Internet music's Soul & new Black $murf - "Thousand Tears [Prod by Frozen Gang Beats]

In one year the world cycles through four seasons The entire Old Testament comes down to ten commandments. The internet has forty-seven total rules; no more, no less, and presumably closed to amendments. What may come as a surprise is this: of the three works are listed, only one of the attributable authors can lay claim to both a Ted talk and a mention as one of Time Magazine's most influential people. But as helpful to writing as randomly selecting a rule of the internet might be - number thirty-three and its decree, "Lurk more, it's never enough" - what follows is not music about the internet. This is, just as well, not a post about music by the internet braintrust. "Internet music" as a label is a thinly-veiled genre reference. "Internet music" is an archival tool to collect a diverse swatch of auteurs, but not a style. This is about music, however amateur, from the internet.

Without straying too far from 4chan - described to me by a gentleman in a very large college lecture hall as "the gutter of human achievement," the one and only time he spoke in five months - m00t is more than a myth. Consider these words by Christopher Poole (or an awfully committed method actor): 

"The emphasis on anonymity is a large factor [...] it allows you to express things that normally you wouldn't if you had an identity." 

The internet as a public service is not a terribly unique idea. Putting it in the context of an unofficial mental health service, though, gives the notion of creativity some legs. Think of the internet as borderless group therapy and the first frontier of Noggle Care. Patients are free to participate by creating. The music is rooted patients' impulsive bursts in different facilities: Bandcamp, Tumblr, and Soundcloud. Raider Klan, OFWGKTA, Based World, Sad Boys, and such are different sessions times.

Black $murf is very much captured by the internet music category. He is based out Memphis, Tennessee and fuses the best of hip-hop he grew up with - late 1990s and early 2000s southern rap - with  the freedom of internet anonymity. Which is to say, the entire corpus used to form an opinion of Black $murf is based on what has been written for him. The Black $murf discography is a first-person point of audio biography for an alter ego's point, the most prolific example that comes to my mind being this 2013 EP. Excessive influences often breeds indifference - lack of focus becomes synonymous for over ambition and stretching yourself creatively thin. But this thought process seems to come natural to Black $murf. A Juicy J flow, DJ Screw variations, horror aesthetics, and anime references (though not exclusive) are effortlessly woven together. Unfortunately this approach produces lots of throwaway creations too. The upside is how far on the opposite end of the spectrum the pleasant results are found. High risk, high reward, and "Thousand Tears" is exemplary of this. As the song begins, the listeners are treated sample from Naruto and an appropriately Japanese melody. Frozen Gang Beatz has made a clever play on the large orchestral creations of trap by replacing symphonic elements with these East Asian sounds over a 4/4 cymbal and non-excessive snare rolls. The somber melodic feel assists the content of the song. The character of Black $murf, as often is the case, is grappling with the topic of fate. The vehicle chosen is more a mid-tempo ballad than a blues record;  a chorus is passed over  Black $murf for a matter-of-fact flow and spoken word passages. "You gotta get it how you live it, always chase your dreams / And never let a n*igga tell you what you gotta be," is some of the wisdom ultimately passed on to those who have the pleasure of enjoying this track.

- John Noggle