By kicking complacency in the teeth, the rapper lives out his plan for domination of the horror rap world.
There is horror rap, and then there is Gizmo. While sinister beats and grim bars have become commonplace, the 22-year-old rapper has retained his own strain of extremity through a unique cocktail of spooky surroundings, desperate times, and diverse skills. Paying respect to the greats of 2000s rap like Gucci Mane and Lil Jon, Gizmo has spent his life developing a flow that stands out from newcomers trying to ride a wave. Always one to take matters one step further, he focuses on long term goals for his music, as well as for a prolonged career in the arts. His tape Deer Boy, which dropped July 28, is the most recent installment in his ongoing merciless hunt. But before Gizmo was a big-in-Europe Renaissance man with a taste for Winnie-the-Pooh t-shirts, he was simply Ben, a budding rapper, swimmer, and photographer from Rhode Island.
“Most people don’t even know what Rhode Island is. Like, don’t you know all the states?” Gizmo laughs as he reflects on his hometown in Newport County. The sailing capital of the United States, the nine-mile-long island is home to brooding landscapes alongside Vineyard Vines-wearing lacrosse preppies. “I was the only artistic kid, so I kind of hung out with all of the girls,” he says in reference to the co-ed Catholic school he attended. His parents sent him there more so to shield him from drug use in the public system than it was to instill any religious indoctrination, so he often chose to skip out on morning mass to smoke wax pens in the boys’ room. While attending AP art class and swim practice provided him with a sense of purpose after stints in basketball and soccer failed, rap was a mainstay in his life since middle school.
Gizmo experienced the early days of SoundCloud through happenstance, stating, “I googled how to get my music up for free and it was there, and that’s kind of what started everything.” Being a rapper first and a “SoundCloud artist” second meant that he enjoyed a repertoire of mainstream artists like Lil Wayne, Gucci Mane, and Waka Flocka Flame. While he also enjoyed listening to alternative and heavy rock, he skipped the stage of playing in bands, keeping his focus on the aggression to be found in accessible rhymes. From Gizmo’s perspective, however, mainstream rap was not incompatible with his emergence as a rapper with horror themes and an abrasive flow. “I was really into how the artists I would listen to would have truth in their music, like old Gucci Mane would talk a lot about his murder case and shit like that,” he says. “I was influenced to start using heavy vocals because of Waka Flocka. Everyone says someone different invented the genre people like to call trap metal, but the first person screaming over trap beats would be, like, Lil Jon or Waka.”
While Gizmo was swimming Olympic times and had been rapping for years by the time he was a senior, it was his passion for photography that ultimately came out ahead, at least for a brief time. Growing out his self-professed Justin Bieber haircut, he embarked on what he thought would be a photography career, majoring in the subject at Salve Regina University in Newport. Two months into it, he quit after being put-off by the department only Unable to even use a dark room until he finished his fundamental classes, he instead fully invested in an art in which he already been paying his dues – music. “I sold all of my equipment and moved to California,” he says of his next move. “I went to the Bay with my bro Prohibeo and we lived in the hills in a little shack where I made most of my music from like 2015-2018.” With all energy going to music, the young men made it work without the puppet strings of a day job. “We were stealing electricity from other houses and we were using hotspots off of our phones,” the rapper recalls. In turn, selling features, reposts, and beats kept their phones on.
Ultimately, the sacrifice was worth it, particularly as the East Coast rap scene proved inhospitable to Gizmo’s needs. While he occasionally went back to Rhode Island to visit friends and shoot videos, he was continually drawn back to California, and, ultimately, Los Angeles. “The only shows that go on [in Rhode Island] are for mainstream artists, or, if not, it’s the same locals,” he explains. “It’s typically all the same people and it’s been that way for years.” While Gizmo booked some pay-to-play shows in Boston, it was permanently settling In L.A. that allowed him to put on his dynamic performances on a regular basis thanks to the flourishing DIY scene. On the other side of the coin, he put on so many shows in 2018 that he began wondering if he was making himself too available. “You don’t want people to be like ‘oh, I’ll just catch him next week,’” he says of his motivations. Nevertheless, the local scene’s come through culture introduced him to invaluable collaborators, including his girlfriend Saphir. After living with his friend, photographer/videographer, AUX, he moved in with the diversely talented vocalist in December of 2017, and the rest has been history. “She’s amazing,” he says through laughs following a hit of his bong.
To this day, Gizmo continues to cultivate what was started way back when. “I think every artist has to find their sound,” he says regarding the process of him becoming a screamer. “When anyone first gets on a mic they don’t know what to do or how to sound and, and for me I was very nervous.” Further complicating matters was that he did not have a microphone with a pop filter in the beginning, which required him to whisper when annunciating certain sounds. After finally being exposed to more advanced setups, such as in the studio with Prohibeo, he was finally ready to unleash what he had been holding inside. “I was trying to talk or whatever but that’s not what you do when you rap, or not what I was trying to do anyway,” Gizmo states. “Over years of trying I’ve learned that you have to put a lot of energy into it.”
Currently, the life of Gizmo involves smoking weed, working out with Saphir, and visiting the skatepark, but most of all, writing music into the night in a continual search for growth.
While the evolution of Gizmo’s sound has been steady, one theme that has remained consistent is his ruthlessness. A lifelong horror movie fan, he particularly admires the grittiness found in vintage films. “They obviously didn’t have the same special effects in the 70s and 80s so the way they’d film things was so different, like you don’t see those things in today’s horror movies,” Gizmo says. One of his favorite techniques involved “clips where they tie the camera to the people being dragged by Jason” due to the angle’s ability to capture the “raw emotion” that serial killers invoke. The rapper’s exploration of Fort Wetherill back in Rhode Island with the other “emos” of the time also left a definitive mark. Like something straight out of a Saturday night special, kids would “go deep in the tunnels and light candles and draw hexes and slit their wrists.” He would occasionally stumble upon odd gatherings, and even a hospital bed. With these experiences coupled with the aggressive rap influences he has consistently enjoyed, it is no surprise that Gizmo’s tape Deer Boy details a great hunt against rappers who have done him wrong.
Old meets new once more as heavy music institution Earache taking charge of Gizmo’s promotion. As he offers a fresh perspective with what the record label describes as “trap metal,” they are taking efforts to get his physical releases into record stores – a lost art in a largely internet-based scene. This extra set of hands, along with settling down in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley with Saphir, has created an environment undisruptive to his creative flow. As he grows older, he does not intend for this process to trickle out, but rather, expand by pursuing new routes. “I’m not trying to be a rapper for the rest of my life,” he says. “I will definitely always be making music, but I want to venture into other lanes once I have the platform to do it.” On tap for the future is a book-turned-movie inspired by Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game. Visually, the enterprise will take on the rotting languidness of Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark. While these hopes may seem unnecessary for someone who is already embedded in a successful rap career, Gizmo never wants to get too comfortable. “I’m actually still very anxious about my work and my status and where I’m at,” he says. “I’m still trying to keep things moving, you know what I’m saying? It’s about staying consistent, and keeping your progression going.”