While Dorrey’s artwork is well known, his SoundCloud page feels like an open secret. As DORIS, he’s uploaded over 100 moody, snippet-sized journeys into his psyche, heavy on pitched-up melodies and self-produced loops and dance beats that sample any and everything: kompa, disco, Southern rap, sadboy rock, whatever is viral on TikTok, and some good ol’ fashioned soul. “I’m really in the weeds, bro, niggas that really listen to music sample,” says Dorrey, a month before his exhibit, in his Flatbush bedroom. “When I was around 20 I found out about Dean Blunt’s sampling and it introduced me to how you could do so much with so little.”
It took me a while to even realize that Frank Dorrey and DORIS were the same person. And, once I knew, it made sense, as both the songs and digital art offer a warped, kaleidoscopic look at the mundanities of everyday life. It’s as if disparate memories are stitched together, the sense of nostalgia heightened by the samples. These scenes often feel surreal yet relatable, like his five-part “Side Nigga” series, a spaced-out rom-com, as melancholy and eerie as it is cute and lustful. “I like storytelling, suspense, shit that is wacky, or whatever I’m going through in my interpersonal relationships,” he says, laughing even when he’s serious. There are times when you won’t be entirely sure what’s going on, but the blurriness gives you the space to fill in the blanks using your own imagination.
Raised in Linden, New Jersey, to a Haitian family, Dorrey was the kind of kid whose notebook was filled with doodles. He tells me of a story he used to draw about a kid, based on himself, who used to go around fighting with a giant pencil. The madcap brightness of his artwork and music was informed by cartoons (Naruto, Fairly Odd Parents) and the radiant colors and patterns his parents wore. (If you come from a Haitian family, like me, you know they love some loud-ass clothes.) The idea to start drawing on his phone came naturally, simply because he was always on it. He started making music in high school, much of the same process; the choice to alter his voice so drastically was simple: “I wanted to be somewhere else with the music and for it to not be so focused on me. It took the seriousness out of it in a way.”
Sitting on his bed, in sweats and Crocs, his locs wrapped in a scarf, Dorrey points out to me items in his room that hold sentimental value. As he describes each one, mostly drawings and figurines from friends, a playlist that weaves between garage, R&B, and mellow hip-hop drifts in the background. Slowly, the room goes dark as the sun sets; now, the only light comes from Dorrey’s lighter when he decides to smoke. I thought it was a little odd, but just chalked it up to an artist being an artist. Suddenly, he notices, too. “Oh, shit, I was being mad ominous” he says, through a belly laugh so hard and loud that he rolls over on his back. “I gotta chill; what the hell was I doing?” Always lost in his own world.
Throwback rapper movie corner: Ice Cube in 2004’s Torque
What if I told you there was a mid-2000s ode to post-9/11 America and Mountain Dew where Ice Cube is the leader of a South Central biker gang and that revolves around a set piece where he gets into a motorcycle fight on top of a bullet-fast moving train? If you’re a kindred spirit of mine, your only response would be, “Fire that shit up!” Well, you’re in luck, because it does exist as music video director Joseph Kahn’s adrenaline-fueled and deranged Torque, a ripoff or send-up of Fast & Furious, depending on who you ask. The movie, full of all the shit we love in this column—themes of brotherhood, Fredro Starr acting turns—centers on the somewhat generic Martin Henderson as a drifter who returns to town to clear his name from a crystal meth frame job. (Adam Scott is the sketchy FBI agent trying to track him down.) That’s what we call timeless storytelling: It kind of plays like a Western on bikes instead of horses. So, yes, we get tons of team-ups (Christina Millian is here!), showdowns (somehow, motorcycles are used more like swords), and life lessons that belong under a Snapple cap, and Cube’s gang is caught in the middle of all of it. If none of that appeals to you, then I’ll ruin a great moment for you: At one point, the crew rides off into the desert while Nickelback’s “Someday” blasts way too fucking loudly.
