Hello. and editorial assistant at Jacobin.

Whether he's releasing a hundred chapter book or a hundred song mixtape, Victor Vasquez, also known as Kool-A-D,

has kept himself busy since leaving the rap group Das Racist in 2012.

For a long time fans of Vasquez, it's not hard to sense a deep commitment to radical thinking,

lurking beneath plenty of goofy intelligent charm, a strong anti-capitalist bent prevalent in countless throwaway song lyrics and

articles penned on the over-policing of black neighborhoods. I sat down with the

Bay Area bred artist to discuss the Oakland Ghost Ship Fire which claimed 36 lives in the DIY space,

as well as which Marxists would make the best wrappers and his whimsical Marxist

fairy tale book, The Selfish Shellfish.

I just want to dive straight in and I guess one thing that's really interesting about all of your

work is just like how many people inspire you so So just sort of from things that you've

written a list of people that have influenced your thinking include Carl Marx,

Mose Deaf, Marina Abromovick, Ornette Coleman, Walter Beny Amin, Allison John Coltrane,

Chigavara, Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Baskia, the list goes on and on.

Yeah, so it's a long one, yeah.

I mean, there's plenty more after that, but you know.

And so I'm curious with, I mean, just as many people as are influencing your thinking and your

work, how do you manage to just sort of reconcile that into the work that you put out there?

And I guess thinking politically, you know, there's so many different strains that you're drawing from,

obviously generally left thinkers, but how do you sort of

distill that and I don't think it's I suppose your thought is pretty

ecumenical in many ways. Yeah I mean basically I I think that pretty much everybody has about that number of influences

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