Spend any time on TikTok and there's a pretty good chance you've already heard the glitchy, screwed up earworms of hyperpunk duo WHOKILLEDXIX. Last year it might've been the pitched-up hook of "molly rocks in my green tea" from their single "Kismet," which became a trend among TikTokers to throw a shoe up, kick it midair and flash to a new outfit as the song hits its peak. Or it could be their recent "Spy," accompanying everything from makeup tutorials to Minecraft compilations.
"We don't really go into the studio thinking, 'OK, how are we gonna blow up on TikTok today?'" says Karm the Tool, one half of the group. "Mostly we'll make, like, a billion songs just to make songs. If I feel like something could blow up on TikTok, then I'll start posting it there."
Listening to the duo's music beyond the quick social media snippets, it's clear there's a far bigger plan at play. Karm and Young Skayda's tracks hop from one genre to the next with glee, though orbiting around a steady foundation of metal and hip-hop. It's these switch-ups in genre that feel their music sound undeniably current, like some kind of digitized blend of Juice Wrld, 100 Gecs and Ho99o9. Songs carry a weaponized level of bounce, with cuts like "Sick Duck" substituting guitars for electronic bass lines to deliver pure attack.
The approach has struck a chord: The duo has racked up over 80 million streams on Spotify and attracted the likes of Marshmello and Sacha Baron Cohen to incorporate their tracks on their own TikToks. They've also won attention from alt-metal icons Deftones, who approached them to remix their recent Ohms cut "Ceremony." The duo transformed the slow-burning number into something completely chaotic and aggressive while using Chino Moreno's voice as another texture at their disposal.
Today WHOKILLEDXIX dropped their latest collab, "mondays!" with Pussy Riot. It's hard not to picture the tidal wave of TikToks to come featuring kids pissed off about Mondays, backed by the hyper, pitched-up vocals of Nadya Tolonko. It's another banger showing a vision for our genreless musical future.
We spoke to them about their recent TikTok success, becoming best friends in kindergarten, moshing to Slipknot and more.
FROM WHAT I UNDERSTAND, YOU GUYS SORT OF BECAME FRIENDS OVER A LOW-KEY FIGHT ABOUT EMINEM?
YUNG SKAYDA [Laughs] Yeah, we were actually in kindergarten when that happened … kindergarten or first grade. And I didn't even know Eminem, but up until this point in my life, like, even now I'm still a shit starter, so back then, I literally just saw some dude going, "Eminem is the best rapper!" And I didn't even listen to rap music period at that point [but] I was just like, "No, he, nah, he suck!" For no reason. we just started going back and forth about it until one day Karm was like, "Yo, yo, come through, let's chill out." And I was like, "Say less. "And then he actually put on Eminem and I was like, "Hold, hold up. This kind of slaps, though."
HOW THE HELL WERE YOU LISTENING TO EMINEM THAT YOUNG? WERE YOUR PARENTS COOL WITH THAT?
YUNG SKAYDA Yeah. I think both of our parents were like that. [To Karm the Tool] 'Cause your mom gave you Eminem, right?
KARM THE TOOL We just had like CDs in the crib. Yeah.
YUNG SKAYDA His mom had Eminem CDs and then my dad started buying them for me. And he already had mad 50 Cent CDs that he gave me.
IN TERMS OF THE HEAVIER STUFF, DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT THOSE EARLY BANDS WERE?
KARM THE TOOL Me and him both got into Slipknot at the exact same time. That was our first show ever.
YUNG SKAYDA When I showed my dad Slipknot, I learned more about metal because he started showing me like Pantera and Korn and stuff like that. So, he, my dad, definitely put me onto all that.
KARM THE TOOL Yeah. That was our first show, like, first mosh pit. It was just a bunch sweaty, old people. [Laughs] We were literally 15. … We were, like, the youngest people there, but we were turned the fuck up. I remember this dude ...
YUNG SKAYDA Someone was riding my back! [Laughs]
KARM THE TOOL Yeah, he was on this kid's back in the mosh pit going ham. [Laughs]
OH YEAH, IT'S WILD SEEING A METAL BAND LIKE THAT BIG FOR THE FIRST TIME. 'CAUSE YOU KIND OF WONDER, LIKE, WHERE THE HELL ARE ALL THESE WEIRDOS COME FROM? THEY'RE NOT AT MY SCHOOL OR ANYTHING.
KARM THE TOOL Honestly there's no young people there at all.
YUNG SKAYDA When we were younger, honestly, I never even saw it as, like, wow, look at all these old people. I was just trying to be cool. I saw everyone and I was just like, "Yo, I'm really with this." [Laughs] "We should do that at our next show. You should get on my back, I'll run into the mosh pit, like, with you on my back. That should be mad funny."
SO, WHEN DID YOU START CREATING MUSIC FOR THE FIRST TIME? WHAT WAS SOME OF THE FIRST STUFF YOU WERE MAKING?
KARM THE TOOL Probably around late middle school, early high school, I was producing dubstep. That was way after the metal phase. And I just started listening to everything and dubstep was like one of the music genres that really stood out to me 'cause it gave me [the same kind of] energy as metal, but I could do it on my computer. And then from there we just started getting more instruments, and then I dropped production for a little while for drums. We started playing guitar and we started building a band together, but we never really found the right members that we vibed with. I mean, we live with our drummer right now from our first band, Party Mouth. But it just never worked out. We were always arguing with someone or not vibing with we wanted to make different stuff. Everyone was just completely stuck in a box. Everyone just wanted to make one certain type of genre. If one riff doesn't fit the genre, then we shouldn't use it type shit.
TOTALLY. I THINK WHAT'S KIND OF EXCITING WITH ARTISTS LIKE YOU GUYS OR CITY MORGUE, ETC. IS THE IDEA OF NOT WORRYING TOO MUCH WHETHER OR NOT A SONG WILL FIT IN A METAL BOX OR A HIP-HOP BOX AND JUST GO FOR IT. I TRY TO TELL SOME OF MY OLDER FRIENDS THAT THE HIP-HOP GOING ON RIGHT NOW IS THE SAME ENERGY AND ANGER OF THE METAL THEY WERE INTO AS KIDS, BUT NOT EVERYONE GETS IT.
YUNG SKAYDA Yeah. The thing about the older age is like, I think they have a lot of outdated views. One being that "no instruments equals no talent." They refuse to acknowledge that our vocals are a talent. Our production is a talent. Our presence is a talent.
KARM THE TOOL You can only make a certain number of sounds with a guitar, and then you need another guitar, and then you need amplifiers and plugins. And now you're pretty much doing the same thing I do with 808s. You know, [guitars are] just physical. You just can't see it on a computer, so you think the [songwriting] doesn't exist. But it's all me. … It's literally the same. It's just people aren't ready to accept that yet.
YUNG SKAYDA I don't wanna sound pretentious when I say it, but I feel like it's just the next wave of sound. Think about metal now, where we have all these like subgenres, like, deathcore, metalcore, death metal, all that stuff. It only started by something starting off really simple. Like, first, we literally started off with rock, like Elvis Presley. And then it went on to rock like Led Zeppelin and stuff like that. And then it started evolving into yelling and stuff like that. [Laughs] So, I feel like we're just a step that's after Slipknot and Korn. [They're] still around, but I feel like we're just the step after them.
LAST YEAR YOU HAD A TRACK GET BIG, "KISMET." IT'S THE ONLY SONG I THINK I'VE EVER HEARD THAT REFERENCES JET SET RADIO FUTURE, AND I FEEL LIKE THAT GAME ALMOST KIND OF SETS A TONE FOR WHAT I HEAR IN YOUR MUSIC, IN THAT THEY WOULD MASH UP SO MANY DIFFERENT GENRES SONG TO SONG.
KARM THE TOOL Jet Set Radio was a fatass influence to both of us. [Laughs] Shit was great.
YUNG SKAYDA My dad gave me the game when I was, like, six, seven — it was just super random. I'm 20 now and I'm still in love with the game since he gave it to me because pretty much as a child everything that you're referencing just hit me. The music, the graphics, the idea of the game itself. Everything was just so wild to me that I was in love with it. Around the time XXXTentacion got popular, me and Karm were having trouble with the bands, and we were just like, "Yo, let's just rap," because I've been rapping since a young age so I had already had the expertise and he was — as he mentioned earlier — producing EDM in middle school. So, we just put the expertise of my rapping and his production together and made a few songs together, but eventually we just started thinking, "Yo, we should not just be making rap. We should just go in." Around then I picked up the game again, and the producers name is Hideki Naganuma, he is literally one of the most GOATed producers on earth. He is a direct influence on both of our production styles so hard. I wouldn't go as far to say, like, he directly influences everything we do — but a lot of the glitches and the breakbeats and stuff like that comes from the influence of the game.
KARM THE TOOL Yeah, [Skayda] put me on to Jet Set Radio and around the time I was playing games similar to it, like, Tony Hawk I was playing. Yeah, I collect them. I still have them.
YUNG SKAYDA Pretty much whenever I describe my music to someone who hasn't heard it and might have played the game — I like to think of it as the Hideki Naganuma influences, but we like to mix more different influences so it's not just that. So, we add the metal, we add rap on it. We'd add rave influences, stuff like that.
IS THE IS THE TERM "HYPER POP" SOMETHING YOU CONNECT WITH, OR DO YOU FEEL LIKE IT'S KIND OF CORNY?
KARM THE TOOL I fuck with the hyper pop stuff. I fuck with all the music that they make. I'm friends with a lot of [hyperpop artists]. I feel like what we do is just a little bit different just because, like, hyper pop has a specific sound that that's already been sort of defined. A lot of our songs just don't fit in that …
[But] we have definitely made hyper pop songs. So, people can consider us hyper pop artists if they want, but we're also so much more than that. We're metal artists. We're rap artists. We're experimental rap artists. We are not pop, bro — fuck that.
YOU DID A REMIX FOR DEFTONES' "CEREMONY." WHAT WAS THAT LIKE?
YUNG SKAYDA Ah, that was hard as fuck, dog. We did it for a month.
KARM THE TOOL It was scary because at first, when the Deftones reached out to us, we're like, "OK, hell yeah, Deftones, fire." But the song that they wanted was a slower song. Like, how could we possibly make this us, because we're always, like, high energy, fast, fucking line-of-coke-type music, so what do we do? … We failed a bunch of times, then one time we hit the studio we're like, "OK, we have to do this, like, this is gonna happen today." I sat down. I was like, "You know what? Fuck everything we were trying to do what we do." And then we ended up doing that.
WHAT'S IT LIKE SEEING YOUR MUSIC POP OFF ON TIKTOK?
KARM THE TOOL It was kind of like looking at a diamond through a glass. Because it was cool seeing everyone use the audio, but, like, no one was following us and still don't know who we are just because of the fact that the audio by itself blew up. So, it's kind of like watching XIX blow up from the outside.
I SPENT HALF AN HOUR GOING THROUGH THE DIFFERENT TIKTOKS FOR "KISMET" AND "SPY." IT'S WILD AS HELL SEEING LIKE VOLLEYBALL TEAMS USE THE SOUND, OR PEOPLE WHO YOU WOULDN'T FIGURE TO LISTEN TO IT.
YUNG SKAYDA it's cool seeing such like a weird sound gain popularity, because that's how you can tell that music taste is evolving and music is evolving.
KARM THE TOOL Yeah. Because, like, honestly, "Kismet" we didn't feel like it was gonna blow up just because of the stuff that was going on TikTok at the time. I was like, "This song is way too weird for people to actually like, listen all through, but ..."
YUNG SKAYDA We were wrong. Yeah. Definitely.
WHAT WAS IT LIKE PUTTING "MONDAYS" TOGETHER WITH PUSSY RIOT?
KARM THE TOOL It was just one of those things where you pull up to someone's house and then you vibe. I loved it. Yeah, we just made the song, one-day-type beat, and we sat down and recorded everything in the studio the first day we met them.
YUNG SKAYDA There's this producer we work with named Elie Rizk. We were going to his studio and Nadya from Pussy Riot had just met Yui, and same with us, but we had walked into the session thing. Everyone was all friends but literally everyone was meeting each other for the first time. So, we went in there, we met them at first — it was slightly weird, but then like I was showing them this riff that Karm hummed in the car, and I wrote it on their guitar when I got there. And then Elie had a drum beat already so I made a hook right there. Nadya started rapping it, and it was all cool. It clicked in this moment when we decided to take a break and we started smoking jays in the back patio. Literally when we came back, it clicked, and we were in flow mode. We were just writing the lyrics. We was just going off. By the end of the day, we just had this like awesome-ass product.
IS THERE A FEELING YOU HOPE PEOPLE GET OUT OF THE MUSIC?
YUNG SKAYDA Whenever we make lit music, I just hope people can fucking go as hard as they can. Like, I hope when they hear this song, they accidentally just like ...
KARM THE TOOL Start tweaking by accident. [Laughs]
YUNG SKAYDA Yeah, when they hear the song, they can't control their energy and they start bouncing like a Looney Tune.
KARM THE TOOL Yeah, yeah, we want to make people move.
