Interview: We Slid Into 11-Year-Old Internet Rapper Lil Shark’s DMs and Asked Him About Sharknado

By Nathan Smith

A few months ago, my good friend Braden aka Nedarb Nagrom posted a video for a song called “Awesome” that one of his associates, the emo rapper Cold Hart, had recorded. I listen to a lot of what Braden posts, but this song in particular grabbed my attention, because it was with an 11-year-old Internet rapper named Lil Shark. The average age for rappers on the Internet has gotten progressively younger and younger over time, but I’d never heard of an 11-year-old rapper before, online or off. We’ve actually seen a lot of “lil” rappers, from Kris Kross to the “Hot Cheetos & Takis” kids, but none of those artists grab me in the same way as Lil Shark. He raps about what you’d expect kids to rap about: go-karts, skateboards, and yes, Hot Cheetos. But in his songs, he also talks about weed, women, and “pussy [that’s] wet like a water spout.”

Initially, I found Lil Shark a little disturbing and strangely compelling. There’s something about his lisp-induced flow that, from an aesthetic standpoint, is actually quite good, imbuing his over-the-top lines with a greater sense of satire, his darker and more serious ones a greater sense of pain. When Lil Shark talks about God helping him through “his struggle” in the song “Suffering,” it legitimately hurts my heart. Lil Shark, like many kids at that age, seems to take a lot of musical influence from his older brother (also a rapper), who has pointed him in the right direction, turning him on to internet rap artists like Spooky Black, BONES, and Black Kray. He’s also worked with some fantastic producers, including (the artist formerly known as) *hitmayng and the aforementioned Nedarb Nagrom (who, full disclosure, are both friends of mine, but I enjoyed their music long before I actually knew them).

You might wonder about the effect of music like this on kids, and that’s a fair thing to wonder. But in this post-modern world of ours, most kids are more hip to the differences between fiction and reality than we might give them credit for. A few notable examples aside, kids can figure out where media ends and the real world begins. Letting a 5th grader play Grand Theft Auto doesn’t make him want to kill prostitutes and beat the shit out of cars- it just makes him want to play more Grand Theft Auto. Similarly, showing an 11-year-old “profane” and “indecent” rap songs doesn’t necessarily make him or her want to do the “profane” and “indecent” behavior, it just makes them want to say they do it in a song. When a child can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not when it comes to media, it’s usually not because of a natural inability to distinguish fact and fiction, it’s because of an underlying and already-existing mental health issue. Plus, if you’re shocked by what you hear in Lil Shark’s songs, go back to when you were 11. When I was that age, kids were already pretty filthy, even if they weren’t this obscene. But then again, they also didn’t have the capability to record rap songs. I’m sure that if Yung Lean had existed in 2005, a few more of them might have tried. And besides, in the only other interview I can find with Lil Shark, he says that his mother doesn’t care what he raps about, so long as he doesn’t actually do it. When a kid is that young, it’s between him, his parents, and nobody else.

There’s definitely a novelty appeal to Lil Shark’s music, but you have to remember- Yung Lean started at the age of 15, went viral early on, and became a legitimate force to reckon with at 18. By that rate, Lil Shark could be an all-out phenomenon by the time he comes of age. With that in mind, I knew I wanted to get in a conversation soon. After a somewhat strange email exchange, Lil Shark decided in the middle of the night that he wanted the interview conducted over Twitter direct message, so I obliged. The medium explains the somewhat stilted nature of this interview, and because Lil Shark is 11 years old, he gets to the point fairly quickly. This might not make for the most conventional interview, but we might be able to all learn from it. So here, in its (mostly) unedited glory, is our Twitter DM interview with 11-year-old Internet rapper Lil Shark.

hey what’s up lil shark? this is nathan from smash cut magazine.

Tape Swap: June 2014

There are so many new rap and hip-hop releases that deserve our time and consideration each week, but only so many writers with so many hours in their day that we can assign to cover them. Luckily, two new contributors have entered the smash cut fold, Malcolm Baum and John O’Brien, with that specific purpose in mind: to review the hip-hop albums and tapes you might be giving heavy rotation, as well as the ones you might have slept on. Every so often they’ll bring you those thoughts as part of our latest feature, Tape Swap. I know it’s July, but here’s some of last month’s releases. – Nathan

Bones – Garbage

Los Angeles rapper Bones is one of the more interesting up-and-coming rappers who has gotten big through the internet, for better or for worse. Coming off of his often cringeworthy TeenWitch mixtape, my hopes weren’t high for Garbage, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that Bones has really come into his own as far as his aesthetic is concerned. Usually, his tapes come off as extremely hit-or-miss, but the first track, “ReturnOfThePimp”, shows that he’s really not fucking around this time. The tape is full of dark, atmospheric tracks, but what really sets this apart from his other tapes is that everything fits. Every time Bones chooses to sing (or even scream, as he does on “IfYouHadAZuneIHateYou” and “HeartagramAdios”), it feels warranted and contributes to the overall feel of the tape. Sure, there are duds as far as the rapping is concerned (the first verse of “Butterfly “comes to mind), but overall this is a surprisingly strong tape rom a rapper with a lot of potential. Hopefully he doesn’t waste it pandering to the internet’s emotionally unstable sadboy population. – John O’Brien