#for the record I'm not dissing trap

[keiachi-chan]

Genuinely pleased that we've moved on from generic trap beats as "remixes" and graduated to making everything breakcore or perhaps jersey

[sinceileftyoublog]

Ashnikko Album Review: WEEDKILLER

(Parlophone/Warner Records)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

It's rare that someone's debut album is a concept record, though if anyone were to successfully on first pass navigate the murky waters between establishing a fictional narrative and making a larger statement about humanity as a whole, it would be trap metal singer-songwriter and rapper Ashnikko. On WEEDKILLER, a fairy civilization has been destroyed by machines, and the protagonist essentially becomes part machine in order to uproot the system from within. You can immediately see parallels to the crises of our time, from climate change to the legislative war on people with uteruses and LGBTQ+ folks; Ashnikko doesn't suggest to either burn it all down or incrementally pick battles, instead focusing on their own emotions to elicit empathy. It works to cement both their imperfections and wants.

Fittingly, some of the best songs on WEEDKILLER are about desire, especially queer desire. The Daniela Lalita-featuring erotica of "Super Soaker" skitters to corporeal heights. "Don't Look At It" is less spiritual, more physical, Ashnikko comparing themselves to Tony Hawk as they're "doin' tricks until my tongue hurt." "Miss Nectarine" details Ashnikko's childhood friend who they'd make out with to "practice for the boys," Ashnikko developing unrequited feelings. "The bruise of bein' fourteen / Got chlorine in our hair, my jaw is shaking in my mouth," they sing, the warbly auto-tune an effective window into their emotional volatility. And "Possession of a Weapon", written after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, effectively alternates between anger and mournful acceptance. "How dare I have private desires?" Ashnikko asks, at the same time realistically and sadly comparing their own body to a chess piece in a game played by lawmakers, their autonomy as strong against oppressive rain as papier-mâché.

Ashnikko has been making music for almost a decade and releasing it for over half that time, so they've certainly established somewhat of a visual and sonic identity. WEEDKILLER doesn't upend what they'd been exploring on their EPs and debut mixtape DEMIDEVIL, but it's certainly their most cohesive statement yet. The title track and "World Eater" form not just the conceptual but musical base for the whole album, a conglomerate of trap beats, cascading synths, and power chords. "Worms", in which Ashnikko makes the best of their own decomposition within a post apocalyptic-world, features surprisingly limber bars and inventive rhyme schemes, as they declare, "Brand-new day, got a brand-new grin / Got a colony of ants underneath my skin / My bones decay, now I'm gelatin / I swear I'm better, Miss Parasite Possessor." From nu metal jams with metallic, clanging percussion to obvious, but successful Britney and Rihanna tributes, Ashnikko fulfills the promising pop dexterity they merely hinted at on previous releases.

And then there's "Dying Star", which takes another sonic left-turn and perhaps hints at where Ashnikko could go next. Featuring gothic Americana troubadour Ethel Cain, Ashnikko finds an aesthetic nestled somewhere in between the hyper-aggression of the rest of WEEDKILLER and Cain's slow-burning epics. The two harmonize, over repeatedly echoing guitar strums and bass lines, Ashnikko at one point singing, "I want something soft." After an album's worth of diss tracks and feelings bursting at the seams, they finally let themselves be vulnerable.

[justabumatthepark]

Sitting on Tumblr, never outside or enjoying the weather

Can name a sweater, but not a talent or don't know if whether

Or not they got one, tried to change their life for the better

I was the drama club kid, I run where the fun did, my nuts itched

I was defiant, always said, "Fuck shit"

Hated the popular ones, now I'm the popular one

Also hated homes too, 'til I start coppin' me some

See, I don't beez in the trap, nigga, I beez in the b's

And I be gassing up my buzz like some bees at a Shell

Fucking sick and getting bigger like I sneezed on Adele

And bitches getting touchy-feely like they reading some Braille

I bust quick like gun-holders with short tempers, and well

I tried to tell the kids, like fuck it, start being yourself

These fucking rappers got stylists 'cause they can't think for themselves

See, they don't have an identity, so they needed some help, but

Really, boy? Posers looking silly, boy

I'm in that past season 'Preme shit, older than Tity Boi

Not a diss, but same with ice cream, my shit is Diddy Riese

Na'kel Smith, Transworld page 64

Poppin' like oil ollie in fire flames

I'm harder than DJ Khaled playing the fucking quiet game

The fuck am I saying? Tyler's not even a violent name

About as threatening as stained windbreakers in hurricanes

But he rapes women, and spit wrong, like he hates dentists

God-damn menace, 666 and he's not finished

And my shit's missing, he hates women, but love kittens?

See y'all niggas tripping, man

Look at that article that says my subject matter is wrong

Saying I hate gays even though Frank is on ten of my songs

Look at that Mom who thinks I'm evil, hold that grudge against me

Though I'm the reason that her motherfucking son got to eat

Look at the kid who had the .9 and tried to blow out his mind

But talk is money, I said, "Hi, " I guess I bought him some time

Look at the ones in the crowd, that shit is barnacles, huh?

They thought I wasn't fair until I threw a carnival, huh?

But then again, I'm an atheist that just worships Satan

And it's probably why I'm not getting no fucking album placements

And MTV could suck my dick, and I ain't fuckin' playing

Bruh, they never played it, I just won shit for they fucking ratings

"Analog" fans are getting sick of the rape

All the "Tron Cat" fans are getting sick of the lakes

But what about me, bitch? I'm getting sick of complaints

But I don't hate it when I'm taking daily trips to the bank

Oh, but no but, shit, who really gives a fuck what I think?

My fans don't, they turning on me, shit, they're almost extinct

Fuck buying studio time, I'ma go purchase a shrink

Record the session and send all you motherfuckers a link, bitch

[theseventhoffrostfall]

When you put aside the stuff that's just fun adventure romps (which I'm not dissing, that's most of what I read) it's interesting to look at how 'high-substance' sci-fi and fantasy tend to operate. Not just in the trappings of whether a knight is fighting orcs with a sword or a a commando is fighting aliens with a laser rifle, I mean in terms of the philosophy behind the narrative

Fantasy works tend to examine man's relationship to nature, the divine, and purpose in life. Magic augments how a character interacts with the world more than the world itself, and grand-scale issues and conflicts tend to be outgrowths of baser, more personal and fundamental conflicts, not just depicting good vs. evil or law vs. chaos, but examining what that means to the characters and the author. As you might expect, the prime archetype here is indeed Lord of The Rings

Sci-fi, by contrast, tends to be much larger in scope with what it tackles. The focus is more likely to be on societies as a whole, the nature and purpose of government, how religion is among the factors shaping both individual thought and the cultural zeitgeist, and more fringe topics like the effects ecology and planetology have when shaping a people's philosophy and mindset. And, of course, how new factors like new technological paradigms, the dispersal of civilization across multiple planets, contact with non-human sapience, and even the removal of certain factors ranging from computers to senescence affect all of the above. As you probably predicted, the poster child for this is Dune.

Where it gets interesting for me is when a work of one genre seems to be written with the mindset of its counterpart. The Hyperion Cantos is a sci-fi series to the hilt, but its focus and mindset trend much more towards fantasy, with different characters going through crises of faith and being forced to confront their understanding of their place in the universe as they encounter strange factors outside their conceptions of what was possible. Conversely, The Prince of Nothing is a fantasy series, but a huge amount of focus is given to how various characters' cultural and religious backgrounds shape their thinking, and as the series progresses it examines the way a new government forms and the methods and reasoning that shape it. As a more surface-level detail, the way it handles plot-important magical devices is a lot closer to how sci-fi handles precursor artifacts and LosTech than how fantasy tends to handle magical relics and wondrous items.

Certain books are likewise a more even mix of the two. Book of the New Sun has examinations on both personal, spiritual topics and the nature of society in an exhausted, ancient world facing none-too-distant extinction, while Sun Eater explores both the personal internal strife of its protagonist and the oppressive, alien nature of a society that in the story's context is a pretty believable evolution of our own. These are actually perhaps unsurprising, since the author of the former is on record as saying "all novels are fantasies, some are just more honest than others" the author of the latter is an outspoken advocate of a no-more-brother-wars attitude among what he calls 'weird fiction'.

Though where it gets confusing again is that, despite what I said at the start, all of these books do indeed play with the trappings of the respective genres as well, with quasi-magical elements in Hyperion, Not-Angband being a crashed alien starship in Prince of Nothing, and Book of the New Sun having strange, time-breaking quasi-divine intervention in a primitive feudal world where a castle's towers might be derelict rockets and a knight's mount might be a bioengineered war-alien