Shanghai Doom and Runnit are barging in with a new leftfield-leaning single ‘Outsiders’, as their first official collab for Bassrush Records.
In the producer community, discovering a mutual admiration with artists on a similar wavelength can sometimes organically spawn into a two-way street of trading insider tips, tricks, and industry secrets. And if the extent of that admiration happens to run deep enough, two projects might go as far as entertaining the idea of melding their minds together to see what surprises await at the other end of the tunnel. ‘Outsiders’ is a testament to the power of producers seeing eye-to-eye, turning a shared respect into a trippy trap collab between New Jersey duo Shanghai Doom and the co-founder of the Partica collective, Runnit.
“We’re big fans of Runnit and the sound his whole crew at Partica have been pushing,” says Shanghai Doom. “We thought it would be dope to come together and create something weird and trappy with him. After a few sessions of writing, and way too many mix downs, ‘Outsiders’ was born.”
“I’ve been a fan of Shanghai Doom’s music for a long time and they just started getting to know mine, as I’ve been having consistent releases the past year or so,” adds Runnit. “The collab eventually got started after I had a sound design session back in early 2020 and developed that ‘beeedoobeedoo’ lead and found the vocal; once the initial idea was filled out and sent over, Shanghai Doom could really get down to the nitty-gritty, adding their elements, second drop, and finalize the mastering! We had a bunch of versions but were extra hype that we landed on this one as the final.”
As any effective collaborative effort should strive to accomplish, the end result of them bouncing ideas back and forth amounted into an outlier sitting between their two styles. The opening bars saunter around spacious drum hits and lilting handpan melodies, creating a false blanket of safety before the intruding beats proceed to raid the space. In a flash, a deep voice poses the rhetorical question “you think you know me?” and the answer comes tumbling in with a slow-burning succession of head-spinning sound design. Once you think you have the flow figured out, the next riff hits where you least expect it.
Since banding together in 2017, Shanghai Doom has always made it a priority to keep reaching for the fringes of bass without falling too out of-step with contemporary dubstep. They originally touched down on Bassrush with the wacky, warbling ‘Coconuts’ cut, which was featured on the inaugural Prophecy compilation album. While carefully constructing a niche for themselves in the left-field arena, the production pair has also been active on the collab tip, with previous appearances alongside Protohype, Holly, Esseks, Toadface, and TYNAN. These one-off showdowns have been a catalyst for the duo to duel it out with nonstop originality.
Based out of Baltimore, Runnit has been getting a leg up on the trap circuit for about the same amount of time. On top of calling the shots for the creative artist collective Partica, the label-head has been running laps around the East Coast bass scene with a sound that has caught the attention of heavyweights from the likes of 12th Planet, Zeds Dead, UZ, Party Favor, and more. Whether it’s through his own releases or the cuts on which he cosigns, the underground seems to be in healthy condition when Runnit is on the track.
Watching these shining talents decide to put a temporary ampersand between their names to kick out a collab is what the spirit of the dance scene is all about. Cooperation and collaboration in the name of creativity. Let’s just hope ‘Outsiders’ won’t be the first and last time we see Shanghai Doom and Runnit passing off project files to one another.
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