Since emerging in the New Jersey rap underground, Fatboi Sharif has reveled in the unorthodox, swerving between styles that remain threaded by his dexterous baritone. Think The Crow and Dungeon Family, darkened by shades of Ghostface Killah’s surrealism, resulting in projects that feel like a twisted hallucination. Sharif, however, has always had a foot firmly staked in the alternative world. He was deep into grunge before discovering hip-hop, calling Pearl Jam and Silverchair some of his “favorite music ever.” He still remembers the first time he witnessed Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” video on MTV. Earlier this year, he hopped on a song helmed by the Code Orange side project NOWHERE2RUN, contributing a ghoulish verse alongside Sadistik.
Appropriately, Sharif unleashed his latest full-length, Goth Girl On The Enterprise, via POW Recordings, near Halloween, where he warped his haunting flow into something wholly intriguing — part growl, part spoken word — over Roper Williams’ glitched-out production (a longtime peer whom he’s been working with on and off since 2016’s Age of Extinction). It feels just as dark, unsettling, and layered as putting on a classic horror flick, and with that in mind, the experimental rapper took AP through a handful of films that inspired Goth Girl’s creation.
Read more: Every Nine Inch Nails album ranked
“Anybody who’ve been to my house that know me for some years know when you come inside a Sharif’s domain, it’s certain movies that you gotta watch, no matter how many times you’ve seen it,” he says, presenting an ease and enthusiasm that oppose his sinister verses. Sharif praises Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, whose “dialogue, crazy cinematography, and how [the scenes] just cut from one thing to another, but in the gist of the story, it still makes sense,” finds kinship with “Tarpit.”
Another includes Jacob’s Ladder, where a Vietnam vet turned postal worker descends into his own dizzying hell (the film even plays in the background as Sharif rattles off his picks). “If you hear a song like ‘Seance’ [or] the title track, it’s kind of like the hysteria and excitement that you hear in that song, and it’d be in a film like that,” he adds. “That’s what it’s all about, man. When we create these albums, we create worlds, and it’s a lot of worlds that inspire me.” Head here for his full list.
