Body of Work

There are countless points during Body of Work, the new hour-long behemoth from Edward Skeletrix, where the multi-hyphenate artist stares dead into the proverbial camera. He sounds like he’d rather be anywhere but here. “I need help writing this song,” he mutters on “Slavery.” “Please save me from the studio.” On “Conference,” after crooning for a minute over eerie, undulating tones, he interrupts himself to murmur, “This song could’ve been fire, but I need more motivation.” The songs he chooses not to rap over he often titles with some variation of “Art Is Sucking the Life Out of Me” (“Art Is Sucking the Life Out of Me Bro,” “Art Is Sucking the Life Out of Me OK,” “Art Is Sucking the Life Out of Me Fr,” etc.).

Body of Work is the latest opus from the most confounding rapper I’ve ever listened to. Skeletrix uses music as a stepping stone for his pursuits with fashion and AI-embellished visual art; he claims he’ll never do a concert in his career. Whatever you may make of his side hustles, he’s a unicorn for his ghoulish, one-of-one baritone and his ear for dense experimentation; the pained vocals and unnerving pianos of 2023’s “Skeletrix Island” are unlike anything else you’ll hear online today. The fact that he says he barely even likes rap, and claims his “art doesn’t have deep meaning,” should be enough reason to disengage from his shit altogether, but my curiosity persists. The affecting, uncanny sound design baked into Skeletrix’s work does well to uphold the perception that there is, in fact, a complex message to be dissected. His production choices tend to be as beautiful and layered as they are arcane, and he’s built a cult fandom of people who consider his music high art. Some critics love him. “I was in a really bad spot, but I started getting the message that he was sending,” one fan said in a recent mini-doc. “It really made me.”

Ask a dozen other fans to dissect this message and you might get a dozen different answers. Ask Edward (a self-proclaimed troll) and he’ll say, “it’s about having peace in your life,” that “life” is his “biggest inspiration.” It really just feels like Skeletrix and his audience are reflective of an Internet-brained affinity for art for art’s sake: a disregard for intent in favor of shiny aesthetics. With Body of Work, we get a 26-track sound collage that doesn’t offer much more than the abstract, shape-shifting sonics on the surface. And despite how clear it is that Skeletrix is throwing paint at the wall to see what sticks, I’d be lying if I said if I wasn’t intrigued by some of the splatters left behind.

The production is a massive silver lining throughout. The “Art Is Sucking the Life Out of Me” interludes remind me of Ricky Eat Acid’s ambient gem Three Love Songs: sometimes sludgy and fuzzy, sometimes pristine and tender, but always refreshing. Elsewhere, o0o’s trap-inflected beats also strike a chord, from the cosmic bounce of “Ariana, Bella Hadid” to the operatic swells of “Chaos in the Order.” Edward is mostly fun to listen to when he’s able to find a decent pocket on these kinds of instrumentals. “Guest List,” produced by him and Silas Roe, locks in on a sticky, debaucherous flow that slides smoothly over those slinky chimes that float over a baby’s crib. Genuine earworms like this are fleeting here.

With each album, it feels like Edward Skeletrix is so close to achieving a musical feat while also being extremely far away from one. Nothing embodies this like “Slavery,” with its terse, theatrical pianos and organ keys that sound like a flattened album cut from Wolf. The track is bookended by audio of a woman who sells plasma to fund her shopping addiction, a parallel to Skeletrix’s depiction of his plight as a tortured artist. “I’m a slave on a good day,” he says before clunky Auto-Tune harmonies and even clunkier lyrics seep in. “I just listen what my brain say/I don’t know if it’s really me.” It’s the woman expressing relief over her new plasma money that sends a pang of sadness through me, rather than Edward himself.

The best bits of Body of Work are defined by the ideas that don’t center Skeletrix in the frame, the half-thoughts and thorny passages that breeze past if you aren’t locked in. When thunderous aughts guitars explode on “Art Is Sucking the Life Out of Me Fr,” when Slime Dollaz floats over the warm plugg of “Back Back,” it’s far more compelling than when Edward riffs on Yeezus type beats or stumbles over measures with shaky melodies. So much of what he raps or sings about feels both masochistic and masturbatory: He groans about being a “fucked-up guy” on “Love Me Not” and vaguely grumbles about “pain and torture” on “Pain & Torture.” His hoarse pleas for people to “shut the fuck up” on “Everyone & Everything” hint at how much better this album would be as an instrumental one. There’s almost nothing depicted in his songwriting that his esoteric sampling and production doesn’t communicate better.

Almost. “Lets Take a Break from the Negativity,” a track full of gorgeous blips and chimes rippling like peacock feathers, is a welcome exception. Edward’s refrain—“I feel blessed/Feelin’ my best/Had a good day/Hip hip hooray”—strikes a chord because the sentiment betrays the apparent dread in his cadence. It’s simple, but weighty and evocative. He’s always had a cyborgian element to his personality, and he leans into it with this juxtaposition. “I enjoy human interaction,” he half-sings. “I hope they don’t think I’m masking.” I wonder what’d we get if that mask ever slipped.