emotegi
When considering art and the internet, it's important to keep in mind that one occasionally needs to go on a bit of a dig to unearth quality material. Bay-area based producer/songwriter emotegi embodies this dynamic perfectly. A member of SoundCloud music collective Tsundere Fan Club, emotegi's music is contemporary genre hybridization in full form, combining elements of emo rap, nightcore, and video game music along with other sources.
In spite of his eclectic style, emotegi gives me a succinct response when I ask him what listeners need to know about him:
"emotegi is my creative spirit, it's the amalgamation of all my ideas, interests, and obsessions. It's my stand."
Like many Soundcloud artists, emotegi is well-versed in the business of sampling, auto-tuning, and modern production. That alone, however, isn't nearly enough to guarantee plays. You need personality; individuality to make it in the music world, and luckily, emotegi has plenty. On "Heartbreakcore" he samples Nier: Automata, Usher, and Young Thug – or at least, that's how much I was able to identify. In our discussion, he elaborates upon an even broader range of inspirations: the instrumental was inspired by London-based producer MssingNo, piano chords were written to evoke Gran Turismo 5, the overall sound reminiscent of Japanese Docomo phone ads, and the inclusion of Thugger and Usher "wasn't that deep," they just happened to be enjoyable for him.
When I subsequently move into a question regarding internet kids' wide array of interests and culture manifesting within their new art, emotegi is pretty much putting words in my mouth. "I've always had the obsession of trying to fit too many things into one frame," he tells me. Process-wise, he finds creating music to be a modular, collage-like project. "It's gradual; it builds upon itself. From the start of the project, sounds and images appear in the brain. You become curious to try each and every suggestion."
My favorite song of his, "5-12-2007 Spring talent show Homestead High School" (embedded below) exemplifies a more intimate relationship between the artist and his choice in samples. It's evidence of emotegi's ability to go even further beyond the average (but not necessarily bad!) tendency of internet musicians to grab the occasional anime dialogue or video game sfx and hope that the beat is alright enough to get plays on YouTube.
The track begins with a garbled, beautifully submerged beat under a strikingly innocent sample: audio of a high schooler introducing the next contestant (with her gymnastics routine, give her a big hand people) at a talent show. It's rare to see this kind of hyper-authentic, found-audio type-beat sampling in both emo rap and nightcore – genres that feel loosely apparent in "talent show" – more so reminiscent of the way indie/experimental artists such as Ricky Eat Acid have approached their samples. According to the artist, the distinctively melancholy, yet subtly frantic theme present on this song was actually introduced after the initial idea:
"My voice was underdeveloped; I was insecure. So I nightcored it to hide the flaws and lowpassed it to sound like a low quality recording. The meaning came after the initial recording [...] the insecurity related to the high school setting." For emotegi, imperfections can be either disguised or rewritten entirely – metamorphosing into a newfound type of strength. Of course, there are plenty of critics and music theorists (many of whom also tend to ignore SoundCloud and smaller projects in favor of covering the next big albums) who will assert that this is a audible "cheapening" of one's sound and individuality.
emotegi's stance on such parties is firm: they're bitter oldheads.
"Not everyone loves everything about themselves, and that's fine, it's not sad. We're taught over and over to "be ourselves" to the point where we forget that we can be something more. It's not about being ashamed [...] it's about breaking our own expectations; becoming our own role models."
Upon his mentioning of becoming "something more" than oneself, I thought to ask emotegi a few more questions on the ways in which the internet collectivizes people in different capacities. We quickly came to contextualize our discussion within the widespread (amongst internet communities) aesthetic appropriation of the iconic 1998 cyberpunk-psychological anime, Serial Experiments Lain. The show's internet-based concerns, along with who emotegi calls its "cool, cyber-emo poster child," Lain, are borderline omnipresent in certain secular internet communities. emotegi partially chalks this trend up to being a type of code-signaling to other cult-followers, but we ended our conversation convinced of something deeper – perhaps a caveat of the show's portrayal of a word where humans, through the internet, are connected at an unconscious level.
The artist's closing remarks on the internet contained aspects of what was expressed in the previous two artists': coming to a conclusion that the internet is perhaps as multi-faceted and elusive in definition as postmodernism itself.
"I think the internet is just an expansion of human thinking and community. Positive or negative. Knowledge and information become more available; people learn more. At the same time, we're also subject to more fatigue, depression, and anxiety. It's just the way it is."
you can find more of emotegi's work through his Soundcloud.