On the standout song of his newest tape, the New York rapper covers Trump, the Bible, Santa Claus and more
If you are unaware of RXK Nephew, FKA Rx Nephew, AKA the Slitherman, AKA the New Breed Trapper, the first thing you need to know is that he does, says, and moves exactly how he pleases. He doesn’t trust the industry, the media, or even his best friends, causing him to move as fiercely independent as an artist can: marketing, engineering, and recording himself, editing his videos, designing his cover art, and even making his own funny memes.
The mid-twenty-something-year-old from the sub-zero city of Rochester, New York went on a tear last year, releasing nearly a dozen mixtapes and hundreds of YouTube exclusive singles. Over the back-end of 2020, he perfected his most natural flow, which I’ll deem his “Neph” voice (a great example can be found on “Crack Therapy Intro”). But more interestingly, RXK began to manufacture and experiment with the voice of his alter ego, “The Slitherman,” which is as groundbreaking as it is demonic. The Slitherman voice is something I recommend listening to in the middle of a well-lit room, properly armed, with eyes peeled open and ten toes planted firmly on the ground. He sounds as if he stuck his hand into the most barren crevice of his being and smeared every drop of anguish and trauma within him across the microphone. The best introduction to the Slitherman voice can be found on “Hold On Let Me Robb You.”
There’s a lot to unpack about RXK Nephew, but just know that he does whatever the fuck he wants to. He’s like the crack house Aesop; having been to hell and back in just a quarter of a lifetime, coming back to orate his sedated epiphanies over virtually every beat that reaches his inbox.
Throughout his dense and scattered discography, RXK Nephew manages to sound like a cutthroat killer as often as he sounds like a standup comedian. This discrepancy can—and likely will—be diagnosed a variety of different ways, but the most convincing explanation can be found in his lyrically splatter-painted behemoth of a track, “9 Minutes of Hell.”
On “9 Minutes of Hell,” RXK Nephew effuses every ounce of curiosity and distaste about the stories he was told as a child, the institutions that attempted to raise him, and literally whatever else entered his mind at the time of recording. He managed to rap his ass off while being simultaneously hilarious and harrowing, creating a mind-bending product that makes you laugh on the first listen and question your education on the second.
“Imma get on the beat and say what I want / I love stimulus and I love Donald Trump,” pronounces RXK at the start of the song’s third beat loop. There’s no lie in that first line, as his stream-of-consciousness bars range from takes on biblical canon to his lifelong connection with Plankton from Spongebob Squarepants to the alleged ambiguity of Will Smith’s sexuality. Those are just a fraction of the topics touched on. This song, officially titled “American Tterroristt” on streaming services, but more aptly retitled “9 Minutes of Hell” after a user on YouTube suggested it, is a hip-hop equivalent to literary icon Allen Ginsberg’s notorious “first thought, best thought” method of writing. The goal behind this method is not perfection, articulation, or even comprehensibility, but honesty. Unfiltered honesty.
RXK loops the beat four times on this song and offers the most transparent view of his twisted mind to date. He makes it clear that while he may be violently deranged, above all he’s curious, confused, and a little pissed off. Similar to how a lot of us are right now.
If RXK Nephew would have sat down and tried to make this song a cohesive, thought through body of work, it would have lost its appeal. One cannot intentionally create a string of thoughts as divisive and corkscrewed as his. For example, within a 30-second span on “9 Minutes of Hell,” he goes from rationalizing the coronavirus (“Swineflu, ebola, COVID-19 what’s the difference? / All of that shit was killin’ people / I ain’t scared of that, guns kill people! / I ain’t scared of that, AIDS kill people!”), to questioning both the clergy’s knowledge of the afterlife and one of America’s founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin (“How the fuck you gonna tell me I’m going to heaven? / Please tell me when you talk to the dead / Send me a picture and show me some proof / Explain to me why the fuck Benjamin Franklin stood his ass up on that roof!”).
I could sit here all day and quote my favorite lyrics from this song, (“Who the fuck is Christopher Columbus? / If he woulda came to my block / Talkin’ bout he discovered my trap / His ass probably woulda got shot”), (“Why would I go out and buy gifts, then blame it on a n**** named Santa? / Shit, a n**** climb down my roof imma beat his ass with a hamma’! / Eat my cookies beat ya with a hamma’! / Drink my milk beat ya with a hamma’!” ), but it’s best for you to discover how wildly invigorating an artist RXK Nephew is on your own.