Hide Your Toes (Or Don’t!) From Detroit Trio HiTech
The ghettotech legends-in-the-making continue their hot streak of definitive genre tracks and bananas videos.
I don’t want to say that HiTech’s “Shadowrealm” is my platonic ideal of a ghettotech song—that distinction goes to the classic “Whatulike,” by the OG and legend Mr. De’—but suffice to say it’s very close. As HiTech is wont to do, “Shadowrealm” fulfills the general tenets of the genre: ass-forward electro, chaotic energy, and, of course, the nastiest, grimiest lyrics one can conjure. The new single from the Detroit trio, who are on a mission to revitalize and preserve one of their city’s most important homegrown styles, brings along the Bruiser Brigade-affiliated rapper Zelooperz for a guttural, caffeinated, satisfyingly shouty joyride across a jitter of synths and a sparing-but-crucial sub-bass boom. If you weren’t awake before, my friends, welcome to this motherfuckin’ day.
Also, like… feet. They’re rhyming “all the hoes” with “pretty toes” and putting their money (and pedicures) where their mouths are in a fetishist’s freak scene of an accompanying video. HiTech member King Milo then hits us with a barrage of bars about taking his girl to Roscoe’s but not Europe (he’s got too many other paramours overseas). It’s a date that inevitably culminates in “Earthquake/In my face/Baby do your thing,” and his request for a “taste”—rowdy behavior that is surely best heard in a smoky basement club with 150 other people at most. Zelooperz, zooming in from a vintage TV, takes the second verse: “In the club or on the street,” he raps, his woman shall be “suckin’ my meat.” It is both a nasty little provocation and, somehow, a reminder to not order carnivorous deli sandwiches for a while.
The video is directed by IGoByCy, who also helmed the clip for the more melodic but similarly transfixing recent HiTech single “Spank!,” and it exemplifies the kind of brain-bananas-osity one must possess to create this kind of breakneck synth butt-busting: a kind of fantastical shadow-play show, except instead of bunnies and butterflies, we get pole-dancer silhouettes, both IRL and through the magic of finger puppetry. (Those are performed by the TikTok star Shadow Ace, but thank you, King Milo, for also doing the index-finger sex motion.) Dancers in fishnet bodysuits throw ass; their craft is flaunted as the HiTech guys grin like kids in a candy shop, their horniest dreams come true.
“Shadowrealm,” like much of HiTech's music, amplifies the good fun of ghettotech—it’s explicit, it booms, it’s raw, and at its best, it transports you to a hedonistic closed circuit where you can forget your troubles for a little while. Live, the trio brings a similar “funhinged” energy to their sets, bonkers in the crowd and earnest about their work; they will somehow translate this to Coachella next year, though if anyone can jar a group of people from its collective influencer selfie pose, it’s these guys. Their next project, Honeypaqq Vol. 1, is out next year. Until then, I leave you with this Zelooperz lyric:
Bitch keep calling me twin
But we is not related
Drowning in that pussy
Jesus come save me
