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Nardwuar on his best and worst interviews

“I went ‘Doot-doola-doot-doo’ and then he Silly Stringed me.”

In 1993, a gonzo journalist and punk singer named John Ruskin barged his way into a press conference with Mikhail Gorbachev to ask, “Of all the leaders you’ve encountered, who wears the biggest pants?” Ruskin, known to his peers as Nardwuar the Human Serviette, had a habit of carrying hisnutty onstage energy into his interviews, and swiftly gained a reputation for befuddling and bedazzling his subjects. He might casually bring up the name of Seth Rogen’s mall cashier when he was a kid, Kendrick Lamar’s Louisiana Chicken order, or Travis Scott’s high-school Spanish teacher. He gives gifts that will remind his subjects of past lives they’d long forgotten, like the poster of the film Coffy that had Drake reminiscing about his days as a horny teenager.

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