In House With Matisyahu: Getting His Beard Shaved at Supercuts, Hasidic-Fan Backlash and Newfound Anonymity

When Matisyahu decided to make a break with Hasidic Judaism, shaving his hair and beard and no longer wearing a yarmulke, there was an unlikely institution that helped him go through with this huge moment.

"Supercuts was calling my name," he says, relaxing on a couch in our New York office. "I couldn't turn it down. It was like $9.99 for a shave. [The stylist] didn't know what she was getting into. I was like 'I want it off' and she's like 'how short?' and I'm like 'No, all of it.'"

As more and more locks fell off, the significance of the act hit the reggae rapper and, by turn, the woman helping him complete his transformation. "At some point, she could see as she was shaving that my eyes were watering up, " he says with a laugh. "She could see something was going on and I was like '10 years, a decade.' I started growing this beard in 2001. And then she started kind of crying a little bit."

Listen to Matisyahu's Spark Seeker
Matisyahu made the announcement to his million-plus Twitter followers, posting pictures of his new look and writing "No more Chassidic reggae superstar." He was greeted with support from some and anger from others, with some fans still holding onto their feelings of betrayal.

"There's a very small population of neurotic people, shall I say, who are still making comments when I post something where I'm not wearing a yarmulke," he says, "but the majority of my fans have really come to bat for me. There has been some sort of split where the people who are more touched by the music are going to be there, and the people who are listening to me because ... I don't even know if those people, they've probably never bought my CDs even. They're people who I represented something for, and as long as I was representing their thing it was all good, but as soon as you start to do your own thing, they don't really understand so much.

"I know that there are a lot of fans who found out my story and how I got into Judaism and took similar roads. Those are probably the people who are most pissed off. It's kind of like you're leading people somewhere. Not that I was planning to -- I was just singing the songs that are important to me -- but in a sense people are being led somewhere and then it's like you pull out the rug. I guess that's how they see it."
What strikes Matisyahu now is that he probably should have waited to make this transition until after he put out his new album, Spark Seeker, which he was working on while contemplating this decision. Recorded partly in Israel, the poppy, urban album also contains a myriad of spiritual influences, with verses in Hebrew and Yiddish, Middle Eastern musical cues and even translated Kabbalah passages recited by his sons.

"It'd be a shame if people write off the music without giving it a chance, but you know the way life works," he says, calling the album his "story of searching for authenticity."

Now, with the controversy mostly behind him, Matisyahu is proud to release his new album, and, later this summer, will star in "The Possession," a horror film about a rabbi's son trying to exorcise a demon. In the meantime, he's enjoying the anonymity his new look affords him.

"You don't feel like you have something to upkeep," he says. "If I want to spit, I can spit. I'm just some guy, not a Hasidic guy. I guess part of the reason I started dressing that way in the first place was I wanted to hold myself to a certain standard. Not anymore. Now I just want to hang out."

Though that's not always the case, especially when his true fans spot him. "Yesterday I was in Çentral Park, like 10 o'clock in the morning and these two hippie kids walk by and one looks at me. She's like 'Is it you? It's you! Come smoke a joint with us,'" he says, on the verge of cracking up. "I"m like, 'It's 10 in the morning! You think I'm gonna walk around with you two smoking a joint in Central Park, you got another thing coming to you." Like, you people attract more attention, bright tie-dye and dreadlocks. There's a great move."

Spark Seeker is available now via Fallen Sparks Records.