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As with so many regional subgenres of rap, you likely know a jerk song when you hear it, even if its particulars raise more questions than they answer. How are such tinny 808 drums still shredding laptop speakers and JBL Charges that boom through subway cars? Why do the blown-out claps, jacked from Jersey club and footwork, still get the feet moving? Jerk’s frosty rhythms have fueled the ascents of a new generation of 2020s rap stars in xaviersobased, Nettspend, and YhapoJJ; now, barely five years in, mutations and alternate colorways are beginning to appear.
Bronx native ksuuvi, a frequent collaborator with xav, is responsible for some of jerk’s haziest iterations in recent memory. While the BPM of xav’s beats can fluctuate wildly, ksuuvi’s are consistently midtempo. (Relatively speaking, anyway—these rhythms are still fast as hell!) He’s been mocked online for being a one-trick pony, but the crunchy tone and texture of his beats keep them interesting. Last year’s ksuuvi buckets played around with brighter sounds—computer bloops, digital chimes, chords and progressions fit for a Nights Into Dreams or Jet Set Radio remaster—that offered a colorful contrast to the dead-eyed braggadocio of the raps. The production of his latest, ksuuvi buckets xtended, goes in the exact opposite direction: This is among the darkest, most brooding music the jerk scene has produced so far. He’s not exactly clearing the “ksuuvi makes the same song all the time” allegations, but it’s intriguing to hear his signature note played to a more menacing tune.
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When the established formula works, it turns heads like no other, especially with the darker palette. Take a song like “sendshit,” which floats in on trance-inspired synths before that hypnotic drum shuffle sets in around chants, NBA Jam samples, and charmingly basic bars about balling like Vince Carter. Even when the songs blur together—I know ksuuvi’s not a capital-R Rapper auditioning for Michigan punchline infamy or 10k and Backwoodz-style abstraction or whatever, but his flexes and disses could use a lot more imagination—his most endearing work achieves annoying new vocal-stim levels of catchy. “shake n bake” is the album’s best song precisely for the way it blends old-school sampling with new-school jerk cavalierness. ksuuvi and guest elibanss have fun trying to one-up each other, sharing laughs between running up credit cards and “moving tac’” in Foamposites and Nike Techs. They sound hungry, awake, and alive, and the beat, little more than brittle 808s bubbling underneath a perfectly looped funk guitar riff, soundtracks the digital hell they’re dancing through.
buckets xtended doesn’t reach those highs often, but it’s fun hearing the different ways he spins his pet sound. Some, like “i told ya,” are entrancing, even though they evaporate the second they finish; others, like “watch me,” feel like NAV cosplaying as a third-generation SoundCloud clone of himself. “pole” and “act right” are among a handful of songs that ditch the jerk blueprint, instead inching toward the pomp of cloud rap and stadium EDM in ways reminiscent of xav’s self-titled album from earlier this year. Getting unfiltered snapshots of his life—like him not liking seafood, or claiming he won’t get ripped off by his label the way esports figure Tfue did by FaZe Clan—does a lot to make him likable past the growing ambition in his production. Jerk ain’t broken yet, and for better and for worse, ksuuvi is still tweaking it for prime optimization.
