Ryan McGinley selects Feebzz

Taken from the September issue of Dazed & Confused:

Ryan McGinley: “The world Feebzz creates through her music and videos is part downtown, part internet and all the way the fuck in outer space. Her mixtape is 
the gospel for bad bitches who flash the middle finger, party until sunrise and call their own shots. Feebzz is the future. Get down or stay down.

It’s safe to say that Feebzz is misunderstood. Just take a scroll through the YouTube comments for the buzzed-about MC’s debut music video, “High Fashion Bitch”, for proof: “this is literally the most beautiful thing to come out of the internet’s asshole”; “WTF is up with your fake ass 
chains??”; and “this bitch can’t be serious.” Well, “this bitch” is serious, as demonstrated by her debut mixtape, Real Bitch Syndrome. “It’s just really hard to have a sense of humour in making art,” says the 22-year-old New Yorker, real name Phoebe Pritchett, 
at a Starbucks on the LES. “All through art school you’re taught that artists are serious people and you can’t be funny or it’s not art, but that’s 
really stupid.”

I hate the hyper intellectualism of music. I’d rather go to a fucking block party and have fun

So stupid that she left Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, where she was studying photography, after two years (“I’m still paying loans, though”) before finding herself booking model castings for lauded lensman Ryan McGinley, and most recently giving the internet something to talk about. She began recording as Feebzz on stolen gear and torrented software after a conversation with downtown producer Alex “Blizzed Out” Winter. “I was like, ‘Somebody should make a song about Jeremy Scott Adidas.’ They’re such a beautiful dichotomy – Pusha T raps about them but cute little Japanese girls wear them and Charlotte Free models them. In a lot of ways, Jeremy Scott kind of has the same vibe as Feebzz, where it’s crazy and out there but at the same time there’s 
real content.”

Unlike other emerging female MCs, Feebzz isn’t whipping her braided weave in a mega-budget music video. Instead, her promos feature 
Auto-Tune-heavy lyrics like “bitch 
I bring the heat like LeBron James cuz my skirt is short like Kanye’s” while Bart Simpsons and OMGs flash onscreen. 
“Rap music has a long history of being DIY and punk and rough around the edges. Feebzz is a reaction to how glossed over and contrived everything is now,” she says, though she shows no signs of losing sleep over music bloggers who just don’t get what Feebzz is all about. “I hate the hyper intellectualism of music. I’d rather go to a fucking block party and have fun.”