Viper - Big Tits 4 U Errday (2015)

I can see how some might have reservations about this one, but I personally take the view that Viper is simply a man who understands his audience. Big Tits 4 U Errday seems to be part of a mammary themed cycle of releases, others in the series including Suck Her Tits and Luv Dem Big Milky Tits. Without wishing to seem like some beardy hipster whose tastes are limited to whatever you've never heard of, you can probably be forgiven for being unfamiliar with these works on the grounds that no-one seems to actually know how many albums Viper has issued beyond that it's been literally thousands in the last decade, albeit as downloads. Apparently his back catalogue is therefore mostly remixes or chopped and screwed variations on a theme, but for what it's worth, this is the third I've bought at random, and there are only three tracks I recognise, or at least which appear to sample material I've already heard; and against all odds, Big Tits 4 U Errday is every bit good as You'll Cowards Don't Even Smoke Crack and Kill Urself My Man.

Viper's sound is pretty startling when you first hear it. Wikipedia defines it as cloud rap, so I looked up cloud rap but the first sentence of the article referred to cLOUDEAD so I didn't bother reading the rest.

Let's try again.

Viper's sound owes a lot to the quarter speed cough medicine beats of DJ Screw and the like, but otherwise follows its own rules. It's hypnotic like vapourwave and sounds as though it was recorded on some cheap hunk of shit which probably cost about fifteen dollars. At first it sounds like an accident, hence the dubious classification of Viper as an outsider artist, but the more you listen, the harder it is to deny his power. Viper's baritone mumble, sounding as though it was recorded over messenger on a dial-up internet connection, slows to a crawl with percussion reduced to a distant ticking and a bass so distorted that it crumbles into digital slurry and genuinely leaves the cut resembling a dreamier version of something from one of those early Nocturnal Emissions albums, or even My Bloody Valentine transposed to Texas. It shouldn't work, but having now heard three albums of this stuff, I'm forced to conclude that it's no accident and that this guy is a visionary by some definition, at least musically.

Lyrically he's maybe a little basic compared to, off the top of my head, Nas, but nevertheless cuts what is very much his own furrow. For a collection named after boobs and sporting a picture of the same on the cover - or on the associated illustration seeing as this is download only - Viper is unusually respectful regarding women, and we find neither hoes nor bitches on this album so far as I noticed.

Girls love me 'cause I'm so real,
'Cause I'm laid back, 'cause I'm so chill.
Sharing they emotions and how they really feel,
That's why, with me, they make life-long deals.

I appreciate it probably isn't the full Andrea Dworkin, but it's nevertheless a long way from Bitches Ain't Shit. The same easy-going and strangely amiable vibe informs the entire album, meaning that regardless of whether he's trying to sell us crack or otherwise telling us how amazing he is, it's really difficult to dislike Viper. He somehow manages to peddle this schtick while seeming like a nice guy, or at least like it's not anything personal. You'll doubtless be disappointed if you're expecting A Tribe Called Quest, and I suppose it's kind of annoying how the titles bear no resemblance to the tracks they describe (and there aren't any songs about tits either), but this cranky underground weirdo keeps putting out albums which are better than anything by most of the big names. Don't be mislead by the je ne sais Sunday Sport ambience of the title, Big Tits 4 U Errday is a powerfully beautiful piece of work.

Viper - Kill Urself My Man (2013)

Possibly ironically, my rap consumption took a downward turn when I moved to Texas, mainly due to change of circumstances and because I go through phases in my listening habits - although I don't mean that I stopped listening to rap, just that my focus changed. More recently, I've been listening to more and more rap once again, and have thus become aware of being a fifty plus white dude with no fucking clue as to what be going on in the world of rappers' music. I was fairly well clued up from 1995 to the point at which I chucked in my job in 2009. I bought XXL, The Source, and Hip-Hop Connection on a regular basis. I'd read them in the caff after work and hunt down anything I liked the sound of. However, like I said, my circumstances have changed, and although I have an internet, I haven't got the first clue as to where to start looking because whenever I do start looking, I only seem to find shite.

I recently picked up a copy of XXL at WalMart - seeing as they're somehow still printing the thing - but I don't recognise any of the names, and albums don't seem to exist these days because it's all about blogs and SoundCloud, and so much time has now passed that even Lil' Wayne is considered old school; and it's all trap music made by twelve-year olds with facial tattoos and names formed from a keyboard smash; and there's this dude called Tekashi 6ix9ine with rainbow teeth - because somehow the fucking tatts just weren't enough - who recently made the news when he spunked away ninety-five-thousand dollars on a My Little Pony chain.

You see, as a fully grown man, I have trouble getting my head around any of this. I know that the good stuff must be out there, but I'm fucked if I can find it; and I know the good stuff must be out there, because it can't be just Viper…

Kill Urself My Man is, according to the internet, a mix of tracks mostly taken from another of the guy's many albums. I bought it mainly out of curiosity, and to see whether You'll Cowards Don't Even Smoke Crack had been some once in a career flash of brilliance. I also bought it because I appreciated the title for more or less the same reasons as this YouTube commentator:

I like how the song tells you to kill urself but also is very uplifting and personal in calling you my man. Viper is a genius.

As I may have mentioned, Viper churns them out more or less single-handedly - 347 albums issued as downloads in just 2014, apparently - so as you might expect, his quality control isn't always what it could be. With this one we get titles which don't bear any obvious relation to the tracks, Shot Once and Wit U 4 Tha Longhaul seem to be the same mix of the same song, and the rest suffer from digital glitches, pauses and false starts; but the good news is that none of that matters because it's a great album, and every bit as great as Cowards.

Kill Urself has a much stronger R&B vibe than the first one I listened to, and the production is better with at least half of the tracks sounding as though they maybe could have turned up on a nineties No Limit release. Given the stripped down bass rumble which I've come to think of as the Viper sound, I'm tempted to wonder whether he might not have borrowed a couple of the instrumentals used here, being as this album sounds almost expensive in places; but on the other hand, I don't really care that much. The results speak for themselves.

Once again we have a mellow atmosphere and the usual bragging contrasted with the occasional threat, and all drenched in a codeine haze. There's also a surprisingly high quota of autotune, and autotune which actually works and sounds good - which makes for a nice change; and there's the revelation that Viper seems to have a pretty decent singing voice in addition to everything else, given that I suspect there's only so much you can do with autotune. As with Cowards, this music is weird and kind of trippy, but it has a good feeling to it and really gets its hooks into you in a way that not many other things do at the moment. So much for all that condescending bullshit about outsider art, Viper is the real thing, but we've been palmed off with fucking ringtone music for so long that we don't even recognise it when we hear it.

Viper - You'll Cowards Don't Even Smoke Crack (2008)

My introduction to the work of Viper came through a facebook group set up to answer the seemingly innocuous question what are we all listening to today? I was getting a bit pissed off with the place, partially due to the promotion of both Burzum and Death in June by means of the usual wearyingly defensive crap about rising above political correctness and thinking for yourself, although it was probably this same post-ironic contingent which started going on about Viper, because this album was apparently massive amongst sneering internet edgelords of a certain type. It's probably the videos which are to blame - shoddy, no budget camcorder jobs made by YouTube types featuring Viper himself sort of jiggling in time to the music, usually with someone who might even be his mum pretending to cook up a big ol' pan of crack on the family stove; but, hilarious though they may be, the videos don't really matter. Of course, it's true that Viper's music probably sounds like nothing you've heard before, and there's an oddly amateurish quality to it as characterised by some of the titles, but fuck - this is some genuinely good shit, and screw whichever anonymous arbiter of what constitutes culture described Viper as an outsider artist.

Okay, so You'll Cowards sounds as though it was recorded on a nineties Playstation, and first impressions speak of a man rapping quietly in hope that his mum, who is probably in the next room, won't hear him talking about guns and crack; but those are false impressions, and the more you listen, the more it becomes obvious how well Viper's husky near-whisper suits the music - and the more it becomes obvious how well everything here fits together, and how it's supposed to sound like this. Sneering over how Viper sounds nothing like whoever just makes you look like a fucking idiot.

The first thing which will hit you is the bass, and how much of it there is, and how often it's more of an effect than anything with any kind of melodic purpose - like a low flying aircraft or the mangled rumble pumped out of some Escalade waiting for the lights to change. The bass is slow and louder than everything else, and the whole sounds compressed to fuck - booming sine waves with a ticking noise in the background, and that would be the drum machine. Never mind outsider art, it takes serious judgment and ability to come up with something this close to sonic collapse which works apparently in spite of itself. Beyond the bass, we have distant haunting melodies played on something resembling a Casio VL Tone, and Viper rapping through what sounds like some kind of codeine haze - the usual gang related material, but not without flair or imagination, and at least as good as anything you ever heard on a No Limit album.

I don't care what any sniggering post-ironic wanker might have to say on the subject, this is a genuinely weird and peculiarly haunting - even soulful - album, and I shall most definitely be investigating the rest of Viper's back catalogue.