Is Riff Raff Serious?

Collaborating with Soulja Boy — the man who instructed America to "superman that ho" — hasn't helped Riff Raff's case. The January track "Versace Bentley" found the two of them drowning in diamonds, waving stacks of cash, rapping a-melodically and generally making Beavis and Butt-Head look like Barack and Biden.

There's another reason Riff Raff has become a lightning rod: White guys who speak with slang and diction associated with African-Americans have elicited heavy scrutiny since the days of 3rd Bass and Vanilla Ice.

PHOTO BY MARCO TORRES

Riff Raff

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More About

• Riff Raff
• Jody Christian
• Soulja Boy
• Houston (Texas)
• Hip-Hop and Rap

"If it's some black dude trying to be a country guy, he's always gonna have some random redneck dude saying, 'Fuck that.' White people do the same thing to white rappers. Ninety percent of my haters are white guys who don't like me because maybe they're jealous," Riff Raff defends himself in his apartment, rolling and unrolling dollar bills lying on his desk, next to a weed pipe, a Swiss Army knife and pills of unknown provenance. The apartment is sparsely furnished. There's the bed, the bathroom, the closet with his high-tops neatly lined up. The main decorative flourish is a pair of ceramic iguanas hanging from the wall, making for a surprisingly understated contrast to his lavish on-camera persona.

While it's almost more logical to believe that Riff Raff sprang from a pair of click-happy web entrepreneurs, Riff Raff's father was a mechanic, who grappled with post-traumatic stress disorder after service in Vietnam. When his parents divorced, Riff Raff lived mainly with his mom and grew up in Houston, with brief detours in Florida, Arizona and Brazil.

He started freestyling for fun and never took it seriously until last year, when he evolved beyond a curio into something legitimately interesting. Before that, he had mostly paid his bills by painting cars and cutting hair.

After dropping out of high school, he bounced from city to city across the country, rarely staying more than a few months. He settled in L.A., partly at the recommendation of Rex, who understood that the casting-call carousel of L.A. was the only place insane enough to appreciate Riff Raff's idiosyncrasies.

For a nation that suckles entertainment with every refresh of its web browsers, Riff Raff attempts to fill the insatiable void with a deluge of freestyles, songs and comic sketches. (In one clip, Riff Raff plays the CEO of something called Stevenson and Tinsdale, "attempting to do logistics and number crunching at his new law firm.") Often, he is compulsively watchable. In the last six months, when he says he first began to write down lyrics, he has released more than a few excellent songs.

It was February's "Bird on a Wire" — Riff Raff's February collaboration with Queens rapper Action Bronson — that forced critics to start taking him seriously. Over a glazed opium donut of a beat from Harry Fraud, Riff Raff practically chops and screws his flow. His imagery is fluorescent, draping him in "cheetah skin and ostrich feathers" and "sparking one in valet parking." It proved that when given the right beat and the right focus, Riff Raff can ... actually rap. His lyrics rarely mean much, but his imagery is vivid, and anyone capable of dreaming up the boast that "he shot dice with Larry Bird in Barcelona" has some sort of singularly strange gift. As Action Bronson snapped when faced with Twitter trolls who taunted him for his collaboration: "RIFF RAFF IS MORE ENTERTAINING THAN YOU."

This raises the bigger question: Is this all a put-on? And even if it is, would it matter in an age of Tumblr memes, Das Racist and Rick Ross? When asked, Riff Raff has a fittingly vague and tortuous answer:

"It's all about how I feel at that point in time. If I'm having fun, then I'm gonna have fun. If someone's crying, are they fake-crying? If they're laughing, then are they fake-laughing? It's not my job to cater to somebody. If I'm happy, if I'm drunk, like, that's me right there. You know? So if I'm not acting like that, well, shit, it's like, this is what I'm acting like right now. This is how I am right now."

Right now, Riff Raff is serious and slightly exasperated that he has to discuss whether he's full of shit or not. In conversation, there is neither guile nor cynicism to his tone. When asked why he decided to appear in the 2008 MTV show From G's to Gents or even start posting videos online, it seems like the first time he's ever pondered the question. As to why he got a BET tattoo on his breastplate, he answers matter-of-factly: "Because one day I'm going to be on the 106th & Park Countdown." He makes it seem like this is the most obvious conclusion in the world, as easy as turning on the tap or logging onto World Star Hip-Hop's website. And while his own humor isn't exactly high-minded, he tellingly says his favorite TV show is Portlandia.

Whether you love or hate Riff Raff, don't blame Jody Christian. In a novelty-thirsty, camera-happy world, it was inevitable that a Riff Raff would emerge. He is a true mass-media mutation with multiple Viacom entities actually inscribed on his flesh. We demand 24-hour entertainment and cures for our hangovers before they happen. Riff Raff is the payoff, the yellow light that never blinks off, our punishment and our reward.