Nicklaus Wilcher
Contributing Writer
Picture yourself on your way home from the bus stop. You hear a dancehall horn off in the distance. The distinctive bouquet of school bus diesel is swiftly replaced with gas of another sort. You don’t remember what this peddler looked like, but you distinctly remember thinking his hydraulic-equipped green lowrider could fly off into space at any time, surrounded in thick, angelic haze. Before liftoff he passes you a cassette box and a slick handshake. Upon opening the too-light container you find a single slip of paper with a link to his SoundCloud, and an invitation to check it, bruh.
Earlier this year Chance the Rapper announced that SoundCloud releases would be eligible for Grammy nominations. He described the changing criteria as a “victory” and was excited to see “all the SoundCloud albums that may now be recognized for excellence.” One wonders what masterpieces Chance had in mind, but the platform has certainly proved its legitimacy. With a larger user base than Spotify, the cul-de-sac and blacktop mixtape landscape has stretched to global and biblical proportions, with MCs serving up bloody sermons from back streets, grimy basements and locked car trunks.
Among the most prolific collectives on the site is Members Only, the most prominent affiliates being XXXTENTACION and Ski Mask “The Slump God.” Best experienced with subwoofers and in a mosh pit, their tracks can honestly be called fire, with all the roaring heat the word ought to inspire. Their sweat-inducing collab track “Take A Step Back” features the shouted and snorted chorus line “F****d up, F****d up, F****d up, F****d up” over an 808 bassline bitcrushed and boosted to absurdity. Ad libs are crammed into every pocket as if a rapper’s cardinal sin was silence, expletives slung like submachine gun spray, swapping accuracy for a deluge of YUHs and AYYs. In direct contrast they deliver highly precise flows on the verses, their product an effortless and absolute turnt-ness.
On the same track Ski Mask and X exhibit some trademark humor with lines like “walked up in the bank with pack that donkey fart” (followed by my favorite ad lib, a mouthed fart noise) and “feel like Dexter, got Double-D’s in my Laboratory.” Its bass heavy beats with lyrics scratched on a bathroom stall suddenly makes me feel like I’m in middle school again, but now I get drunk on the weekends.
What might be the ice to Members Only’s fire comes from the group Circle Five and the pseudo-label BMB Deathrow. With direct lineage to Spaceghostpurrp and the Southern horrorcore scene (evidenced most obviously by their imperfectly photoshopped album art), Circle Five opts for a decidedly darker mood scored by the likes of OogieMane and Forza. The 808s get pounded so fast they bleed into each other, producing a single pulsating noise over which cellphone rings, whistles, and “pew pews” echo into alleyways. It’s a sound that’s authentically raw in the crisply produced rap world.
Of course I don’t expect these artists to win over the crusty Grammy judges anytime soon, but that’s not what it’s about. To know they’re eligible gives hope to the middle schooler in me on the back of the bus, blasting music over the busdriver’s classical radio station. Check it, Bach.