Horst Simco’s rap career began in 2005 where influenced by fellow Texan rappers Devin the Dude and Paul Wall, he would record his rapping over existing rappers’ beats. Simco would then hand them out at malls and later utilised the likes of Myspace, YouTube and WorldStarHipHop to get his name out there.
In 2009 Riff Raff appeared on the MTV reality show “From G’s to Gents” and had a MTV tattooed on his neck so he could legally go by the name MTV Riff Raff on his mixtapes. The rapper got eliminated in the second episode but was remembered for his bizarre and extravagant persona. Soon after the rapper collaborated with Dirt Nasty who contacted him after Simco rapped his phone number out in one of his songs.
After a brief stint on Soulja Boy’s label S.O.D. Money Gang Inc. in 2011, Riff Raff worked with Harry Fraud and Action Bronson and produced the song “Bird on a Wire”. The song and video generated lot of online buzz and led to Riff Raff being signed to Diplo’s Mad Decent label although he released his debut album “The Golden Alien” independently.
The rappers follow up album “Neon Icon” was released on June 24, 2014 and was his major label debut. The album received positive reviews with Rolling Stone placing it on their “27 Must-Hear Albums of 2014” and included collaborations with Mac Miller, Childish Gambino and Amber Coffman of Dirty Projectors.
This was my second time going to RiFF RAFF show and I experienced the same results.
At the beginning of the day I wasn't even sure if I was going to attend the show cause of work but it all worked out. I ordered my ticket's pretty late, it was around 8:30 and the show started @8. But since I've seen him perform before I knew that he wasn't going on stage till a couple hours after the show begin, so I wasn't sweating being late.
I arrived at the observatory around 9:15 people were just arriving as well and when I was getting closer to the venue I was trying to hear if that was RiffRaff that was playing but it was some other artist so I was good, I haven't missed anything. I caught up with a couple of friends inside and went right away with that YakkkDaniels haha.
Try to get a slight buzz going since I drove alone but anyways, so about an hour in I start checking the time and see that's its 10oclock and there still these wack artist with stupid non-catchy hooks just crapping the stage. Some artist received a couple boo's haha. Almost 11oclock, So at this point, my friends and I are kind of getting irritated on riff Raff being late but luckily the Dj was playing hit records instead of having these non artist try to rock the stage. And then the moment we've been waiting for, around 11:30 riff just bursts out with his "I could have played for the raiders in could have played for the hawks" jam and people start going nuts.
We start getting into it, all good vibes EXCEPT!!!.......Riff was only up there for probably 30min!!!!!!! My man just played us short. Was there since 9, had to go through seeing these wack artist perform for 2+ hours and then he just comes in for a cool minute and then bounces!!!.... this was the same thing that happened last time I saw him, so I wasn't really that surprised.
I'll rate the whole experience 6/10.
RiffRaff gotta show more love. So many songs I wanted to hear, probably only played 2or3 songs off his neon icon..... ps I'LL PROBABLY NEVER HEAR MY FAVORITE JAM "LARRY BIRD"