Review
“Neyfakh’s book could be among the first entries in an emerging 'poptimist' canon — the idea that music can and ought to have both critical integrity and mainstream appeal… As Neyfakh reflects on the distance between himself and his friend, he also channels something at the heart of the American tradition: the gulf between mainstream society and its dreamers. There’s something appealing, even Gatsbyesque going on here."
—Washington Post
“Elegant . . . Keenly, wryly observed . . . More than a profile of a hyper-niche artist, The Next Next Level is the quasi-memoir of a friendship . . . between [Neyfakh] and Juiceboxxx: fan and idol, writer and artist, career man and renegade."
—Boston Globe
Highbrow/Brilliant on New York Magazine's Approval Matrix
“The book is light on its feet and often very funny… The Next Next Level is suffused with evangelical energy, and Neyfakh succeeds in making Juiceboxxx into a figure of intrigue."
—The New Republic
“Unexpectedly universal . . . A charming book that’s half memoir, half critical experiment . . . A tale of compromise and generational longing, of green grass and the fantasy of jumping into someone else’s life, if only to imagine what would have happened if you had successfully rebooted your personality somewhere along the way.”
—The New Yorker
“Essential . . . A complex, intimate picture of what it’s like to be an artist, and what it’s like to like art."
—Fader
“A funny, broad-minded, enchanting reflection on the intersection of art and commerce. You’ll find no better account of what it’s like to make music outside the mainstream in 2015."
—Paris Review, Staff Picks
“Neyfakh succeeds at bringing to life fringe niches of youth culture, the urgency that can attend even the most raggedy of DIY shows."
—Details
“Will inspire you to act on your dreams."
—Refinery29, The Ultimate Guide to Summer Reading
“Rousing . . . [A] chronicle of unlikely and unwavering fandom."
—Pitchfork
“The Next Next Level brings together two artists, each of whom has a brutally candid story to tell about the struggles sparked by their internal narratives."
—Barnes & Noble Review
“A story about passion, never quite getting famous, and the meaning that lies at the margins of culture… A portrait of an artist with a difference."
—Dazed, Essential Summer Reading
“A meditation on the relationship between art and struggle, whether one is worth the other, and between artist and audience… A compelling read."
—Michael Hann, The Guardian (UK)
“Fizzy and affectionate . . . As he peels back the layers of Juiceboxxx, it’s the author we see more clearly.”
—Maclean’s (Canada)
“An intimate portrait of an intriguing and idiosyncratic artist whose inner angst is as sympathetic as it is compelling."
—Kirkus Reviews
“Leon Neyfakh's book does the heady work of trying to understand what makes an artist, and whether one can live in the world as we have organized it. In the process he uses his incisive journalistic voice to tackle masculinity, friendship and identity with humor, grace and real depth."
—Lena Dunham
“I've never met Leon Neyfakh, and I wouldn't recognize Juiceboxxx if he knocked on my front door and literally offered me a box of juice. But this is a great book about the intractable dissonance between loving art, wanting art, and being an actual artist. The story is small, but the ideas are massive.”
—Chuck Klosterman, author of Fargo Rock City and Killing Yourself to Live
“The Next Next Level is an intriguing story about the pursuit of an artistic lifestyle. Leon Neyfakh writes as a fan and friend about musician and performer Juiceboxxx and in doing so he honestly uncovers the personal sacrifice and uncertainty that most artists wrestle with daily. It’s a new and worthwhile look at some big questions surrounding creativity.”
—Craig Finn, The Hold Steady
“In The Next Next Level, Leon Neyfakh traces the career of underground musician Juiceboxxx, and teases out the internal conflicts that dog everyone, not just obscure rappers: adult vs child, professional vs enthusiast, artist vs spectator, good vs bad. Neyfakh is empathic and precise, leaving you unsure of which side you'd pick when—as Neyfakh and Juiceboxxx both do—you have to choose.”
—Sasha Frere-Jones
“In his journalism, Leon Neyfakh tends to tackle the murk and miracle of deep thinking, trends, history, and the law. With Juiceboxxx, he’s dared to confront a more ambiguous idea: the murk of the self. Neyfakh wanted to write a profile. He found, instead, a moving, invaluable, acutely sensitive case study of what drives some of us to remain who we inexorably are.”
—Wesley Morris
“Are artists different from other people, or do they just not know any better? The myth of the Romantic genius is alive and well, to judge by Leon Neyfakh's fascination with the underground musician Juiceboxxx, and as Neyfakh struggles to understand the myth, and its extreme forms two centuries after Byron, he proves as thoughtful as Friedrich Schiller and as funny as Geoff Dyer.”
—Caleb Crain, author of Necessary Errors
“In his eloquent look at a fascinating musician, Leon Neyfakh explores the difference between an artist and a fan and suggests that for those Americans under thirty there is no difference between high and low culture. An enthralling double portrait of the performer and the observer and a meditation on the passage from adolescent dreams to adult assessments.”
—Edmund White, author of City Boy
About the Author
LEON NEYFAKH is a reporter for Slate. He was previously the Ideas staff writer for the Boston Globe and a reporter for the New York Observer. He has written for The FADER, the New Republic, Rollingstone.com, NewYorker.com, and a number of other publications. Born in the Soviet Union, Neyfakh was raised in Oak Park, IL, and now lives in Brooklyn.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION
When I saw him this past January, I asked Juiceboxxx directly if I was right to suspect that I had inadvertently ruined everything. I laughed as the words came out of my mouth, because the possibility that he would say, “Yeah, actually,” or even, “Yeah, kind of,” was too horrible for me to fathom with a straight face. Juice had been a free man before he decided to let me be his friend; he may have been living an uncertain, not very comfortable life, but at least he was in his own lane, his hands gripping the wheel even as he swerved, skidded, and stalled. Then I came along and made the myopic assumption that what was best for me, a journalist with a wife, a dog, and a savings account, was also best for him, a turbulent and ambitious artist with dreams I never had a chance at understanding. True, he had asked me to tell him if I heard about any job opportunities. Nevertheless, it was because of me that he ended up pursuing one, and in the process, became a participant in something almost unthinkably ordinary.
On paper it didn’t sound so bad: I had given his name to two former colleagues of mine, who had e-mailed everyone in their professional network saying they had just taken over a fancy magazine about contemporary art, and were looking to bring in new people who could work a few days a week for not very much money. Juiceboxxx, at this time, was making ends meet by writing TV jingles and DJing parties, and living in the basement of a house in Far Rockaway where he paid two hundred dollars a month to sleep on the floor behind a bar. A weekly paycheck, it seemed, would be useful to him. Among other things, it would allow him to finally pay the guy he had hired to put the finishing touches on his new album.
I thought I was helping. What I didn’t think about was the possibility that having an office job for the first time in his life, and spending his days writing articles and blog posts about other people’s art, could throw Juice into a seriously dislocating existential crisis. I began to worry, after he was hired and started going in to work, that the simmering sense of panic that had always infused his entire being, not to mention his music, would thin out, evaporate, and float away.
Among other things, the job meant doing work under his legal name instead of under “Juiceboxxx” for the first time in his life. It also meant that he soon had a room of his own in a decent Brooklyn apartment, and could predict with almost 100 percent reliability where he would be at any given time of day.
“Did I destroy you?” I asked as we sat down to dinner in Soho, both of us coming from our respective offices. Juice smiled and looked down at his food. It took him a minute to answer.
This little book, as you’ll see if you keep reading, is about the difference between being an artist and not being one, and the confusion many people feel as they try to figure out which one they are, or should be, or wish they were. It’s also about two guys colliding with each other at a crucial moment, and despite having roughly nothing in common, using one another as mirrors both for better and for worse.
During our early meetings in New York about two years ago, I spent half the time contorting myself in order to impress Juiceboxxx, and the other half resolving to present myself to him without fear or self-loathing, as the person I really was. The story here is about the ungainly and confusing grind that inevitably comes with shifting between those two gears.
More than anything else, this is a book about people trying to figure out what it is inside of them that makes them special, and then devoting themselves to the hard work of making it legible to the outside world. It’s both a portrait of my idol—a talented outsider who has spent his life, figuratively and somewhat literally, running away from home—and a memoir about defining yourself through your taste, only to discover that the things you love don’t easily fit with who you think you are, or who you were supposed to be. Juiceboxxx leveled with me, sometimes deliberately and sometimes by accident, during the months I spent following him around and interviewing him. In the subsequent pages I will level with you, and with him.
