Key Nyata: Get Fucked Up

saxat från The Stranger:

"If you can't fully read that title, you probably aren't familiar with the Raider Klan — Or RVIDXR KLVN, as they would type it. Their movement is unofficial, underground, and online, a sprawling global gang rather than a block-based one. They type in "glyphs," substituting occult triangles, V's and X's for most vowels (that's "Seattle Raider" up there if you haven't figured it out yet). They wear all black '90s-style snapbacks, jerseys and jackets to match their obsession with '90s underground rap, their main source of inspiration, aesthetics and sample material, despite most of them being '90s babies themselves.

Miami's SpaceGhostPurrp, who has emerged as the de facto KLVN leader thanks to the widespread buzz stemming from his BLVCKLVND RVDIX: 66.6 FM mixtape and subsequent collabs with big names like A$AP Rocky and Juicy J, posted this video on his YouTube channel this week. The young Raider clad in Mariners gear rapping over a sample loop from Memphis rapper Gangsta (not Project) Pat's slow-burner "I Wanna Smoke" (which samples this song, ain't music great?) is Key Nyata, apparently a Seattle teenager. The RVIDXR KLVN movement, though it may seem rooted in the South, is alive in the Northwest.

At first glance it may seem like nothing new, because it's really not. The beat is a sample loop and the lyrics are mostly standard blunt-puffing stoner rap stuff, but Nyata manages to capture some of that dark Southern Phonk sound that early Three 6 had. The switch to Nyata's slowed-up "VLL BLVXK (SPVCX WHXP)" track, which has an awesomely trippy video of its own, adds an element of DJ Screw's Texas Trill to the mix. Older hiphop heads may cry foul over the thought of Tumblr-using teenagers downloading '90s Dirty South albums to sample them on their computers, but I see this as another form of rebellion against the designer-brand pop-rap standard that has become so widely accepted in rap and hiphop these days. Key Nyata and most of the RVIDXR KLVN weren't old enough to properly appreciate the golden-age output of the 1990s, so can you really blame them for wanting to resurrect and restore some of the dark, spooky, fucked up shit that made rap music the scourge of White America before the Powers That Be decided to tame it instead?"