Riff Raff brings comical touch to hip hop
What: Riff Raff with Dollabillgates, Trill Sammy and Dice Soho When: Sunday, 8 p.m. Where: Upstairs Cabaret, 15 Bastion Square Tickets: $40 at Lyle’s Place and TicketZone.com
In the realm of hip-hop alter-egos, none matches the sheer volume of Houston-born performer Horst Christian Simco. He’s in a category all his own, both in style and substance.
He records and performs as Riff Raff, his most notable persona. But Simco also answers to the Jody Highroller, Peach Panther, Neon Knuckles, Neon Icon, Neon Don, Neon Python, Versace Python, Butterscotch Bomber, Butterscotch Barry Bonds, Rap Game Bon Jovi, Dr. Diploma and Aquaberry Dolphin — and that’s only an abridged list.
Which tells you something about Riff Raff’s approach to hip hop. He makes it his personal mission to have fun while touring the world, and his comedic social media presence — which comes with its own verbiage, spread out to his combined 2.2 million followers on Instagram and Twitter — reaffirms it. The downside is that people think the cornrow-sporting, Versace-wearing, diamondstudded personality is a comedian first and rapper second.
“I know people get it, but there are those who want to say that just because I’m having fun or funny, that I’m not an artist,” Riff Raff said in an interview with LA Weekly.
“That doesn’t make sense. Whenever Jamie Foxx was on In Living Color and then you saw him sing, it didn’t take away from either of those things. I can’t change everyone’s perception of me, but I can change the quality of the work.”
Riff Raff is touring to support his latest album, Peach Panther, with a run of dates that includes a hotly anticipated appearance Sunday at Upstairs Cabaret.
Peach Panther is the followup to Neon Icon, which arrived in 2014 when Riff Raff was more of a curiosity than anything else (the New York Times called Neon Icon “a fine hip-hop album from someone who seemed as if he’d make anything but.”) But something happened in the intervening years. Riff Raff, however gaudy, became a real artist with hip-hop bona fides, not to mention a $4-million US contract with BMG.
Helping him along the way was the widespread opinion that Alien, the character played by James Franco in the film Spring Breakers, was modelled on Riff Raff. The film’s director had long denied the connection, but a photo appeared online on Aug. 19 that seemed to suggest Franco — looking like a Riff Raff doppelgänger — was shooting scenes for the rapper’s new video, Only in America.
Riff Raff has been on a steady and surprising upward trajectory in the entertainment world.
Last year, he purchased a purple Las Vegas mansion for $1.4 million US, one that he dubbed the Codeine Castle for its association with the codeine-based cough syrup sizzurp, which originated in the Houston rap scene.
But as much as he’s moving up in the world, criticism does not evade the white rapper. Rolling Stone compared his work with “minstrelsy” during its review of Neon Icon, and with regard to his dramatic change in physical appearance (he reportedly put on 70 pounds of muscle in less than a year), steroid use has been suggested.
Riff Raff, in an interview with Hip Hop DX, said the negative talk doesn’t drag him down.
“I don’t care about how somebody perceives it. I do care, but until everything is exactly the way I want it, I won’t fully care about it. My face should be on billboards up and down the strip. I should be in two or three movies at once. That’s what I care about.”