You’ll never catch Evan Nabavian lacking.
Clutching styrofoam and blowing smoke, KirbLaGoop materializes from a cloud of neon pink and Chips Ahoy blue and lands on the derelict sidewalk with a distorted synthesized bass thump, spilling plastic bags and paraphernalia onto the Florida soil. He announces himself with an echoing banshee laugh, like a Hanna-Barbera villain on a bad trip. His bloodshot eyes and his dazed grin belie the tools of war tucked into his waistband. He and the goons are a fixture at the park like truant skaters and the ice cream truck. They haunt the neighborhood, their wares stocked in metric units and loaded into trunks and backpacks. Inebriation is a distraction, then a pastime, and then a rite.
KirbLaGoop is a SoundCloud rapper from Saratosa, Florida whose signature is an otherworldly vocal pitch whose provenance may or may not be an FL Studio preset. In a rare 2014 interview with Bombay Knox, he described his beginnings as a chopped and screwed DJ and he said he started taking rapping seriously after getting out of jail in 2012. He cited New Orleans rap, particularly Juvenile’s 400 Degreez, as a key influence. His music is characterized by trap beats stripped down to their essential elements, cartoonish debauchery, and Kirb’s squealed adlibs. Comment sections and rap forums alternately regard him as a god and an irritant.
RateYourMusic credits KirbLaGoop with 17 albums and 23 EPs, so newcomers need to sift for gems. A recent highlight is Gooped Da Block, which came out in February; it is the fourth newest opus on his SoundCloud page as of this writing. Kirb castigates would-be peers using the screech in his voice as a warning to interlopers in his realm. He stands apart, proudly, and defends his territory like a wifebeater-clad centurion. He barks over three note piano loops and humongous bass from XannyPacquiao, whose nom de plume ties neatly with Kirb’s aesthetic and the broader SoundCloud cinematic universe. Their 13 minute EP is a vector graphic romp through the incipient decade’s deep south. The cure for sameness is KirbLaGoop.
