission, that is, to reach people and affect change in their lives and in the world at large and the message of hope resonates on so many levels and one can't help but be inspired and stay strong. Supaman keep doing what you're doing, don't stop, it's having an impact, all one has to do is check the comments section on his youtube channel and you'll see what I mean.
That'll do it for another episode of PodJerky, don't forget to subscribe to PodJerky
on apple podcasts and leave a rating, comment and review and check out our instagram page
@PodJerky. Also, all of Supaman's links will be included in our show notes and on our website as well. Thanks and we'll see you in the next episode take care.
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