brokeNCYDE

Hailing from Albuquerque, New Mexico, self-described “scene” kids Brokencyde—short for “broke inside”—fuse pop-rap, dance music, and occasional screamo vocals into the polarizing hybrid they call “crunk punk.” The lineup of Se7en, Mikl, Phat J, and Antz first unveiled the style on their 2007 independent album The Broken!, which veered from ferocious screamo-dance tracks to emo-style power ballads laced with rap passages. Late the following year, Suburban Noize—the label also home to stoner rap outfit Kottonmouth Kings—inked the quartet and issued the BC 13 EP. While the songs retained their mix of crude humor and anguished outbursts, the production grew sleeker, incorporating heavy studio effects and Auto-Tune-treated vocals. The EP featured the track “Freaxxx,” which later surfaced on the 2009 full-length I’m Not a Fan But the Kids Like It; that summer the band promoted the release on the Vans-sponsored Warped Tour. The next year brought their second album, Will Never Die. Still a critically divisive quartet, the group kept a brisk pace in 2011 by self-releasing both the mixtape DJ Sku Presents: BrokeNCYDE, Vol. 1 and their third official album, Guilty Pleasure.