Forgotten Music: Death Grips “ExMilitary”

Existing squarely in the clunky era of Grooveshark, early Spotify, and other developing streaming services, emerging artists started releasing entire albums that you would simply download from their Facebook or Bandcamp profiles as a zip file. While many charged for this, there were a few releases that were always free to the listener directly from the artist to simply own. Two releases from this era squarely stand out and seemed to blast each group into uncharted DIY territory (see also The Weeknd’s House of Balloons). This album in particular, coupled with that “car crash can’t look away” music videos for Beware and Guillotine, drilled itself into our musical catalogs forever. While they went on to make wonderful and genre bending tunes, this first expression carved itself out in a way that no one could forget . . . even if they wanted to.