Injury Reserve - From Farce to Tragedy

In twelve years of activity, and just two albums, the Arizona trio made up of rappers Ritchie with a T (Nathaniel Ritchie) and Stepa J. Groggs (Jordan Groggs), rounded out by producer Parker Corey, left a deep mark on alternative hip-hop, showing two very different faces: one more burlesque, channeling creativity into atypical, asymmetrical tracks that slot neatly into the alternative hip-hop tradition, and the other anguished and dramatic, engaging with noise and experimentation, deconstruction and deafening excess. From the early dentistry-themed mixtapes to the dramatic final album of 2021, they charted a curious evolution from farce to tragedy within the hip-hop world.

Mixtape era: Depth Chart, Live From The Dentist Office, Floss

Formed in Arizona in 2012 as a rap duo, Injury Reserve initially consisted of just Stepa J. Groggs and Ritchie with a T. Parker Corey joined shortly after, partly to help Ritchie produce his debut, "Days Slow Nights Fast" (2012). The duo, now a trio, released their first single on YouTube: it was called "Electric Relaxation" and, after being pulled from the web, was lost forever.
In 2013 came their first mixtape, Depth Chart, telling the story of a young basketball player whose career struggles to take off. The group would later consider it something of a misstep, one to be excluded from their official discography. Compared to what was to come, it's actually much more conventional music, in line with the jazz-rap tradition. There are a few wild swings here too, like the cacophonous finale of "Full Court Press", but on the whole it's fairly ordinary music, especially for the era in which it was released, and occasionally rather dated, as in the '90s-style soul-rap of "Eveileb I" ("I Believe" spelled backwards).

In 2014 they released the seven tracks of Cooler Colors, another record disowned by the trio. As Ritchie himself pointed out in an interview with the Daily Texan, it's an album still very much tied to the sound of other acts and other rappers. There's nothing yet of the style they would go on to develop, and with hindsight it's striking how much they changed within just a few months. That said, more attentive listeners may still find a few points of interest, more in the beats than in the rapping.

The Injury Reserve who released Live From The Dentist Office in 2015 are far more creative and unpredictable.
Whether it's the bright horns of "Yo", with its deliciously danceable soul, the ramshackle piano of the sprawling "Friday" (feat. Curtis Williams), the nostalgic melancholy of "45" (feat. Demi Hughes), or the laid-back beat of the placid "Whatever Dude", everything here is geared toward a reinterpretation of jazz-rap and boom bap without ever tipping into mere pastiche.
The trio also veers into a curious mix of eccentric and immediate on "Snowmen" (feat. Glasspopcorn), an alternative take on Jay-Z, complete with an abstract, cacophonous coda loaded with psychedelic touches, or into the hypnotic variation on Pharrell's sensual productions on "Wow". It's never more fun than on the robotic dance of "Everybody Knows", channeling the most intergalactic spirit of the Beastie Boys.
The experimental streak instead surfaces on "Washed Up", which deconstructs the rap, layers melodies on top of one another and crams the arrangement into one big hallucination, but also on the album's most memorable track, "Whiplash" feat. Chuck Inglish, built entirely on a rhythmic synth over which the rap unfurls until, halfway through, the beat simply vanishes, leaving only street sounds, as if everything had suddenly shifted onto the sidewalk of a busy city street.
The balance between '90s-style references, pop-rap simplicity and immediacy, psychedelic exploration and experimental detours is the strength of Live From The Dentist Office, a mixtape that marks a real shift of gear compared to everything released up to that point in their career. That said, the overall assessment isn't helped by the trio's tendency to overextend, and thin out, themselves, something most felt in the final pair of tracks, "ttktv" and "Falling": over 13 minutes that give far too much room to experiments that come across as naive and amateurish, as if improvised on the spot.

The dental theme, owed to the fact that these two releases were actually recorded in a dentist's studio, is also central to the title of the following Floss (2016), which takes the ideas of Live From The Dentist Office and detonates them into a hip-hop that sounds more aggressive without entirely severing ties with '90s classicism and experimental tendencies.
A banger like "Oh Shit!!!" has the force of a trap track by Denzel Curry and the ferocious delivery of a Lil' Jon, even as it closes out on autotune and machine-gun rhythms.

I say this ain’t jazz-rap, this that, this that spazz-rap
This that raised-by-the-internet, ain’t-had-no-dad rap
Yo, I’m good — don’t pass that, hit me on my Snapchat
You might have to back-back, ‘cause your shit is mad-wack
This that eeny-meeny-miney-moe, might need some Snapcash

No less impressive is the Pharrell-worthy beat underpinning "Bad Boys 3", a hip-hop dance track that fuses the tribal and the futuristic, as if Clipse had teamed up with Travis Scott.
Fun dominates the tracklist, with plenty of songs made to be blasted at full volume ("All This Money"; "What's Goodie" feat. Cakes da Killa; "Back Then"; the deafening "Eeny Meeny Miney Moe"), but there's no shortage of new jazz-rap and boom bap eccentricities either (the helium-pitched extra-beat of "S on Ya Chest"; the ethereal arrangement of "Keep On Slippin'" feat. Vic Mensa), as well as psych-rap moments like "All Quiet On The West Side", slowed down and warped without ever becoming tedious.
Compared to its predecessor, this mixtape is far more brash and cocky: the ideas hit the listener with more force, in the shape of denser, more powerful tracks, where how things are said and how they sound matters far more than what's actually being said. If Live From The Dentist Office is a colorful, fun album weakened by the occasional lull, Floss is a party album recalling the best of Clipse, with psychedelic and experimental elements as garnish. The '90s-indebted style they were practicing only two years earlier, still tied to the tropes of that era, has here been bastardized with futuristic, robotic and sci-fi references.

It's a direction that leads to the even more technological and futuristic Drive It Like It's Stolen (2017), an EP that has completely shed the analog charm of some of their earlier tracks. Instead, it thrives on digital creations that could take their cue from Autechre ("TenTenths"; "91 Cadillac Deville") or sound like reinterpretations of Bomb Squad for the era of the rise of southern rap and trap production ("See You Sweat"). The mood is often unsettling and tense, edging into horrorcore territory on "Boom (X3)". The most famous track on this EP, though, is the lifeless "North Pole" (feat. Austin Feinstein), a bitter reflection on life and its hardships.
Despite its EP format, Drive It Like It's Stolen complements Floss and its exuberance, sketching out the unusual profile of a hip-hop trio capable of being both fun and unsettling, cocky and introspective. When they would end their career in 2021 with By The Time I Get To Phoenix, it was precisely the dramatic tensions of Drive It Like It's Stolen that found their definitive fulfillment, while Floss would find its ideal follow-up in their self-titled debut, Injury Reserve.

Album era: Injury Reserve, By The Time I Get To Phoenix

The Arizona trio finally arrives at its debut, and it doesn't make the long wait feel in vain. Eccentric and entertaining, the 13 tracks of Injury Reserve sweep across a wide spectrum of hip-hop approaches: at times goofy to the point of outright silliness, like the most burlesque version of Eminem, at other times aggressive like the most caustic Death Grips, and elsewhere hilariously lopsided, eccentric, meta-musical. It's released by Loma Vista, a label that has also worked over the years with, among others, Iggy Pop, Korn, Common, Denzel Curry, Alice Glass, St. Vincent, Soccer Mommy.

"Koruna & Lime" builds a rap over a bouncy jumble of cacophonous sounds, grotesque and goofy in tone, but "Jawbreaker" dares even further, with whistles and little bells. Just as you're convinced you're listening to the alt-hip-hop album of the year, along comes the raw explosion of screams and distortion that is "GTFU". The ideal moment to grasp just how exceptional this record is comes with "Jailbreak The Tesla", a dark-toned track built on a beat of metallic percussion and deafening sub-bass that sets a great deal of bravado against a deliberately dumb lyric and literal-minded samples, including a hilarious "Your engine go vroom and my engine go [silence]".
Marshall Mathers would be proud of "Gravy n' Biscuits", which also leans close to early Snoop Dogg, but the real stroke of genius is probably the meta-track "Rap Song Tutorial", a handbook of eccentric hip-hop that builds a song in a few consecutive steps. It's striking that they can also pull off an emotional track like "What A Year It's Been" without giving up the creativity of warped vocals and a tiptoeing intro followed by maximalist arrangements worthy of the most boombastic Kanye West. The latter is also echoed on "Three Man Weave" and its sumptuous vintage style.
A dazzling debut album that plays with post-2000 hip-hop with irony while also being driven by genuine love for certain celebrated artists. It's rare to find this much imagination and creativity, let alone the rare ability to stay poised on the border between experimentation and joke, between ambition and fun. Special mention goes to the lyrics, which steer well clear of tired clichés and are instead effective both in their most human moments and in their most eccentric, ironic or surreal ones. Unexpected collaborations and a production that's always meticulous and personal round out the picture.

On June 29, 2020, Groggs died, with no cause of death reported to the press. Injury Reserve returned with the self-released By The Time I Get To Phoenix (2021), a set of tracks ready to tear contemporary hip-hop apart. The band was deeply marked by the loss, but this is not an album written in memory of Groggs: the compositions were almost entirely finished before his passing, and instead reflect the difficult historical passage between the 2010s and 2020s, intertwined with other personal dramas. It's the reflection of the devastating Covid-19 pandemic and the turbulent events tied to the murder of George Floyd on the group's spirit. The title, inspired by Jimmy Webb's song "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" included on Isaac Hayes's masterpiece "Hot Buttered Soul" (1969), was chosen by Groggs, to whom the album is dedicated regardless.
If Injury Reserve was a collection of creative ideas built on the genre's more or less established templates, here the impression is that the goal is to smash it to pieces and reassemble it into asymmetrical, chaotic, abstract and noisy structures. If the 2019 album was a fun record with experimental flourishes, this time we're facing a deliberate exercise in destruction that continually challenges the listener, as made clear right from the lead single "Knees," an alt-rap track suspended in midair.
"Outsider" is placed up front almost as a screening process at the door: an anxious, deafening magma, with menacing rap accompanied by retro-futuristic synths that somehow morph into a dancing carousel. The first recognizable beat is the industrial, asymmetrical one of "Superman That," with voices pitch-shifted and run through remodulations, while the arrangement saturates with explosions. "SS San Francisco" (feat. Zeeloperz) is no easier listening, a desert blues where the drums are slowed to the point of deformation and the finale is an overlap of ghostly chants in a desolate landscape.
One of the most absurd moments is the frenetic tribalism of "Footwork In A Forest," closing out as a caricature of industrial-rap, with a slowed-down wail and a rhythm that rages without rules. "Smoke Don't Clear" opens like one of the surreal chants of the Residents, a desperate, anxiety-inducing hallucination, but what hits even harder is the boundless melancholy of "Top Picks For You," a sad reflection on grief in the age of algorithms, amid synthetic wails and spoken word that only occasionally returns to rap.

As the dust settles, shake it off of me, shake it off of me
(The train is still on schedule)
Yeah, your pattern’s still in place, algorithm still in action
Just working so you could just jump right back, jump right back
I seen that shit working like nothing ever happened
I go to power on, I see your shit still happenin’, yeah
I felt loss but a hole like this I never could’vе imagined
Your pattern’s still in place, algorithm’s still in action
As I scroll through I see a piеce of you is still reacting

Time itself seems to have broken, shattered into a thousand pieces, and the whole album fights and thrives on that destruction. Beats blur together, refracted into syncopations and multiplied into bursts. Voices split into echoes and reverbs, mutating with aggressive pitch-shifts and slowing down until they fray, break apart, transform. The melodies, when present, are disjointed, disordered and flawed, shredded or at least damaged to the point of calling their role into question: rather than a guiding thread through the songs, they become distractions and detours to process during a demanding listen.
This is the kind of album that also wins over listeners who love hip-hop especially when it's atypical, closer to cLOUDDEAD than to Nas. It's a moving, violently creative album, one that can serve as an ideal catharsis for processing the pains of our time, the way certain great music manages to do.

By Storm: facing your own ghosts to survive

Following this release, and as a consequence of Groggs's death, the two surviving members declared the Injury Reserve story over: they had started out as a trio, and so it no longer made sense to continue under that name. Ritchie and Corey carried on as By Storm, releasing the single "Double Trio" in 2023.

The debut album My Ghosts Go Ghost (2026) makes clear that the project of the two surviving Injury Reserve members can start over five years after By The Time I Get To Phoenix, though it moves away from that apocalyptic sound.
Producer Parker Corey and rapper RiTchie with a T aimed to process grief through a set of experiments built on the skeleton of hip-hop, borrowing heavily from other genres.
It's abstract, melancholic and dramatic music that suggests rather than describes, leaving many questions unresolved: which is exactly what happens after life's great sorrows, incomprehensible and hard to work through.

My Ghosts Go Ghost manages to sound creative and won't disappoint anyone who still regards By The Time I Get To Phoenix as an extraordinary album of this decade's experimental hip-hop. It's important to stress, though, that it sounds like something substantially different: an introspective journey through the later stages of grief, disorienting and moving. A difficult listen, one that improves with close attention to the fragmented lyrics, often in free form, just like our most intimate thoughts.
While the dense form, full of overlapping, distorted samples, dreamlike sounds and filtered voices might suggest comparisons to Dälek and Clipping, an emotional reading points more toward the bitter reflections of the aforementioned Billy Woods, and above all toward other albums dealing with grief, from "Skeleton Tree" to "Carrie & Lowell", developed through a very different musical language.

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