Blog/Deep Dive
Death Grips' The Money Store: masterpiece or elaborate prank?
An abrasive, gleeful, possibly contemptuous record. Fans call it a masterpiece; skeptics call it a troll. Both have a point.
Riffiter2 min read
The Money Store (2012) is the major-label debut of Sacramento trio Death Grips — a violent collision of industrial noise, punk and hip-hop that became one of the most divisive albums of its decade. More than a decade on, the argument over whether it's genius or provocation is as loud as the record itself.
No band has spent the last decade testing the patience of its own fans quite like Death Grips. They've leaked their own albums, canceled tours mid-run, used a fan's suicide note as cover art, and replaced sold-out shows with a drum kit and a handwritten note. Through all of it, one question refuses to die: are they the most important band of the 2010s, or the most elaborate prank?
The argument starts with one record.
The Money Store (2012) is Death Grips at their most focused — a strange thing to say about an album this chaotic. MC Ride screams like a man being dragged somewhere; Zach Hill's drums sound like a kit falling down stairs forever; Andy Morin welds it all to beats that have no business being this catchy. It should be unlistenable. Instead it's gleeful — pop music for the end of the world.
The case that it's a masterpiece
Listen past the abrasion and the craft is absurd. These are songs — "Get Got," "I've Seen Footage," "Hustle Bones" — with hooks sharp enough to survive the noise burying them. It predicted a decade of music: the maximalism, the genre collapse, the idea that the internet's overload could itself be a texture. A good chunk of what's now called hyperpop owes it a debt.
The case that it's a prank
Then Death Grips did this:
No Love Deep Web (2012) arrived months later — self-leaked for free, against the label's wishes, with cover art too explicit to print here. Epic dropped them. The band shrugged. To skeptics, that's the tell: a group more interested in the gesture than the music, daring you to take them seriously so they can laugh when you do.
By Year of the Snitch (2018), the trolling and the artistry had become impossible to separate — which might be the entire point.
The verdict is yours
Here's what both camps miss: Death Grips work because you can't tell. The discomfort, the doubt, the suspicion that you might be the butt of the joke — that's not a bug in the experience, it's the experience. Rate it a 5 or rate it a 1. Just don't rate it a 3; nobody who's actually heard this record feels lukewarm. Tell us which side you're on.
Discussion
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