Dirt Crown
Lead single of Vile Spiral. Featured on the Michigan Music Showcase.
Latest release: Quiet Riot — the third Vile Spiral single.
Independent recording artist · Songwriter · Producer · Audio engineer · Self-taught developer · Systems & app builder
Christopher Jager
Systems Rap from Muskegon, Michigan: 150 songs — built as one connected work — written, produced and mastered on one Android phone, around full-time factory shifts.
The evidence starts with the page you're on. Most of this site was built in roughly four days, across more than 100 updates, using a variation of the same process that built the catalog. No link to follow, nothing to take on faith — the site itself is the first exhibit. The process is documented.
Not 150 songs — one connected work
Every song stands on its own — you never need the references to feel a track, and listened to for feel alone, the music carries the lyrics. But the catalog is built so songs reach into each other: titles thread through other songs' lyrics, and each connection carries a meaning of its own. The second listen lands differently than the first; the third goes deeper. Explore the catalog and the connections start to make sense — what was actually being said when one song reached for another. Casual listening works here. Close listening is what the catalog was built to reward.
Connected bodies of work have precedent — concept sagas have threaded albums together for decades. What we found no precedent for is the artist publishing the map: every connection extracted from the lyric corpus, adjudicated line by line, and put on the record.
Origin
The music is rooted in pressure, memory, work, grief, survival, technology, and self-reconstruction.
Selected press
"Dirt Crown" was featured on the July 24, 2026 Michigan Music Showcase, with airplay on WYCE 88.1 FM and Interlochen Public Radio — the showcase covered by Local Spins. Covering the story? The press page has the verified claims and contact in one place.
The record, in three parts
The music above is half the record. The other half: it was all built by one person who started with zero coding experience, no computer, and an aging Android phone — who built the tool first, FretNova, a guitar-composition engine now live on the web and packaged for Google Play, then built the machinery around the music: a phone-based mastering lab that analyzes every WAV and applies corrective remastering through a frozen, verified chain. The catalog reached 150 songs — a good handful of them built on chord progressions FretNova itself generated. That story is documented in full.
Six chapters and the origin record, told in order — or skip straight to the part you came for.
- 1 — FoundationsThe body, the home, and the earliest memories the catalog is built on.
- 2 — What Broke, What Was RebuiltThree years at Michigan Tech, the collapse, and the work that came after.
- Origin — Before the SystemJune 2025: no code, no computer — thirteen days of named failure, every one preserved.
- 3 — One Year, One PhoneWhat the year produced: 150 songs, a mastering lab, a shipped app.
- 4 — How the Catalog WorksEight acts, 279 mapped connections, and what Systems Rap means.
- 5 — The Measured RecordEvery number, with its source. Nothing rounded up.
- 6 — About ChristopherBiography, and the short version for people who need one.
Platforms
If you want the work to reach more people, three signals cost nothing and matter most: follow on Spotify, save a track, and add one song to a playlist you actually use.
The ask is one share: send this site to one person who’d get it. 82% of listeners here arrive by deliberate choice — people choosing the music, not an algorithm serving it. A shared link is how that starts.
Contact
Booking, collaborations, press, and playlist consideration. Journalists: the press page has everything.