A Very Smurt Retrospective Pt. 1: Early Career

A Very Smurt Retrospective Pt. 1: Early Career

7/28/20

 

 

DISCLAIMER: This is my first in a series of essays I'm working on called "A Very Smurt

Retrospective". These essays will be full, thought-out, edited heavily, and will not include pictures or sources. These are fully opinionated papers on the career and meaning of Very

Smurt going album by album. They'll probably release 1-3 times a month and will go by album.

Only this essay and the essay reflecting on "Smurt's Christmas!!" and "The "Back" Pack!" will

be the exceptions. The series will end after I release the final essay on "THE SMURT

MIXTAPE" discussing the end of Very Smurt. According to my estimates, we'll probably finish

this series up in November (or December if we have a few other topics to discuss). Thanks for

reading this disclaimer, and I hope you enjoy the series.

 

    Very Smurt’s music held its quality through the very end. It stood the test of time while ranging musically and experimenting with various styles of comedy. Through all of this, though, It’s easy to see how far he has come since his first single. This change is clearly showcased in the August 2019 single “Supreme 2”. Just by hearing the iconic “yah” at the beginning of both songs, you see how Smurt’s voice has deepened and the tone of the word has changed. Such a little change, proven to be so drastic. Nearly two years after that first syllable, we find ourselves at the end of Very Smurt as an artist persona. As he’s been through so much through these many months, it’s curious to see how it all began. From Supreme through Hanukkah Man, this is the first part of: “A Very Smurt Retrospective”.

 

    The song “Supreme” begins with a lackluster and off-beat almost nonsensical Spanish rap. This somehow perfectly sets the tone for all Very Smurt wanted to be throughout his career; a parody artist. Not an artist who does exclusively direct parodies, but who mocks the nature of the music industry and today's unique stylistic trends. “Supreme” takes advantage of how easy it has become to make music using services and websites meant to be taken seriously. He utilizes this only to shit on them in such a way that it feels almost like a love letter to the medium. It ever so blatantly disrespects today's heaps of terrible rap music in a way so innocent and harmless. He and Lil Creeper fire random words at the listener with lines about being rich and “memeing” haters. In fact, some of their genius can be found in the word “memeing”, as it tends to mean anything and everything throughout its many uses in Smurt songs. It makes no sense, but Smurt and Lil Creeper say here that nothing needs to make sense for the music to be “fire” or “good”.

 

    Most of the elements that made up “Supreme” can also be found in the second single “The Dreamy Meme Team”. In this song, the team raps primarily about obscure meme references that wouldn’t make sense to anyone under eleven or over thirteen. Like “Supreme”, nothing seemed to make sense, and it was technically a bad song in the best way possible. These themes carry into Very Smurt’s debut solo effort “Roblox Girl”. Some more of Smurt’s sheer comedic genius can be found in how the song introduces you with a simple, four-bar chorus. It immediately starts talking about Roblox; almost as if Very Smurt was playing a character of himself to imitate your average pre-teen at the time. The chorus is a hilarious way to begin this song. It sets the precedent of constantly having the listener’s perception shift outside and back into the song's realm of an overall joke. At first glance, it’s just a silly song, but a further inspection proves the work of a true mastermind.

 

    Afterwards came something of a spinoff track “Riddle of the Rocks 3”, as Very Smurt used his name and profile to project something he was passionate about. A little under a month after this week-long slew of singles, we received the “Roblox Girl EP”; a compilation of Very Smurt’s career thus far. It was hyped up as if it were an EP almost chalk-full of new songs, but instead, we received no new full-length songs from it. This single action was a joke that parodied the music industry. It burlesqued the concept of “releasing way too many singles before an album to deprive it of anything truly ‘new’”. It’s easy to see that this early in his career, Smurt was simply a parody artist. Nowadays, his writing, producing, arranging, and distribution skills have advanced which allows him to make much more ambitious jokes with his projects.

 

    Next, in early October, came Smurt’s first literal parody track. It was an XXXTENTACION spoof about the happenings of “Have You Seen This Snail?”: season 4, episode 3 of Spongebob Squarepants. It was a very simple song, while just funny enough to warrant being this small Smurt single. There isn’t much to analyze here, but it’s still a good track. Nearly two months later, we received our next single; a Lil Creeper diss track that dove into the Smurt lore for the first time in song form. It of course wasn’t anything embarrassing or hurtful, which made it an all the more funny and innocent parody of this type of rap song. It also marked Very Smurt’s first dabble outside of generic trap parody in his beats, though we’d never see much instrumental variety like this until “WOOb” four albums later.

 

    Finally, we got “Hanukkah Man”, which needed its own paragraph due to the bulk of analyzable content. This was most importantly Smurt’s first song with its own distinct story. In this one, Smurt plays a specific character, practically the Jewish “Santa Claus”, in a light-hearted diss track aimed at Santa himself. It’s a funny track that takes pride in itself and uses its awkwardness to comic advantage. This song pioneers one of the many things that makes Smurt so great; his obscure and out-of-the-box style of comedy. While most rap songs with jokes riddled in them get praised for funny bars, Very Smurt’s songs deserve praise for going far beyond that. They go so far as to parody references, artists, and the music industry itself all to give his listener a good laugh.

 

    At the start of his career, Very Smurt was completely devoid of rapping and producing talent. Though, he used this to his advantage to cultivate a comedic atmosphere within his persona. Of course you have his decent one or two-bar jokes by themselves, but Smurt’s songs go far beyond the comedic limits set by artists before. In conclusion, Very Smurt’s comedy style is profound, exquisite, and blooming with nearly limitless creativity. While he had changed lots throughout his career, he always found ways to branch out while staying true to his roots planted here, almost two years ago.