The Charm of "High-Quantity, Low-Quality" Rappers

Despite living in a world that overwhelmingly rewards and acknowledges art focused on quality over quantity, there are always those who go against the grain and succeed. Most artists would be afraid that a poor output could besmirch their brand or sully their reputation, and they are correct to think so. But this may be all the more reason why the few who paradoxically value quantity over quality are more alluring.

In this article, I will share three rappers who subscribe to this approach and what I find fascinating about them.

Viper

(A quick heads-up: There's way too much lore to provide even a cursory backstory of Viper, so if anything here piques your interest, I recommend going down an internet rabbit hole whenever you have an hour or two to burn.)

Known as a proto-"SoundCloud rap" artist and Vaporwave pioneer, Viper believed any chance he had of a successful music career would be attained by releasing as much material as possible, regardless of its artistic quality. So much so, that he apparently licensed someone else, a man who went by the moniker "Kettle," to remix Viper's music and release it under Viper's name.

Bastardizing his music (if that's even possible) with sped-up, slowed-down, reversed, and modulated variations of the same material led to the profound majority of his material. In total, Viper has released approximately 2,000 albums, and in 2015 alone, he released 669 albums, all of which were, as some denote, "spam mixtapes."

Of the many gems that exist in his discography, here are my top 25 (and yes, I had to chisel it down) favorite LP/EP/single release titles in alphabetical order:

1. $500 Billion Is Chump Change (Young Trillionaire 2)
2. Bitches Be Trippin, But I Aint Even Stuck My Leg Out
3. BLACK LIVES MATTER!
4. Booty Booty Booty Booty
5. De-Throning Reptilian Psy-Ops In My Sleep
6. DEath Is A Just DoOR
7. Fuck tha World It Ain't Real I Bend tha Spoon Wit My Mind
8. Google Rapper Viper 2 Listen 2 & Download His Free Music
9. Hot Girls Take Their Clothes Off for People Who Buy My Mixtape
10. If Cops Are Bacon, Than I'm a Four Star Chef
11. I'm Talkin Bout Makin The Bed Rock Like a Flintstone
12. I Scored Top 98% on the S.A.T.
13. I Shot Gunned a 4loco n Went 2 Bed (But I Ain't Sleepin')
14. It'd Be Heaven on Earth If Cops Were Drafted & Not Hired
15. The 40 Acres Covenant: All U​.​S. Born Blacks Must Get A One​-​Time $100​,​000 Government 40 Acres & A Mule Covenant Payoff Payment
16. The Man, The Myth, The Viper 3
17. On the 6th Day Viper Created Viper
18. Put Sum Relish An Musta On It Ain't Extra
19. Realest G - I Test My Crack To Sell The Best Crack -The Penitentiary Album
20. See You in Space Cowards…
21. Viper Says "I'm Gonna Make The United States Government & Their Central Intelligence Agency Murder Me Like Every Other Major Black Leader Before Me Or Every Black Owned Business Must Get A United States Stock Trade Symbol. Black Justice Is Equal Economy"
22. White Supremacy Is a Myth
23. Why Tha Fuck Is Tibet Still Ain't Free ?????
24. Why We Ain't Even Got to Mars Yet, Nasa? 3
25. You'll Cowards Don't Even Smoke Crack

The dichotomy of vulgarity and socio-political awareness is gripping. What's so brilliant about Viper's music is that his sheer volume of output and its respective low-brow humor is itself a work of art. Viper's greatest masterpiece is not any individual song or album but the magnitude of his presence, the pseudo-irony presented throughout his work, and the ironclad ego he sustained to uphold himself as a self-proclaimed alpha-omega figure.