With the DC Auto Show coming into town this month, we decided to explore its significance and find out why certain cars, specifically the Nissan “Z,” mean so much to D.C. culture. We enlisted Rahiem Supreme – rapper extraordinaire and car junkie – along with talented photographer Shaughn Cooper – who we caught a day before he was set to join Ari Lennox on tour – to accompany us to the show.
For Shaughn, the show rekindles memories of his childhood. His father used to take him when he was younger, and that may have been where his love of cars first developed. He recalls seeing huge monster trucks and Jeep exhibits where people could drive cars down steep hills for a thrill ride. It is no surprise, then, that one of the cars in his garage is a Jeep Cherokee.
In addition, he owns a 2003 Mercedes Benz E500, a 1996 Nissan 200sx, and a 1988 Nissan 300zx. His love for the 300zx is another callback to his childhood; his grandfather owned a brown 300zx with sheepskin seats which was just the coolest thing to a young Shaughn. As he got older and gained more disposable income, he was finally able to purchase his own Z with the help of his friend and fellow car junkie Rahiem Supreme.
The Nissan/Datsun 300zx has a long and storied history in D.C. Back in the 80s, a lot of young black men were making a lot of money, fast, in a lot of different ways. When you’re young with a lot of money, you want to be on the cutting edge, you want the coolest things money can buy, and at the time, that was the 300zx. The car had a digital leather dashboard, voice command, and the roof could be dismantled to resemble what is called a “T-top”. It was like something out of Knightrider. Anyone getting money in the ’80s had to have one.
Rahiem Supreme lives and breathes nostalgia. You can feel it in his music, you can see it in his clothes, and you can hear it in the way he talks. His journey with the Z has been quite a long one, and he has owned ten of them over the past ten years. Through trial and error, he’s finally figured out how to properly take care of and improve the car without ruining it. His Z is truly special – with race car seats, a Pokeball gearbox, a detachable steering wheel, and plastered with stickers – it looks like something from a video game. “Boosted Betty,” as he calls his Z, is here to stay though. He’s learned enough through his years of driving and wrecking Z’s to finally perfect one.
Walking through the Auto Show with Rahiem and Shaughn was an enlightening experience. Watching them interact with the cars and analyze things that I would have never noticed was interesting. While at the show, we managed to catch up with another local artist, Shawn Perkins, also known as SPtheplug. Shawn was painting cars as a part of the “ART-of-Motion” exhibit. On the surface, the DC Auto Show is just a showcase of the latest vehicles from car manufacturers but once you dig a bit deeper, you can see a real connection between cars and the art world.
