16 Dec 2024/length unknown/Rare Scrilla
MLow X Rare Scrilla
A collaborator conversation about 42069, Rare Scrilla's AI assisted album with two dozen crypto artists, and the Rare Pepe and Fake Rares history behind it.
Rare Scrilla has made music for more than 20 years, and his method is simple: when he wants to learn something, he creates around it. That gave him Silk Road, an album about Bitcoin as currency on the darknet market roughly ten years earlier, and Sound Money in 2020. AI music entered late in 2023, badly at first, then a program started spitting out loops he loved: one of a kind samples with no crate digging and no clearing, which he calls the backbone of hip hop. By summer he was on Suno and then Udio, tricking friends who asked who the singer was; the answer was a robot. Two days before DJing Pepe Fest he wrote a set of original AI songs in his hotel room, the crowd loved them, and the album was on.
42069, released December 2nd, pairs each track with a crypto artist's visual, MLow among them. Scrilla explains the economics openly: splits between AOTM, himself, the visual artist, and features like Willie Ways, K Beta and DJ Cuber, with no big money in it, but weeks of promotable content and a project everyone did on the strength. His release logic is the episode's sharpest idea: get it out fast so it is timestamped, because in two years AI music will be indistinguishable from anything. He hid a Bitcoin key inside the album, inspired by the Coin Artist puzzle painting that took years to crack, and hints that the lyrics matter.
The back half is living history. Scrilla walks through Rare Pepes solving provenance when eBay was pulling six figure bids on meme folders, the token plus image concept shared in a Telegram chat, geodropped cards collected in Japan and India, his early crypto art podcast, and the 2018 Rare AF fest where the scattered scenes first met. Fake Rares, he explains, exists because the man who introduced him to his wife banned him from the Rare Pepe chat, so he minted a proof of ban card and spun up a new collection that revived Counterparty. He closes on conviction: Bitcoin is speech, the best memes live on XCP, and he feels he works for Bitcoin.
What this episode teaches
- Create to learn
Scrilla studies subjects by making work about them: Silk Road came from fascination with an unregulated internet market, Sound Money from Bitcoin. The album is the research.
- Timestamp the technology
He rushed 42069 out because AI music iterates so fast that the record's value is partly evidentiary: this is what the tools could do at that moment. He expects AI music to be indistinguishable from anything within two years.
- Cover art is the bridge
Album art already pairs musicians with visual artists in the traditional world, from Warhol to Banksy, and it solves a promotion problem: a bare track is hard to post, a visual gives you daily content. He argues musicians entering crypto need a native crypto artist partner or they get lost.
- Why music NFTs lag
Scrilla gives three reasons: art is judged in a second while a song needs three minutes of a scroller's time, most crypto art collectors are not really music people, and music is anchored at free while art carries a high price mindset. The right click save problem never left, it just moved to streaming.
- Do not promise royalties
Collectors asked him where the royalties were; he points out art collectors get none either. Attaching utility or revenue promises to music tokens creates SEC gray areas, and he cites earlier attempts like musiccoin projects that failed on exactly that.
- Provenance was the problem
Rare Pepes mattered because memes were already trading on forums and eBay, which once pulled a 100,000 dollar bid on a folder of rare memes. Attaching a token to the image proved custody and rarity; to Scrilla the provenance and chain of custody were always the point.
- Turn a ban into a brand
Banned from the Rare Pepe chat for sharing a non Rare Pepe, he minted a proof of ban card the same day, started a side chat, and Fake Rares was born, reviving Counterparty and spawning hundreds of new collections. Nobody, he says, is above Rare Pepe.
- A puzzle extends the story
The hidden Bitcoin key, holding about 100 dollars plus Fake Rares and XCP assets, is community design: he sends additions through the mempool at one or two sats so cracking it becomes a race, and the longer it survives the richer it gets.
The conversation, topic by topic
Twenty years to a robot
Scrilla recaps two decades of records, the Silk Road album about Bitcoin on the darknet made roughly ten years back, and Sound Money in 2020. Late 2023 AI music was bad, then a program started producing loops good enough to replace crate digging; by summer Suno and Udio let him fool friends into asking who the vocalist was.
Pepe Fest sets the album off
Two days before DJing Pepe Fest he decided, with his wife's encouragement, to make all original AI music in his hotel room, songs about Charleston, South Carolina and the event itself. He says they were not his favorite songs, but he played almost nothing else all night and went home to make an album.
Making 42069
He spent August, September and early October on the tracks, and took the title from a late 2023 crypto art meme riff involving Pablo, having already tweeted in 2023 that his next album would be called 42069. An open call plus direct invites assembled the artist roster, with some drop outs and audibles along the way, and the record landed December 2nd.
The economics of the drop
Every sale splits between AOTM as platform, Scrilla, and the artist, with extra splits for Young Weekend's dynamic contract and features like Willie Ways, K Beta and DJ Cuber. He is frank that it has not been a money maker; the return is a fun project and weeks of promotable content.
Album cover art as an on-ramp
Both agree cover art is the natural bridge between music and visual NFTs. Scrilla, a record digger with tens of thousands of records, traces the tradition from turntablism sleeves through Warhol and Banksy, and MLow argues visuals make songs collectible and postable in a way bare audio is not.
Why nobody collects music NFTs
Scrilla lays out his three part answer: visual art is judged instantly while music costs minutes, crypto art collectors mostly are not music people, and music's price anchor is free. Even his own collectors asked where the royalties were, which he calls the same broken logic as right click save.
A culture album, not a meme coin album
Scrilla frames 42069 the way a five tweet thread that week did: as Wu-Tang used chess and kung fu, he uses meme speak and Bitcoin culture without cheese. Beyond the Ethereum collection there is a Bitcoin ordinals collection coming and a 42069 weed strain due in spring.
The hidden key
A Bitcoin private key or seed, he will not say which, is hidden in the album, holding about 100 dollars of Bitcoin, Fake Rare Pepes and other XCP assets, growing the longer it survives. He cites the Coin Artist and Rob Myers puzzle painting from around 2014, cracked years later when the coin was worth far more, and drops one hint: people keep asking him for the lyrics.
Rare Pepes in the ICO era
Against the vaporware of the ICO boom, Rare Pepes solved a real problem: memes were trading on forums, Reddit and eBay, where a 100,000 dollar bid on a folder got taken down. The first card's concept, image in a Telegram chat tied to a token, seemed obvious later but was groundbreaking; Spells of Genesis gets parallel credit.
Geodrops and true believers
Cards were geodropped in the ocean, Japan and India; a creator in India fed his family selling Pepes at 15 or 20 dollars each and documented pickup trips. Scrilla dropped a DJ Pepe at a Virginia mall record store that has since closed, with an unlock question about the counter, so that card may be lost forever.
From podcast to Rare AF
In 2017 he ran a crypto art podcast for two years and sometimes could not find artists to interview. After the Rare AF fest in early 2018, the scenes converged, Rare Pepes, Spells of Genesis, Larva Labs, Dada; he says Larva Labs cited Rare Pepes in their initial paper, and PepeCash listed on CoinMarketCap while traders gated Telegram groups with cards.
The Fake Rares origin story
In 2021 he shared an old rejected card in the Rare Pepe chat and got banned by the very friend who introduced him to his wife. He spun up Fake Rares that day with a proof of ban card, reclaiming a 2016 slur for off directory cards, after rejecting Liquid because, as friends told him, that is not real Bitcoin; every Pepe, he says, is literally a Bitcoin transaction.
Memes and meme coins
His current favorites: Pepe as grandfather, Doge, Skibidi Toilet and its cameraman, and the niche Polar Bear 2026; he likes memes with an edge that tell a story instantly, a picture tells a thousand words but a meme tells a thousand stories. On coins he is Bitcoin only: everything else is short term degen fun.
Working for Bitcoin
Scrilla found Bitcoin after being laid off as an audio engineer while raising his kid in the music studio he had just bought; he calls Bitcoin speech and says he works for it. MLow answers with his own arc, Bitcoin since 2015 or 2016, photography to NFTs to AI, and details his 42069 contribution: a Stable Diffusion XL model trained on about 20 of Scrilla's Pepes plus his own work, generating the dynamic two piece Echoes and Machine from the song's lyrics.
In their words
“I was sending songs to people and they're like, who's this? And I was like, it's a robot.”
Rare Scrilla“I need to get this out quick so it's timestamped. This is what it was then.”
Rare Scrilla“Rare Pepes are real Bitcoin. Every Pepe is a Bitcoin transaction literally.”
Rare Scrilla“A picture tells a thousand words, but a meme tells a thousand stories.”
Rare Scrilla“I really feel like I work for Bitcoin in a lot of ways.”
Rare ScrillaCite this conversation
Rare Scrilla in conversation with MLow, "MLow X Rare Scrilla," The MLow Show, unaired recording, 16 Dec 2024. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2024-12-16-mlow-x-rare-scrilla.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.