Steve 'Flash' Juon“How many times I gotta say I do not give a shit?”
Once. Once will suffice. This is Nascar Aloe, a rapper who according to two fan wikis (one of which is probably self-edited) hails from Lexington, North Carolina. He would have been 20 years old when “SH!THEAD” came out. That’s certainly a peak demographic for not giving a shit, even before we all lived through a depressing global pandemic. That’s old enough to smoke, vote, take on debt and serve in the military in the U.S., yet just young enough to not legally drink. Part of that “not giving a shit” mentality is that “legally” thing never stopped any teenager who wanted to from doing it. You’re so young at that point that you don’t fear anything.
“Fuck living, bitch I’m ready for the afterlife!”
Aloe is certainly doing his best to convince us of his bonafides on “SH!THEAD.” He screams at all times with zero regard for his vocal chords, and if he’s not being loud enough, the producer layers up ad libs of him screaming additional interjections. His lyrical content takes the idea of being reckless and nihilistic to an extent that’s borderline comical. Rappers usually say their inferior competitors “bring a knife to a gun fight,” but Nascar and his comrades Myagi & Fo55il swear by this creed on “knife fight.” As dark as drill music can be, it’s at least grounded in the gritty reality of places like Chicago’s South Side, but I didn’t know The BBQ Capital of the World was this bleak. I suspect it’s not… or that Aloe wants to be the face of something darker than drill.
“If you jumpin in my pit you catch a nosebleed
You talkin too much fuckin shit, you do not know me”
Fair enough Mr. Aloe. I don’t know you. Maybe you were abused as a child, bullied in middle school, starting taking acid as a teenager and had numerous run-ins with the law. Maybe you grew up in squalid poverty and your home was a trap house. Maybe nobody ever showed you love once in your life. I don’t have any idea how bad your life was or is. If it’s as bleak as the music on “SH!THEAD” then I feel horrible for you because everybody in your life failed you. This can certainly be read as the anger of a young man whose life was carelessly thrown away, who sincerely does not give a shit, simply because no one ever gave a shit about him. On the other hand because I don’t know him there’s an equally good chance he’s just portraying a violent sociopath who screams his bars over ear raping beats just so that he’ll get noticed. He could be a straight A student who got a full scholarship to a prestigious college and this is just a side hustle.
Above all else I’m going to call “I Don’t Dance” accurate. This is not music you dance to, nor bob your head to, nor am I even sure you could slam your way through a mosh pit to it. That’s probably the only thing you could realistically do with songs this angry. This is 19 minutes of someone who is either filled with pure hatred for life and for the genre he performs in or a very convincing put on. It’s so convincing that I too was filled with hate — not for Nascar Aloe as a person but for the fact this is what he was compelled to do. It’s fascinating how unlistenable a sub-20 minute album can be but Aloe achieves IceJJFish levels of infamy here. “SH!THEAD” impressed me by being so bad it’s almost perversely good. This is a blender full of broken glass and broken dreams that will break your ear drums if played at high volume in any residential neighborhood.