A Review Of: The Money Store by Death Grips

The Money Store is an album that I listened to on release and promptly bounced right off of. It’s a punk-rap album from the Sacramento duo, Death Grips, released in 2012. I recall my buddy Matt showing me this wild music video of MC Ride rapping in a beat up sedan, with nearly half of the frame filled with static and unparsible noise. That track, Guillotine (notably from Exmilitary, not The Money Store), has a somewhat catchy hook and came out in close proximity to what the rap collective Odd Future was putting out: high shock value and rough-around-the-edges tracks that challenge the listener. Death Grips felt like one step further than what Odd Future was doing at that time. In hindsight, Death Grips wasn’t one step further, it was miles ahead and something else entirely.

Recently I went back and relistened to this album. I was immediately reminded of why I bounced off it so hard the first time around. The aggressive synth, drums, and vocals assault your senses, almost challenging your decision to put it on. It ellicits this retching feeling that tells you to turn it down or turn it off. The thing that I didn’t understand at the time, was that this was the central thesis of the album. The opening track Get Got gets straight to the point. It’s fast. You can tap your foot to it. MC Ride’s processed vocals cut through and move at a breakneck pace, challenging your ability to follow along in just one listen. The synth loop chirps along, encouraging this dissociative feeling to give in to the hook and turn off the part of your brain intent on processing the lyrics. It transitions straight into The Fever (Aye Aye), yet another fast-paced trance-inducing swell of anger and disgust.

The members of Death Grips are typically cagey about the meanings behind their songs/albums and I understand why. This album, released in 2012 before the age of information bombardment we experience today, fortold the reality we live in today. I interpret the song I’ve Seen Footage as an acknowledgement that everything is being filmed. It’s a called shot that this is the world we live in and nothing is going to change it. At the time, the basis for this claim was the accessibility of hyper-violent content that was available on the internet at that time (i.e. LiveLeak, 4chan, Facebook, etc.). As years have passed this content is so prevalent that you don’t even need to actively seek it out for it to appear on your small screens. The algorithms at work today in modern social networks feed us this content nonstop, rewarding shock over substance. These days it’s often not even real, but instead AI generated (for lack of a better word) shit.

The album is produced effectively to create an immediate assault on your senses. It’s a synthesis of the overwhelming feeling of what it is like to live in this age of information overload. It’s challenging at every turn moreso than punk albums that came before it. Because of its genre niche, it is able to transcend the trappings of punk rock’s rigid structure and evolve into something else entirely. That’s what makes a Death Grips album a Death Grips album.

Hacker is the bookend. “I’m in your areaaaa” and the wild synth loop breaks the pattern of all the tracks preceding it. Where The Cage hides its hook in complex timings and shifting melodies, Hacker does the opposite: the hook is right up front, loud and undeniable, riding a chaotic swell of colliding textures instead of hiding in one. It is sonically engaging and a track I wouldn’t mind popping up on a shuffle, contrasting with the rest of the album. It’s uniquely danceable. As far as I am concerned, Hacker cements The Money Store as a bold work of art ahead of its time.

Death Grips’ The Money Store is an album I would recommend anyone to listen once. I’m sure there are some people out there that would assert this album is listenable on repeat, but to be completely honest, for me that just isn’t the case. That said, I still put this in the essential category because of how ahead of the time it was. You should absolutely listen to it… once.