Track by Track: ‘RÓS’ by Shades of Reykjavík

Notorious Icelandic rap collective Shades of Reykjavík unexpectedly dropped their new album ‘RÓS’ last week. Shades member Prins Puffin and a few featured artists gave us their thoughts.

R.J.Ó.M.I.

Prins Puffin: “R.J.Ó.M.I.” means “C.R.E.A.M.” and it’s a shout-out to old-school hip-hop. It’s about darkness, or dark alleys, or I guess the darkness of dark alleys.

DÍLANDI ft. Kristín Morthens & Geimgengill

Prins Puffin: Dílandi means “hustling,” and it’s about when you can’t really handle yourself or what you are doing in life. Shout out to Kristín Morthens who is a really talented rapper.

Aðein$ of feitt

Prins Puffin: We already released a video for “Aðein$ of feitt” before the album came out. We filmed the video in Nashville, Tennessee. I don’t know what else to say. We love America.

MelluDólgur

Prins Puffin: This song was inspired by our friend, melludólgur Hannah Jane. We were just in the studio freestyling and the beat was just pimp, you know. Melludólgur means pimp. It’s a cruise song, a good song to just cruise around in the car to. It’s called pimp but it’s not about women-hatred, more just like, being a pimp. Pimpin’.

SO DOPE ft. Kiló & Since when?

Prins Puffin: This is the first English song from Shades of Reykjavik. Since when? rapped his part in America and then Kilo just sort of jumped on the beat one day in our studio. We’re making a video of this and will definitely do more English hip-hop.

Popp í RVK ft. Dadykewl

Dadykewl: Hemmi showed me this beat he was working on at the studio and I was like damn! Then Arnar came, heard it, and just drove us all to this crazy work level to finish it. There was a moment there when we all just connected on a level where the only thing that existed was us and the song. We all worked together on it: I fiddled with the beat, Arnar fiddled with my lyrics, I fiddled with his. It was amazing.

Einhleypur á klúbbnum  (Single in the club)

Prins Puffin: “Einhleypur á klúbbnum” means “single in the club” and this song is just about being single in the club and not giving a fuck about that or anything. You know, everyone goes through that phase where they are really single and just don’t give a fuck and just want to be alone. All the verses are all freestyle verses. It was just us having fun in the studio and laughing. It’s not a song to be taken seriously and if people do take it seriously, they should just shoot themselves in the foot or maybe just shoot someone else.

KISS KISS BANG BANG ft. BLAZROCA

BLAZROCA: Well we were in the Shades studio in the suburban outskirts of Árbær and like every modern rapper studio, it was full of these expensive cars that no one there owned, like Range Rovers and stuff. But the Shades studio is more like an art collective. Everyone was tattooing each other while vaping their home-brewed vape oil. This just made us all really horny, like sickly horny, which was problematic cause we were four guys vaping and getting tattoos, you know. We were so horny that we had to find an outlet for it so we sat down and “KISS KISS BANG BANG” came out of it. It’s just a horny song. I get really horny when I listen to that track. Seriously, I could have sex with dead things when I hear that song.