Somewhere in Sacramento, Stefan Burnett paced down a workplace hallway wearing all black and a gas mask. He tested every door, with his friend Zach Hill on his tail, recording him for a music video. Eventually a door opened, and an empty printing room sat there. A woman screamed.
A cry, “Hello?” is caught on tape – the camera cuts.
Below that office, in the basement for months prior, Hill squatted and lived after the apartment he rented was sold from under him during his trip to Japan. While he lived in the basement, he spent his time drumming and doing coke with homeless people, in addition to the music he, Burnett, and their friend Andy Morin were creating.
The trio would spend their time in Burnett’s apartment crafting the music – Burnett was the vocals of the project, Hill was the drums, and Morin was the production.
What came from their work in 2010 and early 2011 was Death Grips’ debut mixtape, “Exmilitary”.
“Exmilitary” is what some might describe as “messy” – it is a product that is Death Grips at their core. It’s abrasive, unapologetic, and loud. Really loud. It isn’t afraid to test new things or to test boundaries, going against the social norms of what music is, and bending the rap genre until it snaps.
Take track one, “Beware”, for example: the first thing you hear on “Exmilitary” is a monologue delivered by Charles Manson (the serial killer).
“I make the money, man. I roll the nickels. The game is mine. I deal the cards.”
Just like that, Death Grips let you know what they are about. They aren’t here to just make music, but to run the game and make the money, even if people don’t like them. But the thing is – people do like them. And people like them a lot, so much so that they are the definition of “cult following”. You look up “cult following” in the dictionary and you get a photo of a middle-aged man wearing a shirt with the cover of “The Money Store” printed onto it (don’t quote me on that). Anyway, that’s beside the point; my point is that “Exmilitary” was the beginning of something special, something that not even the trio could predict.
Zach Hill had been making music for a long time before “Exmilitary” struck gold. First, he had Hella, his side project with Spencer Seim. Then he had his solo works, which were yet to blow up. But Death Grips was different; the industrial rap sound was something that had yet to be built fully, so when he met Burnett (who happened to be his neighbor for some time), they began to work on some music together.
They began to work on a self-titled EP that would be released just a month before “Exmilitary”, featuring their first song “Full Moon (Death Classic)” and a collection of five other songs, one of which being “Takyon (Death Yon)” (which was the song in which the aforementioned music video was dedicated to), which also finds itself on the mixtape. About a month later, their first mixtape, “Exmilitary,” was born.
“Exmilitary” is genuinely insane. It sounds like songs with rabies. It is one of those projects that takes a couple of listens to fully understand, but once you get it, you get it. If you want a full taste of what the project is about, look no further than “I Want It I Need It (Death Heated)”, which makes you question what you’ve been missing out on this whole time. The music is a reflection of where the trio was at when they were crafting the project; it holds the listener in a chokehold due to its original approach to rap and its brazen lyricism, while representing the drug-induced chaos of Hill’s musicianship.
There’s some sort of overarching grain that plagues the project. It bites the snares and the synths, folding into intimacy between Burnett’s angst and the listeners’ ears. You feel like you are getting yelled at half of the time, but in an endearing way (I swear). In a way, the folds and the aging of the photo on the cover perfectly represent the project: age-old creases create the slightest mismatch of the four corners of the photo, marking a sense of obscurity.
You get lost in the ins and outs of “Exmilitary”, and every listen grants a new hyperfixation, which for me, manifested in the combination of electronic music within the nice of caustic, eroding rap.
Death Grips lend themselves to the trip of Animal Collective just as much as they do to the battling metal sounds of Revenge, or even to the classic psych sounds of the Beatles or Jimi Hendrix. And that’s apparent on “Exmilitary”.
“Culture Shock” gives Aphex Twin. The forty seconds of “5D” give “Merriweather Post Pavilion”. “Spread Eagle Cross the Block” gives 90s gangsta rap. That’s what gives the project that “messy” sound – it’s the process of Death Grips finding themselves, but in a way that breeds creativity and new ideas. It’s the Death Grips basics combined with the flare of a band that is yet to figure itself out yet, which gives listeners the opportunity to hear things that aren’t anywhere else within their catalogue.
“Exmilitary” is a daring, gutsy project that explores the ins and outs of Death Grips’ music, creating a bubble for themselves within the lanes of heavy metal, rap, and experimental music. It’s a project that is inevitable within the discourse of music that has manifested itself as a must-listen that is here to stay.