More than a few times, my hubris has shot me in the foot with a spliff in my hand. The last time I got too fried, I thought I was gonna end up deaf at a basement show my homie’s hardcore band was playing. I still remember how I felt hearing those punishing riffs seep through the restroom door: overwhelmed, neurotic, strangely invigorated. I knew then that’d be the last time I put myself through some shit like that.
Turns out I was wrong. The new tape from Tennessee-based SoundCloud deviant MikeBrokeasf, EM0THUG, brought me right back to that bone-chilling feeling. Not because I was stoned again, and not because the music sounds similar, but because the textures are so brazen and unrelenting. At this fucked-up intersection of Drukqs, trance music, and swag rap, I completely understand if you’re inclined to turn around and never look back. But if you do find enjoyment in EM0THUG, then congratulations—you are more turnt than the average listener. “Break a nigga’s speakers/Don’t play me in yo’ car,” Mike quips on the 90-second opener. Aptly titled “808 Speaker Breakers RIP Speaker Knockers,” it comes with brutal waves of bass and alarmous techno blips that mutate half a dozen times as MikeBrokeasf raps about not being broke. Consider yourself warned.
MikeBrokeasf has messed around with plugg music and raggedy electronica since the early 2020s, when he was known as percosits. The shroom-riddled, sex-crazed “in my polo shirt,” from 2023’s Swag School, is a clear predecessor of EM0THUG’s haywire robotics. Over squelching blips and chimes, Mike’s freewheeling delivery is steeped in rap-game gluttony: Xanax bars and lean cups, Hedi Dior and pretty girls. Despite just being 19 minutes long, EM0THUG at its most left-field is grating and unforgiving. Everything is borne out of carnal, off-the-cuff sadism. Sometimes it’s unnecessary. You feel it on “Juice,” a track whose screwfaced, “U Guessed It”-type buildup leads to a flagrant rhyme with “maggots,” which, yeah. You feel it in the rabid (kinda cool) breakbeats on “ACiD MuSiK” and “Im a Emo Thug” that could’ve been ripped from Squarepusher. It’s the soundtrack to greening out at a chaotic houseparty: The clanging pots and pans, chintzy record scratches, and throbbing Jersey club kicks on lead single “3.5s and 808s” make Carti’s “OPM BABI” sound as easygoing as Norah Jones.
EM0THUG becomes more palatable when it allows its melodies to swell and take shape. Standout “I Slay Demons” is built around menacing synth keys that stutter and slink in reverse before ballooning into a lambent lead melody. MikeBrokeasf paints every surface with crude, acidic Auto-Tune bursts, turning rap clichés into punchy soundbites. “I’m like Ant Edwards/I don’t fuck with none of my kids,” he chirps before dedicating half the song to his “young rich emo dick.” “Purple Dreams” shifts between Eurodance starbursts and spritzes of twinkly MIDI as Mike takes to crooning. As he sings to a girl about leaving the function together, his vocal runs remind me of when Uzi used to make cutesy, drug-tinged love songs. “Yeah don’t act fanned out, keep it cool,” Mike belts. “I fuck wit your vibe, fuck wit youuu.”
Bumping EM0THUG is like opening a bag of gummy worms on a full stomach. You know exactly what kind of carnage is waiting for you at the bottom of that bag, but you’ll find some joy on your way there. In a sea of kids trying mad hard to look like they don’t care about structure, MikeBrokeasf genuinely does not give two shits about structure. Dude probably grew up writing “Thank You Based God” on his desk in math class. Take the electro-armageddon of “Walk In,” a track that sounds like it might’ve been recorded in a single take. The piercing synth and restless one-liners land exactly where they’re intended: deep inside your hippocampus, urging you to run headfirst into that wall.
