Review Summary: Death Grips throw up their hands at their record label and self release their grittiest album yet
Death Grips shocked the world and their record label when they released their second release of the year
No Love Deep Web, but upon listening it's pretty clear that this is a mixtape that the label had no intention of releasing. No Love Deep Web was probably just an elaborate way to hype up the band, and it's safe to say it worked.
No Love Deep Web had over 34.2 million downloads on BitTorrent thanks to the help of Twitter, and I think its safe to say their plan worked. Speaking of the album itself, it employs very minimalistic stripped down beats and has a much chiller vibe overall compared to the previous two records. That doesn't mean the beats are soft though, because they are harder than the phallus on the album cover.
No Love Deep Web is one big grimy middle finger to the music industry and one of the most sordid albums ever released by a group on a major label.
This isn't your father's hip hop, but that should be common knowledge by now. If you go into this expecting insightful lyrics and smooth flow over catchy beats you're going to have a bad time, hell even if you expect to understand the lyrics most of the time you're going to get very little out of
No Love Deep Web. MC Ride is his schizophrenic self on tracks like "No Love" and "World Of Dogs," but he also comes down to earth and actually calms down a bit on tracks like "Artificial Death In The West" adding a lot more depth to their sound. The whole album feels like the fever dreams of a severely withdrawn drug addict, tracks like "World Of Dogs," "No Love" and "Hunger Games" sound like a sick drug addicts crash back down to earth and their gritty existence. The line "I got some *** to say just for the *** of it" perfectly encapsulates not only MC Ride's style, but
No Love Deep Web, and Death Grips' whole career.
The beats on this thing are raw and stripped down, some of the tracks don't even have a melody some of the time, just drums and vocals like in "Lock Your Doors." The beats are fidgety electronic bells and whistles, lots of interesting sounds and synths creating a gritty atmosphere for MC Ride to spit his insane lyrics over. The rawness and harsh production of the beats help point to the fact that this is a mixtape and not a studio release, the minimalistic approach also creates a fresh sound compared to the over produced and at times gimmicky production on
The Money Store, and this approach will likely convert a few people who were not fond of the over the top nature of The
Money Store.
No Love Deep Web inevitably sounds a tad rushed, no *** it was made in only a few months, but it definitely did its job as a hype generator. It doesn't do enough different to warrant its early release date and the band's sound is getting a bit tiring. The main problem though is the lack of standout tracks, with most of the hooks gone and with such stripped down beats a lot of the songs blend together in an unflattering way. Exhausting as it can be at times,
No Love Deep Web turned out to be another great addition to Death Grips' ever expanding discography that is likely to turn a few heads just as all of their previous work has done.
