Death Grips - Niggas on the Moon (2014)
"Niggas on the Moon" is a very, very unique release not just for hip-hop, but for Death Grips in general. You see, whereas every Death Grips release up to this point was made by a lovable trio of sassy lads (Stefan 'MC Ride' Burnett, Andy 'Flatlander' Morin, and Zach 'Zach Hill' Hill), this one finds MC Ride and Zach Hill by themselves for some reason that escapes me, it's not like Flatlander left the group and appears and all of subsequent releases, but the thing that makes this album stick out from not just every other Death Grips release, but every hip-hop release in general, is the fact that every single sound you hear on this entire album, aside from MC Ride's vocals, is triggered by Zach Hill's electronic drum kit. What are those sounds? Oh, nothing other than Björk's singing and other random noises she's made. The only thing you'll hear that sounds like a drum set is Zach Hill's electronic kick-drum and his snare-drum. Literally everything else you hear in the music is triggered by Zach Hill going FUCKING CRAZY at his electronic drum kit, triggering everything in these vast, deep, vocal-driven atmospheres you hear throughout this album.
When you have such a unique concept like that musically, it needs two things: To actually be executed well, and to be complimented by everything else in the music. Well, I can safely say that Zach Hill's electronic drum kit carries the entire fucking album, be it droning atmospheres or schizophrenic vocal breakdowns, Zach Hill is truly an absolute fucking madman for even having come up with the idea, and I would LOVE to see a video of him actually creating the songs, because it takes a certain level of skill to drum like Zach Hill, but even more to strip down everything you knew about drums, and have the sounds replaced by actual samples/voices instead, forcing you to relearn everything you already knew about drumming in order to create something new. The atmospheres, beats, and general experimentation on this album on Zach Hill's part is nothing to fucking scoff at. The production of this album sounds EXACTLY like the album cover looks, and to me, as weird as it is to say, sounds cold. This album sounds absolutely FREEZING. You know how people (okay, just /r/hiphopheads) always say to listen to GZA's "Liquid Swords" in the winter-time while walking down the street at night? Listen to this album while trapped in a car under snow. The way the album seamlessly flows into each song makes it feel like one big song, but trust me: It fuckin' works.
Then we have to flip over to MC Ride, and truth be told, this is arguably his best album on a lyrical standpoint. Where Zach Hill is exploring new sounds on his electronic drum-kit to do crazy shit that no one expected, MC Ride has very clearly expanded his vocabulary and weaves through the construct of the English language, flipping it upside down, describing things in such a poetic yet dark and vague way that it can be hard to understand, especially when he's expressing the abstract and morbid crevices of his mind, and he's pretty consistently calm throughout the album in his vocal performances, at least compared to other Death Grips albums, which serves to the cold feeling that this album is given by Zach Hill. When MC Ride says "It's my pyre, agoraphobe if I want to, afford to be consumed, this pyre's my costume, get too close, it'll lick you, because it loathes you even more than I do." in "Big Dipper", right before the extreme vocal/drum solo by Zach Hill, it truly sets the feeling of this entire album into one precise moment: Cold, numbing pain and the insanity that follows. On this album, I can truly say, even for a group as boundary-pushing as Death Grips, they haven't just thought outside of the box, but burned it and have taken refuge in an abandoned refrigerator in the middle of nowhere.
This album, instrumentally, doesn't even sound like it came from this planet, but rather, some weird form of music that extraterrestrial life listen to that someone managed to intercept on a homemade radio in a run-down shack in Alaska, potentially being the start of some horror movie. We will never see a hip-hop release quite like this unless the artist was very obviously copying Death Grips. This release is insane, and should be treated as a strange and misunderstood piece of art, to be easily dismissed by the masses, but to be truly appreciated by the few, due to its almost alien-esque approach to music. With this release, Death Grips released a portal to a freezing Hell that's as confusing as it is chilling, suffocating as it is cryptic, and underrated as it is undeniably Death Grips.
8/10
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Feel free to check out the song previews/buy this album as part of the "The Powers That B" double-album using my Amazon Associate link!
