Death Grips.
some questions off the top of my head include:
why?
how?
what the fuck?
If you share these sentiments, I strongly urge you to watch this album review, get a Grip (heh) of what's going on, and gently apply context to your ear-wounds before you listen to the great, glorious fountain of horse shit that is Death Grips.
I hated and mocked my friends for bandwagon-ing this band, but as a fan of Fantano's album reviews for a while, I gave Death Grips a chance after watching it. I also appreciated producer Zach Hill's work a lot more on this record, and the experience of my first determined playthrough of Exmilitary was focused more on the sounds Hill brought to the table than MC Ride's spoken-word Benadryl overdose.
Thoughts?
If you haven't heard of Death Grips, or Anthony Fantano, or don't frequent 4chan, or aren't a horrid human being, then this is not the post or the album for you.
everytime some1 mentions DGs i feel obliged to mention B L A C K I E , who pioneered the style DGs rode the wave of acclaim on (releasing tracks like this in 2009, DGs form late 2010), and also who is to me the more interesting, experimental and flat out real artist imo. Lyrically far more honest / engaging , and far greater breadth of vision. I like DGs a lot but usually solely on a surface / stylistic level , B L A C K I E hits emotional depths & intellectual heights on top of that this post (also linked above) showcases a bit of that breadth: http://zhaep.tumblr.com/post/74298969408/yeezus-death-grips-death-grips-b-l-a-c-k-i he left the hardcore electro style years ago and continues to steamroll genre constrictions. his latest album is a sensational blend of extended experimental electronics , live instruments and free jazz saxophone , & his usual poetic / emotional evocations edit: wow did not see the earlier reply by IAMORM , had this post open on a tab since earlier today but just got around to posting. tell ur boy he rules
Yo! BE posted here again, so I just saw your reply as well! Let's be friends.
Death Grips is simply the latest addition to the ridiculous discography (check out those performance credits) of Zach Hill, originally of chaos-instrumental-pop group Hella. You should also scope out Nervous Cop featuring members of Deerhoof and a peep at a pre-Milk-Eyed Mender Joanna Newsome. I would definitely assume that this is mostly his doing, he's very good at picking the best people to work with, making them be weird, and drawing out their best efforts. My axe to grind with Death Grips is that their first album is scattered affair that borderline steals scenes directly from Food for Animals (2008, dude) and my very good friend, who is very well known in some "underground" (for lack of a better term) circles, BLACKIE, who has been digging in this crate for a loooong time. In the summer of 2010, in the tail-end days of the "chillwave" thing, he and the band I was in at the time went on tour on the east coast. We got added onto one of the Brooklyn rooftop parties when those were starting to go strong. He has a very cathartic live presence and encourages the crowd to get rowdy, so some people out of the 300-400 people there did, but the rest just bolted and made a giant circle, staring at him like he was an alien. I saw some blog posts later with comments like "wtf was up with the rapper dude?" "that was the worst show ever" etc. He gets off to this and is used to it, so no biggie. 6 months later, this video comes out, a few months after that, Exmilitary drops, and all of the sudden, the noisier and weirder the hiphop, the better. My friend hasn't been swept up in this wave, other than some producers in NY hit him up pretty often, wanting to make music with him, but he's always been a lone wolf. He was supposed to do some shows with DG, they cancelled on him and never tried to organize anything else, the dudes from clipping played a show with him and told him he was one of their primary influences, there are rumors that Kanye was listening to BLACKIE, amongst others, when he was getting inspiration for Yeezus (tho that album is more so indebted to my one true love, Arca), but he's still not really gotten much bigger. Granted, noisey hiphop has been around for a long time, there's plenty of reason to believe the DG was the logical conclusion of all the members well before they started this project, but they still owe my man a favor, imo. At least tour with the dude that was hashing out this genre well before it started getting polluted.
How am I just now seeing this, god damn rushmore all I want to do is read pages about those scenes, 2010 was right when I started super getting into music and I missed most of the chillwave movement and the advent of the popularization of noisy hip-hop. Death Grips hits the big scene and then all of a sudden Yeezus happens and everybody is either "the fuck is this" or "the fuck is this". Gonna have to do some digging into BLACKIE and Arca and everything else you posted up there, I don't know much about noisy hip-hop besides Death Grips and maybe you can count a few Young Fathers songs in there.
Haha, glad you liked it, I have another story from that tour about how I'm pretty sure we slept at Lil Ugly Mane's house right before he started dropping tapes, but, well, that's actually the whole story. You should check him, Antwon, Cities Aviv, Negashi Armada (or whatever he's going by now) out, too. They're all later additions to the scene, except for negashi.
GET GET GET GET GOT GOT GOT GOT BLOOD RUSH TO MY HEAD LIT HOT LOCK POPIN OFF THE FUCKIN BLOCK KNOT CLOCKIN WRIST SLIT WATCH BENT THOUGHT BOT Death Grips is cool. If nothing, they provide solid Fantano material for suuuure. Oh! I love Death Grips because it's the first time I got to be elitist about artists and have people feel offended because of it. So all you fuckers that don't understand why I hate the Beatles can SUCK IT, hahahaha!
I think Death Grips are a fascinating band. They're also an aquired taste, in my opinion. If anybody is on the fence about them, listen to The Money Store, their seond album. That was my point of entry into their catalog.
I like Death Grips because I like violent, noisy, experimental music. They do a great job of making music like this. I also appreciate how they do what they want, when they want, and don't try to kiss anybody's asses, whether that may be the music industry or their own fans. They cancel shows on their fans, drop albums out of nowhere, break up and act like their still together, fuck over their label, etc. Many people may find this disstasteful, but I personally find this rebellion and unpredictableness to be refreshing. Say what you want, I don't think anybody can argue that they follow their own metronome and no one else's, and I respect that. There isn't enough of that in today's world.
That being said, I am sad the "cult" of Death Grips is eclipsing their music. I do think there is a bigger purpose and meaning behind their actions (not that we'll ever know what it is), but the way they have been turned into a running joke is disappointing.
r/deathgrips is also a good source of all things Death Grips.I would give you a strong six, light seven.
lol!
All I know about Death Grips I learned from vastly inappropriate mashups. I guess Takyon's the only song of theirs I've actually listened to. I listened to it once, and didn't get it. Then I listened to it again, and again. I don't like it exactly, but I'm a point where I kind of appreciate it.
I've never really listened to deathgrips regularly but I saw them play in Columbus about 2 years ago, some friends were going and I figured it'd be interesting. It totally was and was also pretty fun. They go wild on stage and the music sorta gets the crowd doing something inbetween bouncing and mobbing like a hip hop show and a push pit. The band that opened rat king was a bit better to me, expiremental hip hop with a bit more purpose in the lyrics. The show was also fun because the dj kept playing old grime/dub songs I know. That being said I probably wanted go out of my way to see them again.