After a solid and disheartening 20-minutes spent researching the origins of seapunk, only to learn it's not a dockside bar-born genre/movement created by sea-side savages and sailors, but a sonic mash-up of 90s techno and house, pop & R&B, and Southern trap music that was born not at sea, but through meme-overloads on Tumblr, I quickly loathed the term and wished I'd left it in the peripherals. I wasn't the only one that visualized patched-up leather jackets covered in barnacles and nautical tattoos, but turns out it's more about cocaine (not again), memes, and dying ones hair turquoise – great.
As bummed as seapunk makes me, the collaborative EP between Isaiah Toothtaker and Sixtoo, operating as Prison Garde, entitled Sea Punk Funk is the genre validated in the capable hands of an actual Southern rapper and a producer who's adapted and absorbed the EDM mutations for over a decade. While awkward kids in Chicago fry their skulls with acid and hair dye and blog about it on the Internet, Toothtaker and Prison Garde are in the lab, hijacking the ship with the assistance of Antwon, MURS, ShowYouSuck, and Western Tink.
Released through Anticon, Sea Funk Punk is Toothtaker's labrinythian rap sheet and outlaw hymns over lazer synths, 8-bit gaming and slick keys jacked from the champagne room of yacht rock.
Download Isaiah Toothtaker & Prison Garde's Sea Punk Funk here via Anticon.
