It turns out people are looking, though perhaps not for the reasons X had hoped. If anything, the song’s most revealing element is its title’s imperative exclamation point: “Look At Me!” is not a request, but a demand. In fact, “Look At Me!” might be one of X’s least essential offerings-a solid introduction to his persona, but an insufficient distillation of his artistry. Scattered throughout his SoundCloud are surprisingly compelling experiments in grunge, nu-metal, and post-Weeknd R&B. But a deeper dive into X’s three-year catalog turns up sufficient proof that it is more than just lip service when he lists his inspirations as Nirvana, Papa Roach, and the Fray. It’s a thing, these days, for rappers to insist that their work transcends genre-and hey, more power to ’em, though by now it’s a bit clichéd. Then Sonny Digital cuts the beat, and X crouches to the floor, expressionless, rapping in a chilling monotone: “And if the world ever has an apocalypse, I will kill all of you fuckers.” There is a sense of unease when Digital brings the beat back whatever just happened, no one is sure how to follow it. That distance was plainly illustrated in this year’s XXL Freshman cypher: while Playboi Carti, Ugly God, and Madeintyo bounce around, hyping one another with ad-libs and cooking dances, XXXTentacion lurks motionless in the background, head hung low. Currently, it has more than 92 million SoundCloud streams the first comment on the track reads, “MY EARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”īut despite making a handful of the scene’s marquee hits, the 19-year old born Jahseh Onfroy stands apart from his SoundCloud rap peers. Purposely mixed like shit so you know it’s real, with crass lyrics that tumble over a decayed, bass-boosted Mala sample, the song was an inhospitable introduction to the underbelly of South Florida rappers that have so far dominated the sub-genre. “Look At Me!”, the breakthrough hit from XXXTentacion, this scene’s most contentious poster boy, is a succinct embodiment of SoundCloud rap’s ideals. And so the fact that 2017’s most vital rap movement-a loosely-connected group making bruised, blown-out DIY music that often doesn’t sound much like rap at all, mostly discussed under the umbrella term of “SoundCloud rap”-has almost no mainstream appeal is not a hurdle, but a selling point.
One of the most disruptive effects of streaming culture, especially as it pertains to rap, is the way it brings the periphery to the center: When one hot SoundCloud single does more for a young artist’s career overnight than years of label development, there are no rules beyond what works and what doesn’t.
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