The 9 artists Grand Theft Auto VI needs as radio hosts

It’s a fit so natural, it’s perhaps too good. The rapper’s brash sense of humor and penchant for absurd ultraviolence practically makes him a walking Grand Theft Auto character — if God didn’t create him, Rockstar Games would have. But as obvious as this pick arguably is, it just as much feels like too great of an opportunity to pass up.

Music discovery has always been key to the Grand Thefto Auto experience. Anyone who’s played any of the game’s five installments can remember at least one occasion of playing the game and hearing a song for the first time, getting instantly hooked, and searching for it on the radio dial at every opportunity. With Neph’s diverse ear for beats and a catalog so consistent and prolific, who else is better suited to guide players through the landscape of underground hip-hop while still keeping them locked into the game’s universe? It has to be the Slenderman. — Jordan Darville

If you have ever survived a car crash, the sound of metal rending apart lives somewhere in your psyche, a shattering symphony of aluminum and polycarbonate. In the slow-motion split-second before contact, the frailty of the body becomes desperately apparent.

The great joy of Grand Theft Auto is that there are no visceral consequences. That the digital flesh can be resuscitated no matter how grievous the injury, that every homicidal scheme will go unpunished. It isn’t that we can’t stomach the gore — if anything, the carnage is the allure. We want to feel it all and walk away unscathed.

Pharmakon’s post-Industrial Revolution music has always hinged on human mortality, how vulnerable our little meatsacks can become. Margaret Chardiet knows these truths more intimately than most: in the fall of 2013, she underwent emergency surgery after a 12-centimeter cyst collapsed one of her organs. Her brutish compositions plumb the violent recesses of the basal ganglia, the instinctual “reptilian” brain in charge of decision-making.

Who better to soundtrack an amoral rampage across the neon blocks of Vice City? The hulking soundscapes of “Crawling on Bruised Knees” or “Sleepwalking Form” demand attention rather than escapism. No matter how invincible our virtual avatars might seem, they’re never too far from a grisly demise. — Vivian Medithi

There’s a distinctly cinematic thrill to cruising down the information superhighway to ’80s pop hits or trunk-banging beats, but what I really want out of a Grand Theft Auto radio station is something I can chill out and smooth my brain to. I haven’t spent much time jacking cars in San Andreas since my adolescence, but one of my favorite ways to virtually unwind is aimlessly playing straightforward racing games like Burnout Paradise and NASCAR Heat. I always turn off the corny in-game soundtracks and curate my own maximally chill vibes instead; there’s a distinct pleasure I find in driving in infinite loops on the track at Daytona while listening to the similarly endless grooves of a Dick’s Picks or a Darkside live recording.

Kieran Hebden — better known as Four Tet — and William Tyler’s split-single “Darkness, Darkness / No Services” is one of 2023’s headiest jams, wedding gentle finger-picking guitar loops with dubby samplework. If Rockstar Games really wants to appeal to the couch-locked stoner demographic who will inevitably patronize the latest installment of their marquee franchise, they should embrace the chill and give William Tyler and Four Tet a lo-fi morning drive-time show, like Car Talk but where they talk about effects pedals instead of automotive maintenance. I just want to drive through the pixelated hills while listening to, say, the ambient plunderphonics of The KLF or the psychedelic freak-outs of Kikagaku Moyo; let me outrun the cops to the longest “Dark Star” jam you can find. Four Tet already has enough heady jams on his regularly updated Spotify playlist to fill every station on the dial, and then some. — Nadine Smith

GTA returning to Miami for the first time since Vice City feels like the perfect setting for a station rooted in the musical city. With all due respect, though, I don't want to be bumping Pitbull while I'm trying to execute a bank heist. My pick is Nick León, the Miami-based DJ and producer whose sets are heavy with baile and urbano selects. He's also worked with Denzel Curry and Rosalía, as well as running the Suero club night alongside DJ Python. If there's cool music being made in Miami, Nick is probably involved. The only condition would be that Rockstar builds Club Space into the game. The venue is the largest club in Miami and the only 24-hour dancefloor in the country. It's the perfect place to hide from the cops. — David Renshaw

Charli’s special sweet spot is writing bangers about driving, cars, and driving cars, so she’d be the perfect musician to host a radio station in a game all about stealing cars and the chaos it involves (or whatever it is you do there). Her left-field pop is already the ideal soundtrack for cruising down Vice City alongside your partner in crime as you make the perfect getaway, but she’s also known for her impeccable taste in collaborations and musical friends, working with folks who not only share her artistic vision but align in everything related to her ethos and mindset. She’ll be spinning some throwback Britney between some slices of Caroline Polachek, Shygirl, and Kim Petras as you shift into gear, top down. Let’s ride. — Cady Siregar

Grand Theft Auto radio stations never shy away from putting music veterans in the mix, so how about one of the most influential artists in modern rap music? Purrp, who hails from the same state that the new game will be based in, would add some authenticity to GTA VI, and would no doubt choose a selection of horrorcore and Memphis-inspired rap that would blow the minds of younger gamers raised on the TikTok-bastardized version of Purrp’s “phonk.” I’d even just listen to him as a talk show radio host, growling about a decade-plus of rap beef and picking obscure fights out of nowhere. You know, the whole SGP thing. — Jordan Darville

In GTA V, Moodymann gave the series’s perennially coastal aesthetic a sorely needed midwest infusion. No one is more fit to carry on than tradition than footwork pioneer RP Boo, who’s kept the style fresh well into its third decade as he’s entered his sixth, experimenting outside rigid genre lines while never straying too far from the core sound he helped birth. Sure, the sound of a haywire drum machine sped up to the point of near abrasion might be a bit incongruous with the swampy setting of GTA VI, but tracks like “Bang’n On King Dr.” make disobeying traffic laws more fun, whether you’re speeding on the streets of Chicago or off-roading in the Everglades. — Raphael Helfand

Among game franchises, Grand Theft Auto has always been the unhinged oddball of the bunch, with its extreme volatility, macabre sense of humor, and absurdist satirization of our obsession with sex, crime, and violence. Much of the same can also be said about Smino, who’s raised a fair amount of eyebrows with his irreverent musical approach, whether it pertains to his unconventional production, tongue-in-cheek lyricism, or the quirky skits he’ll include in his music videos. He’s brazen and rogueish, using finger snaps for the beat on “Innamission” and switching out the “fucks” for autocorrected “ducks” on “Netflix & Dusse.” But above all, Smino’s just as nihilistic as GTA’s infamous talk radio stations, deploying dark humor on tracks like “Amphetamine,” where he raps “free all my dogs, fuck Cruella,” half-joking about very real societal issues affecting Black communities in a world that’s become almost as “ducked up” as Los Santos. — Sandra Song