Fatboi Sharif and Driveby on the Music They Want to Soundtrack Their Funerals

Existential Playlist is an interview series where artists tell us about the music they want played at their own memorial service, delving into some of life’s biggest questions along the way.

One of the only things that rapper Fatboi Sharif and producer Driveby enjoy more than making music is going to the movies. Sharif, who used to work at a theater near his hometown of Rahway, New Jersey, leans more toward the experimental and macabre—Alejandro Jodorovsky’s The Holy Mountain and Rozz Williams’ 1998 minimalist horror Pig are among his favorites—while Driveby, also a native New Jerseyite, leans more toward sci-fi like Blade Runner, the recent Dune reboot series, and Alien. Sharif and I go to the movies together often, seeing a healthy mix of new films and re-releases of classics and rarities. And on a breezy night in late April, the three of us head toe IFC Center in lower Manhattan to see a screening of Sharif’s pick for the evening: the Norwegian satirical body horror film The Ugly Stepsister. 

The movie is essentially a brutal retelling of the Cinderella story, where a young woman named Elvira is put through physical turmoil to be seen as conventionally attractive enough to be married off to a rich suitor. Lots of other things happen as well, but outside of the visuals—Elvira has to endure having her nose broken, swallowing a tapeworm to lose weight, and having her toes amputated to fit into dress shoes—none of us could understand the dialogue because the film, spoken entirely in Norwegian, was inexplicably shown without English subtitles. 

The screening devolved into a guessing game, with Driveby passing bags of candy and Deep River potato chips down the aisle to Sharif and I as we quietly giggled amongst ourselves. With no dialogue we could understand, we gave in and embraced the spectacle. A movie about grisly body torture that walked the line between camp and true horror felt like the perfect segue for us to eventually talk about death.  

In the best possible way, the music Sharif and Driveby make together embodies that same parallel between camp and horror. Calling Sharif’s raps and Driveby’s beats “abstract” is an understatement—they both start from points listeners might recognize as hip-hop or industrial or synth-based electronica and gradually melt into each other like room-temperature ice cream. But dig a little further into their latest project Let Me Out, their collaborative album out now via Deathbomb Arc, and the depths of Sharif’s poetry and Driveby’s scuzzy productions reveal themselves with time. You have to meet songs like “Elvira’s Wedding Ring” or “Zeitgeistic Psychosomatic Measurements” halfway and be willing to get lost in them before they begin to make sense. There’s a concept at play, one that stretches at least as far back to Sharif’s 2016 album Age of Extinction, but both are tight-lipped about what it might be. Let Me Out, like all of their work, doesn’t hold hands and demands to be unpacked on its own terms.

Over diner food later that night, Sharif and Driveby spoke about the music they’d like to be played at their respective funerals. Sharif’s mostly revolve around music that inspired his craft and that would elicit reactions out of his service-goers, while Driveby’s largely focus on music that plays to his emotions. The respect they have for each other is palpable as they take down their pancakes and chicken tenders. “There was a time I was gonna quit music, and Sharif cursed me the fuck out,” Driveby admits. “That’s what made me realize, Oh, this dude is a true friend. He cares enough to hop on your tracks and to curse you out if you’re thinking about quitting.”

Fatboi Sharif’s Picks:

Ghostface Killah: “Nutmeg” (2000)

Sharif: When I dissolve into the Earth and reincarnate, I want my legacy to be the work I leave behind, from albums and tapes to verses and all that. “Nutmeg” is one of those songs that sent me on that particular path. I heard it when I was in third or fourth grade, so real young, maybe one to two years after I began writing raps. The power it had over me—I was like, Anything I write gotta be as dope as this. The beat, the flow, the word patterns he was using; it still hits to this day. I can just put that on and play it forever. Even when people freestyle to it, they usually come crazier than they would over something else. That’s a testament to the song’s power, and to Supreme Clientele’s power. That’s when I realized it’s a difference between great MCs and special MCs. That’s a special rap song. That’s how I judge a rap song: how special is what you sayin’? Have I heard it on the track before? That song was ahead of its time. 

I would say a track like “Battlestar Galactica,” where it’s me spitting the illest rhymes I can think of, or “Art Show Cult Visit” or “Butterfly Broken Wings.” All of those songs is me hearing Ghost in the back of my head like, “I’m not gonna let you down.” This is “Nutmeg” part three, four, five, six, seven, eight type shit, but it’s my own style to it.

Curtis Mayfield: “If There’s a Hell Below We’re All Going to Go”

“Sisters, niggas, whiteys, crackers, don’t worry. If it’s hell below, we’re all gonna go!” I’m not gonna lie, that’s the most relevant of lyrics ever on a track. It meant something in the ’70s, and it means something even more now. The power of that song! I remember hearing it as a kid and being like “Yo, everything he’s saying on this is an actual fact.” Curtis Mayfield has always been one of my favorite singers, too. He gets love, but to me, he’s underrated. You hear about the Marvin Gayes and the Stevie Wonders, but to me he’s just as powerful with his lyrics. He also had a dope street element to his shit that other artists in his time didn’t have or maybe ran away from. A song like “If There’s A Hell Below” is just a reminder of his greatness to me. 

The song structure, the songwriting. Four minutes in, there’s a part where the band starts going crazy with the drums and everything…what??

Superfly is one of the greatest albums of all time. You can’t praise it enough. We definitely don’t talk about Curtis Mayfield enough. 

Another thing I really love about him is that his work stressed the importance of having something to say and being able to analyze stuff that people might not understand at the time, but will live on forever. A song like “Swim Team Audible Function” off of our album, I wrote it more than two years ago, and to me, that’s a song that’s always gonna be relevant to issues that are going on today. Same with “Crossroads,” “Closed Captions,” or “Mosquito Stock Trade.” It’s putting the eye on the situation that many people have touched on, but they’ve never done it in this particular way with this feeling and energy.

The Coup: “Me and Jesus the Pimp in a ’79 Granada Last Night”

First thing I wanna say: Big, big, big, big, humongous shout out to the genius Boots Riley. To me, the greatest storytelling musician ever. “Jesus the Pimp” is the best storytelling ever done in a rap song. The song is super ill just because it has different things that it’s always important to have. It’s an eight-minute song where his mother was killed by a pimp before fast-forwarding 10 years to him getting revenge on the pimp. It plays out like a movie scene-by-scene. The details in the lyrics, the details in the emotions and what’s going through his brain as a kid and as an adult and dealing with this Jesus character. That’s the beauty of it. That’s one thing I always carry in my writing, the sensation of getting the listener lost in the writing and the storytelling and the emotion; like, “This part makes me feel scared, this part makes me feel hopeful.” To me, that’s what real writing do.

I also love the production and the chorus, but the themes of the song are so important. It’s amazing how he’s taking a situation as dire as pimping and putting a mirror up to it. And the ill part is him being from Oakland, one of the areas that’s shouted out a lot as a beacon of pimp culture, and taking a stance against that. Like “No, this ain’t dope. You’re hurting people, you’re using people.” He put a real mask on that for people to look at.

Pearl Jam: “Daughter”

Big, big shout out to Eddie Vedder and the whole Pearl Jam over there. As a kid, the Ten album was a big deal for me. “Even Flow” and “Journey” were some of my favorite songs as a kid, and I loved Eddie Vedder’s songwriting and how he expressed it. “Daughter” is one of those songs. It’s about a girl with learning disabilities going through all of that, and when you hear it, you can place yourself in her shoes, almost like an out-of-body experience. You can feel her pain, her not understanding the world, or someone who might not be understanding her. I think we go through that everyday, dealing with family, financial stuff, spiritual stuff, political stuff, and the bigger picture. That particular song brings emotion out, kinda like how you were saying with “Impress The Empress,” “Daughter” was always one of those songs for me. You ‘bout to make me sing the whole song. That shit is wild. 

That song might make me break down at a funeral. 

The emotion is on 100 on that. From the instrumentation to the story being told from beginning to end, it’s definitely crafted really well.

Nine Inch Nails: “Mr. Self-Destruct”

Woo! Big shout out to the genius, the one and only Trent Reznor. Again, the overall themes here, the effect, the power, the energy, the emotion. He’s writing at a high level. Downward Spiral is a top 10 album ever for me, and “Mr. Self-Destruct” is one of the best album openers ever. I came out to that song at a few shows. I love how it sets the theme and concept up for the rest of the album. Funeral-wise, it’s on some “All these people are here. What’s your final message to them? How do you want them to react to the situation they’re in?” The song starts out with these little noises and then [makes explosion and splashing noises] and it just goes off.  

Trent Reznor has such a vision, man. And I can hear Nine Inch Nails influence all over Let Me Out, man. 

He’s always been one of my favorite all-around musicians. Every album from him is a different story—Pretty Hate Machine different from Downward Spiral, which is different from Fragile. When you hear the scores, from Natural Born Killers to The Social Network, are crazy. Falling in love with their music young taught me to be an individual in what you do. Make your sound your sound, but make sure nobody can pinpoint or replicate what you do. I bring that into everything. You’re not gonna hear a song like “Mosquito Stock Trade” on any other album this year, lyrics-wise or production-wise. You’re not gonna hear a song like “Elvira’s Wedding Ring.” It was seven different versions of this album. This one’s the sixth version of the album.

Driveby’s Picks:

Scott Matelic: “To Impress the Empress”

Driveby: It’s the first song to ever make me cry. [Japanese producer] Nujabes had put out a compilation of music that inspired the creation of his album Modal Soul and Metaphorical Music, right? And I thought that was just his song for years. I was ignorant as a kid, but eventually I found out it was Scott Matelic. It hit me hardest at my aunt Nancy Torres’s funeral. I was very close with my aunt, she used to play with me and my brothers a lot. Fast forward, she’s going through the chemo and then she passes away. My father played the song while we were driving away from her funeral and I just burst out crying. It made me feel like “Yeah, things are hard right now, but there’s faith in the future.” I still tear up when I hear it to this day.  

Did that specific feeling ever pop up for you while you were making this record?

That’s a good question. I’d say the only songs that have that Nujabes or Scott Matelic inspiration on it would probably be “Punch Drunk Love” and “Butterfly Broken Wings." Even though [“Empress”] is the funeral song, it still has more of a light feel to it, so I wanted to throw that in there. Not too much, just a sprinkle.

Billy Woods x Kenny Segal: “Soft Landing”

That song gets me through a bad day. Like the way he opens the song: “It’s 2:1:1 on the daiquiris/It ruins the whole day when my baby mother mad at me.” That one hit me hard. When he says that opening bar, I’m like “Dude, I do feel like shit when my girl’s mad at me.” Anytime she’s mad at me, I can’t do nothing. I listen to Maps a lot when I wanna get through the worst of it. Even the line “Maybe suicidal thoughts was the everyday struggle,” which is also a Biggie Smalls reference, hit me hard. These all remind me of personal things in my life. 

The other thing is that hook. That hook is so glorious when it comes in, like sunshine coming through on a cloudy day. Shout out to Billy Woods for sure. Shout out to Kenny Segal on the production, too. He killed that beat. The thing about it is, it’s a slow beat, but it hits super hard. Segal’s a master and a genius at that. The bass drum kicks on that song go crazy.

Smashing Pumpkins:  “Hummer”

I had to look up what the meaning of that song was. I’ll tell you what it meant to me. Billy Corgan said the meaning of the song was, Be you. Whatever makes you happy, be yourself, because that’s real freedom. I was like, “Goddamn, no wonder I stuck to this song so much.” I was listening to Siamese Dreams, and “Hummer” was the one song on that album that really struck me. From the instrumentation, how hard they go in the beginning with that weird sample, and then it ends with this soft rock breakdown. It feels like you’re in a good five, six-minute journey through space. It takes you away. He says a line on there that’s something like “Life’s a bummer, when you’re a hummer,” and it just brought me back to my teenage emo years. 

I’d like for that one to be played at my funeral to give people a sense that things’ll be okay. And it shows a side of me that most people don’t really know. That’s how me and Sharif connected so well going on road trips. I didn’t know this dude was a crazy rock fan. We would have crazy rock playlists on our trip, playing Pearl Jam—we’re both crazy Pearl Jam fans—Silverchair, Alice in Chains, Slayer, Bad Brains, all the ill shit. I’d play Smashing Pumpkins and he’d always say, “Billy Corgan’s a fucking genius.” 

When you look up the lyrics for “Bummer,” it’s very simple the way he wrote it. It’s clear how much he went into the deeper meanings of a sense of self. It doesn’t matter what religion you’re in, or the color of yourself: just be the best you you wanna be because that’s true freedom. That’s what we’re all on this planet for: happiness. Whatever stakes or obstacles you gotta get through, get through them, because that’s the meaning of true freedom. That’s what I get from that song. 

Is there a true freedom song on Let Me Out? If so, what would it be? 

That’s a good question. I wanna say “Art Show Cult Visit.” I remember when we were coming up with that song, I had that beat for a specific artist and [Sharif] wanted it. Long story short, I wound up getting fucked over on the artist who wanted it originally, but I told Sharif it had to be his craziest, most unorthodox, obnoxiously offensive verse you’ve ever done. And when I got it back, I was like “Whoa!” And he was like “You said…you asked for this!” I used to be nervous about that song coming out, but I don’t care anymore.

Jedi Mind Tricks: “I Against I” 

That was my first underground hip-hop song I’d ever heard. If you know Driveby, he’s very into underground and experimental hip-hop, and my friend Edwin put me on. This had to have been 2005 or something like that. Planetary killed it with that opening verse. I’ve spit it to Sharif so many times and he’s totally tired of it. From there, I just went down a rabbit hole looking for other artists, some of whom Sharif and I connected on. One of them was Jedi Mind Tricks, another was Company Flow. Big Juss and El-P were big influences on me. We talk about Fantastic Damage a lot. It’s funny because the first time we ever went to a show together was the Fat Beats 25th anniversary. I didn’t know the lineup, but I knew DJ Qbert was gonna be there and I love DJ Qbert. Sharif starts reading the lineup to me and he mentioned Jedi Mind Tricks and I almost crashed the car. 

I’d like that song particularly to be played at my funeral because I want people to know where my love for all this started. I want them to know where my love for crazy abstract verses came from. Jedi kills it, Planetary kills it, the flows on there are nuts. The sample gives me a lullaby type of vibes, and then the rappers come and rip your face off with lyrics. I want people to have that same reaction at my funeral: “What’s going on here? Why did he choose this?”

Mos Def: “Climb”

This is a curveball. It’s not your typical Mos Def song. Don’t get me wrong—Mos Def is one of my GOATs, he’s actually in my top five. He got me into conscious hip-hop because I initially wanted “Ms. Fat Booty,” and this was at the time when your parents would ask you if you wanted to get this album for the one song. The crazy part was, [Black on Both Sides] was that crazy. Front-to-back, no skips. That’s the first album I ever did that for. I know it’s different producers—you got 88-Keys, DJ Premier, and Q-Tip—but the way he put it together, it just fit. 

But “Climb” always hit a soft spot for me. I think it might’ve been because there’s no drums on the first half. It’s loops and synths going around and him and the girl singing. I heard him sing on that song before I’d ever heard “Umi Says.” When I used to listen to “Climb,” it was always about trying to reach the goal, no matter the obstacle. That’s one of the things that was reinforced while creating this album with Sharif, because there was a period of time I was gonna quit music. Sharif cursed me the fuck out and told me, “How dare you do that.” He was the first person to get on my weirder beats, because other people would say it gives them anxiety or they don’t know how to find the pocket. If I was cool with the person, I would always tell them “Well, you just gotta write better.” Some people would get mad, some people would say, “Oh, you crazy.” But “Climb” reminds me of all the times I tried to quit but didn’t, because people like Sharif loved and cared for me and my music. I’m glad I didn’t, because I probably wouldn’t be doing this interview about Let Me Out if I did.