DEATH GRIPS & THE STATE OF PROTEST
Bibliography
Pelly, Jenn (2012). Death Grips Share NSFW Album Cover, Tracklist. Pitchfork. March 19 2012. Available at: <https://pitchfork.com/news/45832-death-grips-share-nsfw-album-cover-tracklist/>
Death Grips (2013). You might think he loves you for your money but I know what he really loves you for it's your brand new leopard skin pillbox hat. [Video]. Available at: <https://youtu.be/y2cQvZPX3OY>
Barron, Jesse (2018). The Man Who Destroyed Donald Trump's Hollywood Star Explains Himself. GQ. December 11 2018. Available at: <https://www.gq.com/story/a-star-is-torn?utm_brand=gq&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=twitter&mbid=social_twitter&utm_medium=social>
hooks, bell (2016). Moving Beyond Pain. bell hooks Institute. May 9 2016. Available at: <http://www.bellhooksinstitute.com/blog/2016/5/9/moving-beyond-pain>
BBC (2008). Masked Protest over Scientology, 11 February 2008. Available at: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7237862.stm>
After years of tracking their career, the occasion on which I managed to catch Death Grips live in concert turned out to be somewhat underwhelming. It should have been anticipated, really. Immediately upon entering I’d seen a woman being escorted from the venue, bleeding profusely from her nose, and took off my hooped earrings in anticipation of being caught in a mosh pit (as is the norm). The actual event was less chaotic, and had an oppressively masculinist atmosphere. I found myself diminished in size by a gaggle of men, seemingly, and meaninglessly, set on taking up as much room as possible: wholly unresponsive to the band’s high-impact performance as they were. I’ve always found the band’s vocal, online following obnoxious, but never elaborated this feeling further, beyond dismissively referring to them as “Redditor types” (which might be enough of a red flag to many). However, this particular event got me thinking about the specifics of my resentment. I found myself considering whether Death Grip’s fanbase was truly representative of their musical project; whether their uniquely transgressive aesthetics of disobedience actually translates to their fans.
Music, as an outlet to express injustice, is inextricably interwoven with activism. Songs can become a rallying point, uniting audiences beneath a catchy tune and meaningful lyrics: moralistic and anecdotal in their qualities, with a proven record of inspiring entire movements revolving around them. Bands such as Rage Against the Machine and their affiliated acts have enjoyed decades in the limelight pursuing their political pursuits – which are so extensive, in fact, that they have an entire Wikipedia article devoted to their militant anti-imperialist action. Throughout their initial run as a band in the 1990s, their name evoked controversy and solidarity alike: between casting their lot in with Mexico’s Zapatista Army of National Liberation (to whom People of the Sun is dedicated); to a broader campaign condemning US interventionism, overseas military activity and the right-wing media that facilitated such endeavours, as epitomised in Vietnow.
More recently, however, it appears such earnest moralising has taken a backseat to meet the demands of a shifting industry. There will always be exceptions within the mainstream, of course, as artists seek to use their platforms to emulate the successes of decades past and ‘speak back’ to iconic anthems that have gone on to inspire a call to action. But such endeavours can only be taken so far within the neoliberal environment in which they are articulated. As much as it pains me to reminisce on this moment in popular culture, this particular struggle can be identified in Macklemore’s Same Love. Co-opting the struggles of LGBT+ youth to represent his own image as a rapper in a favourable light, many fell for his attempt to spin mainstream hip-hop into an ‘inclusive space’, projecting corny and misguided – if somewhat well-intentioned – allyship to victims of bigotry and wider oppression. Ultimately, the song amounted to little beyond being played at every corporate-funded Pride event for years to come, even despite a homophobic slur dropped in the track itself. With Same Love having mostly left the public consciousness (amongst a slew of music from other pop culture icons and lesser-known artists), it remains to be seen what the defining moment of musical activism will be in recent history, by popular definition. The power of contemporary rap as a platform for empowerment, arising from lived experiences of oppression, is not to be understated – but ensuring these messages are not swallowed up by wealth and status are another matter entirely (see. Kanye’s multitude of political controversies).
This naturally brings us to consider whether it is truly viable for mainstream music – understood here as a commercial product – to express dissent without being absorbed into a capitalist system of production. This phenomenon is expressed most concisely in bell hooks’ controversial statement on Beyoncé following the release of Lemonade: hooks claims that the wide appeal of Beyoncé’s public persona is her commodification of the black body. For hooks, Beyoncé’s appeal to her audience is one made towards the ‘world of business’, in which ‘money-making has no colour’. Of course, when more diplomatic routes that pave the way towards such forms of appeasement are exhausted, many tend towards a more potent alternative: a full-frontal attack on all those who dare to challenge their way of life, unsettling notions of civility in favour of a forceful rebuttal of liberal society and its institutions.
The appeal of Death Grips lies in this truly anti-social form of musical attack: music for your parents to turn their nose up at, compiling percussion-heavy, disordered instrumentals overlaid with MC Ride’s raw and aggressive vocals. From the onset, their experimental sound was doubtless bound to attract fans aplenty within the Noise Rap subgenre – but the explosion of their cultishly devoted following in the years since their 2011 mixtape Exmilitary has been somewhat unprecedented. Indeed, such popularity can be traced back to their exposure on 4chan’s /mu/ board: an anonymous online messaging board that has enjoyed notoriety for its role as a platform for hacktivist activity and inciting tangible, large-scale political movements with repercussions into life on and beyond the net. (One such incident was 2008’s Operation Chanology launched against The Church of Scientology, which escalated to the point where members of the website were branded ‘cyber-terrorists’ by its spokespeople.) It is the seedy underbelly of the internet, so to speak, where the facelessness of its community moves in step with its tendency towards inflammatory ideologies, as well as a distinctly anything-goes “philosophy” often wholly opposing ‘political correctness’ in its contemporary conception. However, as is the case with every social networking site, it is important not to visualise it as a monolith – as the birthplace of Anonymous, its lack of internal structure means user ideology can also veer towards the hard left. The impermanence of its format means it is invaluable as a powerful platform for the transmission of resources and in widening the accessibility of information, without significantly endangering its user base should they wish to engage in collective action or organisation.
In the background of their first mixtape, Death Grips’ signature harsh and erratic sound is accompanied by samples, the group drawing influence in Exmilitary’s 7th track - Klink - from nonconformist musical predecessors Black Flag’s 1980s anti-establishment anthem, Rise Above. Such intertextuality ensures it remains one of their most evocative songs to date – wholly hostile towards and mistrusting of authority, wrapped up in a maximalist translation of the punk-rock ethos in the contemporary arena. Other punk-aligned artists within the Digital Hardcore scene have utilised the same Black Flag sample, running as a distorted undercurrent beneath their own unique riff on the genre – notably Machine Girl’s Athoth a Go!! Go!! in its dystopian imagining of a society characterised by the intersections between technology and violence. Contradictory though it may seem for artists who have surged in popularity through the radical potential of said technology, this should not be misunderstood as an all-encompassing rebuttal against the ills of modernity. Machine Girl’s music is at once a study in the limits digitized sound can push towards in order to transgress convention, whilst also creating a sense of losing oneself to the overwhelming hellscape of an increasingly bleak and antagonistic digital world.
I feel most real when I'm not myself / Emancipated, liberated from my human shell / (Salvation in a digital heaven) / 'Cause real life is hell. (Mchngrl vs Wlfgrl)
Whilst Machine Girl’s existentialism is somewhat defeatist in its harrowing depiction of reality, their success is in creating a uniquely cathartic sound that blends punchy and upbeat beats with scathing lyrics. Their album title-- ‘…Because I’m Young Arrogant and Hate Everything You Stand For’--is a dead giveaway of the values that Machine Girl (and seemingly the contemporary hardcore scene at large) encompasses. Its aesthetics of civil disobedience are depicted within its lyrical form in all its vulgarity and frequent references to the digital age and hacktivism, speaking of a general disdain for authority. The culminating effect is one of a bizarre, unforeseen sameness – a reminder of humanity as interconnected, like wires in a circuit board, sharing the same fears and anxieties towards visions of the future.
Both Death Grips and Machine Girl are ironic, even self-deprecating in style and in their outward projection, creating a distinct counter-culture reliant on auditory chaos and the grotesque. The message arising from this is one of unity in solidarity amongst the social ‘outcasts’ who find themselves drawn towards Death Grips’ particular brand of noise, anarchic and brash whilst maintaining a low profile in their personal lives. In an rare early interview with the band for Pitchfork, they elaborated their stance on the purpose of their music and its intended demographic when confronted about the cover art for their first studio album, The Money Store; disassociating themselves from their reputation as a ‘political band’ in favour of the image of a group of ‘freaks and outsiders’.
I understand their statement as intentionally misleading. This statement opened themselves up to their ardent listeners through association, allowing those who come from all walks of life to nonetheless be united under the same banner of societal disillusionment. It seems less a desire to be termed ‘apolitical’ and more an acknowledgement that, try as they might, their mere existence has them bound to a societal contract from which they can never escape. This is supported by their tricky lyricism, which is seemingly nonsensical at first glance but on further inspection fervently satirical. The personal realm becomes highly politicised through the spiralling paranoia of the speaker’s existence, in which the surroundings are made progressively more hostile. MC Ride confesses that turns him towards escapist pursuits, and all the repercussions that may follow. He writes himself into common tropes of the black man as hypersexual, as aggressor, and as avid user and abuser of recreational drugs – but when we re-contextualise such admissions within the socio-economic circumstances in which they arise, its meaning diverges in an abject fashion, painting a picture of the black man who feels he has nowhere left to turn. It’s no wonder No Love was the backing track for the penultimate episode of the first season of hit pop-culture tragicomedy Bojack Horseman. Depicting its titular character embarking on a self-destructive drug trip as escapism from the reality of his inevitable confrontation with his declining morality, it is made to appear that life for the marginalized or those burdened by societal stigma is unrelentingly cruel. Such is the philosophy of Digital Hardcore: nihilistic, and yet altogether comforting in such revelations.
Surely a far cry from the emotional frankness of John Lennon’s Imagine, and other such tracks your parents might rush to term ‘real music’. This tonal shift towards irony seems well-suited to our contemporary society and the ways in which the transmission of information has changed. The number of times we have logged onto social media to be clued into current affairs through a well-placed meme should be testament enough to the changing times. We’re arguably faced with a dual-edged sword, in which accessibility comes at the cost of desensitization. Death Grips have entered the public consciousness by becoming a meme, with fans often reminding one another to ‘stay noided’, referring to a state of paranoia referred to multiple times in The Money Store. This is, at once, a reminder to stay vigilant and critical whilst also demeaning the circumstances in which this paranoia comes to group our psyches.
Notably, the music video for You Might Think He Loves You For Your Money… is a single, extended close-up on MC Ride’s face as he shifts between numerous, though equally potent, displays of emotion: from visibly agonising distress, to elated and wide-eyed joy, mingled with interludes of aggression. Although the band themselves self-perpetuate their blatant absurdity, the comments on the video are wholly unfocused on considering the video’s wider implications. They are mostly innocuous quips, but nonetheless speak of the character of the fanbase Death Grips have cultivated. One somewhat nonsensical to anyone stumbling upon this subset of the internet for the first time, using humour as a stand-in for topics warranting lengthier discussions. A few off-hand comments is fine – encouraged even -- as Death Grips are far from a band that take themselves too seriously – but comic oversaturation leaves a bad taste in the mouth. It clouds intentionality, and brings me to the question of whether this internet culture of desensitization has made entire groups averse to moments of earnestness.
Naturally, the justification for Death Grips’ rise to fame is in part due to their abrasive stage performance and their genre-defying style, which refuses to be shoehorned into any singular category. The band’s relative anonymity and notable disdain for the music industry can also be seen to play a part in their popularity, even approaching something like revery as they leaked their first studio album to make good on promises to fans and were subsequently dropped from their label.
Bold and transgressive statements alongside their elusiveness (remaining withdrawn from the public eye and holding interviews purely on their own terms) form the basis of the model that fans mimic in their own activism. One notable case is found in the destruction of Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame back in July 2018. The instigator, Austin Clay, readily admitted to the band’s influence in a politically-charged act of vandalism that enjoyed short-lived viral status before the star was replaced. The manifest erasure of the act through its reconstruction is a microcosm of the nature of the activism enacted by fans of the band, reliant on symbolic gestures that ultimately barely scratch the surface of tangible, radical change. Clay admitted to it being an attack on Trump’s ‘ego’ – intended as a ‘dynamic, explosive event’ that would incite others to action. Such self-congratulatory and singular activism falls into the trap of losing sight of what makes destruction of public property an oft-utilised tactic in protest: its large-scale enactment reliant on strength-in-numbers and group solidarity, halting public activity until demands are met and, minimally, efforts at appeasement made. The resolution of Austin’s vandalism, in stark contrast, was him unceremoniously turning himself over to the police and the incident being papered over with court-mandated fines and a commitment to meet with a clinical psychologist.
What is the nature, therefore, of the impact fans of the contemporary scene can make on wider society – and, indeed, is it possible at all? Musical activism appears to have gone down a route that is insincere, self-serving and done in the name of fleeting individual whims, instead of collective action in the name of a common cause. Activism thrives on the qualities of mutual respect and solemnity. Caring for and uplifting our peers is one pillar of its vital ethos. And yet, many take anarchic sentiment in a completely different direction towards an individualistic will towards the survival-of-the-fittest. Ultimately this demeans the project that is punk, and all of its associated artforms.
Written by Jasmine Joshi