It's the monkish discipline of keeping yourself creatively fulfilled and financially solvent.
The only difference is that, instead of bouncing from Batman & Robin to The Thin Red Line, DaddyPhatSnaps is a member of the "video game raps" alcove on YouTube and Spotify, which reframes that classic artistic identity crisis in a way that any 12-year old could understand. For instance, why would you write a rap about Apex Legends, when a rap about Fortnite or Cuphead might triple the views and ambush the algorithm?
"I try to do three passion projects for one that I need to like, really do," he says, on a phone call with Billboard. "Three that I'm super interested in, and one where I'm like, 'Eh, it's good for the health of the [YouTube] channel.'"
This is a familiar anxiety for anyone who makes a living through pageviews. Trends and influence take priority. It's why you can buy an Area 51 siege shirt on Etsy after the meme went nuclear. But DaddyPhatSnaps, born Leon Young, was smart enough to adapt that logic to the songwriting process.
The 32-year-old lives in San Diego and holds down a day job working in a hotel, and while his rap career isn't full-time, he says the supplementary income he's generated have resolved a lot of his routine stresses. "I don't have to worry about money anymore," Young explains. "It's allowed me to do what I want to do."
Broadly, he considers DaddyPhatSnaps a "nerdcore" project -- borrowing the term used in the late-'90s and early 2000s for poindexters like MC Lars and MC Frontalot, who dressed in Dilton Doiley pocket-protectors and tucked-in polo shirts in order to trade punchlines about Javascript and Deep Space Nine. But unlike those artists, Young has never released an album, nor has he signed to a record label. Instead, his entire creative itinerary is built around what's happening at the box office or the trending page on Steam's video game storefront.
In 2019 alone, he rapped about John Wick: Chapter 3, Avengers: Endgame, and Sonic the Hedgehog. In each song, Young steps to the mic and delivers grim, curved-lip battle raps, dripping with enough references to geekdom to justify the franchise name in the thumbnail.
"But you don't give a damn you are making a saga/ Hate it or not you're gonna bring the pain to Baraka," he raps on his Mortal Kombat XI-inspired track. The lyrics are emblazoned on the bottom of the YouTube video, which itself is a supercut of all the trailers and highlights that Netherealm, the game's developer, has published to drum up hype before release.
He uploads each song to both his YouTube channel and his Spotify profile, and says that Spotify in particular makes the lion's share of his revenue. This is reactionary music, the chaos-theory feedback of a culture that values fandom as its primary currency. Rap chases clicks, just like everything else in the Comscore era.
"I see what's on the trending tab, I look at Google Trends. I get an idea of if there's going to be a lot of content online [for something] or if it's something I should skip. I try to look ahead at least two or three weeks, and tie [my music] to a big release," says Leon. "I'll search for [my topic] on YouTube to see how many videos have been made about it, and how recent those videos are, and how many views they have. I make a decision based on the overall fan support."
