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I'm not exactly recommending the music – the sound is very specific: punchline Detroit rap about scamming over sped-up '80s samples – so much as the total package persona. When I first stumbled on Babytron in 2019, I was drawn to his ridiculous references (Jimmy Neutron, Dennis Schröder), unpopular music videos shot in electronics departments and beginner's mustache, but also the YouTube comments saying that he looked like Drake Bell or speculating about his race. In the years since, he's gotten some good press and grown out his hair yet almost everything else is the same: tons of music, low-budget videos, rapid-fire Gen-Z Mitch Hedberg bars. He still doesn't have a Wikipedia page. When I saw him live earlier this year, someone asked me how old I was, because they were pretty sure I was the oldest person there. (I’m 34.) He headlined for like 25 minutes and missed about half of his verses because he was hitting a blunt. Stop saying that I'm offbeat if I match the tempo.
Nov 9, 2022
Related Recs
Apr 25, 2024
The breakout star of today’s hyper-online, borderline avant-garde underground rap scene, 17-year-old Gunner Shepardson—better known as Nettspend—is, depending on who you ask, a visionary, a harbinger of hip hop’s end, moderately interesting, or maybe just the most swagged-out teenager on the planet. Your opinion likely hinges on the year you graduated high school—or where you were on the night of December 18, 2023, when a mob of skaters and balaclava-clad SoundCloud rap devotees descended upon an industrial metal detector outside the Mercury Lounge after waiting four hours for Nettspend, xaviersobased, Yhapojj, and Phreshboyswag to make an appearance. For me, the answer somewhere lies in the reuploaded video for Nothing Like Uuu: a mesmerizing hyperpop-rap hybrid that somehow distills the essence of a month at Market Hotel into just two minutes. It’s a whirlwind of gratuitous fog machine smoke, mumbled Chief-Keef-Jr-isms about wanting to "get geeked all night," swirling synths straight out of a Doss DJ set, and, at the center of it all, Nettspend—the inexplicable teenager with black X’s on their hands, completely at home in the chaos.
Dec 30, 2024
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2000s era concept rap album about an intergalactic rap battling warrior in the year 3030. Best known for being Ice Cube’s cousin and his appearance in Gorillaz ‘Clint Eastwood’.
From pitchfork’s review in 2008:
“On Deltron 3030, he unravels an album-length narrative about the titular year, in which he's a superhero named Deltron Zero (a plot not entirely dissimilar from that of RZA's Bobby Digital). Armed with his two sidekicks, the Automator (here saddled with the unfortunate sobriquet "The Cantankerous Captain Aptos") and scratch mastermind Kid Koala (aka "Skiznod the Boy Wonder"), Deltron-Z combs the galaxy, supporting his secretive Earthling existence by participating in weird rap battles where one's rhymes summon psychic powers that physically damage the opponent.”
Feb 22, 2024
Top Recs from @joe-coscarelli
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My friend Jay recently mentioned in passing a 2010 story in The New Yorker, "Sleeping With Weapons" by Tad Friend, about the totally batshit feud between the actor and musician John Lurie and his protege John Perry. It's like 8,000+ words of mayhem and mental illness and I can't believe the magazine ran it or that I'd never read it, especially since there was a whole controversy afterward, including a hunger strike. It reminded me that there's just an endless array of weird old stores from 10 years ago, from 50 years ago, from last year, and you can just mainline them in one subway ride for no money. I always go back to stuff like Nancy Jo Sales on the Pussy Posse or the Golden Suicides, or Chris Heath's Fiona Apple cover story for Rolling Stone from 1998, or Tom Wolfe's "The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson. Yes!" or Ta-Nehisi Coates on MF DOOM. (Use Pocket to get around paywalls.)
Nov 9, 2022
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I try to wear almost only all black (or dark gray), no shorts and no logos – mostly for aesthetic simplicity, though shout out to Naomi Klein and reading Adbusters at suburban Barnes & Nobles – but I'm softening. My friend Bryan, in a nod to his British and Mexican heritage, started rocking old school semi-shiny black Umbro shorts a few years ago and pointed out that they're cheap on Amazon (sorry Naomi Klein). I only have one pair but they're extremely durable and I wore them all summer: around the house, at the beach, to play softball, to go out. People love to remember Umbros. My other major go-to exception is keeping a small pile of Polo chino hats in various colors as a nod to Young Dro (Atlanta's Cam'ron) and because the various little bears on the hats are all wearing Polo themselves, on some mise en abyme-ish shit.
Nov 9, 2022
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I subscribe to a bunch of shit, share log-ins for others and get sent some screeners, but nothing compares to being asked by a friend to illegally locate the third movie spinoff of a Danish sitcom or a German TV documentary about Michael Jackson for free online. It's hunting and gathering for millennial men. The big streaming platforms suck so bad anyway, they flatten most coolness out of culture and they try to trick you into watching stuff in the basest ways. At least I feel accomplished when I do some "Hackers"-style Googling, hit half a dozen dead links and then have to close a swarm of popups like I'm catching flies out of thin air just to watch four innings of a Yankees game.
Nov 9, 2022