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And my takeaway was that the two wanted to be rock stars. This second song almost made me get over the name, to begin to think of them as legitimate, something more than simply R-rated Kidz Bop. Not that they might put out a good album - because of course they wouldn’t - but that they might still be around next summer.Īnd then I saw them perform, a few weeks after “No Type” came out. The same way realizing “Flo Rida” was actually just “Florida” (it took me 18 months) caused me to aggressively despise Tramar Lacel Dillard, learning the origin story of the name Rae Sremmurd provided the easy, cynical rationale to dislike yet another I just moved to Atlanta to get famous soon-to-be one-hit wonder.īut then the brothers followed up their first smash single, “No Flex Zone,” with a much better, even bigger second single, “No Type.” “Rae Sremmurd” is “Ear Drummers” backward and EarDrummers is the name of the production company started by another someone with a terrible name, super-producer Mike Will Made It.
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Because their name is undeniably terrible.
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The word “Sremmurd” is almost bad enough to never give them a chance. But they’re actually like nothing you’ve ever heard or seen. The brothers Brown, Khalif “Swae Lee” and Aaquil “Slim Jxmmi,” remind you of things you’ve heard and seen, Kris Kross being the first that comes to mind. Young men stricken by dumb rap names, but men nonetheless. Rae Sremmurd (pronounced “RAY Shhhhhrrimmmuur,” because why not) are fresh-faced, but they are not boys. And at first glance, when it comes to the duo, I thought that would be their defining characteristic - a lot of nothing. It’s an absolute achievement.īut again, it’s about a lot of nothing. After analysing the impact of streaming, information overload and audience participation (through social media hype and memes) on contemporary hip-hop, I survey the growth of melodic Auto-Tuned vocals and repetitive lyricism in the work of pioneering mumble rappers such as Future, before turning to an extended examination of Atlanta's Young Thug, whose controversially malleable vocal style, which prioritises experimentation with vocal textures while confounding the rules of hip-hop flow, is mirrored by his impulsive exploitation of social media and androgynous fashion sense, establishing him as the most revolutionary archetype of so-called mumble rap.Rae Sremmurd’s debut album, SremmLife, is dynamic and contains about a tablespoon of substance. In this article I argue that this myopic label undervalues the groundbreakingly post-verbal nature of the music being created by these rappers, and highlights the innovations of mumble rap, exploring the centrality of social media, memes and streaming to its existence while critically examining its protagonists’ unconventionally stylised vocals. These artists, who have flourished in tandem with the rise of streaming services, have been disparagingly dubbed ‘mumble rap’ by traditionalists owing to the apparent indecipherability of their vocals and a lack of emphasis on observational or poetic lyricism. While these have undoubtedly been valuable theoretical approaches, the prominence of social networking in the 2010s (with its vast implications for communication and identity politics) has sculpted a generation of rappers whose vocal style and self-representation disintegrate prior assumptions about hip-hop identity. Hip-hop studies have historically centred on issues of the ‘street’ or virtuosic lyricism and flow, foregrounded as evidence of the ‘seriousness’ of the genre.