m4rkim

listening stats

as of october 12th, 2024, m4rkim is my #1 most listened artist of all-time with 4,802 plays, as tracked on last.fm.

about

m4rkim is a young brazilian artist (born in 2002), that creates nerdcore music, or as it's known in portuguese: música nerd/música geek. i.e. music inspired by/that reflects themes from nerd culture: anime, manga, games and such. his style blends mostly rock/metal, trap and rap.

if you're new to nerdcore, see: brazilian nerdcore

playlists

a playlist with a few of my favorites: [br nerdcore] m4rkim favorites (14 songs)

a list of my most listened songs (1-50): https://www.last.fm/user/cassiuscarvalho/library/music/M4rkim/+tracks

a personal review - why m4rkim is my #1 most listened artist:

text written in july 26th, 2024:

disclaimer: m4rkim is by far my most listened to artist in the brazilian nerdcore scene. (3x more than the second/third anirap/kaito, and 4-5x more than most others basara, oshaman, secondtime, etc) i love the guy. my analysis/reflection below is not being overly critical, but just pointing out things i really enjoy and things i think he could be even better at.

update (sept 24th, 2024): it's like m4rkim read exactly what i wrote below and decided to up his game for murciélago - ulquiorra. 😝 it's a great song. if it weren't for a few aspects of the mix (slightly too loud violins and a slightly too high chorus, i missed a bit more heaviness in it), it'd be my favorite song. still, it's super good and it honors how good of a character ulquiorra is.

i really like m4rkim's primarily trap/rock style, mixing a lot of flow and aggressive deliveries. it can be seen early on on songs like gon, erwin smith, and saber, and more refined later on on songs like [ichigo], kenjaku, rob lucci. and as he kept evolving, i think he really found his sound in this style and capitalized on it. his cypher hashiras x kokushibou, castelo infinito captured this spirit and was for a long time my favorite while he still hadn't released some the songs that were soon to become my favorites.

for example, my two favorite m4rkim songs - hantengu and crocodile - have nothing to do with the characters, but because of how it actually sounds/how it was delivered. the construction/build up is great and their choruses are explosive - very powerful and surprising. they kept me at the edge the whole time. gilgamesh, also one of my favorites, has a bit more of the character flair shining through - the orchestral instrumentation, the debonair demeanor, the lyrics themselves. props to him and the producers/editors!

one thing i noticed though, as i was looking through my most listened songs, i started noticing/comparing the characters they were about vs the characters in the songs i really like from other brazilian nerdcore artists.

a few of my favorite characters for a song would be like: sung jin woo and eren for some of the most epic yet meaningful/troubled stories. others like aki hayakawa (i really like rodrigo zin's and oshaman's renditions) and sasuke can have way more reflexive songs, which is not his style. sukuna and madara with the all-in glorious epic music. yet, m4rkim's renditions of them (with the exception of aki, which he doesn't have one) are hardly in my top 50 of my most listened songs from him.

in my opinion, it's a missed opportunity by him. daarui was able to capitalize on that on his songs on sukuna and satoru gojo, for example. henrique mendonça (of course), with guts and geto, as well. okabe with denji and kokushibo. anirap with eren and akaza...

sure, it's also freaking awesome to take a weak character like hantengu and elevate him with a song like m4rkim did. but also taking a badass character and making a song that lives up to their expression, is freaking awesome.

if he wants to rise to an even higher level in terms of emotional connection/storytelling, i believe these reflections provide some clues.

i also really like some of his soft-spoken, more melodic lines, like the ones in [musashi miyamoto, caminho da alma] (x:xx and y:yy). i love the trilogy of [musashi] songs, but really think some of it could be way slower-paced and more experimental compared to other characters/narratives. but also, i understand the appeal of keeping it primarily high-tempo, especially for a younger audience. even in the [eren] song i mentioned, my favorite part are the melodic/reflexive lines talking about mikasa (x:xx), which also setup for a big chorus.

i believe the same missed opportunity happened with beelzebub, which i also really like how it sounds, but i believe he could have explored a lot more the choir/ambience and make it less electronic, so it could hit more in the feels.

he does some surprising stuff at times as well, like [shaka de virgem], rob lucci itself (with some crazy cool flows and a very different texture in the chorus), chihiro (invoking a much more anirap style of singing), johnny joestar/makima (invoking a more lgbtq style), which i believe bring a great deal of novelty/freshness to it.

there's of course lots of other good/hit songs like buda, doflamingo, fushiguro toji, yoriichi, kaneki, barba branca, kaidou, the mask, lampião...

just like he was able to develop more techniques (especially for the metal stuff) in the past 2 years, i think if he's able to explore more of these aspects (melodic, ambient), he'll go even beyond. henrique mendonça and daarui are good references for this, embracing this kind of more wholistic "producer mindset" and exploring less conventional approaches.

yet again, they haven't been freakin' posting a song EVERY WEEK since basically the beginning of their channel. m4rkim is a beast in this sense. so i guess these thoughts apply for the time when/if he feels that he wants to change a bit directions and maybe dive deeper into these aspects i brought. he may well be happy continuing on this path for many years until him or his audience gets saturated, if they ever do.