Memphis Rap Sigils - Mariana Bay

Introduction
In this article we will be covering a topic I’ve been wanting to cover for ages and that is the Memphis Rap Sigils. For those uninformed, the Memphis Rap Sigils are supposed cursed tapes that emerged in the bloody rap scene of 1990s Memphis, Tennessee. This story is rather unknown outside the general area it took place and /x/, hell, I only know about it due to random people I spoke to a few years back, and because of it’s obscure nature I feel this is the perfect topic to cover on the Esoteric board of this forum.

History
During the late 80s and 90s the hiphop scene was really exploding in America, you had names such as Tupac and Biggie becoming household names, and everyone wanted a piece of the pie from the East coast to the West . However, it was a hard market to standout in, you needed to be different and if you were simply copying the gangsta rap of the West Coast, then you wouldn’t be seen as anything special. Because of this, different areas of the United States had to form their own hiphop identities, and Memphis was unique for taking a horrorcore vibe for their rap scene, with the most vile, violent lyrics embodying the distinct style of their music. Not all but some found great success within this scene, a notable example being Three Six Mafia, who would go on to enjoy mainstream fame. With such a sinister undertone within the scene however it wasn’t long until rumors spread that there was more to the music than initially thought, that many detailed real murders on the lyrics and some even contained captured negative energy from these killings. “But capturing negative energy, how is something like that possible?” you might be thinking to yourself; that is through the use of a sigil, which is a essentially a symbol created for the working of magic, they can come in many different forms such as written, spoken, drawn, etc, but all in all they are used for the capturing of a given energy to project onto those who come across it. What helps reinforce the possibility of dark magic taking place within the Memphis rap scene is the strange occult history of Memphis as a whole as it’s roots go much deeper than Memphis 90’s rap.

Memphis & The Occult

Memphis has an occult history stretching way back to the 1800s, primarily through the use of Hoodoo from African slaves taken from their homelands and trying to retain their traditional religious practices. Despite forced conversions to Christianity, Africans in the Memphis area managed to retain their Hoodoo heritage better compared to other areas. Into the 20th century Memphis became known nationwide as an epicenter of magical arts within the United States: sports teams would sport black cat bones and horseshoes, while famous blues singer among the likes of W.C. Handy and Lillie Mae Glover were singing about Hoodoo in their music.

**An example of occult symbols being used in Memphis Blues during the early 20th century**

Memphis is even said to had rootworkers (hoodoo magicians) who cured people through hoodoo magic, notable names being Doctor Scissors and Uncle Dub. I think the real icing on the cake of all this is that Memphis is quite literally named after a city in Egypt, which has a deep occult history within itself, and pays homage to it’s namesake with plenty of Egypt inspired landmarks. Memphis, Egypt, was known also for it’s worship of Ptah, an ancient creator God who we will discuss further later on but it should be known he was one of the most revered Gods in Egypt during the era he was worshipped and was represented by the water element.

The occult background of Memphis is not something to be primarily associated with African Americans however, as Memphis attracted plenty of Americans of different races who leant towards alternative spiritualism. Moreover, Koopsta Knicca had a story of once going into downtown Memphis to shoot a cover for Three Six Mafia’s debut album Mystic Styles and discovering a creepy warehouse from which when he went inside he found a group of robed white men
performing what seemed to be a bizarre ritual before an altar.

The Sigils

Time to to get into the real juice of the article which is why the sigils were made, how they were made, and what are the actual sigils? Well to start, the sigils are believed to be made so things the rappers wanted could manifest itself into reality, so if they wished for fame and fortune, and enough people listened to their sigil and helped charge the energy within it, then it would be more likely to happen.

**Anon from /x/ explaining the use of sigils**

Ok, so how would they go about creating these sigils? In a nutshell, it required you murdering someone, recording the audio from this murder, sampling the audio, returning to the scene, and then rapping over the murder scene with the murder audio intact to capture the negative energy within the recording in order to place it onto mixtapes, which you would then give out and with each one containing a part of the sigil you could seriously charge up the energy of your sigil fast if your music proved popular enough. Due to this process it’s not thought digital copies contain the negative sigil energy from the original tapes as the energy can only come from the original source and not be some copy recorded from an external device.

What are thought to be the sigils then? It’s generally agreed that these eight songs are the Memphis rap sigils and for those of the particularly superstitious kind I would not recommend listening:

1.Ten Wanted Men – 4 Corners Pt. III

2.Children of the Corn – Deep in the Woods

3.Maniac – Hellraiser

4.Lil Ramsey – Magnolia a.k.a. Down With Magnolia (feat. Tommy Wright)

5.H.O.H. – Outro

6.N.O.D. – N*ggaz Of Destruction

7.Mr. Tinimaine – Last Man Standing

8.Psycho – Welcome To Tha Graveyard

However some believe more to exist though this can’t be confirmed.

Connection to Murders

It’s time to get into the deeper and gritty side of this mixtape conspiracy iceberg. This part is confusing and I’ll try and delve into this best I can, but TL;DR the Memphis rap scene of the 90s is supposedly connected to the murders of three young boys and potentially three young girls too, and samples from their murders are believed to exist on the sigils. Theories are still rife to this day.

Robinhood Hills Murders

In 1993, three young boys Steve Branch, Christopher Byers, and James Micheal Moore, were found killed in the Robinhood Hills of West Memphis. Police described the killings being done in a ritualistic fashion, with one boy castrated, two beaten, stabbed, and injured, and then two drowned. The night of the murder a black man walked into a restaurant in the nearby area known as O’Giggles covered in blood, went to the restroom leaving blood everywhere, before running away from the scene; blood samples were taken by the police but were unfortunately lost. There was however a single hair left on a blanket from the scene of the murder from a black man, which was strange considering the Memphis Three, who were three teenagers arrested for the crime, were white. The Memphis 3 are still considered guilty for the crime by the courts to this day but documentaries such as Paradise Lost argue it was a rush job due to a Satanic scare and more was going on behind the scenes. If I wanted to give the full story it would require a whole other thread, so I’ll leave the first part of the Paradise Lost documentary in the sources for those who wish to delve deeper.

Before I go any further I want to share an /x/ post that will help you understand what I’m going to discuss next as it is rather far-reaching but will help you understand the ritualistic nature of the murders in the Robinhood Hills.

The West of Memphis is believed to be the fourth corner. A handful of theories say the murders were done in this exact location to appease Ptah, the Egyptian creator God mentioned earlier and what the name of Memphis is inspired by. Two of the children were drowned since Ptah is a water god and this is what would please him most and through this strange ritual is what created the sigil samples in the first place through the method described earlier. All this happened in 1993 and 1994 is when Memphis Rap boomed in popularity. Was the worship of an ancient Egyptian deity a part in putting Memphis Rap on the map in the first place? It’s a compelling theory though understandingly it’s hard for many to bite.

Monroe County Murders

A lesser known theory on the sigils is an apparent correlation with the unsolved Satanic murders of three young girls in Monroe county Florida, though this one seems way more farfetched considering it doesn’t even take place in Memphis. However, it seems to be an interesting, (though less grounded) theory so I’ve chose to mention it within this article. A random commenter off YouTube, I believe, describes it like this:

Conclusion

The cursed nature of a few Memphis hiphop tapes and an apparent connection to a string of murders, alongside all this taking place in one of America’s most esoteric cities, I’ve found to be a really interesting topic to research. Now, the normie judgement of this whole case would be most of its overblown and no sigils existed in the first place, but they can not deny something was very wrong in Memphis in the 1990s, with it being one of the murder capitals definitely not helping. In short, I hope Memphis Rap Sigils reaches more people as it’s a rather unknown urban legend. Thank you for reading and good night.