Astronaut In The Ocean

Masked Wolf Gives An Intense ‘Astronaut In The Ocean’ Performance On ‘UPROXX Sessions’

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Three years ago today (June 7), Australian rapper Masked Wolf posted his breakout single “Astronaut In The Ocean” to SoundCloud, kicking off the song’s ascent to chart dominance and near-ubiquity thanks to its popularity on TikTok. Naturally, we couldn’t let Wolf hang out at Uproxx Studios without securing a performance of the track for UPROXX Sessions — and what better time to release it than on the song’s third anniversary?

Showing some love to Los Angeles with a designer Dodgers hat and a black-on-black Essentials hoodie, Masked Wolf raps the anxiety-laden lyrics directly to the camera, displaying all the charismatic intensity that has made him a star and that turned “Astronaut” into a sleeper hit.

Since its original release in 2019, “Astronaut In The Ocean” was re-released by Elektra Records on its second anniversary, climbing to No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, and received numerous awards nominations in Masked Wolf’s homeland, including Song of the Year, Best Hip Hop Release and Breakthrough Artist at the 2021 ARIA Music Awards.

Watch Masked Wolf’s UPROXX Sessions performance of “Astronaut In The Ocean” above.

UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, UPROXX Sessions is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too.

Masked Wolf is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Masked Wolf Jumps Into The Deep End Of ‘Astronaut In The Ocean’ For ‘Behind The Video’

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If you’ve turned on a radio anytime in the last six months, you’ve probably heard Masked Wolf‘s breakout hit “Astronaut In The Ocean” — even if you didn’t know that it was called that at the time. With its inescapable chorus (“What you know about rollin’ down in the deep?”) it’s been a hit on charts across the globe, including the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked at No. 6 in May. You may have also seen its video, which has racked up well over 265 million views on YouTube — which means you probably have seen the video.

This week on Behind The Video, the Australian rapper explains the concept of the video (“I have no idea,” he says), which he says only took two hours and $1,000 to create, and fields a few questions and reactions from fans in the YouTube comments. In one, his song gets compared to British singer Adele’s similar-sounding hit “Rolling In The Deep.” “The amount of times I’ve received this question is beyond a number,” he jokes. “It’s infinity. The weird thing is I hope people don’t feel what it’s like to roll down in the deep, ’cause it’s representing pain.”

He also breaks down the paradoxical title of the song, saying that it comes from the feeling of being in the wrong place — i.e., an astronaut being in the ocean rather than in space where they actually belong.

There’s plenty more Behind The Video above… Check it out.

Masked Wolf Shows Off His Verbal Dexterity With Performances On ‘The Eye’

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In The Eye, music’s most intriguing up-and-coming artists take to an intimate and sparse studio space to perform their best songs with just one microphone and one take. Next up is somebody whose music you’ve almost certainly heard before: Masked Wolf.

The Greek-Australian rapper is best known for “Astronaut In The Ocean,” which he originally released in the summer of 2019 and which saw some success in Australia at the time. The track blew up on a global scale, though, when it started gaining traction on TikTok in late 2020 and was subsequently re-released by Masked Wolf’s new label, Elektra, in January of this year. The track was more than a passing fad: In TikTok’s recently shared slew of year-end data, it was revealed that the song was the platform’s most popular track of 2021 worldwide, beating out hits by artists like The Kid Laroi, Megan Thee Stallion, and Cardi B. Furthermore, it ended up rising to No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Since “Astronaut In The Ocean” took off, Masked Wolf has been able to leverage the success into some big-time collaborations: His recently released singles include the X Ambassadors-featuring “Razor’s Edge” and the Bebe Rexha collaboration “It’s You, Not Me (Sabotage).”

Now, he finds himself in The Eye. While most artists in this setting tend to strip down their songs to the core elements, Masked Wolf instead kept the full instrumentation intact for “Astronaut In The Ocean,” which, as the original song does, allowed the rapper to flex his verbal dexterity with his rhythmic and often rapid-fire lines.

He took the same approach for the other two songs he performed, “Pandemonium” and “Paper Planes,” a couple of album tracks from Astronomical, which was just released back in September. While “Pandemonium” has a swaggering and aggressive tone, “Paper Planes” is a more vulnerable and less in-your-face tune in which Masked Wolf gets candid about his struggles with depression. All in all, the three performances show that the rapper is capable of more than just his one massive hit.

In an interview with The Eye, Masked Wolf explained why he thinks his debut single “Speed Racer” was a “breakout” moment for him and how it led to “Astronaut In The Ocean,” saying, “It was really where I found a way to describe what I’m talking about in a song, have an actual storyline of what I wanted to speak about. The most important part was the listeners being able to grab that, not about me just writing it. And then from that, ‘Astronaut In The Ocean’ came, and that’s when I started writing and rapping at the mic with a story and imagery.”

Watch Masked Wolf perform “Astronaut In The Ocean,” “Pandemonium,” and “Paper Planes” for The Eye above.

Masked Wolf is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.