Death Grips Songs Ranked By How Well I Sleep to Them

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking: Death Grips? How could you possibly sleep to a high energy, experimental rap group like them? What is this list? Well, let me explain. About three years ago, at the tail end of college, I discovered I can sleep to almost any music. Instead of using clunky headphones or AirPods that easily fall out, I use my phone’s native speakers near or at the lowest volume possible: I nestle it under my ear as I lay on my side on the pillow and voila! I’m out like a light. It works like magic. While I can sleep to just about anything, it helps if the music is at least a little bit lethargic. Death Grips, despite their reputation for hyper-active and extremely aggressive music, have traces of lethargy across many songs in their discography.

A thing about sleeping to music like Death Grips is that heavy repetition is key. Like a good Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Yellow Swans track, waves of distorted noise should wash over you until your eyelids follow suit and close for the night. The more a song beats you over the head with its groove, the easier it is to fall asleep. The main draw of these songs largely remains the same: hypnotic synths from Andy Morin, bombastic drums from Zach Hill and equally chaotic performances from MC Ride—the best kind of quiet pandemonium to fall asleep to, ADHD music for the restless. Truthfully, just writing this list while listening to their music has made me sleepy. If you’re anything like me, these 10 songs may help you fall asleep better as well. They’re ranked in descending order, with #10 being a jarring, wide-wake trip and #1 nearly being a lullaby.

10. “Punk Weight”

And like its Money Store sibling, “Punk Weight” is built off a sample—this time from a collection of cellphone songs from the Sahara desert—that’s also woken me up. As much as I love this song, that striking sample at the beginning has aroused me from my sleep. The whoosh of heavy synths and punishingly hard drums in the song itself somewhat counteract that burst of hyperkinetic energy, but not enough to push me back to sleep. Still, “Punk Weight” is great for various physical activities during waking hours.

9. “Hustle Bones”

From 2012’s The Money Store, “Hustle Bones” has a weird place in my personal sleeping music canon. As one of my favorite DG songs, it’s on many of my playlists. However, its strengths as a song are also what hold it back in the pursuit of sleep. I particularly mean the sample of Joe Cooly and Vanilla Ice’s “U Don’t Hear Me Tho” that’s flipped into a wickedly addictive arpeggio, which has always sounded like a woman’s voice to me. (Ride even name drops “U Don’t Hear Me Tho” in the song.) I know for a fact this song—and that sick arpeggio—has woken me from my slumber. Add in a typically explosive MC Ride performance and a synth like a motorcycle revving up and you get a song that works against the tide of sleep. Alas, “Hustle Bones” is a sucker punch of energy, not a cup of camomile tea.

8. “Three Bedrooms in a Good Neighborhood”

Another song that evangelized me to stay noided, “Three Bedrooms in a Good Neighborhood” has been on heavy rotation for at least three years now. The line “I’m all up in my gloryhole / S-O no no no no” has always felt strangely queer-affirming, but that’s a discussion for another day. What’s important is how Ride lets loose in his maniacal way over pile-driving synths that drill into your cranium. The best way to capture the magic of this song is to imagine a lobotomy in the backwaters of some nameless suburbia. Pre-25-year-old frontal lobes beware.

7. “Pss Pss”

Rarely would I characterize Death Grips music as ‘smooth’ per se, but the lock-step groove of “Pss Pss” easily takes the cake for the cleanest song on this list. And that smoothness is thanks in part to that synth that slides up and down though a fader with that pumping beat. The whispered verses lull you into a kind of trance. Of course to truly sleep to “Pss Pss,” you’d have to disregard MC Ride’s wrecking ball performance (and those corkscrewing synths that throw the whole thing off kilter) that punctuates the sleekest parts of the song. Its central refrain of “pss pss,” besides working as a nice sedative, also doubles as a handy solution for all your cat-summoning needs.

6. “Spikes”

“Spikes” was the other song that turned me into a fan. Ride’s performance in the third verse is particularly memorable, even if the lyrics are practically gibberish. The viciousness with which Ride enunciates his words make you want to believe him even if the words themselves are basically nonsense. You can hear him spitting through his gritted teeth. “My jigsaw manipulates you open” and “I skid like I’m no use” manage to break through the noise, as well as the foreboding line “Can’t kill myself twice,” but who knows what any of it means. That chorus of “Spikes spikes spikes / rip ‘em, rip ‘em, rip ‘em” touches the right amount of serotonin receptors in my brain. The appeal of Death Grips has always been the anger and ferocity that permeates everything they put out. “Spikes” is no different.

5. “Streaky”

I have a confession to make. I used to be a Death Grips skeptic. It took me a long time to come around to their brand of music. “Streaky” was one of the songs that evangelized me. Its chorus is insanely fun: “Streaky on the outside / Standby, dealer holds a franchise / Southside / Do me ‘cause it sounds tight … Booty on the outside.” Morin’s synths strobing from one channel to the other are also a delight to hear and are hard to forget once they’re lodged into your brain. “Streaky” additionally has Ride heaving with his full chest “Oh my / yuh! / Oh my / yuh!,” but the verses themselves sound like they are delivered behind big dark sunglasses—a quality of being too cool that’s conducive to a good night’s sleep.

4. “80808”

I swear I’ve heard Ride mutter “80808080808” in my dreams before. One of many highlights from 2016’s Bottomless Pit, “80808” is addictive and earwormy with dimly-lit synths that practically slink along in the dark and a pounding bassline to boot. Even when Ride destroys his own groove, breaking the song’s atmosphere of cool calm with “Biters eat the gank move / Fuck with me” in the chorus, the song is deftly understated. It’s engrossing. I have no idea what any of the lyrics mean, but that never stopped me from snoozing to this banger.

3. “Interview A”

“Interview A” is one of Death Grips’ dancier tracks. And while it isn’t the heaviest track here, it still puts me right to sleep. One of the rare instrumentals in their discography, “Interview A” is an outlier here in that it’s the only one without MC Ride. Morin and Hill are just fine on their own, however. They conjure up a storm of squelching synths and glitching drum pads that sound nearly broken. In a way similar to “Pss Pss,” which we’ll discuss later, “Interview A” is just smooth, or about as smooth as a Death Grips song can be. More than other songs on this list, I recommend “Interview A” as a melatonin replacement. You’re welcome.

2. “Billy Not Really”

If there ever was a Death Grips song to help you sleep, it might just be “Billy Not Really.” A highlight from the Björk-assisted first disc of The Powers That B, her sampled vocals are chopped and spliced together, providing a hypnotic foundation for Ride’s raps. “Billy Not Really” is one of Death Grips’ chillest songs to bliss out and drift away to sleep with Björk’s crescendos looping into your subconscious. Of course, this is all relatively speaking. There is the requisite noisy clutter that comes with any Death Grips song. Note the rave-y ending where Björk’s vocals go into double-time too.

1. “Hahaha”

As for much of 2018’s Year of the Snitch, at least to me, a lot of the music is pleasantly sleepy in its ordered chaos. “Hahaha” sees MC Ride at his most cartoonish, whirling around a bed of punk-but-also-surf-rock-y guitars and Morin’s downturning synths that just ooze dread. The song is wonderfully unhinged. Ride’s cry of “Destroyer!” coupled with a snippet of an opera singer’s canned aria, in addition to its chorus of “Hahaha / bitch!” with those summertime guitars riffing away all come together to create one of the most fun Death Grips songs. “Hahaha” is palatable in a weirdly mainstream way despite the group’s long held disdain for everything and everyone. (That relative tameness is not a negative in my book, for the record.) And, yes, “Hahaha” makes for good sleep material too—like a pillow fight in a mosh pit.