Death Grips' Niggas on the Moon

Welp. I found out "Niggas on the Moon" came out in 2014, in spite of "Jenny Death" and the resulting double-album "The Powers That B" being released in 2015. I can't declare it as my favorite album of 2015. But I can still talk about it.

I'm going to assume that most people know of Death Grips, probably inadvertently, through the "Guillotine (It goes Yah)" meme of MC Ride yelling and losing his mind in a car. I may have heard "The Money Store" (2012), their debut and possibly most famous album, one or two years after it was released. That was the beginning of my journey through music, but even listening to it now, it sounds new, encompassing this strange hyperactive dark aesthetic that is at once offputting and enticing for its abrasiveness. As a younger man it felt like a record you shouldn't be hearing, and listening to it was like dipping one's toes into the Dark Web, feeling you were just on the brink of discovering all the illicit activities that goes on in the background of society.

Nothing exemplifies this more than "I've Seen Footage" where MC Ride shouts he's seen an "armored cop open fire Glock / on some kid who stepped, / so fast, was hard to grasp / what even happened 'til you see that head blown / off his shoulders in slow mo," and lest you think it's a protest song in any way, Ride adds: "Rewind that, it's so cold." My personal favorite is "The Cage" and its hypnotic, unrelenting loop that vaguely sounds like a police siren designed for MKUltra, where MC Ride plays torturer and tortured:

I say kill it like ya, you say HATE it, kill it like it HATE IT kill it like it HATE IT
I say OW you say can't take it OW can't take it OW can't take it

But I don't really talk much about "Money Store" nor Death Grips because, as interesting as they are, they're ... fairly straightforward. As singular as "Money Store" is, it is just a guy screaming over samples played at over 100 BPM. I think I stuck around for "Government Plates" (2014) and then concluded the project was of a niche interest. I thought the best song they released was "Whatever I Want (Fuck Who's Watching)" where it felt like there was a tighter integration of Ride's vocals with the music, a rave Underworld-esque instrumental. Ride actually sounds he's adjusting his lyrics and delivery to the pace of the music, which is particularly notable when the song slows down to a churn.

So, that was that. Death Grips had its fans, I was not going to interfere with that, it's an interesting art project, but I'm going to leave it alone for ten years.

This is all to say, I love "Niggas on the Moon".

I was wrong to think Death Grips would do nothing with "Whatever I Want (Fuck Who's Watching)"; they actually adapted the project to fit with the ideas that came from that track. What's shocking too is that Ride actually raps in "Niggas on the Moon"; his vocals aren't blurred and the instrumentals give him space such that you can focus on his lyrics. He actually sings, has lyrics, isn't reduced to grunting, and has a delivery. And he's really good.

Take "Billy Not Really":

Oh, why me, why me, oh, I mean, oh, why me, don't see why I need all these hands, can't stand these,
All my palm lines running, stretching, cross my palm like blind cross-etching, palm mummified, chimera filming, bronze my palm now, all brown palm now.

I really like the alliteration of the Dada "why me, why me / oh I mean, oh why me"; where Ride would focus on the brutality of a phrase, here he has a sense of rhythm. This extends to the weird surrealist verse where he describes his palms - there's a tension as he sneers "running", "stretching" and "cross-etching". Again, with the alliteration, I love the m's of "palm mummified". After, he sings "Visit some medium, / won't come near me, / treats me like a meteor, / she scares me", which is the first time I've perceived a sense of vulnerability coming from Ride.

I know this seems like chump change, but this all matters to me, that of Death Grips expanding their setting, their "world" of people, of relationships, so to speak. It's not heady stuff but I like that they're adding more color to their vocabulary.

Of note is the "chorus", which sets some of the themes of the album:

Yo, oi, yo, oh, ahhhhh, Billy, Billy, not really, Yo, oi, yo, Amnesia,

as if Ride is hesitant to even confirm the character, or doubts whether he is actually seeing the person.

The lyrics become of real interest once you start "Black Quarterback":

I'm so black quarterback, thrown off this app by his badge, blare my organ for juice, pipes spike blonde kicks on my boots, approach me, licking his fur, whining "I demand a word"

all to a sample of Bjork yelling. Ride here, to Zach Hill and Andy Morin's roaring instrumentals, is painting a picture, building a scene. I've legitimately never seen him do this before. And while he builds, we see he's capable of elevating his easel into drama, with him barking:

GIMP JUST KEPT STRIKING SO I HAD TO BRAIN HIM LIKE THIS, COMFORT OVER FREEDOM, PAVE A PATH OF LEISURE, HAVE IT ALL, FREEDOM OVER COMFORT, GIVE YOU BACK SO MUCH LEISURE, FEEL SMALL,

all which goes into the heart of Death Grips' music: the relationship between power and individual expression. Obviously, the guy who screamed "I DO WHATEVER I WANT" is concerned with individual expression, and yet "Niggas on the Moon" really tests that relationship by making Ride a character. "Black Quarterback" isn't one-sided, from either the perspective of the oppressed or the oppressor; Ride is both.

Relishing in this absurdist canvas, Ride devolves into phrases:

Heady, baby, Eddy's crazy, Cadabra, abrogate need to bloot, bank on absolutely, to bloot, bank on absolutely.

For someone so concerned about independence, Ride doesn't have a high opinion on human autonomy; his characters stumble, their minds a jumble, wandering aimlessly to their next adventure involving some enemy or victim.

Now, one of the my favorite songs on the album, "Say Hey Kid", which begins with Ride mumbling, "I do what my people would, / because my people would, / but only if my people could." It's like he's spasming with the thought of agency. Later, he has this verse that baffles me in how much I like it:

Happy's perfect, perfect's tame, tame and cashmere go together,

mixing sensuality with this simmering violence hidden underneath the music.

Then, my favorite moment where Ride starts growling,

HEY, it's a party, come early if you're lonely, say HEY kid, say HEY, don't you O.D.,

with the music quietening for Ride to say, "Say, HEY, don't you O.D., / come play dead." The music then lurchs forward, moving from 30 to 60 in a second, entering this mesmerizing whirlpool of sound. The music ramps and ramps as Ride gets suddenly, uncontrollably violent:

Say Hey kid Say Hey kid Say Hey Kid HEY KID COME PLAY DEAD

I'm going to be real with you: in the year of 2026, with the incessant headlines of war and child predation in the news, this makes me uncomfortable in a huge way, Ride literally commanding kids to play dead. It's frightening, but that's Death Grips, laying the relationship between the weak and the powerful bare. If you're uncomfortable with that, I point you to the beginning of the essay, where I talk about "I've Seen Footage": be uncomfortable, smooth-brain, because that's what real-life is.

I obviously love "Have a Sad Cum BB" and its taunting sample saying literally that - it's another twist on Death Grips' aesthetic, of exercising power by taking pleasure away - but I'll end with "Voila", my other true favorite track on the album.

(Actually, I'll add one more for "Have a Sad Cum BB" - this is the track I remember headbanging super hard to, and which I am doing now. The drums and that yowling sample weave into each other; Zach Hill and Andy Morin are extremely skilled at taking a sample, knowing when to loop it, and when to shorten it and adjust it to blend with the more "traditional" instruments in the track.)

Voila actually has one of my favorite lyrics ever; Ride starts, muttering,

My proper voila shadow candle, my shadow stigmata often, left, right, up, step right uo, get your crisis, why bother,
quack like priest, win five dollar, melanin pewter cellophane, arms long as their legs, even the greys can't,

with the pre-recorded Oh's escalating more and more, until they overwhelm Ride's voice; he then returns back to the track with a shrug, "Voila". Then the Bjork sample (I do wonder if they use that one sample for the entire album?) comes back, truncated entirely to fit into a greater-than-60 BPM. Once the initial assault of screams and laser synths ends, Ride mumbles my favorite verse,

Maybe I belong to you, I'm sure you want me to, my shadow's onto you, Voila,

where he doesn't have the menace of a predator, he doesn't have the passion of a jealous lover, he doesn't have the violence of a killer, there's just something so ... inevitable in his execution. He's more like Nosferatu, whose powers cannot be resisted by mortal beings; Ride is just something so completely other from this plane of existence. That's why it's creepy when he then continues, "I can't make you like voila, / I'll make you love voila, / make you make love to voila." Later, Ride says, "I don't talk to the / HELP! HELP!"

The last thing to mention on "Voila" too is, earlier, in "Black Quarterback", Ride blurts out "Cadabra". There's a subtle theme of magic tricks running throughout the album, of fooling other people and oneself of one's powers.

Who is doing what, and why? No one knows; that's Death Grips. You are at once oppressor and oppressed, pusher and mark, victim and violator. What compels about the music is that you learn you like both roles, sometimes at the same time.

I'll add here, at the end, the contemporary reaction to "Niggas on the Moon" is disappointing. It was considered a low point for the band, with a critic saying it was their "least intense album". To which I ... wildly gesticulate ... to the conversation we just had now and the lyrics we highlighted.

The response was baffling, but I largely get it: I don't want to be reductive of critics, but I do think they just wanted Ride to yell so they can headbang and project themselves on Ride's anger. To which I say, I have not headbanged as hard as I did when listening to "Niggas on the Moon"; I literally almost broke my neck to "Billy Not Really", it happened so spontaneously.

It reminds me of the issue Black Flag ran into in Michael Azerrad's "This Band Could Be Your Life": the band was performing the songs of "My War" (1984), particularly the second half of the album, and the headbangers and slamdancers hated the stoner / sludge metal of "Nothing Left Inside" and "Scream", which, and let's be clear, they're fucking wrong, those songs are awesome. It's a reminder there's an artistic and intellectual side to music, and there's a vicarious side to music, where people like to use the music as a vehicle towards their fantasy. I have no issue with any side of music - hey, I listen to PUP, I'm no stranger to the vicarious aspect of music - but I do think the band was put on a very narrow lens, which was put upon them from "Money Store" onward.

Anyway... I was so happy and rather satisfied to put "Niggas on the Moon" in my 2015 spot, but, alas, timing. That's actually why I like the "album of the year" format: it's so arbitrary that it forces you to ask serious questions about your own taste and why you choose one album over another. So I'm back to the drawing - err, listening board, but that gives more of an opportunity for another obscure album to shine.