Death Grips skirt around the fringes of Hip Hop as a genre. As they develop their sound they continue to delve into this abrasive world of harsh tones and heavy samples. It can seem daunting to a new listener who starts from their most recent works.
For this reason I would recommend their first full length album “The Money Store” as a great starting point. It already has their unique style but is centered on the traditions of Hip Hop making it more accessible. Yet it still has the creativity to turn some of these traditions on their head.
I’ve seen footage is a favorite of track of mine. A strong synthesized drum beat drives the lyrics of MC Ride which focus on the viewing of material that is damaging and yet you can’t get it out of your head, something highly prevalent in the modern internet age. It’s the way that the Vocals are processed that adds interesting elements to the track. They are sampled and looped in smaller parts to create rhythms, cut off mid delivery to add elements of surprise and ran through distortion to merge them into instrumentation it all comes together to create an aggressive sound which still holds its own today:
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TOTW Playlist: