New York Mag 15-28 Aug

August 15–28, 2022

®

How Two
Wall Street
Washouts
With a
Can’t-Lose
Crypto
Hedge
Fund
Vaporized
a Trillion
Dollars
ASurarZnohdwus,CKaypleitaDlavies,
The Crash of
Three

By Jen Wieczner

Uniltered conversations.
Global changemakers.
Be there.

Noubar Pete Aswath Mathias
Afeyan Buttigieg Damodaran Döpfner

Founder and CEO, Flagship United States Secretary Professor of Finance, CEO and Chairman,
Pioneering and Co-founder of Transportation NYU Stern School of Business Axel Springer
and Chairman, Moderna
Anand Frances Andy
Scott Giridharadas Haugen Jassy
Galloway
Author, Algorithm Expert and President and CEO,
Co-host of Pivot, Host The Persuaders Advocate for Accountability and Amazon.com
of Prof G Pod, Professor of Transparency in Social Media
Marketing, NYU Stern Nilay
Gavin Jen Patel
Hiroki Newsom Psaki
Koga Editor-in-Chief, The Verge
Governor of California Former White House and Host of Decoder
Co-founder and CEO, Press Secretary and
Oishii New MSNBC Host Evan
Spiegel
Sundar Jessica Issa
Pichai Powell Rae CEO and Co-founder,
Snap Inc.
CEO, CEO and Co-founder, Writer, Producer,
Google and Alphabet Audioshake and Actress

Sept. 6-8

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august 15–28, 2022

features

The Three Arrows
Guys Who Couldn’t

Shoot Straight

Inside a hedge fund’s
trillion-dollar mistake.

By Jen Wieczner
16

The Last, Lonely Days
of Ivana Trump

A life of orchestrated
glamour, punctuated

by chance.
By Nina Burleigh

22

The Voice of
New York Is Drill

How a sound
became a movement—

and a target.
By Dee Lockett,
Wayne Marshall,
Camille Squires, and
Simon van Zuylen-Wood.
Portfolio by Ashley Peña.

28

B-Lovee august 15–28, 2022 | new york 1

Photograph by Ashley Peña

august 15–28, 2022

intelligencer the culture pages

7 67

The National Interest With a Little Help
From Her Friends
President Biden’s newly
revived narrative Sharon Van Etten,
By Jonathan Chait Angel Olsen, and

10 Julien Baker share
the spotlight.
The Group Portrait
By Justin Curto
Congressional
candidates for one 70
of the city’s most
progressive districts The Cult of A24
By Errol Louis
Has the brand
12 synonymous with

28 Minutes With … style become a
parody of itself?
Unlikely super-pitcher
Nasty Nestor By Nate Jones
By Ross Barkan
76
14
Critics
The Money Game
music by
Recession or just Craig Jenkins
vibecession? Beyoncé’s Renaissance
By Kevin T. Dugan is a guided tour of Black
dance-music history
strategist architecture by
Justin Davidson
51 Westworld has become
West Side World
Best Bets
movies by
Cityproof bike helmets; Bilge Ebiri
a non-expertly crafted Bullet Train’s
tool guide heartfelt maximalism

54 82

Best of New York To Do

Vintage shops rife with Twenty-five picks
novelty tees and Met- for the next two weeks
worthy kimono coats
on the cover:
55 Illustration by
Shira Inbar for
The Look Book
New York Magazine.
Blisses out at this page:
a brand-new
Governors Island spa Photograph by
Dina Litovsky.
58
For customer service, call 800-678-0900
Design Hunting

An artist’s
not-so-precious
Greenpoint home
By Wendy Goodman

64

Food

Our diner-at-large
reconsiders breakfast

4 Comments
90 Games: New York

Crossword,
by Matt Gaffney;
the Vulture 10x10s
92 The Approval Matrix

2 n e w y o r k | nymag.com

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Comments

August 1–14, 2022 Our landlords recently told us they were selling our apartment.
®
The rental market was a complete nightmare, and
It’s Been a Very Long Decade of Swiping
we had only two months to find a new place. What did we
Tinder
Diaries want? A two-bedroom, two-bathroom, ideally with a
By
Allison P. dishwasher, a washer-dryer, and excellent soundproofing to
and Davis
1,000-plus keep neighbors from hearing our children’s screaming. Where?
others
Clinton Hill or Bed-Stuy, walking distance to my son’s school.
p.22
Our budget? $5,000 a month, tops. My hunt, in four parts.

60Days toFind a Not-Horrible Apartment
By Emily Gould

16 new york | august 1–14, 2022 a u g u s t 1–1 4 , 2 0 2 2 | n e w y o r k 17

1 New York’s latest issue explored the tion. I think it’s generally been worse than have masked his real-life struggle with
ways dating apps have transformed sex just doing someone the courtesy of telling aphasia (“The Making of Silent Bruce,”
them I’m not interested.” August 1–14). @SailorSoapbox called it “a
and romance in the decade since Tinder hit heartbreaking read. I hadn’t realized how
the scene (“Ten Years of Re-Re-Re-Re- 2 In “60 Days to Find a Not-Horrible much I cherished the rapid-talking roles
Downloading Tinder,” August 1–14). The Apartment,” Emily Gould docu- of Willis’s early career until this article
series of stories featured Allison P. Davis on documented the chronology of him grad-
her own long-standing relationship with mented two months of navigating an ually speaking less and less.” The Atlantic’s
the apps. Journalist Roxanne Khamsi increasingly volatile housing market Christopher Orr wrote, “Sad, terrific piece
tweeted, “There’s a lot of talk about how (August 1–14). On Curbed, where Gould by @mattzollerseitz in @NYMag on Bruce
technology changes our behavior but no narrated her search in four installments, Willis’s cognitive decline due to aphasia,
article has captured the profound effects commenters responded quickly. Editor-in- and on the degree to which it may have
of dating apps—and how they sabotage chief of Slate Hillary Frey wrote, “Already been hidden by his role shift from fast-
human connections—as well.” Oli riveted. This cliffhanging series will pull me talking charmers to nearly mute assassins.”
Franklin-Wallis commented, “This! Is! away from Scandi-noir!” Dan Wilbur But @StPaulHawk responded, “I don’t like
Writing! @AllisonPDavis making me so tweeted, “A harrowing saga that I can only this attempt to take away Bruce’s self
glad that I missed out on Tinder and mar- assume will get worse when the lease determination. There’s a strong element of
ried so young people (single, unhappy peo- renewal drops. A lot of people are going disrespect here for a dude who did nothing
ple, mostly) mock me for it.” Editor-in-chief through this in NYC right now!” The New wrong but get old. Sure, maybe he did
of The Atavist Magazine Seyward Darby Yorker’s Clare Malone added, “As a person in roles the author liked less but who cares?
tweeted, “A recurring nightmare of mine is search of a mythical non-shitty 3 bedroom He kept working like he wanted to.” Others
that my husband doesn’t exist and I have to BK apartment, it was the real estate hunt took issue with how Willis’s aphasia was
get on Tinder … The anxiety of downloading that spoke to me most re the fate of the characterized. @MsResistFL asked, “Curi-
the app is the climax of the dream.” The sad young literary man. Also, if you have a ous: Did you consult with MDs and apha-
Guardian’s Alyx Gorman wrote, “It’s worth pocket listing, holler (the real reason for this sia patients for this piece? Aphasia doesn’t
carving out the time to read @AllisonPDavis tweet sorry not sorry).” @nolongerabashed cause cognitive decline, though it can be a
on Tinder in full. The ending is a sucker- wrote, “Incredibly funny and painful and symptom of other neurological disease.
punch,” while T. Darr added, “Between the making me grateful to not be looking for a It’s an issue with language processing, not
ex who ‘stoically chugged his negroni’ and place to live. Follow along and keep our col- intelligence.” @ge_ki_tsu noted, “this was
the guy who yelled ‘That’s sick!’ at the point lective fingers crossed for @EmilyGould beautifully written. and it stings to read. big
of orgasm, this is one of the funniest, most and her gang.” Writer Porochista Khakpour *sigh* at the lack of reading comprehen-
honest pieces of writing I’ve read in a noted, however, “There is so much afford- sion that makes people comment that it’s a
while.” The issue also explored Tinder’s able housing in super nice parts of Queens ‘hit piece’ though,” and the writer of the
most definitive cultural consequences. In today! This made me sad but I really feel like Proteautype Substack, Adam Proteau,
response to Rachel Connolly’s assessment of only people wanting Brooklyn & Manhattan added, “A very good piece indeed. A real-
the ethics of ghosting, @VibeGuy666 wrote, are going thru this stress these days!” life tragedy.”
“The situations I feel worst about are the
[ones] where I’ve been too much of a cow- 3 Matt Zoller Seitz wrote about how Send correspondence to [email protected].
ard to be the ‘bad guy’ and risk social fric- Bruce Willis’s stoic persona might Or go to nymag.com to respond to individual stories.

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Obsess better. A new podcast about
the pop culture that’s consuming us.

NEW EPISODES
EVERY THURSDAY

inside: A very crowded race for Congress / The Yankees’ unlikely secret weapon / Making sense of our feel-bad economy

PHOTOGRAPH: DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES The National Interest: a month ago, Joe Biden’s presidency was on the brink of
Jonathan Chait failure. His legislative agenda was moribund, the economy
was teetering on the precipice of recession, and Democrats
Biden Back Better were speculating in the press about who else they could nomi-
His presidency is suddenly nate for president in 2024. Biden, like Jimmy Carter, seemed
shaping up to be destined to be remembered as a president overwhelmed by
a resounding success. economic crosscurrents and a Democratic Congress he could
not productively lead.

The situation has changed with astonishing speed. Biden
has salvaged his domestic-policy agenda, his party’s base has
snapped out of its torpor, and the economy is showing signs it
just might pull through. And while not all these developments
are his own doing, nor do they completely extinguish the politi-
cal danger he faces, they all redound to his benefit. In the span
of a few weeks, Biden’s presidency is back from the dead and

august 15–28, 2022 | new york 7

intelligencer sumer; giving the IRS resources to pro- safety measure, health care for veterans,
vide better customer service to average a $280 billion bill funding scientific
looking something close to triumphant. taxpayers and catch wealthy tax cheats; research and semiconductor produc-
The event that triggered the turn- expanding subsidies for Obamacare; and tion, reform of the Postal Service, more
subsidizing the green-energy transition than half a trillion dollars in funding for
around was the decision by five Repub- while allowing more fossil-fuel production infrastructure, and a national holiday for
lican Supreme Court justices to overturn in the short run. Juneteenth. Congress may not be done: A
Roe v. Wade. In so doing, the Court’s right reform of the Electoral Count Act (the hor-
wing disregarded the advice of its more What these proposals may lack in ribly written 1887 law setting out the pro-
cautious chief justice, John Roberts, who transformative sweep they make up for cedure for certifying the Electoral College
reportedly tried in vain to steer his col- in campaign-ad appeal. Indeed, other vote) and a law codifying marriage equality
leagues toward an incrementalist strategy than warning preposterously that Biden both stand a strong chance of enactment.
that would avoid a backlash. was planning to unleash an army of IRS
agents on his political enemies, Repub- Several of Biden’s accomplishments are
Roberts’s fears have been vindicated. licans have hardly bothered to attack measures his predecessor promised but
One reason midterm elections almost Biden’s signature bill at all. They may be failed to take. Donald Trump vowed to
always punish the president’s party is crazy, but they can read polls. get Congress to pass a giant infrastructure
that the public has an instinct to curtail bill, to let Medicare “negotiate like crazy”
the powers of those in power. The Dobbs What could matter more than the con- on prescription drugs, and to withdraw
decision inverted that calculation, tent of the Inflation Reduction Act is the from Afghanistan. Biden did all these
creating a context in which Republicans transformed narrative surrounding his things instead.
were responsible for dramatic social presidency. Signing a domestic legacy bill
change and Democrats could stand for won’t make Biden any younger or better Biden likewise co-opted the one defen-
the restoration of the status quo. at reading from a teleprompter, but it will sible, substantive element of Trump’s polit-
make Democrats less freaked out about ical appeal: his promise to revive Ameri-
The altered political landscape has how old he looks and sounds and will can manufacturing. Other than imposing
been reflected in polls showing the reduce the stream of news stories about tariffs, which aided a handful of favored
public moving back toward a preference his frailty to a slow trickle. industries at the expense of disfavored
for Democratic control of Congress in ones, Trump did almost nothing to bring
the upcoming midterm elections. It was There is no easy way to measure the back the dying industrial towns he claimed
reflected even more strongly in a series connection between the tone of the news he would save. Through the Infrastructure
of surprising votes. A special election in coverage about a president and how his Investment and Jobs Act, the chips and
a Nebraska House district in June that party fares at the ballot box. Still, there’s Science Act, and hundreds of billions of
had voted for Donald Trump by 15 points a reason every president cares intently dollars in energy funding, Biden has actu-
went to a Republican by less than half about it. And the media narrative around ally enacted an ambitious program to move
that margin. In August, a special election Biden’s presidency has turned sharply the manufacturing supply chain onshore.
in Minnesota, in a district that Trump from failure to success.
won by ten points, went Republican by The success of this strategy will take
just four. Usually special elections, held While he hasn’t fulfilled every campaign years to measure, and there’s no telling yet
outside the normal November election promise, Biden’s most outlandish- whether Biden will gain any political bene-
time, give exaggerated strength to the sounding promise has actually come to fit from it. (Only a small minority of voters
out-party, whose partisans have more pass: He has revived bipartisan lawmak- know the infrastructure act even hap-
motivation to turn out. Instead, it was ing. He has signed a spate of laws enjoying pened.) But there is no question that the
Democrats who overperformed. support from both parties, many of which scale of Biden’s actions to encourage blue-
have slipped under the radar: a gun- collar jobs dwarfs anything undertaken
An even more surprising event occurred by Trump. Perhaps this success would be
between thosetwo elections. In early August, Republicans have more evident if Biden stopped comparing
Kansas held a statewide referendum to hardly bothered himself to FDR and started comparing
repeal the personal-autonomy clause in its to attack Biden’s himself to the president he defeated.
Constitution and thus enable strict limits signature bill
on abortion, if not its outright abolition. at all. They may Biden’s biggest problem, inflation, is
Republicans favored a midsummer vote on be crazy, but they one he can do the least about. But here,
the assumption it would be dominated by can read polls. too, the gods have begun at last to smile
anti-abortion activists, and polls projected a on him. The most recent economic reports
close race. Instead, the pro-choice side pre- showed faster-than-expected job growth
vailed by nearly 20 points. and lower-than-expected inflation. He
may yet escape Carter’s fate.
The Kansas shock was followed by a
second thunderbolt: Senator Joe Man- Other than the economy, Biden’s great-
chin, last seen shoveling dirt onto Biden’s est handicap is that Trump’s crudest cam-
domestic agenda, suddenly announced paign taunt, “Sleepy Joe,” was beginning
his support for a robust combination of to look broadly accurate. But the conclu-
economic reforms. The Manchin-crafted sion that the economy and Congress were
plan, while falling well short of the full- too difficult for Biden to handle was pre-
scale welfare-state expansion Biden had mature. Just as Biden’s presidential cam-
originally hoped to enact, had the advan- paign burst to life after pundits (includ-
tage of confining its ambitions to the most ing this one) had already delivered the
popular elements of Biden’s vision: higher last rites, so too has his presidency roared
taxes on corporations; allowing Medicare suddenly back. He is sleepy no more. ■
to bargain down the cost of prescription
drugs and pass savings on to the con-

8 new york | august 15–28, 2022

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Photos by Julieta Cervantes

intelligencer Photograph by Victor Llorente

The Group Portrait:
Spoiled for Choice

The many, many candidates
for New York’s Tenth District.

By Errol Louis

the leading Democratic candidates in New York’s
newly created Tenth Congressional District are get-
ting a little sick of one another. At a televised debate
in August, City Councilwoman Carlina Rivera told
ex-prosecutor Dan Goldman, who is the heir to the
Levi Strauss fortune, “You’re a walking campaign-
finance loophole,” referring to Goldman’s decision to
give his campaign $1 million from his personal coffers.
“I believe in the Constitution,” former representa-
tive Elizabeth Holtzman sniped at Assemblymember
Jo Anne Simon, as the two jousted over wheth-
er there should be term limits on Supreme Court
justices. “Maybe you haven’t studied it sufficiently.”
(Simon favors the limits and criticized Holtzman for
not backing them.)

The winner of this contest will walk away with
a high-profile prize: a district that includes Wall Street,
Greenwich Village, the World Trade Center, and Park
Slope. The Tenth will likely rank among the most pro-
gressive districts in New York, if not the country. The
candidates, despite the differences on display at the
debate, all see eye to eye on big federal issues, notably
the need to prevent a repeat of the January 6 riot and the
efforts by Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election.
Each of them has a plausible path to victory, not least
because the unusual date of the primary, August 23—
a time when many New Yorkers leave town on vaca-
tion—all but guarantees a low voter turnout.

Yuh-Line Niou has the backing of the progressive
Working Families Party and might be able to build
a base among Asian families in the district’s two China-
towns (in Manhattan and around Sunset Park). Rep-
resentative Mondaire Jones has endorsements from
marquee names including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Rivera scored the backing of SEIU 1199, the powerful
health-care union, as well as Representatives Nydia
Velázquez and Adriano Espaillat, who have complained
about a dearth of Latino leaders in elected office.
Goldman, a staff attorney for Democrats during Trump’s
first impeachment, has been a fixture on MSNBC and
CNN for months, while Holtzman’s legendary political
career began in 1972, when she was then the youngest
woman ever elected to Congress. Simon claims that
turnout has been so high in her Assembly district, which
includes all or part of Brooklyn Heights, Gowanus, and
Park Slope, that she got more votes than any other can-
didate for Assembly over the past three election cycles.

In a contest so tight, every difference matters. “Will
you apologize tonight to the victims of your invest-
ments?” Jones asked Goldman during the debate, refer-
ring to the latter’s ownership of shares in News Corp.
and weapons manufacturers. Goldman declined. ■

10 new york | august 15–28, 2022

from left: Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, former representative Liz Holtzman,
Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou, City Councilmember Carlina Rivera,
Representative Mondaire Jones, and Dan Goldman.

august 15–28, 2022 | new york 11

intelligencer

28 minutes with …

Nasty Nestor

The pitcher has become an unlikely star for the Yankees.
He’s just happy to be here.

by ross barkan

O n a muggy afternoon at juggernaut and the front-runner for
the ragged end of July, Nestor the American League’s Most Valuable
Cortés Jr., the mustachioed, Player Award. Not since Derek Jeter
heavily tattooed left-hander have the Yankees enjoyed such a cap-
for the New York Yankees, tivating superstar. But the 27-year-old
was pouncing off the mound to field Cortés, built at the human scale of five-
ground balls and fire them to first base. foot-11, has emerged as a star in his own
The night before, the Yankees had won right, quietly capturing the hearts of the
on a walk-off home run from Aaron Yankee faithful as the team tries to win
Judge, their six-foot-seven, 282-pound its first World Series title in 13 years.

12 new york | august 15–28, 2022 Photograph by Meron Menghistab

For most professional athletes, there’s on its alpha status. His father was once mastered a new pitch, the cut fastball,
a time, usually in late childhood or jailed in Cuba for trying to defect and which jams right-handers, making it dif-
adolescence, when they realize they are eventually won a visa lottery to escape to ficult to get the barrel of the bat on the
superior. The other kids can’t hurl a ball Florida. Cortés, who was born in Cuba, ball. His ball spins faster now, too. And he
as far or tackle as hard, and high-school was raised in Hialeah, a city in Miami- has grown wilier, altering his windup and
competition melts away. Scouts arrive in Dade County with the highest percentage arm angles and speeding pitches up and
droves to herald a bright, limitless future. of Cubans in the U.S. He grew up a rabid down so hitters never get comfortable.
For Cortés, such a moment never came. fan of the beleaguered local baseball Most fans thought his 2021 success was
“I was a 36th-rounder out of high school, team, the Marlins. His most cherished a fluke. This year, he’s been even better.
throwing 87, 88,” he told me in the Yankee childhood memory is one of my most
dugout, fresh off his rigorous stretching- dismal: the time the Marlins shocked the The lifestyle difference between the
and-throwing routine. “I didn’t know how Yankees to win the 2003 World Series. minors and the majors is enormous. Cortés
long my career was going to be. I would’ve Beyond baseball, his dream (still unful- currently earns more than $700,000 a
been happy with a two-, three-, four-year filled) is to meet Eminem. “Growing up, year, a paltry sum next to Judge or Cole but
minor-league career.” I listened to almost every song he came plenty to a working-class kid. His father
out with,” he said. still insists on keeping his job as a forklift
Nicknamed “Nasty Nestor,” Cortés driver, even after his son’s salary bump.
contorts his torso and right leg into An undersize high-school pitcher with “I’ve told him, ‘Hey, maybe you should do
quasi-yogic poses on the mound, a pedestrian fastball, Cortés understood less hours,’” Cortés said.
deceiving hitters who are sure this will that his greatest hope was to pitch well
be the time they crush a fastball that enough to get a scholarship to help pay He enjoys being a young gun in the city.
clocks, at best, in the low 90s. They for college. Florida International Uni- “Being in the struggle so long, it’s nice—
rarely do. In an era of behemoths—the versity came calling; he would have people actually recognize you,” he said.
putative pitching ace of the Yankees, gone if the Yankees hadn’t drafted him. “People love to take pictures.” He lives in a
the $300 million, six-four Gerrit Cole, The enticement was money, not pres- large one-bedroom in Fort Lee, New Jersey,
casually throws a baseball 100 mph— tige. With an $85,000 signing bonus, driving over the George Washington Bridge
Cortés is an anomaly, succeeding at the Cortés could afford a down payment on and parking his car in midtown. Unlike
highest level of the sport with guts and an apartment in the Miami area, a rainy- Yankee stars of the past, he’s not routinely
guile. “I think there’s been a change for day investment for when his professional hitting the clubs. He said he goes out maybe
scouts to look at guys like me,” he said, baseball career inevitably fizzled. “once or twice a month,” having drinks,
“who aren’t very tall or throw very hard living “a little.” “In Miami, you stay up a
but have a big heart, who have that edge.” Cortés made subminimum wage pitch- lot longer. We go later in Miami,” he said,
ing for minor-league teams and did well laughing. “I think 2 or 3 a.m. is enough for
Cortés is so far outpitching Cole and enough to get promoted. After 2017, the you to not get into trouble.”
almost everyone else. By mid-August, he Yankees dumped him altogether, unim-
boasted a lower earned-run average and pressed. He then cycled among teams He has had controversies. Earlier in
a higher bWAR, an advanced stat that in the minors and majors—the Yankees the year, the New York Post and other
measures overall pitching value, than brought him back, only to trade him outlets reported he had used a racial
Cole. He has won nine games and lost away—before landing with the Yankees slur in old tweets from high school. He
three. Despite not being a classic power for a third stint in 2021. By then, he had quickly apologized. Later, fans became
pitcher, he has struck out more than a outraged on his behalf when the 83-year-
batter an inning and walked very few. In In an era old Jim Kaat, a Hall of Fame pitcher and
July, he made his first trip to the All-Star of behemoths, broadcaster, referred to him as “Nestor
Game, donning a customized glove and Cortés is the Molester” while describing his feisty
strutting the red carpet in Los Angeles. an anomaly, pitching style. Kaat apologized, though
He even got engaged there. succeeding Cortés said he didn’t need to because
at the highest there was no malice intended.
“If you told me three years ago that level of the
I would’ve been an all-star in 2022, sport with guts In the next few months, Cortés, now a
I would’ve told you that you were lying,” and guile. crucial part of the pitching rotation, will be
he said. “I wouldn’t believe you.” far more than a feel-good story. Cole has
struggled at times, and the Yankees’ other
It is a renaissance year for the Yankees, pitchers appear to be regressing. Mean-
who were, before a recent losing skid, on while, since Cortés has never pitched this
track to near the 114 victories they captured much before, the Yankees are seeking to
in 1998, a franchise record. That year, they limit his innings in August and September
won the World Series, something they used to make sure he doesn’t burn out. But
to do with regularity. Those days are long come October, when the postseason
gone; the Yankees last won a World Series begins, Nasty Nestor will be summoned
in the first year of Barack Obama’s presi- for the biggest games of his life.
dency. This drought has made an entitled
fan base restless. With the crosstown Mets He already pitches as if each game
also in first place in their own division, were his last. Having gone through the
New York City is threatening to become the “bad stuff,” as he calls his struggles in
unquestioned baseball capital it has always the minors, he knows he can’t afford to
believed itself to be. make mistakes. “Every day I’m out there
pitching, I’m nervous until I actually get
And it all starts with Cortés, the rare there,” he said. “Once I step on the mound,
underdog on a team that prides itself it’s like, Okay, I’ve been here before.” ■

august 15–28, 2022 | new york 13

intelligencer

The Money Game: when we think about the economy, there’s a tendency to rush
Kevin T. Dugan headfirst into the swirl of numbers moving up or down each
month, plot them on angular charts, and spin out a story of what
Weirdest Economy Ever it all means. Inflation, unemployment, pay raises, gas prices—
Some of the numbers together, these indicators are supposed to jell into a coherent
are good, but the narrative and tell us where we’re going. The problem with the
feelings are bad. current economy is that the numbers don’t make any sense.
Call it a “vibecession.”
Less than a month ago, some commentators were claiming we
14 n e w y o r k | au g u s t 1 5 – 2 8 , 2 0 2 2 were already in a recession, thanks to two consecutive quarters
of negative GDP growth. Then the July jobs report hit, showing
that the economy had added a staggering 528,000 jobs and
that the unemployment rate hit a 53-year low. Prices are high,
everything is expensive, and it’s sometimes impossible to find
baby formula on the shelves—but for many workers, the pan-
demic economy has seen the balance of power shift in their

Illustration by Michael Houtz

favor with more people switching jobs for If the Fed ate at home during the Omicron surge and
better work and higher pay. screws upand
inflation surges sending skyward the price of rental cars as
It’s safe to say we’ve never seen an once again,
economy quite as weird as this one, thevalue of people went on vacation.
warped by some $5 trillion in domestic people’s savings
stimulus, a war in Ukraine, a recovery and salaries This is where the Federal Reserve
from a pandemic, and the stop-start of will erode
covid-containment policies in China’s by theday. comes in, the authority of last resort to set
manufacturing hubs. As a result, the
basic question on everyone’s minds—Is the same. But since the start of the year, prices right. For Jerome Powell, the Fed’s
the economy good or bad?—is exceedingly the two domestic yardsticks have gone in
difficult to answer. Voters, for their part, opposite directions for reasons that still chairman, the options left on the table
have already decided: A CNN poll shows aren’t clear, with GDI actually expanding
that only 18 percent of Americans think in the first quarter. While GDI for the sec- are few. The central bank’s main tool to
the economy is in decent shape. ond quarter of 2022 hasn’t been released,
it probably grew, according to Prakken, tamp down inflation is raising interest
It’s hardly a surprise that those struggling and there’s reason to think it may offer
to fill the tank aren’t celebrating that unem- a more accurate view of the economy. rates—essentially sucking money out of
ployment has matched its lowest point “Scholarly research suggests that when
since 1969. (Which suggests one reason these two measures differ by a lot, even- the economy by making borrowing more
people are dissatisfied: Inflation affects tually it’s GDP that gets revised in the
everyone, while the ups and downs of the direction of GDI and not the other way expensive—and it has already hiked at a
labor market are largely the concern of around,” Prakken says.
the unemployed.) It’s this disparity between pace not seen in 40 years. But Powell has
the numbers and lived experience that led But even the best theory of the expanding
Kyla Scanlon, a financial educator and influ- economy falls apart if people feel more made a mistake once, when the Fed dis-
encer, to call current economic conditions a insecure each time a direct deposit hits
“vibecession.” People are relying on their their account. Inflation probably peaked in missed the initial bout of rising prices in
gut to determine the state of the economy June, rising to 9.1 percent for the year, then
because of the haunting feeling that any pulled back dramatically the next month 2021 as a likely blip. During a July press
crumb of data used to explain the world as the price of gas plummeted. Meanwhile,
may be irrelevant or canceled out by rising shelter and food costs ate into what- conference, Powell even admitted that
something else. ever relief people got at the pump. What
we know about the causes of inflation is he let his optimism over covid vaccines
The concept of a vibecession may feel still a little choppy: some mix of supply-
like a cop-out. But it’s a good starting point chain snarls, wage gains, stimulus, easy ending the pandemic color his thinking
for understanding where we’re really at. credit, record profits, an expensive housing
“This moment of cognitive dissonance is market, and the war in Ukraine. But one of over the early rise in prices, which he then
useful to make us question our framework the features of this economy is how prices
to begin with,” says Martha Ross, a senior have shifted along with people’s habits, attributed to supply-chain problems that
fellow focusing on the labor market at the pushing up grocery prices when consumers
Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy would resolve over time. Now the Fed has
Program. “A low unemployment rate is
a crucial measure, but it’s not the only to play catch-up.
measure,” Ross adds. “We shouldn’t be mea-
suring economic health only by the unem- Powell faces the possibility that he will
ployment rate and by inflation. We need to
look at: Are people earning enough to live have to plunge the economy into a reces-
on? What kinds of jobs are we creating?”
If we adjust that framework a bit, a leg- sion on purpose in order to tame prices. In
ible, serviceable picture of the economy
takes shape. practical terms, that means crushing the

The reality is the U.S. is not in a reces- labor force by squeezing the money supply
sion and was unlikely to have fallen into
one earlier in 2022. The economy is to businesses and banks. When unem-
expanding—it’s just doing so in unfamiliar
ways. “It’s not completely obvious at this ployment rises, people spend less: They
point that the economy actually did con-
tract over the first half of the year,” Joel stop buying houses, car loans get more
Prakken, chief U.S. economist at S&P
Global Market Intelligence, tells me. The expensive, and the economy slows down.
usual way of measuring how well an econ-
omy is doing is GDP, but there’s another, At least in theory. July’s booming
similar measure called gross domestic
income: the total of all the income earned jobs report came not long after the Fed
in the country. Most times, they’re exactly
yanked rates close to their highest level

since 2008, a sign that the Fed still

has plenty of room left to hike. Powell

has said he doesn’t plan on tanking the

economy, but his caution hasn’t been wel-

comed by Wall Street and the academic

elite. The “economy is unsustainably

hot,” Larry Summers, the former Trea-

sury secretary, said on Twitter after the

July unemployment report. He further

warned that inflation was nowhere close

to “coming under control.”

It could take years for people to make up

the loss in income since the largest wage

gains of the pandemic years went to those

who tended to make the least, according

to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s

wage tracker. What comes next are likely

just different flavors of bad. If the Fed

engineers a recession, it will not only cost

people their jobs but also empower busi-

nesses on issues of pay, hours, and ben-

efits. If the Fed screws up and inflation

surges once again, the value of people’s

savings and salaries will erode by the day.

“I don’t like the odds of low-wage workers

in either scenario,” Ross says. Here, again,

is a situation in which vibes are useful:

Some 70 percent of Americans think a

recession is coming anyway. ■

august 15–28, 2022 | new york 15

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a u g u s t 1 5 – 2 8 , 2 0 2 2 | n e w y o r k 17

HE BOAT WAS A beauty of a thing: some Arrows Capital, once perhaps the most bility on the problems than anyone. “They PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF PHILLIPS ACADEMY
500 tons across 171 feet of glass and steel as highly regarded investment fund in a bur- weren’t the only people who blew out, but
white as Santorini. All rounded edges, the geoning global financial sector, collapsed they did it way bigger than anyone else did.
five decks—one with a glass-bottom pool— in excruciating and embarrassing fashion. And they had way more trust from the eco-
were made for July on the Mediterranean, The firm’s implosion, a result of both reck- system prior to that.”
sunset dinners among the islands near lessness and likely criminal misconduct,
Sicily, cocktails in the turquoise shallows set off a contagion that not only forced a For a firm that had always portrayed
off the coast of Ibiza. Her would-be cap- historic sell-off in bitcoin and its ilk but itself as playing just with its own money—
tains showed off pictures of the $50 million also wiped out a wide swath of the crypto- “We don’t have any external investors,” Zhu,
vessel at parties, bragging that it would be currency industry. 3AC’s CEO, had told Bloomberg as recently
as February—the damage Three Arrows
T“bigger than all of the richest billionaires’ Crypto companies from New York to caused was astonishing. By mid-July, cred-
yachts in Singapore” and describing plans Singapore were the direct victims of Three itors had come forward with more than
to adorn the staterooms with projector Arrows. Voyager Digital, a publicly traded $2.8 billion in claims; the figure is expected
screens, creating a waterborne gallery for crypto exchange based in New York that to balloon from there. Everyone in crypto,
their growing collection of digital art in the once had a multibillion-dollar valuation, from the largest lenders to wealthy inves-
form of NFTs. filed for Chapter 11 in July, reporting that tors, seemed to have lent 3AC their digital
No matter that they had originally told Three Arrows owed it more than $650 mil- coins, even 3AC’s own employees, who
friends they were shopping for a $150 mil- lion. Genesis Global Trading, headquar- deposited their salaries with its “borrowing
lion vessel; the superyacht was still the tered on Park Avenue, had lent Three desk” in exchange for interest. “So many
largest by well-established boat builder people feel disappointed and some of them
Sanlorenzo ever to be sold in Asia, a tri- V embarrassed,” says Alex Svanevik, the CEO
umph of crypto’s nouveau riche. “It repre- of Nansen, a Singapore-based blockchain-
sents the beginning of a fascinating journey,” Zhu and Davies in their senior analytics company. “And they shouldn’t
the yacht broker said in an announcement year at Andover in 2005. because a lot of people fell for this, and a lot
of the sale last year, saying it looked “for- of people gave them money.”
ward to witnessing many happy moments Arrows $2.3 billion. Blockchain.com, an
aboard.” The name the buyers had in mind early crypto company that provided digital That money appears to be gone now,
was cleverly chosen—an inside joke nod- wallets and evolved into a major exchange, along with the assets of several affiliated
ding to the cryptocurrency dogecoin that faces $270 million in unpaid loans from funds and portions of the treasuries of vari-
would both thrill their social-media aco- 3AC and has laid off a quarter of its staff. ous crypto projects 3AC had managed. The
lytes and be intelligible to all the pathetic, true scale of the losses may never be known;
poor “no coiners” out there: Much Wow. Among crypto’s smartest observers, there for many of the crypto start-ups that parked
Her buyers, Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, is a widely held view that Three Arrows is their money with the firm, disclosing that
two Andover graduates who ran a meaningfully responsible for the larger relationship publicly is to risk increased
Singapore-based crypto hedge fund called crypto crash of 2022, as market chaos and scrutiny from both their investors and
Three Arrows Capital, never got the chance forced selling sent bitcoin and other digital government regulators. (For this reason,
to spray Champagne across Much Wow’s assets plunging 70 percent or more, erasing along with the legal complexities of being
bow. Instead, in July, the same month more than a trillion dollars in value. “I sus- a creditor, many people who spoke about
the boat was set to launch, the duo filed pect they might be 80 percent of the total their experiences with 3AC have asked to
for bankruptcy and disappeared before original contagion,” says Sam Bankman- remain anonymous.)
making their final payment, marooning the Fried, who as CEO of FTX, a major crypto
unclaimed trophy in her berth in La Spezia exchange that has bailed out some of the Meanwhile, the unclaimed yacht looms
on the Italian coast. While she has not been bankrupt lenders, has perhaps more visi- as a slightly ridiculous avatar of the hubris,
officially listed for resale, the intimate world greed, and recklessness of the firm’s 35-year-
of international superyacht dealers has old co-founders. With their hedge fund in
quietly been put on notice that a certain the midst of chaotic liquidation proceedings,
Sanlorenzo 52Steel, the coveted Cayman Zhu and Davies are currently believed to be
Islands flag billowing above her empty bal- in hiding. (Multiple emails to them and
conies, is back on the market. their lawyers requesting comment went
The yacht has since become the subject unreturned, except for an automatic reply
of endless memes and jokes on Twitter, the from Davies that reads, “Please note I am
functional center of the crypto universe. out of office at this time.”) For an industry
Pretty much everyone in that world, from constantly defending itself against accusa-
the millions of small-scale crypto holders tions that cryptocurrency is, at its heart, a
to industry employees and investors, has scam, Three Arrows seemed to prove the
watched in shock and dismay as Three antagonists’ point.

Zhu and Davies are two ambitious
young men, by all descriptions exceed-
ingly smart, who appeared to understand
the structural opportunity of digital cur-
rency rather well: that crypto is a game of
creating virtual fortunes out of thin air and
convincing other humans with traditional
forms of money that those virtual fortunes
deserve to be real-world ones. They built
social-media cred by playing the part of bil-

18 new york | august 15–28, 2022

PHOTOGRAPH: SU ZHU/TWITTER lionaire financial geniuses, translated that variations in relative value between two between trying to snap a single arrow—
to actual financial credit, then put billions linked assets, typically selling the one effortless—and trying to break three arrows
of dollars in borrowed money to work in that’s overpriced and buying the one that’s together—impossible.
speculative investments they could cheer- underpriced. He focused on exchange-
lead to success with their large, influential traded funds (basically mutual funds that In less than two months, they had
platforms. Before you know it, the pretend are listed like stocks), trading in and out doubled their money, Davies said on the
billionaire is a real billionaire shopping for of related ones to collect small profits. He podcast UpOnly. The pair soon headed
superyachts. They grokked the game, and excelled at it, rising to the top percentile of for Singapore, which has no capital-gains
the plan worked perfectly—until it didn’t. moneymakers at Flow. The success gave tax, and by 2013, they’d registered the
him a new confidence. He was known to fund there with plans to relinquish their
S U ZHU AND KYLE DAVIES met at Phillips bluntly criticize colleagues’ performance U.S. passports and become citizens. Zhu,
Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and even call out his bosses. Zhu stood out fluent in Chinese and English, moved
part of the class that started high in another way: The Flow offices, full of fluidly in the Singapore social scene, occa-
school the same week as 9/11. While servers, ran hot, and he would come to work sionally hosting poker games with Davies
lots of kids at Andover, as the top-ranked in short-shorts and a T-shirt, then remove and friendly exhibition chess matches.
boarding school is commonly known, come the shirt, leaving it off even when he went They seemed frustrated by their inabil-
from great wealth or prominent families, through the building’s lobby. “Su would be ity to get Three Arrows to the next level,
Zhu and Davies grew up in relatively modest walking around topless in his mini-shorts,” though. At a dinner around 2015, Davies
circumstances in the Boston suburbs. “Both a former colleague recalls. “He was the only lamented to another trader about how
of our parents are not, like, rich,” Davies hard it was to raise money from investors.
said in an interview last year. “We’re very one who’d take off his shirt and trade.”
much middle-class guys.” Neither were they After Flow, Zhu did a stint at Deutsche On May 5, 2021,
especially popular. “They were both known with Three Arrows
as kind of weird, but Su especially,” says a Bank, following in the footsteps of Arthur at the height of its
classmate. “In reality, they weren’t weird at Hayes, the crypto legend and billionaire co- fortunes, Zhu tweeted
all—just shy.” founder of the Bitmex exchange. Davies had a 2012 photo of the
stayed on at Credit Suisse, but by then both firm in its earliest
Zhu, a Chinese immigrant who had were tiring of the big-bank life. Zhu com- days, when he and
come to the U.S. with his family when he plained to acquaintances about the low cali- Davies traded foreign
was 6, was known for his perfect GPA and ber of his banking colleagues and a bloated currencies out
for taking a heroic load of AP classes; he culture that allowed people to lose the firm’s of a two-bedroom
received the “most studious” superlative in money on a trade with little consequence; apartment. Implicit
his senior yearbook. He earned a special in his view, the best talent had already in the tweet was a
citation for his work in math, but he was decamped for hedge funds or struck out message: Think how
far from just a numbers guy—he was also on their own. He and Davies, now 24 years good we must be
awarded Andover’s top prize for fiction upon old, decided to start their own shop. “There to have built a
graduation. “Su was the smartest person in was very little downside to leaving,” Davies multibillion-dollar
our class,” remembers a fellow student. explained in the interview last year. “Like, if firm from such
we ever left and really messed it up hard, we humble beginnings.
Davies was a star on the crew team, but would definitely get another job.”
classmates otherwise remember him as The trader wasn’t surprised—after all, Zhu
an outsider—if they remember him at all. In 2012, while both were temporarily and Davies had neither much of a pedigree
A budding Japanophile, Davies received living in San Francisco, Zhu and Davies nor a track record.
top honors at graduation in Japanese. pooled their savings and borrowed money
According to Davies, he and Zhu weren’t from their parents to scrape together about During this early phase, Three Arrows
particularly close back then. “We went to $1 million in seed funds for Three Arrows Capital focused on a niche market: arbi-
high school together, we went to college Capital. The name came from a Japanese traging emerging-market foreign-exchange
together, and we got our first job together. legend in which a distinguished daimyo, (or “FX”) derivatives—financial products
We weren’t the best of friends all the way or warlord, teaches his sons the difference tied to the future price of smaller currencies
through, he said on a crypto podcast in (the Thai baht or the Indonesian rupiah, for
2021. “I didn’t know him that well in high instance). Access to those markets depends
school. I knew he was a smart guy—he was on having strong trading relationships
like valedictorian of our class—but by col- with big banks, and getting in the door was
lege we started to hang out a lot more.” “almost impossible,” Bitmex’s Hayes wrote
recently in a Medium post. “When Su and
“College together” was at Columbia, Kyle told me how they got started, I was
where they both took a math-heavy course- pretty impressed they had hustled their way
load and joined the squash team. Zhu into this lucrative market.”
graduated a year early, summa cum laude,
and moved to Tokyo to trade derivatives at At the time, FX trading was moving to
Credit Suisse, where Davies followed him as electronic platforms, and it was easy to find
an intern. They had desks next to each other differences, or spreads, between the prices
until Zhu was laid off in the financial crisis, quoted at different banks. Three Arrows
landing at a high-frequency trading shop in found its sweet spot trolling the listings for
Singapore called Flow Traders. mispricings and “picking them off,” as Wall
Street calls it, often pocketing just frac-
It was there that Zhu learned the art of tions of a cent on each dollar traded. It was
arbitrage—attempting to capture small a strategy the banks detested—Zhu and
Davies were essentially scooping up money

august 15–28, 2022 | new york 19

these institutions would otherwise keep. while selling bitcoin futures, or vice versa, shows: Buy, buy, buy now, and the super-
Sometimes, when banks realized they’d in order to harvest a price premium. “The cycle will make you insanely rich someday.
quoted Three Arrows the wrong price, they Fund’s investment objective is to achieve
would ask to amend or cancel the trade, but consistent market neutral returns while “They used to boast that they can bor-
Zhu and Davies wouldn’t budge. Last year, preserving capital,” 3AC’s official docu- row as much money as they want,” says the
Zhu tweeted out a 2012 photo of himself ments read. Investing in a way that involves former trader who knew them in Singapore.
smiling while sitting in front of 11 screens. a limited downside no matter what the “This was all planned, man, from the way
Seemingly making a reference to their FX- broader market is doing is, of course, known they established credibility to the way the
trading strategy of picking off banks’ bids, he as “hedging” (where hedge funds get their fund was structured.”
wrote, “You haven’t lived until you’ve hit five name). But hedged strategies tend to spin
dealers on the same quote at 230am.” off the most money when executed at scale, As it grew, Three Arrows branched out
so Three Arrows began borrowing money beyond bitcoin into a slew of start-up crypto
By 2017, the banks began cutting them and putting it to work. If all went well, it projects and more obscure cryptocurrencies
off. “Whenever Three Arrows requested a could generate profits that more than cov- (sometimes called “shitcoins”). The firm
price, all the bank FX traders were like, ‘Fuck ered the interest it owed on the loan. Then seemed rather indiscriminate about these
these guys, I’m not going to price them,’” it would do it all over again, continuing to bets, almost as if it viewed them as a charity.
says a former trader who was a counterparty grow its pool of investments, which would Earlier this year, Davies tweeted that “it
to 3AC. Lately, a joke has been going around allow it to borrow even larger sums. doesn’t matter specifically what a VC invests
among FX traders who knew Three Arrows in, more fiat in the system is good for the
in its early days and watched it collapse with Beyond heavy borrowing, the firm’s industry.” Says Chris Burniske, a founding
a bit of Schadenfreude. “We FX traders are growth strategy depended on another partner of VC firm Placeholder, “They were
partly to blame for this because we knew for scheme: building lots of social-media clout clearly spray and pray.”
a fact that these guys were not able to make for the two founders. In crypto, the only
money in FX,” says the former trader. “But social-media platform that counts is Twitter. A number of investors remember having
then when they came to crypto, everyone Many key figures in what has become a their first sense that something might be off
thought they were geniuses.” global industry are anonymous or pseudo- with Three Arrows in 2019. That year, the
anonymous Twitter accounts with goofy fund began reaching out to industry peers
A BASIC THING to know about cartoon profile images. In an unregulated with what it described as a rare opportu-
crypto is that, so far anyway, it space without legacy institutions and with nity. 3AC had invested in a crypto options
has been subject to a progression global markets trading 24/7, Crypto Twitter exchange called Deribit, and it was selling
of extreme but roughly regular is the center of the arena, the clearinghouse off a stake; the term sheet set the value of
boom-and-bust cycles. In the 13-year his- for the news and views that move markets. Deribit at $700 million. But some inves-
tory of bitcoin, the 2018 bear market was tors noticed the valuation seemed off—and
a particularly painful one. After reaching Zhu—and to a lesser extent Davies— discovered its actual valuation was just
a record high of $20,000 in late 2017, the earned his way into the elite upper tier of $280 million. Three Arrows, it turned out,
cryptocurrency crashed to $3,000, dragging Crypto Twitter. According to friends, Zhu was attempting to flip a portion of its invest-
with it thousands of smaller coins in the had a conscious plan to become a “Twitter ment at a steep markup, essentially netting
market. It was against this backdrop that celebrity”: It entailed tweeting a lot, pan- the fund an enormous kickback. It was a
Three Arrows switched its focus to crypto, dering to the crypto masses with outra- sketchy thing to do in venture capital, and
starting to invest at such an opportune time geously bullish prognostications, racking it blindsided the outside investors, along
that Zhu was often credited (which is to say, up a huge number of followers, and, in with Deribit itself. Says David Fauchier, a
he took credit) for calling the bottom of the turn, becoming an apex predator on Crypto portfolio manager at Nickel Digital Asset
cycle. In later years, it looked like brilliance Twitter, profiting at the expense of every- Management who received the pitch, “Since
to many impressionable crypto noobs—and one else. then, I’ve basically stayed away from them,
even industry insiders—who followed Zhu held them in very low regard, and never
and Davies on Twitter. But the timing might Zhu gained his 570,000-strong fol- wanted to do business with them.”
have just been luck; after all, Three Arrows lowing in part by promoting his theory of
was looking for a new racket. a cryptocurrency “supercycle”—the idea of But the firm was thriving. During the
a yearslong bull market for bitcoin with pandemic, as the Federal Reserve pumped
With cryptocurrencies trading on prices rising well into the millions of dol- money into the economy and the U.S. gov-
exchanges around the world, the firm’s lars per coin. “As crypto supercycle con- ernment sent out stimulus checks, crypto-
experience with arbitrage came in handy tinues, there will be more and more people currency markets rose for months on end.
right away. One famous trading strategy trying to larp how early they were,” Zhu By late 2020, bitcoin was up fivefold from
was known as the “kimchee premium”—it tweeted last year. “Only thing that matters its March lows. To many, it looked like
involved buying bitcoin in, say, the U.S. is how many coins you have now. Either you a supercycle. Three Arrows’ main fund
or China and selling it at a higher price in own the % of the key networks you should posted a return of more than 5,900 per-
South Korea, where the exchanges were or you don’t. Being early and low convic- cent, according to its annual report. By the
more tightly regulated, resulting in higher tion is gross tbh.” And: “As the supercycle end of that year, it was overseeing more
prices. At that time, winning trade setups continues, buttsore mainstream media will than $2.6 billion in assets and $1.9 billion
like this were plentiful and profitable. They try to talk about how the early whales own in liabilities.
were the bread and butter of Three Arrows everything. The richest ppl in crypto now
Capital, which told investors it practiced had near-zero net worth in 2019. I know One of 3AC’s largest positions—and one
low-risk strategies designed to make money ppl who unironically say if someone had that loomed large in its fate—was a kind
in both bullish and bearish times. lent them $50k more back then theyd have of stock-exchange-traded form of bitcoin
$500m more now.” Zhu hammered the called GBTC (shorthand for Grayscale
Another crypto arbitrage might involve point constantly on the platform and in his Bitcoin Trust). Dusting off its old playbook
buying bitcoin at its current (or “spot”) price appearances on crypto podcasts and video of capturing profits through arbitrage, the
firm accumulated as much as $2 billion
in GBTC. At the time, it was trading at a

20 new york | august 15–28, 2022

premium to regular bitcoin, and 3AC was kids, go to work, go to the gym, come back, tite for cash was another warning sign. In
happy to pocket the difference. On Twitter, put them to sleep. Shitpost in between.” early 2021, a fund called Warbler Capital,
Zhu regularly blasted out bullish appraisals managed by a 29-year-old Chicago native,
of GBTC, at various points observing it was Although not quite billionaires yet, Zhu was trying to raise $20 million for a strategy
“savvy” or “smart” to be buying it. and Davies began treating themselves that largely involved outsourcing its capital
to some of the luxuries of the superrich. to 3AC. Matt Walsh, a co-founder of crypto-
Zhu’s and Davies’s public personae In September 2020, Zhu purchased a focused Castle Island Ventures, couldn’t
became even more extreme; their tweets $20 million mansion, known in Singapore understand why a multibillion-dollar
were increasingly pompous, and social as a “good-class bungalow,” under his fund like Three Arrows would bother with
acquaintances say they didn’t bother to hide wife’s name. The following year, he bought onboarding such a relatively tiny increment
their condescension toward friends from another one in his daughter’s name for of money; it seemed desperate. “I was sitting
the past and less wealthy contemporaries. $35 million. (Friends say that Davies there scratching my head,” Walsh recalls. “It
“They have very little empathy toward most eventually upgraded to a GCB too, after started to put up some alarm bells. Maybe
people, especially normal commoners,” says becoming a citizen of Singapore, but that these guys were insolvent.”
a onetime friend. the house was still under renovation and he
hadn’t yet moved in.) T HE TROUBLE SEEMS to have started in
Three Arrows was known for high staff earnest last year, and Three Arrows’
turnover, most notably among the traders, In person, though, Zhu was still an intro- huge bet on GBTC was the nub of it.
who groused that they never received recog- vert who wasn’t big on small talk. Davies Just as the firm reaped the rewards
nition for winning trades but were insulted was the outspoken one in the firm’s business when there was a premium, it felt the pain
as stupid when they screwed up—even their dealings as well as socially. Some acquain- when GBTC began trading at a discount to
wages were garnished and their bonuses tances who had first encountered the pair bitcoin. GBTC’s premium had been a result
reduced. (Still, 3AC traders were highly on Twitter found them surprisingly under- of the initial uniqueness of the product—it
sought after in the industry; before the stated in person. Davies had a hipster vibe. was a way to own bitcoin in your eTrade
fund’s collapse, Steve Cohen’s hedge fund, “He has heavy disdain for a lot of main- account without having to deal with crypto
Point72, was interviewing a team of 3AC stream, popular stuff,” says a onetime friend. exchanges and esoteric wallets. As more
traders to potentially poach for its system- When he became wealthy, Davies went to people piled into the trade and new alterna-
atic trading unit.) some trouble to purchase and customize a tives emerged, that premium disappeared—
Toyota Century, the exclusive model of limo
Zhu and Davies kept the inner workings drivers in Japan. It’s a simple-looking car
of the firm cloaked in secrecy. Only the two

“These guys were not able to make money in FX.
But then when they came to crypto,

everyone thought they were geniuses.”

of them could move money between cer- but costs about as much as a Lamborghini. then went negative. But plenty of smart
tain crypto wallets, and most Three Arrows “He was very proud it was the only Japanese market participants had seen that coming.
employees had no idea how much money taxi in Singapore,” says another friend. “All arbitrages die after a point,” says a trader
the company was managing. Although the and former colleague of Zhu’s.
staff complained of long hours, Zhu was While Zhu and Davies grew accustomed
reluctant to hire new people, worried that to their new wealth, Three Arrows con- Davies was aware of the risk this posed
they would “leak trade secrets,” says the tinued to be a giant funnel for borrowed to Three Arrows, and on a September 2020
friend. In Zhu’s view, Three Arrows was capital. A lending boom had taken hold episode of a podcast produced by Castle
doing anyone who worked for it a favor. of the crypto industry, as DeFi (short for Island, he admitted he expected the trade
“Su said they should be paid instead for “decentralized finance”) projects offered would fade. But before the show aired,
offering valuable learning opportunities to depositors much higher interest rates than Davies requested that the segment be edited
employees,” the friend adds. Some business they could get at traditional banks. Three out; the firm obliged. Unwinding the posi-
acquaintances in Singapore described the Arrows would, through its “borrowing tion was somewhat tricky—Three Arrows’
3AC founders as playacting characters from desk,” take custody of cryptocurrency that GBTC shares were locked up for six months
a 1980s Wolf of Wall Street trading floor. belonged to employees, friends, and other at a time—but Zhu and Davies had a win-
rich individuals. When lenders asked Three dow to get out sometime that fall. And yet
Both were now married fathers with Arrows to put up collateral, it often pushed they didn’t.
young children, and they had become exer- back. Instead, it offered to pay an interest
cise fanatics, working out as much as six rate of 10 percent or more, higher than any “They had ample opportunity to get out
times a week and going on calorie-restricted competitor was delivering. Because of its with a graze but not blow themselves up,”
diets. Zhu chiseled himself down to about “gold standard” reputation, as one trader says Fauchier. “I didn’t think they could be
11 percent body fat and posted his shirt- put it, some lenders didn’t ask for audited stupid enough to be doing this with their
less “updates” on Twitter. On at least one financial statements or any documents at own money. I don’t know what possessed
occasion, a friend recalls, he called his per- all. Even large, well-capitalized, profes- them. This was obviously one of those trades
sonal trainer “fat.” Asked about his drive to sionally run crypto companies were lending you want to be the first one in, and you des-
become “massive,” Zhu told an interviewer, large sums of money uncollateralized to perately don’t want to be the last one out.”
“I was super-weak for most of my life. After 3AC, among them Voyager, which was ulti- Colleagues now say Three Arrows hung
covid, I got a personal trainer. I got two mately pushed into bankruptcy. in its GBTC position because it was bet-
kids, so it’s just like wake up, play with your ting the SEC would approve GBTC’s long-
For other investors, Three Arrows’ appe- anticipated conver- (Continued on page 85)

august 15–28, 2022 | new york 21

After Donald,
she became the QVC
shopper’s idea of
a jet-setter with
a yearslong, on-and-off
relationship with
a rakish young Italian,
known to her friends
as the “snake.”
She never imagined
she’d outlive him.

The Last,
Lonely
Days of

IVANA
TRUMP

By nina burleigh

22 new york | august 15–28, 2022

2004

Ivana Trump and
Rossano Rubicondi
arrive for Sir Elton

John’s White Tie
and Tiara Ball.

august 15–28, 2022 | new york 23

vana trump’s house at 10 East 64th “I was more concerned about her falling second ex-husband—the one who became PHOTOGRAPHS: PREVIOUS SPREAD: IAN WEST—PA IMAGES/PA IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES; THIS SPREAD: FERNANDA CALFAT/GETTY IMAGES ( 2002); EVAN AGOSTINI/IMAGEDIRECT ( 2002);
Street, which she purchased for $2.5 mil- down those stairs than anything else, and president—the tragic love affair of her life, a MICHEL DUFOUR/WIREIMAGE (2003); ARNALDO MAGNANI/GETTY IMAGES (2004); FOC KAN/WIREIMAGE (2004); BENOIT PINGUET/ABACA (2005); DAVE BENETT/GETTY IMAGES (2005);
lion in 1992 after her divorce from Don- she adamantly refused to move,” said her romantic error she couldn’t help but make. MICHAEL LOCCISANO/FILMMAGIC (2005)
ald Trump, is modest compared with the friend Nikki Haskell. “There are all these It was Rubicondi whom many assumed that
former mansions of Gianni Versace and pictures of her on that stairway. When you Dorothy Curry, the former nanny to Ivanka,
David Geffen on the same block. Twenty think about how you are going to end your Donald Jr., and Eric, spoke of at Ivana’s
feet wide with a 1920s limestone-column- life, did she ever once think that is how it’s funeral, referring to the “sinking swamp” of
gonna happen?” “parasites” who had kept her “afloat” with
Iand-pediment façade, it could pass for a “illicit dreams and schemes.” As recently as
small nation’s consulate or a mausoleum. Which is likely what happened. On July 2018, when “Page Six” reported the couple
Inside, it was all Ivana: red carpeting, 14, Ivana was found at the bottom of the was squabbling at La Goulue, Rubicondi
gilded paneling, and animal prints. She stairs, dead after suffering, according to the was still telling anyone who would listen
was especially proud of the grand curving medical examiner’s office, “blunt impact that he was planning on opening a pizzeria,
staircase with a mural, she once told People injuries” from the fall. Rossano to Go, presumably with Ivana’s
magazine, “painted on so it looks like it’s backing, in the city (an earlier plan to open
a balcony, looking into French-Roman She had been giving the people who cared it in West Palm Beach had gone nowhere).
gardens”—the backdrop for countless regal about, and for, her some cause to worry for a
publicity moments with her posing in ball while. Especially since the induced isolation “I think Rossano’s death sank signora.
gowns, peddling a relentlessly queenly idea of the pandemic—she was extremely covid She was very, very down; we could see it,”
of herself almost to the very end, even as her cautious—she had become noticeably frail. remembered Paolo Alavian, the owner
realm had shrunk. of another one of her go-to restaurants,
Her children and remaining friends Friends say she enjoyed a drink, but as she Altesi. As a doorman on her street told
(not everyone stayed loyal to her after her got older, it started to take its toll, and they the British tabloid The Sun, “She used to
ex-husband became the kind of president wished she would cut down or quit com- always wear high heels and walk straight
he became) hated those stairs. Old skiing pletely. She had reportedly done at least one up … After he died, she didn’t come out as
accidents and a more recent hip injury— stint in rehab. Tabloids, especially the Daily much. She wore flats and walked hunched
she fell at one of her go-to restaurants, Mail, which was always up for publishing over with a cane.” Massimo Gargia, the
Avra Madison Estiatorio—had rendered unflattering candid shots of her, reported man who introduced her to Rubicondi,
“Glam-ma,” as she liked her grandchildren on episodes of what appeared to be pub- believes the combined effects of the pan-
to call her, increasingly wobbly. She ignored lic inebriation and occasional meltdowns. demic and his death depleted her. “She was
her friends’ and family’s pleas to sell the In 2009, she was kicked off a plane after a so depressed,” Gargia said.
townhouse and move into a hotel suite. “foul-mouthed” tirade aimed at some kids
They feared she would slip and fall down playing loudly in first class. Most of her friends told me they wished
those stairs and hurt herself. At some point she’d never met Rubicondi in the first place.
in the past few years, her kids bought her Most thought she was really undone by
one of those emergency “I’ve fallen and the death in 2021 of her last ex-husband: ivana zelnícková always wanted
I can’t get up” devices, but she refused to Rossano Rubicondi, the rakish Italian more. She was born eight weeks premature
wear it. adventurer and former model, 23 years her in a drab shoe-factory town in communist
junior, whom she’d started dating around Czechoslovakia on February 20, 1949. Her
2002, married (at Mar-a-Lago, no less) in father, an electrical engineer named Milos
2008, divorced a year later, and could never Zelnícek, had wanted a boy and raised her
quite rid herself of. sporty. He taught her to ski in the foothills
of the Carpathians. On Saturdays, when
Rubicondi returned to her for the last they got off work at the Bata shoe factory,
time in 2020 while he was suffering from the parents of Gottwaldov (her hometown,
cancer. She brought him from Italy, got him since renamed Zlín) took their children out
an apartment near her house so he could get two hours by bus, hauling wooden skis with
treatment, and begged him to quit smoking, homemade bindings up hills with no chair-
which he refused to do—debonair, friends
say, almost to the very end.

He was, maybe even more than her

2003

On the way to
La Goulue with

Rubicondi.

2002 2003

Rossano Rubicondi, Ivana At another
Trump, Donald Trump, Fashion Week
and Melania Knauss 
at a Fashion Week event. event with
Rubicondi.
2003

With Rubicondi
on her yacht,
M.Y. Ivana.

lifts and overnighting in cabins heated with she replied with a little giggle, “One dollar.” loosely based on Ivana, wears on Absolutely
wood they collected. Donald chimed in, “And all the dresses she Fabulous. She hit the talk shows—delicate,
can buy.” teary, vulnerable. She was branding Ivana
Competitive skiing eventually got Ivana with a vengeance, using everything she’d
across the Iron Curtain, a rare privilege It all ran aground by the end of 1989 after learned from becoming a Trump. You-
in the 1960s. As a teen on her first trips to Trump brought his mistress Marla Maples Tube is filled with Vaseline-smeary videos
the West, she fell in thrall to the sorts of on a family vacation in Aspen. There, of her, blonde hair piled high, hawking
luxuries—chocolates, fashions, jeans, Coca- Maples confronted Ivana in public at a silk blouses from House of Ivana priced to
Cola, and sports cars—that didn’t exist back slope-side eatery, two big-haired women in sell at $79.99—always adding the 99 cents
home. In 1971, the same year her boyfriend expensive ski gear, in a scene straight out of because people might pay anything but not
George Syrovatka defected to Canada, she Dynasty: “I love your husband. Do you?” a dollar more.
married her friend Alfred Winklmayr, an
Austrian ski instructor, so she could get a A protracted divorce followed that She trademarked clothes, perfume,
passport to leave the country. was extensively litigated in the tabloids. bottled water, bath products, china, all
As it happened, just as their marriage under the Ivana brand. Besides matching
She divorced him before long and even- imploded, his business crashed, leaving Donald brand for classy brand, she tried
tually moved to Montreal to be with Syro- him $3.4 billion in debt. (Among the to match his ego, plastering her name on
vatka and found work as a model. Then, on disasters and fire sales, he sold the Plaza everything, including a yacht she chris-
a trip to New York in 1976, she met Donald for an $83 million loss.) tened the M.Y. Ivana.
Trump; according to a 1990 New York Mag-
azine profile of Ivana, he “spotted her across Ivana accused him of marital rape, and The “classy” Trump brand usually turns
Maxwell’s Plum and used his pull to get her Donald invoked the Fifth Amendment 97 out to be just painted gold or mass-produced
a table.” After she signed a prenup, they were times in depositions. When it was all over, in China. This was also true of Ivana’s. She
married in 1977, the same year Don Jr. was off she went with a $10 million certified had money, but her wealth didn’t hide the
born. (According to the New York article, check, $4 million more for housing, a 1987 foundational nouveau brass. Her beloved
she “fixed [Syrovatka] up with a girlfriend.”) Mercedes, and their nearly 20,000-square- M.Y. Ivana cost $4 million, was 98 feet long,
foot Greenwich, Connecticut, mansion, and had four staterooms and marble baths.
She was by Donald’s side for the next which she sold for $15 million. It served as a weapon in her media war with
dozen or so years, helping him remake the her ex. “While Donald doesn’t even have a
Grand Hyatt, picking the pink marble for Researching for my book about Trump’s dinghy,” the New York Post wrote when
Trump Tower’s atrium, helicoptering down women in the Czech Republic, I met people she bought the yacht, “Ivana is in Monte
to Atlantic City to oversee Trump Castle, in Zlín who believed their most famous ex- Carlo kicking the tires of a spanking new
then returning to the city to run the Plaza resident skied under the Iron Curtain like vessel.” She proudly told reporters she had
Hotel, which he had purchased and reno- Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity, dodg- paid for it herself. “I make in one year three
vated. (She even accompanied him on his ing bullets. They got that idea from a 1996 times what he paid me in a settlement. I
first trip to Moscow in 1987, after which he made-for-TV movie called For Love Alone, don’t need Donald Trump’s money.” Donald
declared his intention to run for president.) based on a roman à clef of the same name responded with a public letter claiming she
She also created Trump’s oligarch brand. that Ivana wrote. According to IMDb, it “fol- had paid twice what the boat was worth.
She told Time in 1989, “If Donald were mar- lows the triumphs and tragedies of Katrinka
ried to a lady who didn’t work and make cer- Kovár, a young Czechoslovakian ski prodigy For the rest of her life, at least until the
tain contributions, he would be gone.” who discovers high-society splendor in the pandemic hit, Ivana was on the move, win-
arms of a wealthy American businessman. tering in Palm Beach at a 12,000-square-
They became the epitome of ’80s flam- When lust turns to lies, Katrinka—long foot house that she’d bought, like the 64th
boyance. But as she gained more attention, haunted by a burning secret from her past— Street home, in 1992 after the divorce (and
he would undermine her. Lounging beside sets out to find the love she left behind.” that she would eventually sell for $16.6 mil-
Ivana on a couch during one televised lion to designer Tomas Maier, who resold it
interview after he named her president of post-donald, Ivana set about reinvent- earlier this year for $73 million). She moved
the Plaza Hotel, he watched her talk about ing herself, starting with what became her on to a Miami Beach condo in the Murano
how much she loved her work. When the trademark Brigitte Bardot–inspired hairdo, at Portofino, where, as recently as five years
reporter asked how much Donald paid her, the one Joanna Lumley’s character, Patsy,

2004 2005

With Rubicondi With Rubicondi at
at a party hosted the New York launch

by P.Diddy in of the “Ivana
St.-Tropez. Las Vegas,” a
condo project that
was never built.

2005

Out with
Rubicondi and
Massimo Gargia,

who had
introduced them.

2005

A nightclub
opening

in London with
Rubicondi.

ago, she was witnessed rolling down her litigation over the ones Donald made her was something like, ‘Thou loveth and hold- P H OTO G R A P H S : D U F F Y- M A R I E A R N O U LT / W I R E I M AG E ( 2 0 0 7 ) ; M I C H A E L C A U L F I E L D / G E T T Y I M AG E S ( 2 0 0 8 ) ; M I C H E L L E M C M I N N / G E T T Y I M AG E S ( 2 0 0 8 ) ; T I M B OX E R / G E T T Y I M AG E S ( 2 01 1 ) ;
bathing-suit top poolside to apply sunblock sign) protected her from his attempts to get eth thy dear to thy heart and will cherish,’” BACKGRID (2016); PROBE-MEDIA (2020, 2021, 2022); GOTHAM/GC IMAGES (2022)
while the building staff buzzed around her a piece of her fortune. she said. “And I read the thing over and I
solicitously. She spent at least three months said to her, ‘I don’t think we should really
every summer at a trio of small former fish- Numero due, Roffredo Gaetani di Lau- read this because this marriage isn’t going
ing cottages she owned in St.-Tropez. renzana dell’Aquila d’Aragona Lovatelli, to last that long.’”
was from, as she liked to put it, “an impor-
Ivana adored the yacht-owner lifestyle, tant family.” Their relationship lasted five At the reception, Don Jr. gave Rubicondi
but her own boat seemed cursed. Sugar years before he died in a car accident on an a “welcome to the family” speech straight
tycoon Alfy Fanjul sued her when the icy Tuscan mountain road at age 52. She out of The Godfather: “We are a construc-
M.Y. Ivana slammed into his yacht dur- told friends he was the best lover of her tion company, and we have job sites, we lose
ing a Florida hurricane. Worse, according life. “I cry whenever I think about him,” she people … You better treat her right because
to a lawsuit she filed in 1997, it was “fall- wrote in her 2017 memoir. “I have no idea I have a .45 and a shovel.”
ing apart” as soon as she took possession. why I didn’t marry him.”
Two years after she bought it, she sued the The guests, many of whom were Euro-
Italian maker, Cantieri di Baia, for $35 mil- As Ivana tells the story in her 2017 book, pean, didn’t know whether to laugh or be
lion, claiming the yacht was “damaging she met Italian numero tre at a party for horrified. “It was sort of a timid haha, haha,
her internationally ‘recognized persona.’” 200 she hosted on M.Y. Ivana when it haha. You heard a chittering going through
She claimed it was seven feet shorter than was docked at Cannes for the film festival. the crowd,” one guest recalled.
promised, didn’t travel at top speed unless it Her friend Gargia brought Rubicondi—a
was empty, and had a faulty exhaust system “young, nice, very good-looking trim stylish “The whole family was against it,” said
that sparked a fire. In 2001, the company man”—along as his guest, and they hit it off. her friend Gargia, an Italian PR man,
settled. Her attorney Gary Lyman isn’t sure By the end of the summer, she’d invited him sometime actor, and fixture on the French
who bought the yacht from her, joking, “It’s to cruise with her from St.-Tropez to Sardina Riviera. “Even Ivanka said, ‘Why did
probably at the bottom of the sea.” and professed to be shocked when she found you introduce him to my mother?’ ” In
out his age when she later took a peek at his his defense, he said he knew Ivana was
But while the M.Y. Ivana was seaworthy, passport. But she soon got over it, and he grieving over her lost lover and needed
she needed a man to put on it. Donald became the love of the last third of her life. some fun. He didn’t expect it to end in a
Trump wrote (well, actually Tony Schwartz As she wrote, “I’d rather be a babysitter than wedding. “I feel guilty that I introduced
wrote) in The Art of the Deal that he had a nursemaid.” them,” he said. “It was fine for six years
built Trump Tower not for “the sort of per- while he was a boyfriend. But the minute
son who inherited money 175 years ago … Rubicondi was born in Rome in March they got married, he changed.”
I’m talking about the wealthy Italian with 1972, 23 years after Ivana. Handsome,
the beautiful wife and the red Ferrari.” That’s with a full head of brown hair and Cupid’s- At the ceremony, Rubicondi charged
exactly what Ivana wanted, too. Or to be that bow lips, he had occasionally modeled down the aisle fist-pumping to the Rocky
guy’s beautiful wife or girlfriend, anyway. and acted in Italian and American movies theme, then promptly ran off with a
(including a small role in the 2000 adap- younger Cuban girlfriend.
An Italophile since her teen years, she tation of Henry James’s The Golden Bowl
worked her way through three Italian men. with Uma Thurman). He and Ivana divorced a year later, but
Numero uno, businessman Riccardo Maz- she never cut the cord. For the next 13 years,
zucchelli, married her at the Mayfair Regent For six years, they dated, threw tempes- until his death, the boy toy swanned in and
in New York in 1995. She wore a blue satin tuous tabloid-ready fights, kissed, made up, out of her life, often trailed by paparazzi.
dress and a diamond necklace with a “piece and went at it again. Her friends assessed There they were, walking her dog Tiger One
of ice as big as the Wollman Rink nestling Rubicondi as a classic fortune hunter, on a leash on the St.-Tropez promenade,
in her décolletage.” The marriage lasted two “a snake.” At Mar-a-Lago in 2008, she Mediterranean pines in the background;
years, foundering, friends said, over his jeal- married him anyway. canoodling near the yachts, Rubicondi in
ousy at her Home Shopping Network suc- sea-breeze-rumpled hair and surfer trunks,
cess. Her prenup (she had been schooled in Donald’s sister Maryanne Trump, then Ivana in designer kitten heels and a tropi-
that unromantic art from enduring years of a federal judge, officiated. Haskell, her cal wrap dress; posing in evening clothes
matron of honor, refused to read lines the beside a giant birthday cake for her at the
judge handed her before the ceremony. “It Hotel la Mistralée. Back in New York,

2007 2011

At her engagement At her Ivana
party with her Wine launch
children Ivanka party on the
and Donald Jr. steps where she
would later die.

2008

Her wedding to
Rubicondi at
Mar-a-Lago.

Rubicondi wore a Donald Trump costume Furrier Dennis Basso, one of the few middle of the pandemic, Ivana paid for
to escort her to a Halloween party in 2004 people to speak at her funeral, summed his move to New York and set him up in
(you can buy a photo of this at Walmart). up her attitude about her ex’s election: an apartment around the corner from her
The tabloids loved their public fights, too, “Divorce is difficult, even if you own a little on Madison Avenue, arranged with the
including the time Ivana threw his clothes shop in the smallest town in America and help of another Czech émigré girlfriend, a
off her yacht. He enjoyed his wine, as she that person gets remarried. I am putting Sotheby’s Realtor. She had wanted to be a
did, and, in 2016, even called the police on politics aside; politics is not part of the babysitter but ended up a nurse.
himself for driving drunk near Mar-a-Lago. picture. Nobody wants to get divorced and
have their husband or wife become the The “snake,” as her girlfriends still called
In between their breakups and makeups, most powerful person in the world.” Her him, was now her charge. “I can’t say his
Ivana’s ex-husband became president. This friends said she was convinced she would name,” said her friend Vivian Serota, a
was complicated for her. On a cold, slushy have been a better First Lady than Melania. Manhattan mondaine and widow of the
day a few weeks before the inauguration, she Long Island commercial-real-estate mag-
visited the studio of fashion designer Marc ivana had a competitive streak and an nate Nathan Serota. “Nobody could stand
Bouwer to select some dresses. Bouwer was instinct for turning relationships into trans- him except Ivana. There was no sex, either.
an old friend but hadn’t seen her for a while. actions. The boy toy and the yacht were Nothing was happening except that she
She looked, he thought, surprisingly down- paid for him and he brought her breakfasts
trodden. Ivana never let things get to At his wedding
her like this. to Ivana, Rubicondi in the morning.”
charged down the Not only could Ivana stand him,
Bouwer and his partner, Paul aisle fist-pumping
Margolin, helped her inside, where to the Rocky theme. she still liked him a lot. “There
she started sobbing. She was so are always the two girlfriends
hysterical she began to collapse and fun, sure, but they were also proof she was who don’t like the boyfriend,”
they had to hold her up. Soon, the making it. Yet it can be hard to maintain Basso said. “Look, he was young
two men were also overcome. She dignity and faith in one’s seductive powers, and good-looking. Ivana and I
said people were shouting hateful especially for a woman who made her used to say to each other all the
things at her and protesting outside beauty central to her personal brand. Rubi- time, ‘Every day is not Christmas.’
her house. “And I’m not even mar- condi apparently kept that faith alive. Ivana I spent many summers on her boat
ried to him anymore,” she wailed. glowed, giggled, and got girlie whenever he in the Mediterranean with Ivana
“It’s not my fault!” showed up. Even that was fleeting. and Rossano, and we had fabulous
times. Was he the greatest catch in
Ivana shared many political views In 2020, Rubicondi was diagnosed with the world? No. Was he dashing,
with her ex, starting with a devotion melanoma. He was in Italy, needed treat- and did they have some fun? Yes.”
to unfettered capitalism, “doing ment, and had no money. That fall, in the
deals,” and adopting the transac- A New York Democrat who
tional mode in all of her relation- worked with Ivana agreed.
ships. An immigrant herself, she told “Rossano gave her what nobody
a British TV network during his reelection else did. He was this younger
campaign that U.S. immigrants “steal and man she could be girlie and flirty and
rape women” and “don’t get jobs.” sexy with. Why is it any different from
an older man who puts up a younger
At a crucial juncture in the campaign, woman as his partner?”
while Donald was fighting off sexual-harass- In his last year, between visits to Sloan
ment accusations, she even downplayed the Kettering for chemo on her tab, he would
rape allegations she had once made against often accompany Ivana to her table at
him. Still, “in Washington for the inaugura- Altesi. “Signora paid for everything,” its
tion, she had a very bad seat,” Gargia said. owner, Alavian, remembered.
“So she left. She was in shock to see where Rubicondi was dreaming up wacky
they put her. It was a little exclusion.” moneymaking (Continued on page 87)

2016 2021

In St.-Tropez Strolling in
with Rubicondi New York with
Rubicondi the
and her dog year he died.
Tiger One.

2020 2022

Having pasta left: With an aide
at Altesi with shortly before her

Tiger Two. death. right:
Ivana’s funeral was

attended by the
former president
and their children.

28



ew york comes alive in the summer. 1.
All that pent-up kinetic energy from
the long winter collects, then the fire Jayquan McKenley,
hydrants crack open and the colliding known as CHII WVTTZ,
pressures coursing through each block performing in the
and borough burst onto every sidewalk. “IYKTYK” music video
It’s open season for the good and the in December 2021.
ugly, and for the past three years, sum-

Nmer in the city—the whole city—has
sounded like drill music. Just over a
decade ago, a sprawling ecosystem of
mainly teenagers in Chicago’s South Side who grew up with trap’s mix-
ture of no-holds-barred realism and aspirational escapism found a way
to distill the conflicting feelings of their neighborhood into a new rap
subgenre. Drill—pushed into the mainstream by artists like Chief Keef
and translated as far and wide as London and, later, Brooklyn and the
Bronx—created a potent, grisly language for a community to talk to
itself about what it meant to call a metropolitan war zone home. It got
its name from the kill-or-be-killed mentality (the word literally means
“to shoot”), a code wherein black-and-white ideas about morality are
sacrificed in the name of survival. There is an unflinching sense of des-
peration reflected in drill. Like all hip-hop, it is a culture born of suf-
fering and a desire to alchemize the pain, and so, like many rap scenes
before it, the music and those making it have been misread as causing
harm instead of working through harm done.
In New York, on any given day this summer, you might hear a high
schooler cut through a bustling McDonald’s on Atlantic Avenue to
announce to her friends that South Bronx star B-Lovee just posted some-
thing hilarious on Instagram and then immediately clock his friends
Dougie B and Kay Flock wailing through a car’s speakers on their hit with
Cardi B, “Shake It.” But as popular as drill has become since Canarsie’s
Pop Smoke welcomed the city to the party in the spring of 2019, it has
also made countless enemies. It took less than a year for the NYPD to
direct its so-called hip-hop unit to surveil drill on social media. They
combed through lyrics and music videos for clues of any crime, leading
to artists being pulled from the lineups at major rap festivals in the city,
shows being shut down hours before opening, and, increasingly, mass
indictments targeting gang affiliates, an unavoidable birthright for far
too many of the city’s children.
Earlier this year, Mayor Eric Adams, incensed by the murders of two
local drill hopefuls, met with several members of the scene for a summit
on what the city can do about drill and the role he suggests it has played
in an uptick in bloodshed throughout his constituency. If there is as much
violence engulfing New Yorkers as he (and other mayors before him) says
there is, then the art produced by the city’s lifers can only report the truth:
Living here is to be at constant odds with loving it here. In the following
pages, you’ll hear from several members of this new generation coming
out of the five boroughs, some of whom are currently incarcerated, and
the stories of pride and pain they’ve been fighting for their lives to tell for
as long as the city passes the mic to them. No single person can speak for
New York, but is it possible a sound can? Dee Lockett

30 new york | august 15–28, 2022

THE TRAGEDY He wanted to
OF JAYQUAN be a drill star.
McKENLEY
He became
a symbol

in a culture
war instead.

BY SIMON VAN ZUYLEN-WOOD

MUSIC VIDEO STILL COURTESY OF AFFILIATEDFILMS T hirty-five hours before he was murdered, a melancholic side. In one Bravehearts session, stu-
18-year-old Jayquan McKenley was sitting on a dents were asked to name something missing from
yellow beanbag chair in a teacher’s office at the Chil- the juvenile-justice system through which they were
dren’s Village, a residential facility for at-risk youth, passing. “Unconditional love,” McKenley said.
including juvenile offenders, tucked away in the
woods of Westchester County. The campus includes That Friday, February 4, 2022, the Bravehearts
a school, ball fields, and dormitories with beds for 137 were studying the Mississippi Freedom Rides of the
students. On Fridays at 3 p.m., McKenley attended early 1960s. Ramaseur was preparing the kids for
a voluntary after-school mentorship program called a trip down South that summer to mark the anni-
Bravehearts run by Robert Ramaseur, a 26-year-old versary of the protests. Ramaseur had been out on
sick leave, and when McKenley saw him, he ran up
from East Harlem who had lived at Children’s Village and dapped him hello. McKenley told him his court-
ordered term at Children’s Village would be up in a
as a teen. Ramaseur would lead the Bravehearts few weeks, but he wanted to stay involved with the
program. Come summer, he planned to join the
through exercises like “Monster in the Basement,” in which students would try to Freedom Ride.

identify suppressed traumas, such as “death, substance abuse, seeing things that McKenley’s agreement allowed him to head back
to the Bronx on weekends, where he was staying with
you shouldn’t have seen when you were younger.” A dry-erase board featured a his girlfriend, Jamayra Ingramm, and her mother.
McKenley’s father, Perry Williams, lived in North
little cyclops at the bottom of a staircase, flexing its arms and looking a bit like the Carolina with his wife and their two daughters; his
mother, Naomi McKenley, had been living in tempo-
creature from Monsters, Inc. rary housing after a fire in her apartment. That Friday
night, at Ingramm’s, he was working through some
A charismatic emerging rapper from the Bronx and a basketball talent—he feelings he didn’t want to talk about face-to-face. He
went into the bathroom and texted Ingramm from
averaged 17.9 points a game and was selected for the All-Conference Team— there. It was after 2 a.m. The couple had been fight-
ing. He questioned his parents’ love for him, why his
McKenley was the resident celebrity of Children’s Village. On campus, he mother had not just aborted him, what awaited him
in the afterlife. “What is after death,” he texted. “Why
assumed a leadership role, participating enthusiastically, showing up to class should I live not even knowin where ima goo.” She
wrote, “ i guess, Jayquan, you brushin it all on
on time, making the younger kids who idolized him feel included. He also had me like everything is really my fault.” He pushed on:
“Like am I goin to hell for the shit I did.”

McKenley’s rap name was c-hii wvttz, and he
was a part of the scene surrounding Bronx drill, a
new variant of the hip-hop genre that had emerged
in Chicago in the 2010s. The Bronx sound is defined
by high-tempo rapping, mostly about real-life vio-
lence, set to sped-up melodic samples and scuzzy,
sliding 808 bass lines. McKenley wasn’t represented
by a label, though, according to Ingramm, he was
taking meetings in Miami and Los Angeles.

wvttz, pronounced “Watts,” was a reference to
the L.A. neighborhood. c-hii, pronounced “C-high,”
signified McKenley’s allegiance to the Crips. Specifi-
cally, he was associated with a smaller Bronx gang
known as DOA 700, or Sevside, whose territory
covers the area around East 187th Street in Bronx’s
Belmont neighborhood. DOA’s rivals, or “opps,” are
the Young Gunnaz, or YGz, whose territory includes

august 15–28, 2022 | new york 31

the River Park Towers complex overlooking B efore his death, McKenley YouTube or Columbia Records to act for
the Harlem River. The rival groups each was not a household name. But him—never materialized, nor has an offi-
include a number of drill rappers. set against the backdrop of the cial mandate to the cops, who, in any case,
had been investigating drill rappers’ gang
In June 2021, McKenley allegedly fired city’s rolling crime surge, his ties since the de Blasio administration. In
mid-February, Adams smoothed things
a gun into a vehicle, for which he was murder triggered an unusually over with Fivio and a number of other drill
artists in a late-night meeting at City Hall.
charged with reckless endangerment and public chain of events. Drill rap has been By the summer, the mayor was having din-
ner with Rowdy Rebel, a Brooklyn drill pio-
criminal possession of a firearm. Nobody intertwined with gang affiliation since its neer. “I exercise to drill music,” Adams told
me recently. “I enjoy drill music.”
was hurt. He posted bail after spending six inception, but the volume of recent casual-
In general, the discourse around drill
days on Rikers Island but was subsequently ties was unusual. Less than a week before seemed stuck, unable to move beyond the
binary of “art or provocation?” But Adams,
sentenced to a term in Children’s Village— McKenley’s death, Tdott Woo, a 22-year- despite his distracted approach to find-
ing solutions, hit closer to the heart of the
a placement a rival rapper once mocked old drill rapper from Brooklyn, had been matter by citing the role of social media.
Drill, like any other ecosystem dominated
during a conversation they were having on murdered in Canarsie, and about a week by teenagers, plays by the rules of online
engagement. Bronx drill in particular has
Instagram Live—for violating his probation. before that, a rapper from a rival crew was a callout ethos in which rivals publicly
insult one another, often on Instagram,
(His father said he’d been involved in a rob- shot in his leg and back in Prospect–Lef- with much of the back-and-forth not set to
music at all.
bery as a minor.) ferts Gardens. Around this time, Hot 97’s
Even to drill’s defenders, it seemed
On Saturday, February 5, McKenley DJ Drewski—an early champion of the clear that social media had sped up a
cycle of retaliatory shootings; the Bronx’s
traveled to an Airbnb in Brooklyn’s Bed- genre—announced he would stop playing pandemic-era spike in gun violence
persisted through 2021 and into 2022,
ford-Stuyvesant neighborhood to shoot a drill diss tracks on the air. “If you make drill even as it abated in other boroughs. Count-
less factors were at play: access to firearms,
music video for a new song, “wvttz.” The music,” he wrote on Instagram, “there are a peer pressure, institutional failures at every
level. “What social media did is kind of
spot was off Lewis Avenue in a four-story lot of drill songs without dissing your opps made it fashionable for these kids to be that
disrespectful with one another,” said the
walk-up several blocks north of the popu- or smoking your opps!” rapper Maino, who brokered the meeting
at City Hall. “It gives them a vehicle to do
lar bakery and restaurant Saraghina. In the Eric Adams, then early in his mayoral that in real time and gives the fans the
opportunity to watch it in real time.”
video, McKenley and his crew are jammed tenure, seemed distraught after McKenley’s
The day after McKenley’s death, as rain
into the apartment, pointing finger guns at death, and on February 10 he delivered drizzled in the Bronx, Ingramm streamed
herself on Instagram Live from the passen-
the camera and playing Nets versus Blazers a tearful 13-minute speech calling on his ger seat of a car. Braces showing, she lit a
joint, cued up c-hii’s music on her phone,
on an Xbox. administration to save future Jayquans by and started wading through a stream
of incoming comments, some of which
McKenley begins the song, “DOA, investing in housing and education and involved rumors about who might have
killed or betrayed her boyfriend:
DOA, DOA. DOA, DOA, DOA,” then adds, jobs. More controversially, he critiqued
rah rah saying he getting beat up in
tauntingly, “Rah Rah. Rah Rah.” “Rah drill itself, describing a “scene that involves heaven by Chii
let me know if u want his clothes from cv
Rah” referred to Rah Gz—Ramon Gil- using music as a challenge on social-media Doa down bad
Yo heard dat man kay flock set him up
posts—posts that bled out into vio-
Pulling up to a sidewalk vigil for
lent real-world confrontations.” In McKenley, Ingramm told off the disre-
spectful commenters but kept the stream
Set against a press conference the next day, he live while she fussed with his candles and a
the backdrop of the free-associated, wondering whether poster-board tribute.
some drill-related posts could be cen-
When he heard the news, rival rap-
city’s rolling crime sored online, the way Donald Trump per Yus Gz hopped on Instagram too. He
surge, McKenley’s had been removed from Twitter after shared a photo of McKenley overlaid with
inciting the Capitol riot. the text “And (Continued on page 88)

murder set off That wound up turbocharging the
an unusually public news cycle, as Adams was accused of
being a moralist and a concern troll,

chain of events. a contemporary version of the stuffy
pundits who tut-tutted N.W.A and

other gangsta rappers in the ’90s.

Fivio Foreign, who has succeeded

Medrano—a 16-year-old alleged YGz affili- the late Pop Smoke as the king of New York

ate who had been murdered in the back of drill, tweeted at the mayor, “it’s deff not the

a cab the previous summer and whom music that’s cause’n or contribute’n to the

McKenley had mocked in songs before. In violence.” (Fivio was close with Tdott Woo,

the first verse, McKenley raps, “Still outside the designated dancer of his crew.) Within

nigga totin’ the Colt/DOA be the niggas days, The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah would

I came with/We see a Gz we leavin’ him devote a segment to drill, featuring a photo

faceless / Locked up, still fighting these of McKenley grinning in his Children’s Vil-

cases.” In the second verse, he seems to refer lage Hawks basketball jersey. Noah was

specifically to Rah Gz’s death. “Got caught in ambivalent, defending artistic license while

a cab and that little nigga died/Stupid nigga critiquing drill rappers for their poor taste.

got his head fried.” “Why do you gotta make songs dissing a

Around 2 a.m., McKenley left the Airbnb dead rival?” he riffed. “It’s not like God’s up

to record a scene for the video. According to in heaven like, ‘We were gonna let you in,

the police, two individuals shot him from a but Lil Tre bodied you up so hard.’”

car, one from the front seat, another from A decades-old debate resurfaced about

the back, hitting him twice in the chest. He whether certain hip-hop lyrics glorify or

was driven to nearby Woodhull Hospital, merely reflect violence. A mayoral crack-

where he was pronounced dead at around down on drill—functionally impossible

2:30 a.m. anyway, unless Adams could pressure

32 new york | august 15–28, 2022

2. THE SOUND Brrrrrrrrrrap. Bang!
ITSELF Bam! Pow!

BY WAYNE MARSHALL

P H OTO G R A P H S : F I R S T ROW: A L A M Y ( L I L D U R K , C H I E F K E E F, WA K A F L AC K A F L A M E, W I L E Y ) ; S ECO N D ROW: A L A M Y ( P O P S M O K E, T H E S EC T I O N B OY Z ) ; A L F I E RO C R I SC I ( 8 0 8 M E L LOW ) ; S P I K E TA R A N T I N O ( B - LOV E E ) THE SOUND OF DRILL is the brazen brrrrrap of street-level rap over the past decade. It’s the unsettling,

aestheticized sound of gunplay evoked by spraying hi-hats, double-tapped rhyme blasts, and a bottomless

pool of ad-libbed variations on BANG! BAM! POW! Hyperlocal yet deeply translocal, it’s

the sound of New York via Chicago and London. It’s the self-made soundtrack of young For a
Black artists in these cities as well as a rhythm that any laptop producer can program after DRILL
a YouTube tutorial. Drill can be many things, but as a musical term, it increasingly refers to
PLAYLIST,
turn
to page 43.

a distinctive pattern, one that bears audible witness to its locale-hopping history.

The Chicago The London The NewYork
Sound Sound Sound

Chicago is where the term drill This is the quality that changed most The same Afro-diasporic rhythms
took on new meaning, irst as slang clearly once drill had become the sound have been hot in New York since
for shooting and killing and then, with of rap in London by the mid-2010s. the heyday of the Charleston a
Pac Man’s “It’s a Drill” in 2010, for In the hands of young Black British century ago, especially during the
music about witnessing both. The producers smitten by Chicago drill but past two decades of dancehall
branding stuck not just because the raised on a diet of grime, dubstep, crossover. This context primed
songs and raw videos of Chicago’s and other dance music, drill’s open another serendipitous moment
Chief Keef, G Herbo, Lil Durk, space offered room for other rhythms of Black Atlantic exchange in the
and Lil Reese centered such themes to hop aboard. Appearing within a year case of drill in 2016, abetted by the
with captivating power, but because of Chicago drill’s explosion, early U.K. internet. The children of the children
these productions musically drill tracks by Stickz or GR1ZZY & M of Caribbean immigrants in London
embodied the dreadful ambience Dargg emulated Chicago’s, save for the started making “drill-type beats” for
of a city dominated by gun accents.Yet in just a couple of years, their counterparts in Brooklyn (many
violence. Surgically slow tempos of the beat shifted, inlected by the U.K.’s of whom also come from Caribbean
65 to 70 beats per minute allowed an distinctive Afro-diasporic heritage. On families). They engaged YouTube’s
unhurried delivery of speech-rhythm many tracks, like 2014’s “No Rules,” recommendation algorithms to
threats over booming bass with by Section Boyz, the snare on the direct their work to established
synthetic snares, snaps, or claps fourth beat recedes as other percussive and aspiring New York drill artists:
anchoring the backbeat. The heavy, iligree ills in. By 2016, the same beat 22Gz, Sheff G, Pop Smoke. These
almost martial drums—Chicago was replaced by bubbling soca-style Brooklynites, inspired by what they
producer DJ L cites marching-band snares traveling twice as fast, as in heard from Chicago but seeking
cadences as a cornerstone in his 67’s “Lets Lurk.” a sound of their own, decided the
snare patterns—moved in lockstep tailor-made beats hit the spot, not
alongside foreboding melodic London producers sutured early always knowing where they had been
loops indexing horror ilms drill’s half-step stomp to grime music’s produced.
(eerie one-inger piano lines) and angular, up-tempo grooves and
big-boss battles (church bells timeless Afro-Caribbean polyrhythms. These beats propelled NYC drill’s
and crashing cymbals). For timbres and arrangements, they big hits and helped it come into its
As the sound of Chicago drill crested likewise drew from a local palette: own. Modeled on the sound of U.K.
from 2011 to 2013, it owed a large sinewy bass lines surreally sliding producers such as AXL Beats and
debt to Atlanta, especially the from one note to the next, cherished 808Melo, the icy but dancy approach
muscular pomp of second-wave trap, percussion bits sampled from such gave Brooklyn drill its own energy
popularized in 2010 by producer Lex iconic grime instrumentals as Wiley’s and a sound distinct from Chicago’s.
Luger with Waka Flocka Flame. “Ice Rink,” and snarling synth smears Producers in the Bronx and other
Inluential Chicago producers like recalling dubstep’s half-time wobble. boroughs picked up the baton and
Young Chop took strong sonic With this infusion of energy and style, started adding sample-based touches
cues from Luger and other trap something subtle but crucial happened to the template, heard on songs like
beat-makers. Many of drill’s biggest to drill’s formerly plodding beat: It began B-Lovee’s Mary J. Blige–indebted
productions at the time were nearly to loat. The effect was as if each bar “My Everything,” bringing drill into
indistinguishable from the bounce contained a half-measure of Chicago more direct dialogue with all manner
of trap, but they shifted the mood “half-time” (70 bpm) followed by a full of pop. Drake has already come
and attitude. As they tended toward measure of London “double time” (140 knocking for beats, while posthumous
slower tempos, more space started bpm), a rhythm similar to Afro-diasporic Pop Smoke songs and new Fivio
to creep in: room for ad-libs, for music from dancehall to salsa—what Foreign tracks climb the charts.
tension to build, for cavernous some would call tresillo or what This evolution away from macabre,
pauses between bass kicks and long reggaeton devotees know as dembow. macho music might have appeared
stretches with no drums at all. But These asymmetries enhance the push- incongruous at irst, but it now
while its sound offered an alluring pull feel of the rhythm, creating new seems itting that the irst major star
template, Chicago’s unhurried momentum and resonance. It’s music to emerge from drill’s biggest new
approach could feel plodding, airless. for the streets and for the club. scene broke out with a song called
“Welcome to the Party.”

GENERATION
3. THE DRILL
19 Artists
Who

Deine the
New York

Scene

Portfolio by
Ashley Peña

As told to Camille Squires

KENZO B

18, the Bronx

22Gz

24, Flatbush

26AR

23, Crown Heights

CASH COBAIN

24, South Bronx

THE DRILL GENERATION

➔ 22Gz
The 24-year-old from Flatbush is credited with helping
bring the U.K. scene’s dancier style to Brooklyn.With
a long history of police run-ins dating back to 2014, he
has felt the NYPD’s crackdown on drill more than most.
In 2019, he was scheduled to perform at the Rolling
Loud festival in Queens when he was shut out at the
last minute by police, who said he was associated with
“public-safety concerns.”This June, as he arrived at
JFK to perform at Hot 97’s Summer Jam festival, he
was arrested on attempted-murder charges for a March
shooting at a Brooklyn club where three people suffered
gunshot wounds. A month after that arrest, 22Gz
released a new single,“Sniper Gang Freestyle Pt. 2.”

it was our time to shine. Everybody was looking for
the next Jadakiss or Meek Mill type, and it was like a
little competition in the hood. I needed something that
was going to make people want to move their bodies.
The beats I pick give you goose bumps. They’re dark and
deep and hit hard, but you could dance to them and still
get that gangster feeling. Once this sound clicked and
my first song got a million views, I knew I had my own
lane. Eventually, all of Brooklyn got onto this sound.
Now I see all five boroughs rapping like that.

Rapping saved me. I’m not saying I’d be a criminal out
here in these streets, but without it, I don’t know what
I’d be doing. With rap, I live how I want to live. I got
my own apartment; what my mom makes in a month
doesn’t add up to my rent. I know y’all know New York
City is expensive. I got my own car. Rap elevated my
life way faster and opened my eyes to the whole world,
not just one neighborhood. I’m touring, traveling. Those
little checks I was getting as a kid through YouTube and
TuneCore saved my life completely. I know over 20,
30 rappers who got signed just through this sound
alone. Some of these kids don’t leave their block. They
don’t go to school. They don’t leave their neighborhood.
They don’t see nothing but that. I know a lot of kids
in the ghetto who love recording in the studio. That’s
all they want to do, and it’s probably the only positive
thing they’re doing the whole year. When I was coming
up, we didn’t have that access. We was all trying to be
ballplayers, and not everyone can. Anybody could write
some bars—it’s like poetry.

There are some people who don’t take the craft seri-
ously, and they just use the drill sound to go at their
enemies or say crazy stuff. And then there’s people who
actually love rap, who want to get signed, and the reason
they’re doing this is all for money and for a deal to better
their family. I’m not going to say drill wasn’t made for
dissing, but it wasn’t made for violence. It’s just another
route for the ghetto—for us in New York City—to speak
how we want to talk, and let the world know how we
feel, without sounding like everybody else.

➔ CASH COBAIN
The 24-year-old rapper and producer from the South
Bronx established himself in the local drill scene by
introducing something new to it: beats that heavily
sample everything from ’90s R&B hits to gospel.

mayor adams must really have something against
gang violence, so of course he’s going to use drill music
to connect it to that. It’s what’s in, what’s hot. I feel like
they really want to lock these people up, so now they use

38 new york | august 15–28, 2022

B-LOVEE

21, South Bronx

FIVIO FOREIGN

32, East Flatbush

POLO PERKS

27, Harlem and the Bronx

lyrics in court. I’m 24 years old, so I already And that’s not by indicting everybody every people are already getting into.
know, but these kids are young, like 16, 17. two seconds. Instead of worrying about the I’m a workaholic. I try to stay out of
They’re not like, “Let me watch what I say music, change the kids’ actual environment.
because the police will probably lock me up.” Everybody wants to be a rapper, so put some anything negative and just lock myself in
They probably think they’re so slick they can studios in the hood, have these kids rap, have the studio. I do ten-hour sessions to keep
say whatever they want and then pretty soon them do something they want. They got to myself busy. That’s why I’m still releasing
they’re locked up. let out things that already have happened. music twice a month while I’ve been locked
up for a year. Staying focused is my moti-
This whole generation is a clout era. A lot of these drill rappers are really good vation. I want us—drill—to be respected as
Everybody wants to look like the man, do people. When you’re a rapper and when you a real genre of music.
the crazier diss. One person will say some- come from a certain type of environment,
thing about the other person; next thing even though you don’t owe anybody any- ➔ FIVIO FOREIGN
you know, the other person is making a song thing, you feel like you have a responsibil- If there’s a face of New York rap right
about that person, and no one knows what’s ity. It’s not like pop or R&B—when you rap, now, it’s Fivio Foreign. His irst hit, “Big
real. The fans are waiting for the other you are a voice for a community. So when Drip,” went viral in 2019, prompting a
person to respond. Whatever these two had you make it out, you feel like you got to be remix with Lil Baby and Quavo. This
going on could’ve been cool, they could’ve able to work hard to be able to put people in year’s “City of Gods,” featuring Ye and
never even seen each other in real life, but better positions. We are out here just trying Alicia Keys, has been blaring from car
now it’s like, “All right, bet. Once I see you, to work and employ our friends, live our speakers and block parties around
it got to be up now because we’re making life, buy jewelry, and have fun. We’re able to the city. The 32-year-old out of East
songs about each other.” They really want to use our pain to make some diamonds. Flatbush has become an ambassador
crack down on drill music, but you can’t stop for New York drill, attending the
people from saying what they want to say. ➔ KENZO B February “summit” the mayor held with
The 18-year-old from the Bronx may local rappers to discuss violence as it
We see the little games the NYPD plays. be new to rap, but she has already relates to the music.
Somebody has a show and then it gets can- earned the respect of industry peers
celed by the police at the last minute. That including Fivio Foreign, Maino, and her it’s a shame the way the whole genre gets
can really discourage a person, like, “Nah, friend Young Devyn. portrayed. You can’t just put it on drill like
I don’t even want to rap no more if they’re we’re the only people talking about a gun or
going to keep doing this.” there are other good female rappers, death. I guess with drill, you can kind of
right? But you’re not going to find a female understand the lyrics in a more literal way
➔ YOUNG DEVYN rapper who sounds like Kenzo B. I don’t like than a lot of other styles, so people notice it
Young Devyn is a relative newcomer taking a lot of breaths; I want to fill every more. But it just don’t make no sense. I get
to the Brooklyn drill scene, but she is gap in the beat. If I’m mad, I write. I just called to perform at bar mitzvahs, and these
already a music-industry veteran. She make good music when I’m upset. kids know all the music and all the words
was born and raised in Brooklyn by and it don’t persuade them to do nothing
Trinidadian parents and began singing ➔ ENVY CAINE violent. You can almost compare it to a
soca music at 8 years old; by 12, she Brooklyn’s Envy Caine is a classic case movie or a book that tells a story of selling
was performing in shows across the of increased exposure as a drill rapper drugs. We watch Boyz n the Hood and
Caribbean. When she returned to New coming at a price. Earlier this year, Training Day, but we don’t lock up the
York at around 16, she pivoted to rap, prosecutors charged that there had been director. We don’t lock up the Denzel
inspired in part by Nicki Minaj and their an ongoing plot against the 29-year- Washingtons. I don’t know what makes a
shared Trini roots. old’s life for six years, stemming from music video different.
an alleged beef with some members of
one thing about me: You’ll never see a NewYork gang. Meanwhile, he says, The genre is always expanding, and it’s
me dissing on the internet. I don’t argue on having extra NYPD eyes on him had because of the innovators. Sample drill
social media; I don’t highlight certain stunted his career well before his current wouldn’t be possible without Pop Smoke,
people who have passed away in my music. incarceration on gun charges. He is period. The whole point of my latest album
That’s what’s made me transcend: I stay out currently on Rikers Island. was about expanding drill. I got songs with
the way, and it’s respected so far. I was just Alicia Keys, KayCyy, Chloe Bailey, Chris
on the block with my friends chilling, and it’s really rare for popular drill artists Brown—people you wouldn’t expect to be
now they hear me on the radio. That moti- to get a chance to perform and make money on drill beats. Expanding my content helps
vates people. That shows them, “Yo, we to feed their kids because the police auto- drill get bigger instead of keeping it in a
could all make it out. Even if it’s 50 of us matically say, “Oh, they can’t perform due to bubble with people looking at it as new-
rapping, at least one of us will.” gang violence.” I can’t put on shows in New school gangster rap.
York, period. Artists are trying to progress
If we really think about it, drill music their careers, and they’ll never reach their ➔ BIZZY BANKS
is just a lot of pain—we just want to talk pinnacle surrounded by cops. Half the
about it in a way that gives us some type of time, they don’t even know the artist; they Since dropping his irst single,
enjoyment and escape for a little bit. That’s just hear what kind of artist. These songs “Don’t Start,” three years ago, 23-year-
why it’s crazy to blame drill for things that just have an aggression to them that if you old Bizzy Banks has cemented his
didn’t start yesterday. In order for me to don’t understand what’s going on, you will place as one of the leading NYC drill
rap about something, it would’ve had to perceive it as, Oh, this is making violence rappers. That momentum has been
happen, unless we’re all just lying. These happen. Now, I’m not saying it’s innocent, halted by arrests, irst in 2019 on
kids who already got problems with each either, but that’s more to do with what assault charges and again in January
other, they’ve had problems before they of this year on drugs and weapons
was rapping. So you’ve got to start with the charges. He was released from Rikers
community and physically make changes. Island on August 11.

42 new york | august 15–28, 2022

every drill rapper is not gangster, just ➔ POLO PERKS about gangster rap and shooting things up,
like every regular rapper is not gangster. The 27-year-old rapper who grew up then why the fuck are rappers onstage per-
Every drill rapper doesn’t smoke people; all over New York and Connecticut has forming? They should have no time for that
every drill rapper doesn’t antagonize other carved out his niche with sounds that if the perception was real.
people. We’re creating dance moves; we’re sample early-aughts emo and alt rock.
creating new words. I don’t rap about things When they see us, I don’t want them to
they say we rap about. I’m looking forward if you’re gonna attack the whole think of just drill. If I wanna sing, I’ll sing.
to going mainstream, to get out of the box of genre, you have to do research on the whole I embrace the past because the past is the
being a drill rapper, so I won’t be targeted. genre. My sound? The samples we chose future. It’s the way I learned all my lessons.
I could do bigger shows in the city without were early-2000s alternative like Blink- I understand everything that any ghetto
being bugged by or shut down by police. For 182, Foo Fighters, Snow Patrol. It’s like, kid goes through because I’ve been through
my fans, it’s like, Dang, I don’t want to keep “Let’s try to make it more universal so the everything in the ghetto, through group
buying tickets to see this man and then we white kids won’t get looked weird at for homes and all that. In the hood, I get the
can’t even see him. banging this music, and the Black kids only feedback that matters: They say, “Oh
won’t either.” For proof, come to one of my shit, when you say it like that, I understand.
5 shows. The whole crowd is full of kids. You’re talking my language.”
There’s no aggression. There are older
4. THE SONGS people who are into my music. I never had ➔ ROWDY REBEL
TO KNOW a fight at none of my shows. At 30, Rowdy Rebel has been in the
game long enough to be considered
A mini genre primer. Everybody makes drill different. For one of the elders of the scene. He rose
Adams to sit here and say, “That’s just a to prominence in East Flatbush
Selected by Trey Alston violent genre,” is crazy. alongside Bobby Shmurda in the mid-
2010s, only to miss out on the rest of
→ “Gumbo → “Kennington ➔ BIG YAYA the decade during a six-year sentence
Mobsters,” Where It Started,” Along with Shawny Binladen and the owed in part to GS9’s sudden fame.
by King Louie by Harlem Spartans rest of his Yellow Tape Boyz crew, He returned with this year’s Rebel vs.
& Bo$$ Woo (2011) (2017) 24-year-old Big Yaya holds it down Rowdy, his irst album since his release
for Queens in a genre dominated by from prison in 2021.
→ “Go In,” → “Slide,” rappers from Brooklyn and the Bronx.
by Shady (2011) by FBG Duck (2017) i just did a video the other day with Bobby.
i’m not contributing to no crime. Police see us and they say, “What’s up?
→ “I Don’t Like,” → “Suburban,” Me and my crew, I want us to all go dia- What’s going on?” They know we don’t have
by Chief Keef by 22Gz (2016), mond, be on the top of the Billboard list. But time for trouble—we just out here working,
featuring Lil Reese and its response → being watched definitely affects how I write. trying to give people good videos with good
(2012) “No Suburban,” I can’t blatantly just say stuff. parts of the city in it. This is our job.
by Sheff G (2017)
→ “Lemme ➔ BOBBY SHMURDA ➔ 26AR
Get Dat,” → “Crazy Story,” In 2014, well before the genre exploded The 23-year-old Crown Heights native
by Giggs & Waka by King Von (2018) in New York, Bobby Shmurda, then picked up rapping while in prison on
Flocka Flame a newcomer out of East Flatbush, gang-conspiracy charges. He released
(2012) → “Welcome to embodied the image of a drill rapper. “Aaron Rodgers,” an autobiographical
the Party,” by Pop His viral behemoth “Hot Nigga” song paying homage to the football star,
→ “Lets Get It,” Smoke (2019) launched a million memes and led to the week after he was released in 2019. In
by Stickz (2013) a record deal. As his proile grew, police July, he dropped an album on Def Jam.
→ “Who I Smoke,” investigated Shmurda’s GS9 crew,
→ “Dis Ain’t What U by Spinabenz, pointing to his lyrics as evidence of the police once locked me up for a
Want,” by Lil Durk Whoppa Wit Da criminal activity. He was arrested in situation that had to do with one of my
(2013) Choppa, Yungeen 2014 on gun charges and served six music videos. It’s a violation of our First
Ace, and FastMoney years in prison. While often credited Amendment rights as artists. The music
→ “Computers,” Goon, and its with the rise of drill in Brooklyn, he connects with people—they feel it because
by Rowdy Rebel response “When I doesn’t consider himself a drill artist. everybody has emotions. I try not to make
featuring Bobby See You,” by Foolio Now a year out from prison, Shmurda music only about violence but pain and sad-
Shmurda (2014) (2021) has returned to music unsigned and ness, too, because I know everybody could
is experimenting with new sounds. relate to it.
→ “Lets Lurk,” → “My Everything
by 67 (2016) (Part III),” by B-Lovee i’m 28 and I feel like I’m 19. Ever since ➔ ELI FROSS
& G Herbo (2021) getting out, life has been a roller coaster. Growing up in Crown Heights, Eli
I’ve been enjoying life, but I’ve also been Fross wanted to be a pro basketball
Scan to trying to get my music into my own hands. player. He played for a travel league as
hear The company I was with kept control of a teenager but fell away from the sport
everything before I came out. So now I’m when he got caught up with guys in
these and trying to release my stuff independently his neighborhood “doing shit I wasn’t
more. and own it. supposed to be,” he says. Getting
into rapping helped him refocus and
→ Drill is a category I don’t want to be.
The stereotypes about it are coming from
the people pushing the narratives. If it’s all

august 15–28, 2022 | new york 43

RON SUNO

22, Co-Op City

YOUNG DEVYN

20, East New York

earned him an RCA record deal by the ➔ DOUGIE B When we filmed the video for my song
age of 19. Now 21, he’s a member of + B-LOVEE “Grabba,” we shot it at the train station
the Winners Circle cohort with Sheff G and in the middle of the street. We had the
and Sleepy Hallow (the latter could not Twenty-ive-year-old Dougie B, 21-year- kids outside. There were homeless people
be reached while incarcerated). old B-Lovee, and 19-year-old Kay Flock dancing. It felt like the cops were liking it,
are childhood friends who became three too. They were just telling us to stay safe. We
sometimes i would wake up in the of the newest faces of Bronx drill after were all having fun.
studio saying, I’m not feeling it—I’m their irst hit, “Brotherly Love,” gained
depressed, I’m angry, or whatever—and attention in 2021. In December of that ➔ DUSTY
I would rap off that energy. Eventually, as year, Flock was arrested on murder LOCANE
I got older and deeper into rap, I had more charges. (He could not be reached for
to lose. So it’s like I had to put things away an interview.) Still, his career continues The 23-year-old rapper from Canarsie
in order to keep growing and doing what to ascend. In April, Flock and Dougie was a childhood friend of the late
I love. The NYPD is basically saying they released “Shake It,” featuring Cardi B. Pop Smoke, the prodigy who put New
don’t want us to grow; they don’t want us to York drill on the map in 2019. For many,
be better people. I ain’t come up on no nine- me, kay flock, and b-lovee—it’s 20-year-old Pop Smoke was elevated to
to-five job—none of that. I was doing this. deeper than just friendship. Those are my legend status after his shooting death
It’s my way out. This music has helped a lot brothers. We all grew up with each other, in February 2020 during a botched
of people, and they know that—they know going on ten years. That we all made it robbery in Los Angeles. Locane has
this is the way for us to come together as and could bring along groups of people often been compared to the artist for
a community. Me and Sheff, for example, we know, it’s a great feeling. —Dougie B their similar voices and styles.
we will always fuck with each other, but
the music made the bond way stronger. during the pandemic, we didn’t really i was born and raised in Canarsie. From
We know there’s a lot of negativity around have much to do, but we had a studio in
the music we put out, but we don’t let that the projects. We were just in there making my hood, the only other person to do it was
trick us out the game. We don’t only put out music for fun until we gained a fan base.
drill music; we artists now. A drill rapper They encouraged us to take it seriously. It’s Pop. I don’t talk about it much, but I grew up
is what I started as. It’s not what I’m going a life-changing thing. I just want for artists
to end as. to be smart. We need to deal with the with him. I’m talking about sleepovers-in-
criticism and just face the fact that there’s
➔ SHEFF G gonna be stuff to overcome. —B-Lovee my-crib type shit. He let people from where
The video for Sheff G’s latest single,
“No Remorse,” is a montage depicting ➔ RAH SWISH we’re from know that it’s possible to make it.
a day in the life of a rapper at the top The 26-year-old East NewYorker started
of his game: in the studio, putting on an rapping in 2015 at the encouragement of I’ll always be grateful to him for that because
impromptu show in a mansion with friends and had a local hit,“Debo,” in 2017.
the Winners Circle, walking a goat down He signed to Woo Entertainment/Empire outside of him, unless you’re talking about
the sidewalk in NewYork. It’s a stark in 2020 and has since put out two albums.
contrast to the 23-year-old Flatbush star’s Biggie, there’s not that many people with
current situation—locked up on a two- you could listen to Jay-Z or Nas
year sentence for weapons charges in back in the day—they were talking about that bass, that deep voice that know how to
a prison upstate—and the continuation drugs, gangs, guns. That’s true of almost
of a run of prison releases culminating every genre of music that got something home in on it. Pop did that too. He opened
in his July album From the Can. to do with hip-hop. As drill continues to
grow mainstream and street rappers make that door.
when we started rapping, at first it money off it, then you will have more drill
was just for fun. We didn’t think nothing of music that’s got to do with lavish living. You I try not to get into politics too much
it. But when we blew up and the money not going to be rich and go on shopping
started coming, we learned we could feed sprees and take vacations and still be when it comes to what the mayor is saying
our families. It changed everything. Why talking about the same thing. Right now,
would you want to take that from us? You’re drill is still in a baby form. about drill. I just know I understand what
going to leave us nothing to turn to.
People talk about drill, but they won’t take ➔ RON SUNO drill really is; it’s an art where we get to let
the time to really understand what we go Twenty-two-year-old Bronx native
through. They don’t want to. I was living in Ron Suno started rapping when he was our emotions out without actually mur-
a shelter. I’ve got a two-year sentence right 13. He released his debut album, Swag
now for attempted gun possession. Now I’m Like Mike, in 2020 and dedicated it to dering, robbing, or breaking into some-
upstate with people that have five years for those who inspired him: Michael Jordan,
attempted murder. How is my crime com- Michael Jackson, and Mike Tyson. body’s home. A lot of people will look at us
parable to that? Obviously, there’s a tar-
geted situation going on. Growing up in the i want to be the Michael Jackson of drill. and say we’re vulgar, we’re disrespectful,
hood, you battling shit like that on the regu- Bronx drill is oriented toward dancing. It’s
lar. You’re always the one that’s being looked connecting more with the kids on TikTok. we’re violent. We get pulled over three, four
down upon. So this is nothing new to me. I
put all my pain in the music, my happiness, times a day, and all they want to know is if
my everything. And then the music is what
gives me pain. It’s like a revolving door. I got guns in the car. The odds are always

going to be against us. Whether it’s the cops,

whether it’s the opps, whether it’s somebody

you don’t know from a hole in the wall that’s

just jealous. You got to just be very, very, very

eyes open. It’s not a good way to live.

That’s why I get the younger crowd.

Everything for them is flashing a gun, but

I try to tell them, “Yo, if you want to flash

your gun, put it in a story line.” Because

now you not just waving guns in the

camera; you’re showing me a piece of your

life through the music.

I wish Pop could have still been here

because I feel like he would have put us

back on top faster. You see how down

South you got that sound we all know:

DaBaby, Young Thug, all them. We

would’ve been another example of it. But

we’re still building. The East is still holding

it down. ■

46 new york | august 15–28, 2022

DOUGIE B ELI FROSS

25, the Bronx 21, Crown Heights

DUSTY LOCANE BIG YAYA

23, Canarsie 24, South Jamaica

ROWDY REBEL

30, East Flatbush