And Zilla’s are the product of a suburban neighborhood where “a lot of young White kids and their parents using really deadly drugs like heroin,” says Mel Carter, the Senior VP of A&R at Republic Records, where City Morgue signed in 2018.

Zilla and Sos are not going to preach at you, dispensing answers from a pulpit; they’re going to smack you in the face with the questions.Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in the Spring 2020 issue of XXL Magazine, on stands now. However, this project showcases some of Mula’s most incredible verses to date proving to us that he’s not going anywhere. When Sos was locked up on a 15-month bid following a house raid in 2015 (he says the police found “like 50 grams of crack,” along with various other contraband), he often called his friend Righteous P on the phone; P is Zilla’s older brother. “Nobody really knew what was going on there.” This marriage of the urban and suburban, like the meshing of rap and rock textures, makes City Morgue’s music a fascinating document of American life in 2020.And where some modern rap groups, like Brockhampton, actually met online, City Morgue came together as the result of familial connections. [3] Here, the group talks about their upbringing, combining rap and rock to create their music and more. I was just doing other shit.” That might sound coy, but it gets at the current that runs underneath City Morgue’s music: this is a group that is the product of kids growing up in vastly different, though similarly trying circumstances, filtering this hardship through the cultural instruments that were available to them, doing whatever was necessary to survive.For a pair that had grown up gravitating toward Eminem and Slipknot, respectively, Sos and Zilla found they had an easy chemistry in the studio. By submitting this form, you agree to the Universal Music Group Privacy Policy. “Anything we catch a vibe to, that’s the song,” Sos says. “I was a good kid, you know what I’m saying,” says Sos, “I wasn’t a bad person. While most City Morgue songs resist the kind of linear, myth-building narrative that more conventional rap gravitates toward, there is an underlying complexity. “I already knew I was gonna fuck with him off the come home,” Zilla says of Sos, adding that he expected they would develop a social bond when Sos got home. Zilla’s background in punk—he previously played bass and sung in a band in his hometown and he apparently spent time ghostwriting for the loud, careening “Shinners13” did not have 20,000 views for long. ZillaKami x SosMula Produced by Thraxx CITY MORGUE VOL. One of the most bracing, provocative acts in hip-hop is a two-man wrecking crew known as It’s tempting to talk about City Morgue as a phenomenon of the internet, and the group does indeed reflect many of the realities of an online existence. (Speaking of YouTube, they also reflect the current online struggle in that some of their more provocative clips have been removed from the service. )But each rapper is also committed to evoking the crushing truths of the real, unplugged world. 1 : HELL OR HIGH WATER HIKARI ULTRA video remix by illview follow us on IG: @illview They’re also wound tightly; while Sos and Mula have different backgrounds as music fans, each brings to his recorded material an eager verbosity, packing verses with carefully-timed syllables. Their debut album Hell Or High Water released on October 12, 2018. The water level is rising and the tsunami is about the make landfall with City Morgue surfing the wave like a couple of professionals.What’s next? City Morgue chops it up with XXL for the Spring 2020 issue. Where the strains of hip-hop that have grown out of the Auto-Tuned Atlanta scene and the punkish one birthed on SoundCloud are less jagged and value negative space, City Morgue songs are serrated, nearly growling.

But the combined energies of the two rappers is anything but a natural fit in today’s rap landscape. Zilla and Sos are both uniquely attuned to the kinds of phrasing and syntax that cut through the social media din; they understand what sorts of jarring images stand out from the crowded YouTube algorithm.

“It’s a natural progression,” Zilla says of what he and Sos have learned from one another on the creative front. City Morgue challenges conventional ideas: about what rap can sound like in 2020, the way music can cut across lines of race and background, which images and ideas are considered offensive in a country that shows a cruel disregard for so many of its citizens. While all of these songs do hit hard; the singles released before the project are definitely still the strongest on the project.Since they formed, SosMula has definitely gotten the short-end of the stick.