If You Like Tyler the Creator's Goblin Era, Listen to Zombie Village by Prince Ube

In 2011, Tyler, the Creator released Goblin and broke every rule about what hip-hop could sound like. It was dark, funny, self-produced, intentionally abrasive, and built around characters that blurred the line between Tyler's real psychology and horror fiction. It wasn't polished. It wasn't safe. It sounded like it was made in a basement because it was. And it built one of the most devoted fanbases in modern music — not through playlist placement or label machinery, but through the sheer force of a creative world that people wanted to live inside.

Fifteen years later, that energy has largely disappeared from the underground. The lo-fi rap scene went cozy. The horrorcore scene went formulaic. The concept-album tradition got absorbed into mainstream rollouts with movie budgets. What's left is a gap — a space for music that's raw, conceptual, self-produced, dark, and genuinely funny at the same time. Music that builds a world you can explore, not just a playlist you can background.

Zombie Village Chapter One

Zombie Village Chapter One is a 5-track conceptual mixtape that lives in that gap. Made by Prince Ube — a Minneapolis-born, Atlanta-raised artist who produces, writes, records, mixes, and designs everything himself — it follows a simple premise: Prince Ube is trapped in an infinite loop with a Demon. The Demon is trying to be terrifying. Ube is not scared. He is just incredibly annoyed.

The tape moves through five stages — from the creepy conversational setup of welcome_to_zombie_village, through the manic chaotic energy of HOLD_UP!, into the psychedelic haze of zombie_dream, through the claustrophobic rapid-fire climax of RIP_UBE, and finally into BACK_FROM_THE_DEAD — where Ube tries to quit the tape, the Demon won't let him, and the audio loops seamlessly back to track one. There is no escape from the Zombie Village.

• 01. welcome_to_zombie_village — The Setup. Creepy, conversational, raw.
• 02. HOLD_UP! — The Escalation. Aggressive, glitchy, blown-out.
• 03. zombie_dream — The Haze. Psychedelic, dusty, hypnotic.
• 04. RIP_UBE — The Climax. Fast, dense, claustrophobic.
• 05. BACK_FROM_THE_DEAD — The Trap. The loop closes.

The Goblin Connection

The parallels to Tyler's Goblin era aren't accidental — they're structural. Both projects are entirely self-produced by the artist. Both use horror and comedy as two sides of the same emotional coin. Both feature a recurring antagonist (Tyler's therapist, Ube's Demon) that drives the narrative across tracks. And both refuse to be background music — they demand you pay attention to the world being built.

But Zombie Village isn't a Goblin clone. Prince Ube brings his own sonic identity — what he calls ube soul and Y2K luxury rap — into the darkness. The production pulls from early Odd Future, Raider Klan, and underground horrorcore, but filtered through the jazz-influenced, conversational flow that defines Ube's broader catalog. Tracks like boss_talk and girl_of_my_dream? show the luxury side. Zombie Village shows the basement.

The Game

Because Prince Ube is also a product designer and game developer — he built Ehoro Village, a full lo-fi music companion game, entirely solo — Zombie Village comes with its own browser game. A side-scrolling runner where you play as Ube's floating head, collecting cassette tapes and dodging zombies through a dark overgrown village while snippets of the EP play as your soundtrack. When you die, the Demon says "Welcome back, Ube" — the same infinite loop from the tape. When you survive, you get links to stream the full project.

This is the kind of creative world-building that made Odd Future matter — not just music, but an entire ecosystem of visual art, games, fashion, and narrative that fans could inhabit. Prince Ube is building that ecosystem independently, one project at a time.

For Fans Of

Tyler, the Creator (Goblin, Bastard), Earl Sweatshirt (EARL, Doris), Odd Future, MF DOOM, Raider Klan, SpaceGhostPurrp, Denzel Curry (early work), JPEGMafia, clipping., Death Grips, Injury Reserve, Wiki, billy woods, Cities Aviv, Mavi, Saba, and anyone who believes underground hip-hop should feel dangerous and funny at the same time.