theMIND

Matt Morris is an artist who works in painting, perfume, and conceptual projects. He has presented artwork nationally and internationally. He writes for Artforum.com, Art Papers, ARTnews, Flash Art, Pelican Bomb, Sculpture, and Fragrantica; his writing appears in numerous exhibition catalogues and artist monographs. He is a transplant from southern Louisiana who holds a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and earned an MFA in Art Theory + Practice from Northwestern University, as well as a Certificate in Gender + Sexuality Studies. In Summer 2017 he earned a Certification in Fairyology from Doreen Virtue, PhD. Morris is an adjunct professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The last time we heard from Zarif Wilder, theMIND, he was on a breakout run with his peers. The year was 2016. He was cultivating a genuine fanbase with an endless stream of international tours after dropping his critically praised mixtape, Summer Camp. He was the smiling sage on the mic that dropped acid and invited us to genuinely sing along with the lyric, “Whoever said that the sky was the limit wasn’t living how I was living.” With an enviable list of features and writing credits among some of Chicago’s most beloved artists, including G- Herbo, Mick Jenkins, Noname, Chance the Rapper, Smino, Joey Purp, Saba, Ravyn Lenae, Jamila Woods, and Pivot Gang, he was everywhere.

Then three years passed. Aside from a few tours and singles, he was gone. The lyrics to the final track “Sand Dunes” on his 2016 project began to age less like the reflections of a road-worn artist and more like a haunting prophecy that foreshadowed a period spent helplessly adrift in the endless undertow of the music industry. 

I feel like I'm fading
Like everything I've done has made me jaded
And what I became is
Nothing more than something that is shapeless
Weightless

Legal battles, label struggles, overworked management, friendships dissolving — every cliche horror story found its way into the deluge of troubles that befell Wilder. He was evicted twice. Once when he ran out of money paying his own way out of bad deals, then again - a comical fuck you from the universe - when his landlord informed him that his building would be demolished. 

Quite literally left with only his craft, Don’t Let It Go to Your Head was born as both a survival mantra and record full of brutal honesty to clear the air. Whereas Summer Camp escaped life’s pain in the kaleidoscopic and surreal, Don’t Let It Go to Your Head faces it unflinchingly. In Wilder’s hands, bad times and good times are as fleeting as they are inseparable. As he sings on Atlas Complex, “This the last clean glass in this empty house / Every month I wonder how the hell we make it” and later, 

Now I’m selling everything 
I’m telling everything 
I hope this honesty saves us

Backed exclusively by production from Montreal-based producer, Da-P (Soulection) and mixed by L10, Don’t Let It Go to Your Head will be released on Friday the 13th of November, 2020. But as the very shirt on Wilder’s back read a few months ago, Fuck Luck.