Cardboard robotics will combine with hip-hop rhymes and recording electronics for a local rapper’s video shoot at a Howards Club-H concert tonight.
Bowling Green Resident Mark Miller, 24, has long been involved in many art forms. The earliest reaches of his recollection, Miller said, have always involved him experimenting in one form of expression or another. In 2009 Miller even displayed some works of his visual art in a stand at the local Black Swamp Arts Festival.
“I’ve been told you can never call yourself an ‘artist,’ but I’ve dabbled in the arts my entire life,” he said sarcastically. “I’ve always had a pencil in my hand.”
Miller added rap to his artistic repertoire roughly five years ago. He entered the genre, in part, upon the encouragement of friend and fellow rapper, 25-year-old James Legg, when the two played around making beats together on a Playstation. According to Legg, who had already possessed an appreciation for rap music, the style was of little interest to Miller at the time.
“He was definitely not into rap,” he said. “He despised it.”
As experimentation continued, Miller’s appreciation for the music grew and the two started to take themselves seriously. Legg said he watched Miller’s abilities develop and flourish in short time.
“The biggest difference between then and now is his simplicity then, to his complexity now” he said. “The way he flows, his lyrics – everything.”
Miller’s quick acclimation to hip-hop, Legg said, can be credited to the intrinsic artistic qualities he has always possessed.
“Mark is probably the most creative person I know, period,” he said. “As an artist he’s just a natural; every form, everything he does.”
Miller’s rap persona has come in a variety of names over the years – he personally cited at least 8 – as he struggled with a self-described “identity crisis” that he said has become a bit of a joke among those who know him. His popular song “Rapper-X” sheds light on this indecision in syncopatic verses over a melancholy, Tim Burton-esque rhythm driven by a whining and wheezing accordion. The song’s hook runs down the many names he has formed from different facets of his personality over the years, and concludes with the line: “No I don’t know Mark Miller.”
“Yeah, I definitely don’t,” Miller said of the chorus’ last line. “That’s basically what the song is about: my identity crisis … I’ve had a thousand names and I’ll probably continue to fight with it for a thousand more.”
Of all the masks Miller has worn throughout his development, two have had the endurance to maintain. While performing with Legg in their two-man rap group “Outspoken,” he raps under the name Markilla, and the tone of his writing is shaped for the style they employ. Markilla’s alter ego, Marktron, however, is the name by which most of his fans choose to identify him.
Despite its popularity, Marktron originally started as a gimmick Miller used for a backyard concert during the summer of 2008 to add a greater aesthetic appeal to his set than that offered by one man rapping, one man spinning. Using visual aids leftover from a backburner video project he had intended to shoot, Miller threw on a cardboard robot suit for the show while his DJ dressed as an amplifier constructed of like material. A cardboard cityscape was placed around them, furthering the setting. Fans loved the theme, Miller said, and soon started designing and building their own bot suits to wear to shows, eventually becoming numerous enough to be worthy of notice.
“Marktron was not supposed to be my rap name,” he admitted, laughing. “Over time it’s just turned into a monster I had nothing to do with.”
Whether he intended its birth or not, the Marktron visage quickly became his foremost appeal. He decided to embrace the following and applied his knack for the visual arts to creating more costumes for these “go-go bots,” as he calls them, and started distributing them to those who wanted to wear them to his shows. He could not deny the effect it was having on his performances.
“I have a lot of friends who would never dance, you could never get them out of the house,” he said. “But as soon as you’d slap a cardboard robot helmet on their head they’d go wild and dance their asses off all night … People really enjoy it and it really gets everyone involved.”
University student Lindsey Johnson, junior, has seen Marktron perform twice: once at Howards and once at a house party over the summer. She described his music as “very original” and “innovative,” and said his on-stage set designs and interactive go-go bot dancers can enhance the experience for audience members. She personally donned the go-go get up for the house party show she attended and said she greatly enjoyed playing role in other people’s experience.
“It was super fun, you can really involve the audience with what you’re doing,” she said. “You just get to kind of creep around and get everyone to dance along – it’s sweet.”
Tonight’s show carries a $5 cover and will begin at 10 p.m.. In addition to the Marktron show, there will be performances from various other local rappers as well, Legg included. Roughly 10-15 go-go bots will be in attendance, interacting with the crowd during Miller’s set, and the video shoot will be a blend of scripted, on-stage theatrics and hashed video clips from cameras interspersed with the crowd.
Miller said he is not yet certain which song the video will be applied to, but that despite the popularity of “Rapper-X,” he is leaning toward his upbeat, space invasion-themed “Marskilla,” for its compatibility with the videographic approach he has planned. Though not fully put into motion, Miller mentioned his want to expand the Marktron persona into something more like a play that relies heavily on audience participation, set design and choreography, all working in harmony with the subject and tone of the hip-hop above it.
“I really like the idea that those who are there for the show, are the show,” he said. “For me, the show wouldn’t really be a show without the audience participating with me.”
