The Short Kings are Winning
The true brilliance of Cody Ko and Noel Miller as Tiny Meat Gang lies in exactly how dumb their music is
Have you ever been depressed?
Of course you have. That’s not a smart question. But have you ever been depressed enough that you fall down a YouTube rabbit hole just to watch former viners making commentary videos on how bad Jake Paul’s “It’s Everyday Bro” is?
I have a feeling that’s a little more relatable than I might think, given the number of people who’ve been all over the music of Tiny Meat Gang. A project started by former Vine stars Cody Ko (“Son, why didn’t you mow the damn lawn?” “I don’t know, maybe because I don’t give a fuck?!”) and Noel Miller (“Ahaha, ayy, it’s your boy…uh…skinny penis!”) as a joke in 2017 has gone from one song to two mixtapes with a third on the way.
TMG’s first song, “Keep Ya Dick Fat” (no, I’m not making that up), was created as part of Cody’s reaction video to the, and I don’t mean to get too opinionated here, absolute travesty that is “It’s Everyday Bro”. I know that song’s moment has passed, I know, but sometimes it keeps me up at night thinking about exactly how bad that song was, is, and will be till the day I die. Cody and Noel, friends since their Vine days and their time working together at Fullscreen, wrote and recorded “Keep Ya Dick Fat” in four hours in an attempt to outdo Jake Paul’s self-professed ability to make “It’s Everyday Bro” in a single day.
And apparently, TMG had so much fun making a song about eating a lot of food to increase one’s, er, girth, they decided to turn their joke project into a real comedy rap duo.
I’ve heard them described as many things, not the least of which has been people referring to them as the millennial, modern The Lonely Island. This makes sense, a bit, since both groups satirize tropes of modern rap and occasionally have an in-your-face, aggressive performance style. However, with Cody and Noel constantly on the forefront of hip-hop news, as heard in their podcast discussing weird rap beefs such as Drake vs. Kanye West and Smokepurpp vs. Russ, there’s an extent to which TMG feels much more relatable and real.
That’s nothing against The Lonely Island. Most of their music is absurd for absurdity’s sake, and it’s excellent. TMG’s niche, however, lies in taking the popular styles of SoundCloud rap to ridiculous, yet catchy extremes. Take their first post-”KYDF” single, “Super Xan”, for example — in which the duo gets aggressive about exactly how much Xanax they do, while never once referring to how it makes them feel other than “loose”. Noel loves this mysterious wonder drug so much he wants to have sex with it (“I’m gonna fuck all these Xans/I’m gonna fuck all these Xans!”), and Cody is entirely willing to throw down dad-level puns about his own drug use (“Taking a seat on the Xans, call that a bar stool!”). Get it? Bar? Xanax? I didn’t.
The punchline of the song truly hits in the outro where Cody comes right out and admits it: “I don’t even know what Xanax is, hahaha!” That bro laugh heard so often in TMG’s music solidifies it: these two may be making dumbass music, but they know exactly what they’re doing, and it’s working out.
Since their first mixtape Bangers & Ass dropped in 2017, Cody and Noel have been on fire with high-quality production from Diamond Pistols and Rynx, minimal yet professional music videos directed and edited by Noel himself, and even a guest spot from Blackbear on the duo’s ode to smaller men, “Short Kings Anthem”. And they haven’t lost the energy that kept them catchy and hilarious back in the “Keep Ya Dick Fat” days.
Let’s take a look at the first single from their untitled next release, “Walk Man”. On the surface, this is just a goofy little I-stole-your-girl track full of innuendos and wordplay that Cody and Noel make seem absolutely effortless (Noel’s cocky demeanor is perfect for lines like “Boy, you only busting down with a fucking bus pass/smacking your girlie’s box, she a Camel pack/touching her end zone and we gon’ run it back/fingers all over my quarter pounder and she lovin’ that”), but in between the verses, little skits give this song its true brilliance — the rappers who just threw down bars about getting with as many girls as possible make phone calls to their girlfriends asking if it’s okay for them to rap about other girls. Cody sweetens the deal with his own girlfriend by ending his verse with “I might bust down her ring finger”, then telling her he said he was going to propose to her in the song.
This low-key dumb-ass brilliance is all over TMG’s discography, from their self-produced early stuff to their polished latest work. It’s got all the minimally catchy beats and hooks of trap music, but with a self-aware edge that takes it farther than so many other SoundCloud-styled modern hitmakers. From having a medium amount of money (“No Flex”) to kicking 13-year-old ass in Call of Duty (“G-Shit”) to, well, eating a lot of food to “Keep Ya Dick Fat”, Tiny Meat Gang may be making self-described “stupid beats”, but they bang just a little harder when you know exactly what they’re trying to do — and what they’re trying to do is make you laugh. Which they unequivocally succeed at.
