Following the release of his debut album VVSS2, the internet rapper shares his favorite holes in the internet
Dazed Faves is the series where we talk about everything online—that surreal meme account you’re obsessed with, weird conspiracy theory subreddits, ASMR YouTubes, or slime Instagrams.
SEBii is so incurably online it hurts. The New York-meets-Shanghai artist makes music that sounds like a video game, with MIDI-focused sounds and sound effects to go spoing! “Without the Internet, SEBii would not exist,” he claims. “Almost all the influences I found were due to the internet.” With support from industry names like Anthony Fantano and Playboi Carti (the latter shared a photo of the rapper on his Insta Stories in December), SEBii’s debut album VVSS2 builds on the epicness of past releases – a sequence of three EPs based on the primary colors (VVBLUE, VVRED and VVYELLOW), each representing different aspects of SEBii’s character – to form a bouncy pop universe inspired by Nintendo favorites such as Donkey Kong and Pokémon Platinum.
Flexing his internet rapping credentials across 18 kaleidoscopic tracks, SEBii delves into the full spectrum of human emotion, accelerating the intricacies of money, love and relationships through fast-paced tracks like, “I hit it raw like a carpaccio” and “I hit so hard / the piñata“. It’s the kind of catchy, quirky lyrics the artist is known for, which he combines with post-digicore production and DJ Mustard Baselines which will strike even the most fried attention.
To celebrate the new release, we’ve invited SEBii to take part in our Faves series, where artists tell us about their internet obsessions – take a look below.
SEBI: OMG I love a lot of jokes and this one is one of my favorites. I’m going to go to his page and like all the videos of him doing this prank where he basically tells a joke that makes no sense and then asks them to explain. When the explanations hit, you just watch people break down – it’s so funny. You completely shatter someone’s reality, it’s good.
SEBI: This is the art I strive to make. Mob Psycho 100 is so funny and goofy and playful, but when it gets real and emotional, it hits hard. It’s about this middle school boy who isn’t popular or particularly interesting but has crazy psychic abilities. But even though he has all this power, he doesn’t care about it and just wants to be a better person. It is very useful. If you have seen Mafia Psycho you’ll know it’s very SEBii-core. I am a big fan of [Japanese Manga] author ONE. It really is a great story and one of the best anime of all time.
WTFFFFFFF I’m literally shaking 🤯 pic.twitter.com/UgsUH5ZXjx
— SEBii (@sebseb122_) December 10, 2023
SEBI: I didn’t want to add my own tweet about it, but it was like this was such a crazy moment for me. I’ve been a huge fan of Karti for a minute and he never posts on social media so that meant a lot to me. He was one of the artists that got me into making music so it was so surreal I was literally shaking when it happened. Everyone was calling me and it all happened when I was on a date lol. Shit my life is anime fr.
SEBI: This YouTube channel is a goat. This video is how I discovered what chromatic notes are, so it’s extremely important to me. I would recommend anyone reading this to watch this video, it’s super interesting and also helps give a lot of context to this sound I’m trying to create. Summon the Nintendo games and summon the 8-bit music theory.
SEBI: It’s hard for me to pick a favorite album or song. But I’ve been listening to Erykah Badu a lot lately, so I’d say Mom’s gun. Her voice is so beautiful that I got the high voice from her because when I was younger I always wanted to sing like her. Also, a lot of her stuff is super chromatic, so it’s been inspiring me lately as I’ve been trying to do more in that vein, like some neo-soul stuff.
VVSS2 is now out
