Growing up, Undead had always dreamed about becoming a musician and performing in front of large crowds. Although the inspiration was there, he always saw it as something far fetched and unobtainable. Fast forward to mid 2016 – early 2017, Undead began to take notice of the rising popularity of the underground SoundCloud scene and fell in love immediately. The rawness and distortion of the sound, mixed with the experimental nature of the “DIY wave”, was surreal to him. Seeing teenagers, not a lot older than himself, gain serious traction by solely recording producing and uploading songs to SoundCloud was beyond inspiring. Watching hit artist “XXXTENTACION” go from underground to a top-tier mainstream artist was also insanely impactful for him and made him change his mind about the obtainability of a career in music.
Early 2018 he would finally convince himself to take a leap into the dark and start recording in his bedroom, dabbling around in a few different styles varying from lyrical tracks with lo-fi beats to distorted trap with dark lyrics as well as melodic tracks expressing his struggles with mental health. As August of that same year came around he would start experimenting with a new genre called Trap Metal, combining metal vocals and trap instrumentals with the release of two tracks, Call Of Duty featuring $ubjectz of GCSY and Finders Keepers featuring Cameron Azi of GCSY. Although these tracks were his first steps at finding his own sound he had lacked the technique that would come in time, these two collabs with far more popular artists would put him in front of a larger audience, marking the beginning of his journey towards building his own fan base from scratch. Shortly after these releases Undead would follow up with another single titled “Death is Near” that would drop early September. Death is Near aimed right for the listener’s heart with an emotionally vulnerable verse accompanied by a catchy melodic chorus, shooting all the way up eventually becoming his first song to surpass 100k streams on Spotify (Currently sitting at over 300k).
May and June of 2019 would also highlight two significant milestones. The release of R6B Z6MBIE, his third track to surpass 100k streams, had really began to define his sound as an artist incorporating elements of late 90s – early 2000s Industrial Metal into the pre-existing Trap Metal sound while also adding a touch of DeathCore with nasty gutturals, growls, and high screams. Secondly, and more notably, he would collaborate with Sosmula of the duo City Morgue which had begun to really take off shortly after the release of their song “WarLord” becoming one of the most popular names in the Trap Metal/Dark Trap/Emo Rap Scene. This marked his second track to surpass 100k streams on spotify with it currently approaching 300k.
Following these milestones he would collaborate with his close friend T0RTVRE to establish their own line of clothing, independent record label, and collective all under the name “As Above, So Below”. He stated ” This brotherhood-like brand we created would motivate us both to learn from each other and inspire each other as we grew and evolved as artists, frequently collaborating on plenty of tracks along the way. ” 2020 would soon come to an end with the release of his mixtape “MILWAUKEE DEMON VOLUME II” which included the fan favorite “NO TALKING!” featuring T0RTVRE, gaining popularity fast in the underground scene for its unique sound mixing together elements of modern gangsta rap, midwest drill, triplet flows and Trap Metal. Subsequently Undead would follow up with the release of “super villain”, a much more mainstream sounding track that featured a melodic chorus sung smoothly and a clean rap verse that would appeal to a much broader demographic in contrast to a majority of his other work which had been more niche-based.
Thursday March 25th of 2021 would be an extremely devastating day that would bring forth a whole world of issues and conflict upon his personal life as well as his career when my closest friend, T0RTVRE, would pass away at the untimely age of only 18 years old following an altercation at a Home Depot where he was assaulted by a group of men that had falsely accused him of shoplifting, resulting in an act of self defense that would snowball into a full on shootout between him and Chicago Police. Upon the realization that the closest person in his life had passed in this way Undead’s mental health spiraled into a rollercoaster of debilitating despair, unforgiving rage, violence, apathy, as well as an increasingly nihilistic outlook that really left me without a direction to turn and still affects me to this very day, even despite my generally callous personality that pre-existed long before.
Following this tragedy Undead spent a long time trying to find purpose and motivation, finally pushing himself to start releasing music again starting with GRIMEBAG!, nothing left, and W2D, all being songs that he had been unsure about releasing and held onto for a while but ultimately decided to release anyways due to my inability to record anything new at the time. This had shown to be the right decision because even despite his self doubt these tracks did well and made him change the way he went about releasing music from that point forward, building a release schedule that would make it so he would be releasing every month alternating between singles, mixtapes, and EPs really capitalizing on consistency. Since this decision he has continued releasing back to back taking off with fan favorites DUMPSTER CORPSE and ZASTAVA! followed by two mixtapes AGE OF APOPHIS, notable for its intensity and incorporation of Extreme Metal, as well as voice of the plagued, a distinctively more emotional and experimental project taking a more cloudy and psychedelic sound. Both of these mixtapes included tracks that had been up to 3 years old and were destined to be scrapped, instead deciding to include anyways because he knew the fans would enjoy regardless of my perfectionist attitude towards his work. “Tracks like HOMEWRECKER, KHAMZAT, HENRY H HOLMES, and most recently CROWDKILL! would come directly after keeping up that consistency I pushed myself towards to keep myself busy and my fans happy.”
Keep Up With Music Artist Undead PAPI Down Below!
https://www.facebook.com/undeadpapi666/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzxzR_DEXQOx8JEOKWfzQVQ
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-W30OxfTCsgd98ig5VvRig
Streaming links:
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/undead-papi/1325214978
