Bridging The Underground: On RXK Nephew & DJ Rude One's The ONEderful Nephew
For decades now, rap has seen constant generational clashes among fans, often leading to binary labels: you’re either an old head or you’re in the new school; you either listen to “mumble” rap or you’re interested in “lyrical miracle” songs. Recently though, changes in how we discover music —from the musical microclimates of blogs and forums to the constant shuffling of larger platforms like TikTok—have helped to break down these superficial barriers. On The ONEderful Nephew, his new tape produced by Chicago-bred Brooklynite DJ Rude One and released via indie label Closed Sessions, RXK Nephew kicks the door down between these two worlds while ripping through any preconceived notions fans and critics may have had about him.
RXK and Rude’s collaboration came from a song they did together for Rude’s upcoming personal release. After being shown Neph’s song “The Real Lil Reese,” an almost 14-minute masterpiece of quotables and one-liners, Rude was impressed. A few weeks later while in the studio working on his own project Rude finished a chaotic beat that he couldn’t imagine anyone rapping on. He sent it over to Neph with low expectations. “Two hours later, Neph hit me back with 24 bars of absolute murder,” Rude said during our interview. “I knew I needed to do another one,” he continued. Rude put his own album on the back burner and turned with full focus to crafting the beats for The ONEderful Nephew.
At first glance, the two might seem like a musical odd-couple. RXK is often dismissed as a meme-rapper. A high-speed remix of his electro-dance rap track “Critical” recently went viral on TikTok. His presence is extremely online and though he can seemingly rap on any type of beat, boom-bap is definitely not the sound most people would associate with him. Rude, on the other hand, has built a career mastering that grimy 90’s sound for hip-hop purists like Roc Marciano, Westside Gunn, and Your Old Droog. While it might not be expected, the minimalist soundscapes that Rude cooked up are the perfect backdrop for Neph’s non-stop street-forward stream of consciousness flows.
Rude went into the project with a real sense of creative freedom and experimentalism that Neph’s range as a rapper allowed. The beats on ONEderful Nephew are composed of samples and sounds that Rude couldn’t make sense of for other artists’ tracks. “Honestly, a couple of the beats that I sent over to Neph, I didn’t know if he was going to go for them, but an hour later I got back crack,” Rude joked. He credited Nephew’s talent as a rapper for holding the project together. “Everyone that I work with, I take seriously as an artist. I like dudes that rap to rap,” the producer enthused.
The nine songs that make up the album clocks in at just over 20 minutes, making every second essential. Rude wanted to keep it short and sweet with a dramatic flair and he achieves this through a masterful use of menacing samples and throbbing sub-bass. On the opening track, “Fuck Yo’ Set,” Neph releases a non-stop barrage of roasts and flexes over a pulsing bassline. “I’m not ’bout to get on the beat and rap like Conway yeah/ And I can’t stand in no club drinkin’ no Bombay,” Nephew raps shouting out Rude’s former collaborator and fellow upstate New Yorker Conway the Machine while subtly acknowledging that though he’s on a Griselda type-beat he’s still the same damn Neph.
RXK’s infectious personality and twisted sense of humor anchor the album but on tracks like “Black Ice,” Neph shows that he has the bars to back up his boom-bap posturing. Over a dusty upright bass sample, he weaves a tale of a robbery and betrayal that wouldn’t sound out of place on a 90’s hardcore compilation tape. Nephew is a rapper who embodies the multiplicity of the modern moment. You might catch him rapping over reggaeton, heavy metal, EDM, and now boom-bap, but no matter where he finds himself, RXK has the charisma to make it look effortless.
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