EVERY GENRE PROJECT - April 17 - Rap Rock
Genre of the Day - Rap Rock
Album of the Day - Jenny Death by Death Grips (2015)
April 17, 2024
Today my hearing went through quite an ordeal. No, that is not a knock to Death Grips. It’s a knock to my own stupidity. Sometimes when I take my headphones off in order to complete a task requiring my ears, I’ll turn them up all the way so I can still hear from them while they rest nearby. And then occasionally I’ll pause my music in the midst of that, and forget to turn it back down after putting my headphones back on. That is exactly what happened today. Opportunely, I unpaused full-volume smack-dab in the middle of an extended scream from Death Grips’ MC Ride. It genuinely hurt, but at least I got an up-close-and-personal experience with the genre of the day.
Rap and rock may not necessarily seem to be two genres conducive to collaboration: there is a rather large emphasis on singing on rock, even when that singing comes out as mangled, impassioned roars, and clarity of rapping might be difficult to get across through the timbral thickness of heavy guitars or unconventional time signatures. However, the two have had their converging moments ever since the day Aerosmith hit up Run-DMC for a remix to “Walk This Way.” As rap became less emphasized on just wordplay over breakbeats and became more of a political phenomenon, it unleashed a growing punk sensibility that some artists seized upon and melded more directly. Rap became a juggernaut commercial genre by the end of the ‘90s, so the opposite was true as well: aspiring rockers began to rap, becoming a major facet of nu metal artists like Limp Bizkit and Rage Against the Machine. Unfortunately, the dominance of nu metal as the face of rap rock caused many to lampoon the fusion. The angsty nature, pop elements, and the rap aspect seen by many as corny by many gave nu metal a bit of a bad name among a ton of music enthusiasts.
Nonetheless, while the late ‘90s rap rock ‘golden age’ died down, in the 2010s innovative groups like Death Grips picked it back up and put their own avant-garde spin on it. Death Grips feels a bit like a genre of their own. Yes, their sound is industrial, thrashing, noisy rock. And indeed they rap. Nonetheless, being declared the vanguards of rap rock feels a bit reductive to their standalone sound. Like many bizarre phenomena, they hail from northern California (love to my Bay Area friends; you’re all so… unique!), and quickly received attention for their innovative, expansive combination of hardcore rap and punk stylings. Death Grips really loves Björk. I feel like including that simply because the first side of today’s album (I only listened ot the B-side, as they’re listed separately on RYM and also were not simultaneously released—the group is notorious for messy releases) is a collection of Björk samples. Nonetheless, that should tell you something about their preference for the sonically unusual and provocative.
There are almost no words to describe today’s album. The melodies are off-kilter and MC Rides’ delivery, intonation, and word emphases are so unusual and power-driven in a way that sets him apart from (and above) other assertive rappers. Through guitar and drums drenched in stormy distortion, MC Rides is still able to pierce through to the bone with his simultaneously take-no-prisoners and offhandedly humorous rapping. Some of them are nonsensical, but delivered with such commanding force that you’re inclined to agree, such as “Inanimate riffs I’m glazin’ / Brag you’re making music, naw, you’re makin’ bacon” on the hyperpop presage “Inanimate Sensation”. While boastful at times (“I'm the only thing ever on my mind / You're one of those things I never rewind” on “Pss Pss”) other verses like the scathing critique of inertia (“Beyond Alive”) offer a varied platter of insights. It’s a listen that can only be described as: how does one even conjure music like this? And therein lies the beauty of Death Grips.