slayr's Nerd Rage

Sometime in the middle of reading Alphonse Pierre’s 2Slimey roundtable with friends of the blog Mano Sundaresan, Kieran Press-Reynolds and Olivier Lafontant, I realized there are two distinct veins of the subgenre. There’s the more mainstream, label-backed, addicted to youthfulness side—the kind that figures like Ken Carson, OsamaSon and Nettspend typify and is much more likely to feature on Times Square billboards. And there’s the blerd side; think Lucy Bedroque, Prettifun and co. They are absolutely the type of people I would’ve been chopping it up with at lunch in high school over Sonic Advance 2 and FLCL. slayr’s newest Half Blood catapults him into the pantheon of the digicore-descended rage artists.

Of course this dichotomy is an oversimplication, guys like Che and Bear1Boss slide in between these classifications, whereas the rage elders like Glokk40Spaz and Thouxanbanfauni elude the newer faces’ styles entirely. Yet you can pretty easily sort these rappers and their audiences into the virality online and otaku online divide, or more succinctly, the Bandlab vs Fruity Loops divide.

Bloodluxe, the Half Blood sequel that came out a week ago, is a further fleshing of slayr’s musical universe. As much as I liked Half Blood, his experiments into Drake-esque dancehall and Skillet-fetishizing butt-rock were a bit goofy. Bloodluxe doubles down on the digicore element, with fellow DAW legend Lucy Bedroque lending a helping hand on “Daytona”, and the record is better for it. Slayr goes full “Yeat mix with transitions” with thrilling results, the cleanliness of each song leading into one another providing a kaleidoscopic affect. A ton of credit has to go to his production collaborators Waera, m8i, Doxxmade, Chris Marek, Kay Boba, jackwya, 808toofly, and fellow technicolor warrior prettifun for the seamless integration.

Is it a bit goofy that he’s talking about sliming dudes and popping pills when he’s doing Cooking Mama videos? Yes, but it’s also fun to rap about those things. Fun is in short supply when dudes are criticizing Slayr for not having enough “aura”, for being slightly chubby, for not fitting neatly into a square peg. “Underground” rap as a category has now become a way for kids to act as A&Rs, ruthlessly critiquing anyone who does not doesn’t fit their preferred aesthetic form, a more deep-fried stan culture. Ironically, while underground rap used to be the domain of nerds, it’s now a litmus test for how much teenagers can vicariously live through you.

In this context, the top comment on the video for “Sloppy Joe”—”He look like the guy who brought his Nintendo Switch to lunch” is a rorschach test. Do you find that archetype of guy in rap tedious and wack? Or is it refreshing for a kid who isn’t the most image-conscious in his class to find an audience in an increasingly fashion-driven underground, where aura is considered more important than craft? Especially given if 2Hollis or Nettspend made these songs, they’d be hailed as radical visionary wave for rap by Jon Caramonica? I for one, am rooting for the blerd underdog.