Today Portland hardcore / industrial artist King Yosef returns with his first new release since his collaborative LP with LA duo Youth Code from early 2021. “Barbed Teeth” maintains the intensity level of some of Yosef’s most popular tracks to date like “Pity Case” or “Lurch.”
“This song is one of many I have been working on, but I feel it best represents the path that I am starting to unveil. Its sound is old and new to me all at once. It is 100% DIY. Written, recorded, produced, mixed, directed, filmed and edited by myself and friends. The idea of the song’s lyrics is based on the idea of inevitability of retaliation and perseverance. ex; Things either fight to survive or they lay down and die.”
King Yosef is the project of musician, singer & producer Tayves Yosef Pelletier from Portland, OR. Having started the King Yosef project in his teens, releases under the moniker are “more extreme and closer to the bleeding edge than most of today’s internet-grown hip-hop. Though he’s produced songs for Billboard Hot 100-charting rap artist like the late XXXTentacion and Ski Mask the Slump God, Yosef animates the lo-fi blown-out brood-scuzz of Soundcloud rap with the vein-popping screams of hardcore and the mechanical noise of industrial” (from a profile piece in REVOLVER Magazine).
Yosef began producing for a number of artists in 2014 with a consistent string of releases and by 2015, found himself in more of a niche within the community of Soundcloud. This would eventually lead to him joining the group Members Only, fronted by the late XXXTentacion, as well as meeting his future collective members of the Red Mirror artist collective (Fifty Grand, Gin$eng, Hellion & Kellbender). He would eventually depart The Red Mirror during the pandemic.
While Yosef was continuing to produce for other artists he was starting to develop his own solo material. In this time the King Yosef project started to blend in more diverse influences which was showcased on the 2017 release Fortune Teller.
2018 would see the release of his sophomore album Guilty, a combination of metal, industrial, and hip-hop. This release solidified the King Yosef trademark which continued on subsequent singles such as “Lurch,” “Pity Case” and “Stygian.” In 2021 he released a collaborative LP project with his like-minded friends in Youth Code.
