The Tragic Truth of K.K. Slider
By: Austin Harvey
Tags: Features, Gaming, Humor, Culture, Music

The Tragic Truth of K.K. Slider

A wild, insomnia-fueled theory about father and son

Do you remember the oddly creepy-yet-calm 4AM music from Animal Crossing: New Leaf? Because I do. Vividly.

It is, I think, the most fitting video game music ever composed — and I’m aware that this is a controversial opinion. After all, video game soundtracks are beautiful.

PCMag compiled a list of the 20 best video game soundtracks ever, and Animal Crossing — any iteration of it — does not appear once on that list. To be fair, they have The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Breath of the Wild on there alongside Journey and Final Fantasy VI, so I can’t exactly argue with their choices. Maybe Animal Crossing would have been #21. Who knows?

The point is, the music in Animal Crossing is criminally underrated, and I’m not just talking about the background instrumentals. While “4AM” perfectly captures the feeling that, well, four in the morning gives off — a calming sense of unease as the rest of the world is asleep and you, for some reason riddled with an incredibly anxious mind that won’t shut up and go to bed, boot up your 3DS to distract yourself from the ghost in your mirror, the monster under your bed, or the creepy face outside your window — it does not befit me as both a fan of the series and a lover of music to ignore the masterclass catalog of K.K. Slider.

K.K. Slider performs at The Roost. Source: Nintendo.

Have you heard this mix of “K.K. Soul” from Nintendo composer Toru Minegishi? That thing slaps, dude.

Let us not forget, either, the infinite number of videos on YouTube of villagers in New Horizons gathered together in town square to sing another K.K. smash hit: Bubblegum K.K.:

By now, it’s pretty undeniable that K.K. Slider is a songwriting genius who should be touted as a master alongside the likes of Pharrell and Jack Antonoff, but what if I told you there was more to K.K. Slider than meets the eye? Perhaps, a tragic backstory?

The Tragic Tale of Totakeke Slider

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: K. K. is not Mr. Slider’s real name. It is a stage name, a variation of his real name: Totakeke. He reveals this information to the player in the original Animal Crossing on the GameCube.

When originally introduced to us, Totakeke is a laid-back, chill, hippie-esque musician who says that the “fat cats” in charge of record labels are trying to sell his music, which he believes should be free. Okay, K.K., I can get behind this.

Well, that is until New Leaf launched on the Nintendo 3DS. Just as our simple villager moves up in life to the status of mayor, so too does our beloved K.K. Slider take on a new role — a new role as DJ KK.

DJ K.K. in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.

New Leaf was also the first instance of players having the option to buy records of K.K. Slider’s music. You know, for (in-game) money.

I never thought I’d see the day that K.K. Slider became a sellout, but I guess you never really know a guy, huh?

It’s like if your favorite rebellious pop-punk band, I don’t know, staged a Broadway musical based off of their anti-capitalist early-2000s rock album. You just don’t plan for these things.

But let’s cut K.K. some slack, okay(kay)? After all, the guy couldn’t even afford clothing. K.K., I have too many clothes and I haven’t fully upgraded my house, so please take a shirt or something. The world is a tough place, and a guy’s gotta make a living, right?

It raises the question, though: in a world where we pay our loans off to a tanuki with the most lackadaisical approach to debt-collection I’ve ever seen and can sell turnips for millions of dollars, what could drive K.K. Slider to turn his back on his core values? Could there, perhaps, be a clue in his music?

The Lamentation of K.K. Slider

“K.K. Lament.” Oh, you thought K.K. Slider only wrote funky pop bangers? Well, guess again. K.K.’s got angst, folks.

Lament: a passionate expression of grief or sorrow. Not exactly fitting for a game about cute animals, is it? We’ll never know exactly what it is that caused K.K. to write this song — after all, the game doesn’t provide us with any actual lyrics.

Or does it?

To the un-trained ear, K.K.’s words might sound like mere gibberish, but to a master such as myself, the truth shan’t escape. Listen closely. What do you hear?

Something along the lines of, “Oh me oh way me, me me nah me na, oh. Nah me nah, nah me oh.”

Have we ever considered, however, that these syllables aren’t simply meaningless gibberish meant to avoid lyrical complexity in a children’s game about adorable animals, but instead a hidden code for something much more somber? Perhaps, K.K. isn’t saying gibberish at all, but instead singing a song to “mi hijo:” my son.

That’s right, K.K. Slider has a son.

“But Austin,” I hear you say. “K.K. Slider doesn’t have a son.” And to that I say:

You’re wrong.

Source: TheBigOReview on YouTube.

You see, we’ve only been assuming DJ KK and K.K. Slider are the same person because, well, they look alike and perform music. But K.K. Slider would never ditch his guitar to spin records at a busy club on a Saturday night — he’s way too chill for that! Besides, if he’d given up on his old path, why would he return to us in fully-nude excellence in New Horizons, once again a free-loving acoustic guitar-playing, nude dog in the nude?

DJ KK and K.K. Slider are not the same person. DJ KK is K.K. Slider’s son who decided to, sort of, follow in his father’s footsteps, but unlike his old man, DJ KK is a greedy, money-hungry sellout. K.K. Slider, disappointed in his son’s path in life, expresses his feelings in the song “K.K. Lament.” What does he lament? The broken bond between father and son, of course!

Still don’t believe me? Well, luckily musicians and foreign language interpreters Jay Andromeda and Rekcahdam have taken it upon themselves to translate the works of K.K. Slider into plain ol’ English, so that we may further understand and appreciate his great body of work.

Their lyrics to “K.K. Lament” are as follows:

Never will I see | That smile on your face

Never will I feel | The warmth of your embrace

Only can I dwell | In what’s taken their place

Since the day that you said goodbye. You said that the pain | Wouldn’t last very long

You said that the tears | They would dry on their own

You said that my heart | Would find love if I’m strong

On the day that you said goodbye.

The “fat cats” K.K. Slider so adamantly disagreed with early on teamed up with his son, DJ KK, after a falling out between father and son, to sell K.K. Slider’s body of work to the public and reap a profit, prompting K.K. Slider to travel the world a nude, homeless, nude dog who visits my island every Saturday to share the music that was stolen with him for free while in the nude.

This is why he sneaks a bootleg copy of his music into your pocket after every set — his music is meant to be free.

It’s like the oppposite of when Art Alexakis re-recorded a bunch of Everclear songs on 2009’s In a Different Light because Capitol Records had already released Everclear’s greatest hits record and he wasn’t profiting from that.

The Future of K.K. Slider

So, you’re probably wondering, “Why did you write all of this?” And the simplest answer is that I’m a believer of the truth.

I also couldn’t sleep and was listening to songs from Animal Crossing to help calm my anxiety. Because, at the end of the day, that’s what music in Animal Crossing is really, truly good at: being chill, laid-back, and groovy.

It deserves some recognition for that.