Wettworker – Queen City Sounds and Art

Wettworker2_sm — Wettworker, photo courtesy the artist

Wettworker remixed the title track of Cubbiebear’s 2015 album Are You Okay? after asking the Baltimore-based MC 2015 for permission to do do so Joshua Bailey aka Cubbiebear sent Wettworker the vocal track and six months later the MC passed away from an aggressive form of brain cancer. In 2020 Wettworker released a dynamic lyric video for the remix that highlights Cubbiebear’s facility with poetic expression in the context of a song and his willingness to go beyond the tropes of the hip-hop genre and its prevailing trends of the moment to make the beat serve the emotional content of the lyrics. The use of pages with the bars of lyrics like a nod to Bob Dylan’s film for “Subterranean Homesick Blues” but with each page burning and re-manifesting with different words and repeating laying out choice cultural references to frame a fierce adherence to one’s vision, creative life, friendships and radical vulnerability as the guiding beacon of one’s life. Laying bare fears, insecurities, flaws and psychological scars while a borderline black metal guitar riff runs through over a techno synth line and spare drums, the song paired with the visual representation of the song is a powerful manifestation of the essence of Cubbiebear’s artistic legacy. Watch the video on YouTube and follow Wettworker at the links provided.