Art via Evan Solano
Steven Louis did a Scrooge McDuck jump into his pool of candy corn.
Frightening sounds for frightening times. Junglepussy has us covered in One Battle After Another, and against all odds, Skrilla’s song about Kensington bips is sending up middle schools. We still deserve an added dose of discordance right now. Cue the ripgut, and tell Ecko to cut our server off if we ain’t trippin’ on it.
Chaos’ traveling circus does some quick barnstorming along Rockaway, blamping pixels down into smaller pixels for the sport. New Jersey devil Fatboi Sharif raps by way of exorcism, while New York’s Brandon Gallagher lifts sounds of surveillance as Trace Amount. Together, they rattle the reservoirs and then swim laps in the sewage. The bars connect Socrates to Maccabis, Surgeon General to serial killer. As if any connection stood a chance in these lonely, fetid grays.
Everything Sharif makes is Halloween-coded, though the textures are more Korine than Carpenter. “There are a million tough situations right now, but fear will ruin you. Fear will literally take off years of your life,” Sharif told me. He snagged a few with this latest one. Elsewhere, Sharif and Roper Williams just dropped a letterbomb banger with Goth Girl On The Enterprise. Stand clear of the closing doors.
Just as sludgy but a lot phonkier, DJ Smokey and Soudiere take us on a blunt ride through the post-atomic. They are in the business of acceleration — geeking up North Memphis double-time on “DON’T WORRY ABOUT WTF THEY BE DOING,” and microwaving jukework into arcade spasm on “WE GOT IT ALL (FOR CHEAP).” The Nuke Radio play-by-play voice reminds us of the Trapaholics host, flexing about enriched uranium and grandma groupies with the same mechanical tone. All that packaging is familiar, and it’s part of internet rap brain rot now. But the mix’s depths are really disorienting. There are sudden detours that plunge us below the bassline, and laugh tracks that cascade maniacally. Baptism by fire, possession by blood.
What’s spookier than a skeleton? Nothing, not one darn thing. Houston’s S.U.C. dynasty had a few different visual signifiers — like the swiveling screw that welcomed onlookers to West Fuqua, and the purple cup that forever slowed the world. But the skull was always in use, and it conveyed the most meaning in its own way. Adorning both 3 ‘N Da Morning covers, it was an earthly expression of just how for life this mission went. Almost three decades later, “Rep till I’m Dead” tethers two of the city’s stalwarts as they keep cutting down to the bone. Keke takes the slab from Herechelwood to Sunnyside, creeping atop a sinister piano pounding. Slim Thug goes against the drums with his commanding, molasses flow. The hook flips J-Dawg’s “Ride on 4s,” a jam already about the long car ride to nowhere, and extends it even further to the edge of timelessness. This has the eeriness of a blank-face clock, and summoning power at 60 BPM.
The scare comes from seeing Stockton’s star as a sentient being, rather than the folkloric presence he’s become in death. Slo-Be was gunned down in a horrific 2022 Manteca murder, yet here he is before us — shades on, chains out, slithering through Nightingale and cracking jokes about Detroit. Frago’s beat is cold and spacious, paced by a synth that bends around containment. It’s weightless and woozy at the top, with a leaded snare line holding it down at the bottom. Slo-Be is sorely missed, but his footprints stay fresh. He still materializes to pump-fake and taunt and get blood circulating, like Beetlejuice with crosses on his temples. Music to float around the graveyard to. Any trick-or-treater who hits the “ah ah ahhhh” adlib gets the whole bucket of loot.
After this, we are forced to issue a retraction. There is something spookier than a skeleton, and that’s a man in the woods with blood-spattered overalls. Cartel Bo delivers Dateline horrors with WWE showmanship. “This Where You Die” is sold by his sharp vocal turns and bulging eyes, but it’s also got an SUV of a beat that pushes Wes Craven into the trenches. “They saw that demon come out my body and take ‘em,” the Texan shouts to clear out his first verse. He rides with chainsaws on the freeway and raps with trash bags over his face. Premium unleaded nightmare fuel, which is 10 cents cheaper per gallon when you use this week’s Rap-Up card.
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