What Are You Listening To? An Interview with Professor Michael Roman

by Catherine Baptiste-Sanders, Contributor

“So, what kind of music are you into?”

It’s Oberlin's biggest question. It's the biggest icebreaker, the biggest catch-up, the quickest route to a judgement of character, the quickest path to friend or foe. 

What I’ve found to be true is that professors are not typically roped into this Oberlin experience. There’s something about their age, or maybe the context in which we know them, that causes us to forget that a professor is really just another person with a job.

With this article, I want to break through that social disconnect in order to figure out one thing: What are our professors listening to?

I had a very fun chat with Professor Michael Roman, assistant professor of Studio Art and Africana Studies, Atlanta native, self-defined “child of hip hop,” and, conveniently, my advisor.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Michael Roman: I'm a child of hip hop, so my base is always going to be hip hop, and whatever iterations it goes through.

Catherine Baptiste-Sanders: Right, right.

MR: I say I’m [laughs]—I say I’m a child of hip hop like my first two albums were: ABC, you don’t even know who that is, Another Bad Creation. So it was in the mode of Chris Cross. It was that whole time period of manufactured boy bands, you know. So it was that and then, The Simpsons Sing the Blues.

CBS: The blues?

MR: This is me as a kid, right.

Michael then showed me the first couple of minutes of “Do the Bartman,” pointing out the major hip hop influences of just those first few shots alone.

MR: So, yeah.

CBS: I did not know that existed. That's awesome.

MR: Right? So, like, to fourth grade me, this? This is genius. 

I’m also from Atlanta, so hip hop, at least for me, meant OutKast and Goodie Mob, which then turned into T.I. and Ludicrous, which turned into what we now know affectionately to be trap music. I can’t do the mumble thing, though. You know Young Thug?

CBS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MR: I can’t do it. I gotta know what you’re saying, man. Anyways, that’s the long way of getting to your question: What do I listen to now? Now, I listen to a lot of phonk.

CBS: Funk?

MR: Phonk. P-H-O-N-K. Phonk. So this guy, he actually got kicked off of YouTube for a minute, but yeah, Ryan Celsius Sounds, he’s been around for about 10 years now. He’s like his own music production company. It’s a lot of samples, he might throw his own bassline on it or something, but it’s basically like collage work with music. And, you know, it’s just a vibe.

For a bit, Michael showed me some of Ryan Celsius’ music. A drill beat played over a smooth flute line, and in cut “I live a life I deserve, fuck a vacay I feel better at work”: a bar from “Blessings,” off of Big Sean’s 2015 album Dark Sky Paradise.

MR: See him bringing in Big Sean out of nowhere. It’s a vibe. To me, it’s just a vibe. Its coo’. I ain’t got the energy to be running around anymore—the “Knuck if You Bucks” and all that, that was high school for me. I don’t have that energy anymore. So this is my jam now.

CBS: Do you find yourself just listening to music, like taking the time to listen to music, or is it that you’re usually doing something else?

MR: I’m usually doing something else. As an artist, ideas usually come from repetitive acts, being in the shower or driving, so I usually put on [music] to help with that. If I’m doing the dishes, working out, drawing or just working in my studio, there’s probably music playing. I’m one of those people, unless it’s something like this where we’re sharing music, or when something new comes out and I’ll take an hour or so to listen to it. 

I’m a child of hip hop, and by that I mean I am a child of self-discovered hip hop. That’s why ABC and the Simpsons were my introduction. My dad listened to gospel music and talk radio and that’s it. If we were running errands or something and he left me in the car to go get groceries, I would sneak and switch to the RnB station and flip back when I saw him walking to the car. Cause if he got back in the car and heard that playing? Bah! And my mom, my mom listened to James Taylor. [laughter]

CBS: That’s hilarious.

MR: I had to bootleg my stepbrother’s cousin’s OutKast album. ATLiens came out my sophomore year of high school. The cover was a comic book, that was pretty dope, but the cover of the CD itself was, in varying degrees of abstraction, art of a naked woman. So…yeah. I could not bring that home—my dad would’ve grabbed me by my fricking ankles. I had to bootleg it onto a tape. So I teach myself hip hop. That’s how it should be