‘Tis the season to get slaughtered — or, rather, um, watch that happen to somebody else in your favorite slasher flick. Spooky time is when you can kick back, eat some candy corn and watch Friday the 13th for the 20th time. If you’re like me, it’s more like a cool moment for silly thought experiments like this one: What would happen if, instead of jittery piano, Michael Myers was creeping to the tune of 21 Savage and Metro Boomin’s “No Heart”? Put more broadly, what if your favorite rap album replaced the theme music for your favorite horror flick? Today, we take an extended look at that idea.
In celebration of Halloween, REVOLT’s putting you on to some rap albums that could double as soundtracks for your favorite horror movie. After all, if you’re going to have a psycho killer or interdimensional monster put you on a shirt, you might as well hear some slaps before you go.
1. 21 Savage and Metro Boomin’s ‘Savage Mode’
Envisioning Savage Mode as a horror soundtrack takes all the imagination of writing Freddy vs. Jason 3. With Metro Boomin’s shadowy woodwind synths and sinister piano loops that sound like they’ve been dipped in a witch’s cauldron, it’s not hard to see the Headless Horseman running down on his opps before riding off into the night. Amplifying the effect is 21 Savage’s cemetery-still monotone, which is probably what Jason would sound like if he actually talked.
2. Tupac’s ‘The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory’
The video for “Hail Mary” sees the ghost of ‘Pac come to the land of the living to get revenge on his enemies, and the song itself is somehow even more haunting than that. Same for all of The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, an LP that sounds like a trip to hell, with only a slightly more pleasant pit stop in purgatory. With its invasively shrill synth line and heartbeat 808s, “Blasphemy” feels like a soundtrack for an exorcism; you can practically see that zombie lady from The Shining rising up to seduce you. Embedded with discordant bells and whispery murmurs, “Life of an Outlaw” is a séance designed to conjure the spirits of dead homies, with Makaveli leading them on a global conquest for Night of the Living Thugs.
3. Gangsta Boo’s ‘Enquiring Minds’
There’s a lot of crunk out there, but none of it’s ever been quite as unnerving as Three 6 Mafia. Their distorted, lo-fi soundscapes sound like transmissions from hell, and their spurts of double- and triple-time flows can sound like the arcane incantations of ghetto mystics. So it’s only natural that Gangsta Boo’s debut album, Enquiring Minds, is just as supernaturally sinister.
4. Mobb Deep’s ‘The Infamous’
Just as much as it is a rap classic, Mobb Deep’sThe Infamous is a feat of transfiguration. In the hands of Prodigy and Havoc, a Dee Dee Warwick song as sweet as “Lover’s Chant” becomes a collection of shouts from dark project buildings (“The Start of Your Ending (41st Side)”). Cymbals and industrial percussion become the site of a grim, ritualistic promise for retribution (“Eye for an Eye”). You get the idea: It’s a masterpiece of atmosphere.
5. Suicideboys’ ‘I Want to Die in New Orleans’
Suicideboys have been making drugged-out horrorcore raps from the very beginning, so their narcotized phantom flows translate pretty well to any movie with cemeteries and late-night dealings with the occult. I Want to Die in New Orleans is something close to the best synthesis of their sound, which is designed for sipping lean in the graveyard with your homies.
6. Big L’s ‘Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous’
Big L’s debut album lives up to its title, with its gloomy Lord Finesse soundscapes and Big L’s acrobatic fatalism making life’s ills feel particularly ill. “MVP” and “Put it On” are reprieves, but tracks like “Danger Zone” and “Da Graveyard” are enough to take you to West 139th Street and Lenox to wait for the arrival of the anti-Christ. If you only listened to this LP, you’d think Damien’s got nothing on Big L.
7. Bbymutha’s ‘Muthaland’
Bbymutha can get pretty raunchy, but the beats she raps on pull from the same occult Memphis energy Three 6 Mafia’s been channeling for years. It helps that her 2020 project, Muthaland, begins with somebody reporting, “Live from the depths of hell.” At different points of the album, it actually sounds like that. If not the depths, maybe a slightly chillier surface.
8. Danny Brown’s ‘Atrocity Exhibition’
If I were executive-producing “American Horror Story” — or, if I were simply a better video editor and didn’t have to spend all of my time actually having to make money — I’d consider making the beat for Danny Brown’s “Downward Spiral” the opening for Season 1. Or maybe I’d use “Ain’t It Funny.” Or “Tell Me What I Don’t Know.” Look, I just really like Atrocity Exhibition. Musically, its blend of discordant horns and distorted basslines combines with Brown’s screechy voice to make something as unnerving as a banshee drug addict zooming through your trap house.
9. La Chat’s ‘Murder She Spoke’
Comprised of hazy, lo-fi samples and gleaming piano loops that haunt like a ghost clown’s merry-go-round, La Chat’s debut album is an electric entry into the Memphis horrorcore tradition. Props for a title that could be a horror flick, too.
10. Playboi Carti’s ‘Whole Lotta Red’
The cover for Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red looks like cover art for a Dracula NES game, but the album itself plays out like theme music for a cyberpunk horror movie. Its glitchy synths and his twitchy yelps are the type of jump scares that will make you pop up from your MacBook for fear of getting sucked into a gruesome netherverse of annoying Carti Stans.
