Topeka noise-rap crew Young Mvchetes emerges from the shadows

Jackson Street Lofts is a former Catholic elementary school that sits about 100 yards from the Kansas State Capitol, in Topeka. The building was renovated in 2015 and chopped up into apartments, many of which retain the school’s spacious green chalkboards. Up the spiraling metal stairs from one of these classrooms-turned-living-spaces is a makeshift studio where the members of Young Mvchetes often meet. 

You might also call it a hideout. Since the noise-rap crew released its self-titled debut a year ago, a cloud of mystery has hung around Young Mvchetes. Who were these guys? The only names credited in the Bandcamp notes were Young Mvchetes and Maadcxmmander. A cryptic Young Mvchetes Twitter page materialized shortly after the release and began sending out Bandcamp links and photos of handwritten introductions to local music heads. Savvy friends and a handful of fans have pieced together their identities, but this article is the first time Young Mvchetes members have acquiesced to having their names published. 

The group’s de facto leader, Kody Stadler, says there were two reasons for the initial cloak of anonymity. One was to allow the art to be appreciated separate from the artist — to completely remove social politics and music-scene popularity contests from the equation. 

The other was self-doubt. They wanted to be able to silently step away from the project if it wasn’t received well or, worse, openly mocked. But while Young Mvchetes’ debut effort may be a little on the nose at times, it’s hardly embarrassing. Across the EP’s seven tracks, Stadler tackles America’s societal ills one by one, constructing run-on bars and shrill, impassioned rhymes critiquing media consumption, police brutality, and government corruption. Producer Kyle Werner (Maadcxmmander) constructs chrome-plated boom-bap beats that successfully recall those of hip-hop pioneers Public Enemy with a few modern flourishes tossed in. With Stadler and other Mvchetes’ raps slicing through the high end and Werner’s instrumentals stomping through the low end, everything in between — distorted guitars, metalcore-style growls — sounds like complete and total warfare.

Stadler and Werner, I’m told at Werner’s Jackson Street loft, played in a high school rock band together. They chuckle and cringe a bit recalling those days, divulging their past enthusiasm for Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, and other grunge and punk acts.

In college, Werner got interested in producing electronic music and began performing under the name Boba. Stadler gravitated toward hip-hop. (He has a hearing impairment that makes it difficult to do traditional vocal work, which made rap a more practical form of self-expression.) They decided to team up for an EP together. During the initial recording process, Stadler realized he enjoyed the dynamic of having a group, so he invited friends Bryan Kincade and Nikki Williams (aka Slick Nik) to contribute verses to the project. Stadler says he considers anyone who contributes a member of the crew, so he counts himself, Werner, Kincade, Williams, Devon Hanna (who assists with production) and Preston Walker (who often deejays their live shows) as Mvchetes. 

About those live shows: in the summer of 2017, after the debut had been up on Bandcamp for several months, the group released two singles and performed its first show, opening a Studio 785-sponsored block party in Topeka’s Oakland neighborhood. The DJ introducing Young Mvchetes flubbed their name, and their music drew some wild stares, but the songs proved to be just as sharp in the live setting. Ebony Tusks’ Martinez Hillard, another Topeka rapper known for fiery, genre-smashing live shows, says he and Stadler are close and often talk shop about performing. 

“This is not me tooting my own horn,” Hillard says, “But I think what I really appreciate about the way Kody and Bryan perform [is that] I feel like they took a lot of really strong lessons from what we do [in Ebony Tusks] in terms of crowd engagement. But again, I think when I watch them, I see something that’s really unique to them.”

Stadler and Hillard have also bonded through local activism, in particular the protests and community meetings that have followed the fatal shooting by police of a man named Dominique White in East Topeka last year. White was briefly memorialized in Young Mvchetes’ music video for “Track 01 (They Got Us On Camera).” Along these lines, Young Mvchetes also recently released the LGBT EP, whose cover features a Polaroid photo of the Equality House, the rainbow-painted nonprofit center that sits across the street from Topeka’s infamously vile Westboro Baptist Church. Here, the crew swaps out the bone-crunching blasts of experimental hip-hop in favor of ambient pieces soundtracking a series of interviews Stadler conducted with young LGBT people in Topeka about their struggles and triumphs. 

The concept isn’t unlike two interludes that appear near the tail end of Young Mvchetes’ debut. On these “intercepted conversations,” as Stadler calls them, Stadler gives an account of a nightmare in which he witnessed a friend being slaughtered by monsters while he stood nearby, paralyzed in fear. He says it was inspired by a real dream he had as a child, but repurposed as a metaphor for a call to action. It’s Young Mvchetes’ way of saying that rapping about injustices and spreading awareness is all fine and good, but real-world action will be required sooner rather than later. But with three socially conscious EPs under their belt, and a fourth on the way — all in just over a year — Young Mvchetes could hardly be accused of inaction. They’ve planted their flag in the bloody Topeka soil, and it damn sure isn’t a white one.