By Kara Kokinos

A rapper forcing himself to not speak seems like a strange choice for a debut follow-up, but Rex Mac isn’t exactly the person to go for safe choices. Her Name Is Happiness is a 6 and a half minute transportation to the internal space that Rex wishes to inhabit, a “personif[ication] of ultimate inner peace.” The ebbing nature of the project is palpable, coordinated with the movements of dancer IJ Chan and the vision of Kat Waterman. An Impressionist ballerina moving through subliminal space served as Rex’s inspiration and was translated into IJ moving their way through an array of spaces, a “short little trip,” that was meditative and escapist.

“I’m usually in the corner delegating but this involved a lot of trust,” Rex notes of the process of creating the visual elements of Her Name Is Happiness. The person who creates all of his beats surrendering control to other artists allows the visual EP to breathe in a way that demonstrates the talent of its creator. Waterman’s camerawork follows Chan’s movements in a way that allows for the unexpected, “[un]refined but reflective of the flow and openness of the pieces.” Rex gave the songs to IJ a month before production and didn’t see the moves until the day-of, but the lack of rigidity accomplished exactly what he set out to create.

Waterman’s location choices serve as a exploration of space that feels grounded in reality while allowing Chan to transcend through movement, starting and ending in the juxtaposing urban and natural space, reflecting itself. The dreamiest space is featured in the video for “Holding Space,” where Chan is bound up by her own movements, creating and escaping knots of her own design. Meanwhile, “Midair” takes place in a “industrial, metallic, [and] tinny” space that mimics the sounds Rex created. Her movements have an improvisational intention that toggles between extremes while maintaining flow. Waterman and Chan “filled in the blanks” that Rex left open in his intentional abandoning of self.

HNIH is a destruction of the rapper’s compulsion to self-profess. Rex’s idea for the project was one based in catharsis; it was a blowing off of conceptual steam while straddling more traditional hip-hop albums. Rex is still a rapper and “hip-hop [is still] my foundation but that term is ever evolving.” He knew that his audience would be expecting “808s and trap beats” after his 2017 release ABLOOM and has been smirking through the promotion of his new project at the idea of getting to mess with the expectations people have of him. This album isn’t made for fans or commercial attention; it’s a “middle finger to conventions” in the same way that hip-hop is.

Rex is an avid consumer of Muji ads. He watches the snippets of captured life to decompress, for the mundane routine that is routine. That is a part of him that doesn’t see the light when he is performing: the quiet spaces of contemplation and living life. It releases him from himself and from the expectations that come with his identity. Her Name Is Happiness has the same effect as a cleansing rain, creating the perfect blurred effect in which to live, rather than reflect on, life.

You can watch Her Name Is Happiness below in full or listen to the soundtrack on Soundcloud or Spotify.

“Her Name Is Happiness”

“Midair”

“Lucy”

“Holding Space”

“Vorfreude”