Death Grips - The Money Store (Experimental Hip-Hop)
”Now here is some amusing, candy-coated anarchy.” - iTunes page synopsis of The Money Store
We all know what #1 is, but let me just say the fact that it was a tough decision is a testament to the The Money Store. Following the Exmilitary mixtape, this album basically launched Death Grips into the stratosphere of internet music fame and made the group something far more than a Hella side project (although getting the first ever 10/10 rating from Anthony Fantano and the constant discussion by 4chan’s music board /mu/ probably helped too). I included the opening line of that iTunes synopsis as an epigraph because it really does describe the entire energy of the album. Something wild but exhilarating, something with an almost playfully manic edge to its chaos that’s perfectly exemplified by the pitched-up vocal intro to “Punk Weight”. While the quality of the album has aged like fine wine since since its 2012 release, the sheer aggression has been surpassed by a variety of soundcloud rappers (and by Death Grips themselves).
That said, at the time of release this was something else. The energy and abrasiveness of hardcore punk, drumming from the math rock drum god himself, Zach Hill. The beats flirt with everything from the abrasiveness of industrial music (like Dalek previously), the frenticism of IDM, and at times it gets straight-up catchy like on “Get Got”, “I’ve Seen Footage”, and “Hacker”. You can’t sit still to this album. There’s an anecdote by Tyler, the Creator, where he describes the group as “his meth” and says the first time he ever listened to Death Grips, him and a friend put together an entire trampoline in 17 minutes. “I put that on and I can do anything and do it efficient as fuck.” Or another instance where he decided to burn rubber at a red light while listening to Death Grips which caused his car to spin out at 60-70 mph in the middle of a Los Angeles intersection (no one was hurt or anything). This is what I’m getting at, this music forces you to move, to do things, not in the “get up and want to dance” sort of way but rather like you simply can’t sit still. The music makes you restless, forcing you to expel energy because you feel like you’re about to overflow. The Money Store isn’t just a tough listen for the uninitiated, it does so in this energetic fashion that prioritizes speed and aggression, but with the efficiency of technology.
When this album first came out it one-upped most other aggressive rap projects and its beats are sequenced in a way that’s calculated but kinetic it makes the music feel inhuman. Voices modulated, synths roaring, stuff no natural instrument can make. However, the drumming somehow keeps pace with it all, a testament to Zach Hill’s sheer skill and speed, dude’s so good he puts a fucking computer to shame. The music on The Money Store is basically what it would probably sound like if your computer could do stimulants before BSODing.
Many of the song’s hooks are more like mantras, short memorable phrases that are easily and satisfyingly shoutable, like “I’ve seen footage, I stay noided.” repeated ad infinitum, “Hustle Bones comin’ out my mouth”, and of course, “Teaching bitches how to swim”. As The Money Store has become a piece of internet culture, it is, to a point at least, about the Internet and “being online”. “I’ve Seen Footage”, the closest the band has ever had to a pop banger, is about Ride’s growing paranoia from watching videos of police brutality on LiveLeak. “Hacker” delivers probably some of the greatest one-liner rap lyrics ever, and is a celebration of a sort of cyber-gangster attitude, being a badass hacker, all that cool shit. I find that with all the memes Ride’s lyrics have occasionally been quite underrated. Not only in how effective they are in conveying emotions, but in his versatility and his ability to, using the cliche here, “paint a picture with words”. The music may dunk you head first into the madness but the lyrics are what fleshes it out into something far more terrifying and exciting.
The Money Store was a look into the near-future, which might just be the present at this point, of a dystopia obsessed with technology, the Internet, and violence. Something paranoid but also strangely accepting of it all. As if this state of discomfort and unrest brought on by the Information age is the only place one could feel at home in.
This reads more like rambling than an essay. But the point is, album is good, album is smart, album perfectly encapsulates the modern technological age and all of its glorious and terrifying insanity. You should listen to this album.
kianamaiart
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janainaart
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