Photo Illustrations by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Soundcloud
Bringing together New York City’s discrete social worlds—art, nightlife, academia, fashion, music, film—is a time-tested path to celebrity. In early 2019, Wolfe Margolies was well on his way down that path. Rapping as Drrty Pharms, Margolies developed a cult following for his visceral mixtapes. Vice wrote up his performance at an Austin “anti-SXSW” showcase, describing him as “a rainbow in an inky sky with a torrent of stuff to say over his piercing feedback.” He released a collaborative EP with no wave legend Lydia Lunch, leading to a name-drop in Rolling Stone. At his “Subspace” parties in Alphabet City and Bushwick, he booked acts like $UICIDEBOY$ well before they went platinum.
But Margolies wasn’t confined to rap and nightlife. For a time, he worked as an assistant in the Columbia University Classics Department. He appeared in a sprawling art installation by MoMA-collected Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard—coinciding with New York Fashion Week in 2017, and covered in GQ and The New York Times. A large-format image of Margolies masturbating in the middle of a field decorated the artist’s imagining of a “dystopic department store.”
Given songs like “Rape is a Victimless Crime,” public opinion of Margolies was divided, to say the least. Some saw his music as boundary-pushing; others as tasteless. Small-but-vocal groups on Twitter and Tumblr suggested his lyrics might not be fictitious.