To the editor:

The recent death, quite young, of the rap DJ Prince Be, who with his brother founded P.M. Dawn, was terrible, but it did not prevent commentators and obituary writers from distorting the duo’s history and outlook.

P.M. Dawn’s essence is almost without any exception swept under an enormous rug of “mysticism,” and this is not totally wrong. The mysticism was there, and even in generous amounts. However, even more significant was P.M. Dawn’s unapologetic and matter-of-fact attacks on so-called “reality.”

The duo that was not afraid to say “reality used to be a friend of mine” made such criticisms as so inevitable, so obvious, even taken for granted, that their rightness seemed more of a starting point for the possibility of future action. While stopping short of attributing their point-of-view to a naive idealism to be contrasted with naive realism, I must say that naive realism’s proponents must be given pause with the supreme ease at which P.M. Dawn’s work brushes their conclusions aside.

Aside from all the loopiness, the weirdness, the eccentricities and idiosyncracies that kept us listening to even their most critically-excoriated LPs, was P.M. Dawn’s militancy. Their magisterial attacks on “reality,” though delivered low-key, nevertheless shove aside all concept of them as impossible, as insane. These advances, these campaigns, are coming, they cannot be avoided or defeated, and despite their being “crazy,” despite their being too “impossible” to even be mentioned, they are happening anyway. P.M. Dawn was the soundtrack for their victory, which is on its way whether you like it or not.

Daniel Boyer

New York