SNP’s word of the day: Schizopolis

Illustration by Lewis Mirrett
Illustration by Lewis Mirrett

Word: Schizopolis

Meaning: A fractured, kaleidoscopic urban landscape.

Usage: “In the meantime, [Nicki Minaj has] kept building her stable of alter-ego thoroughbreds—Nicki Mirage; Nicky Lewinsky; Rosa; Roman Zolanski and his weirdly British mother, Martha Zolanski—all of whom parade through the pastel schizopolis of her bizarro music-video universe. ” — David Wallace-Wells in the New York Times Magazine

You should know it because: If the cover of New York mag’s fairly excellent fashion issue is to be believed, it’s Nicki’s world. We’re just living in it. The writer calls her look “a laundry pile of influences from the anything-goes fashion future,” which kind of makes me not to want to wake up tomorrow, and heralds her as the only female rapper who’s beat the game—because she’s not afraid to be sexy. Yeah, anyway. Among the many, many words Wallace-Wells uses/thinks he made up, schizopolis sticks out. It’s the name of a 1996 experimental Soderbergh film that he thought would change the world (he thought wrong), but hasn’t been used much elsewhere, even though it perfectly evokes urban atomization in our strange, upended times. You’d think it would be the name of a club, or at least a club track. Get on it, Nicki?

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