Savannah rapper Cunabear finds lots of love in the Phantasmagoria
Prolific Savannah rapper Cunabear loves a good collaboration, and his work with Brooklyn beat-maker Steel Tipped Dove has produced some of his most rewarding music yet.
While Cunabear leans towards the trippier, more experimental side of hip hop, Steel Tipped Dove has lent his talents to underground artists like Moor Mother, Armand Hammer, billy woods, Fat Tony, and Nosaj from New Kingdon, so when Cunabear discovered that Dove offered batches of beats for $15 a month on his Patreon it was a natural fit that led to the 2021 album “Steel Tipped Bear Claws 1.”
“I sent him a copy of it and was like, ‘Hey man, if you ever make another batch of beats I’d love to do this again and make another record.’,” recalled Cunabear. “He basically hit me up on Twitter and said, ‘Hey man, I heard the record and really liked it. You’re a really good rapper. If you want we can try to work something out to get you up to New York to record and we can come together on it and actually do a proper collaboration.’ I was ALL about it.”
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Cunabear showed up to Dove’s studio in New York City with demos for a new record and together they shaped it into “Steel Tipped Bear Claws 2: Phantasmagoria.”
“We spent five days locked in his studio apartment from noon until 5 p.m. in the afternoon and we were recording just non-stop,” said Cunabear. “Everything came together and I dropped the record on the two year anniversary of the first album. I think it’s in some ways better, and in other ways different from the first collaboration, but it was a lot of fun and I really enjoy working with him.”
Steel Tipped Dove uses synths and space in the beats to produce subtly psychedelic dreamscapes that conjure the hazy vibes of being in a smoke-filled basement listening to “Dark Side of The Moon.”
“He’s got this way of building atmosphere that I really enjoy,” said Cunabear. “When the atmosphere needs to be gritty and heavy and heart-pumping he’s able to do that without taking too much space up and leaves you room as a vocalist to experiment and pull away from those four-on-the-floor lockstep rhyme schemes that come out of a regular old hip-hop beat.”
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Lyrically and thematically, Cunabear is much more focused on this outing. Where the first collaboration was more of a “variety hour,” where Cunabear played around with Dove’s beats, “Phantasmagoria” is what he has described as a “romance” album. The word phantasmagoria refers to a sequence of real or imaginary images that feel like a dream.
“When I was writing some of the first songs for this record, I was writing love songs,” explained Cunabear. “I’m not currently in a relationship, but I had been in a relationship around the time that I was writing these records, and it was just a moment of reflection I had one day. You just wake up slow after an intimate night with someone you care about. You’d just gone out, had food, there was laughter, and you feel that powerful connection to a person you care so much for.”
Those warm feelings of love grew into a poem which became “Plenty,” the first song written for the album. From there Cunabear knew what direction to take the album.
“I started to write about love, and gratitude, and passion, and the different ways that can be seen and felt and understood. Unconditional love may be unconditional love, but the way you express it for different types of people or different scenarios, it all culminates into what I would consider a phantasmagoria state.”
“Those things don’t get talked about enough, at least in rap music. We talk about sex, and money, but I feel like there’s not as much of an emphasis on love as a construct, as a concept, the way we build up love, we decorate our love. These things just interested me and I wanted to try to put them together in a way that felt like an example of the different ways we don’t often think about love.”
A spirit of camaraderie can be felt in everything Cunabear does, including features on the album from his Beartooth Collective cohorts Lady Valore, Jouquin Fox, Virgil Wolfe, and Big Flowers.
Cunabear founded BearTooth Collective in 2010 around his circle of friends that included painters and metal heads from his home town who would get together to make art, listen to music, smoke weed in the woods, and rave about the nerdy things they loved.
Since then BearTooth Collective has grown into a tight (and loose) group of underground artists and DIY genre-inclusive musicians that reaches across the globe as far as South America, with the upcoming release of Brazilian recording artist Raphael de Toledo Pedroso’s “Berbequim” album.
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“BearTooth is becoming international,” said Cunabear. “We’re not a record label. I know we put records out for people, but we don’t ask for advances. I don’t get cuts from their records. They keep all their masters. It’s not really for that. It’s just a vehicle for people who don’t have experience putting records out, or don’t have a community who could share that record.”
“I do hope artists make their money, and I do my best to make sure they get as much as they can, but at the end of the day I’m just a vehicle to facilitate. I like to create cassette tapes for people, I like to make album art for people, I enjoy community and collaboration, so I try to put that forward.”
Cunabear’s spirit of community and collaboration extended to the creation of the music video for the “Phantasmagoria” cut, “Zero-Grav (Willpower Spells), which was conceived and shot by an entire SCAD film class.
“They worked really hard, we had a lot of fun,” said Cunabear of the experience working with students. “I made everyone BearTooth Collective hats as a thank you, and I’m really proud of that video and record. It came out exactly how I hoped it would.”
Cunabear’s emphasis on community includes an upcoming reappeåçåarance at this year’s Undergo Festival on April 21-22, which is a Savannah-artists-only event that caters to a local audience. Naturally, Cunabear always has the 4:20 p.m. slot. “It’s everything that I love,” said Cunabear. “It’s community, its food, its music, its art, its craftsmanship, it’s for the people, and it’s affordable, and by affordable I mean free.”
“To have a stage that is open and welcoming to almost any genre, to almost any person, so that people who are local can get a better scope of what is actually available in Savannah, I think that is a beautiful thing.”
IF YOU GO
What: The Undergo Music and Arts Festival 2023
When: Friday and Saturday
Where: 2302 E. Gwinnett St.
Cost: FREE
Info: undergofest.com
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah GA concerts: Cunabear at Undergo Festival
