Viper (rapper)

Early life

Viper was born in El Dorado, Arkansas. He began playing the piano at the age of five. At the age of six, he relocated to the Hiram Clarke neighborhood of Houston, Texas and started rapping at the age of nine. In 1998 he was an actor in the film Fifth Ward. After graduating from the University of Houston in 2000, he became a real estate broker. He also became a member of 5-9 Piru, a sub-group of the Bloods, which is mostly a street gang.

In an interview with Ell Umbra, Viper revealed he had two felonies convictions, one for breaking and entering into a college residence and another for providing misinformation on a government document related to the breaking and entering felony. Viper uses his mugshot from his conviction as the album cover for These Rappers Claim They Hard When Them Fags Ain't Ever Seen the Pen (2010).

Music career

While Viper was releasing mixtapes as early as 2006, he first gained attention for the record You'll Cowards Don't Even Smoke Crack, which was self-released in 2008. University of Notre Dame newspaper The Observer noted that the album became an "internet meme due to its shockingly upfront title and unique album cover".

Despite the independent nature of the album, it received mixed to positive coverage in the music press. Sputnik Music wrote that the album fuses "a nostalgic and ethereal blend of cloud rap and vaporwave". The Chicago Reader wrote that the album is "outsider-artist genius. People on the Internet are initially drawn to Viper because of his blatant disregard for grammar, outrageously violent and drugcentric lyrics, and how sonically bizarre he is in general." Viper remains active, having produced almost an album per day on average in 2014, making his music available on Spotify and iTunes and giving interviews to the local music press.

Style

Viper is noted for the prolific nature of his work, having released 347 albums in the year 2014 alone, and the low-budget, DIY aesthetic present not only in his music but also its accompanying videos and album art, which frequently consist of simple self-portraits, clip art and his name and the album title superimposed in plain text.

Musically, he is recognized for his deep voice, occasional use of Auto-Tune, and slowed-down, glitchy and ethereal production typical of cloud rap or the chopped and screwed subgenre native to Viper's Houston scene. Many of his albums and singles are the same material as what he has already released, but are slowed down or stylistically reworked, as well as having a slightly changed name.

Partial discography

Mixtapes