Kenny “Snottaynose” Truhn – “Rutabaga”
“Rutabaga” by Kenny “Snottaynose” Truhn is a five-track EP released earlier this year on Bandcamp. My first introduction to the musical variety that makes up Kenny Truhn was through his self-released album “Mandarin”; I loved how unique the vocals and emotions were and when I heard that this same person was making a hip-hop album, I knew I would jump aboard the ship. “Snottaynose has been my hip hop alias since 2005. It’s a completely different part of my Music DNA…” Kenny wrote to me when I asked him about the EP, “I have self produced a lot of Hip hop records of my own and other artists within those 15 years. Rutabaga was done in 3 days and it was a snapshot in time…Snottaynose is always jaded underdog who gets in his own way, a dope Mc who flows like the nose when he’s congested, producing the heat on the beats, self made, self engineered, self mixed”. Mixing and flowing through voices and emotions, read on to hear more about “Rutabaga” and the avant-garde hip hop journey this EP takes you on!
The EP starts off with the title track, “Rutabaga”. It’s a powerful first song, and gives a great introduction to Snottaynose’ style. The pace is steady, readying the listener for a ramp up and an appetizer for what is to come on this five-course EP. There’s a certain grit and edginess to the title track, which Truhn noted how this came off during the recording process. “Kobe had literally passed the second I was recording the first song” Kenny told me, “and I just felt super off and grimy and cranky and I felt it was super accurate to how I have been feeling.” As it was relevant when the EP was released, so too do the words “the energy in the air is detrimental lately” from ring true today; the energy in the air from what’s been going on really has been detrimental, but it is people like Snottaynose who can expertely take these feelings and bring them to a spoken word for the masses to listen and bump to.
“Shin Wong Foo” follows suit in the EP, and continues the energy that “Rutabaga” gave but with a different sort of attitude and style. This track gives me some serious Fort Minor’s “The Rising Tied” and Linkin Park’s “Cure For The Itch” energy: with static-ey, machine noises with vocals and rhymes that drip more smooth than his stage name, Snottaynose shows how expertely he is able to maneuver and weave through different aspects of rap and hip hop in just two songs!
“Axel Foley” starts in a similar vein of the previous track, but also features the vocal talent that also makes up Snottaynose. When I first heard “Mandarin”, I really fell in love with the dark, liquid timbre of Truhn’s voice, and hearing this movement and electricity in “Axel Foley” is a sure hit for Truhn fans.
The final tracks, “Kinda Heavy” and “Experiment In Terror”, hit your musical taste buds like ghost pepper tortilla chips. The shaky beats in “Kinda Heavy” coupled with the fast and rhythmic pace of the verses give the listener a sense of uneasiness, needing to be on their feet constantly. This uneasiness continues through to “Experiment In Terror” but in a different way: we hear the eerie, blood-curdling vocals complemented by unearthly instrumentation peels off another layer of what is now a complex person that is Snottaynose. “Experiment In Terror” really does feel like its title, an experiment in terror: keeping the hairs on your skin raised but leaving you wanting to hear more.
I would highly recommend listening to “Rutabaga” from beginning to end: it is a fantastic journey of boundary-pushing hip hop with remarkable vocals that can truly be called a spearhead of music in this decade.
Support local artists during these strange times! Purchase “Rutabaga” now on Bandcamp or Venmo him directly at Kenny-Truhn