Images and Words: Samsa - Singles

June 26, 2022

Like the Avatar, when the world needed Samsa the most, he vanished. Unlike Aang, Samsa left us with a thought-provoking and hilarious discography of two dozen singles released between 2015 and 2017. His first release, entitled “lol my first rap ever ignore this,” was allegedly produced by Danger Mouse. With a name like that backing his first single, it was unlikely Samsa would ever be ignored.

According to the streetwise Urban Dictionary, a “Soundcloud rapper” is “[a] middle-school kid who thinks he can rap, so he hits the "studio" (the couch) and records with top notch music equipment (his iPhone mic).” Lo-fi though Samsa’s production may be, it is far from immature, and his verses are of higher fidelity than REO Speedwagon’s ninth studio album. He’s a Soundcloud rapper, but he escapes the bad rap that entraps such rappers.

Samsa has a relatively small discography; so, if I had a nickel for every time Samsa wrote a song about the end of the world, I’d have two nickels - which isn’t a lot, but with just over twenty songs to his name, it’s odd. Both are as optimistic as apocalyptic visions of the end times can be. In “Cataclysm,” Samsa revels in the world’s most introvert-friendly environment: “Instead of panicking, I’d marshal mannequins, pretend they’re friends / And host a massive slumber party in the “Home and Bedding” end / 'Cause all I need to be content is room and board and solid food / If I end up the last on Earth, then I’d adore the solitude.” “Anthropocene” finds him watching the atomic sunset with a lover: “We could linger on the boardwalk, watch tsunamis from the turf shore / I'll go get my board shorts, and you could bring your surfboard / Maybe we'll hold hands as we get swallowed into Earth's core.” Optimism is a Samsa hallmark, and no circumstance would try anyone’s capacity for cheerfulness like the end of the world.

Besides end-times enjoyments, Samsa’s most engaging theme is his complicated relationship with a belief in a higher power. One of his most popular songs, “Tinder Samurai,” displays his powers as a lyricist. Have you ever heard someone rhyme “Jehovah” with, well - anything? Samsa has no trouble: “On ChristianMingle, I'm a casanova, if y'all don't think so, y'all can ask Jehovah / Check your inbox, he might send an answer over.” Not content with rhymed couplets, Samsa effortlessly rhymes eight words in six lines in “twenty-two thoughts on god:”

I wish Christ was still alive to turn my water into Zinfandel

I’m confused why ISIS slaughters guiltless infidels

I wonder if when God sent Fidel, He would toss him into Hell

Or place the hard decisions in his closet on a shelf

The Fall of Adam sucks and all, as God has taught us very well

If God’s almighty, why could not he just have caught him as he fell?

It’s been five years since he quit music, and Samsa continues to rack up streams on all platforms because of verses like that.

In 2017, Samsa posted on Twitter the reason for his disappointing disappearance was that his heart was not in music anymore. At the same time, he left us with one final witticism: “I don’t want to be a content creator, I want to be a content creator.” Since he signed off his final broadcast with wordplay, I’m holding out hope he’ll come back one day and once again help rescue Soundcloud rap from its bad rap.