It started out as a niche trend on SoundCloud, a popular audio streaming and sharing platform, but emo rap has taken over the charts and airwaves. It crept in slowly, you may not have even realized, but rap these days is… sad. Forget hitting up the club, or showing off your ice cream paint job, rappers these days are talking existentialism. Turn on the radio and you’ll hear Post Malone wailing about throwing it all away in his raspy, puedo-90s-grunge vocals, or Juice WRLD revealing a dependence on prescriptions and dealing with a broken heart. Sometimes it’s disguised with a catchy beat, but the heaviness and reality of rap music these days is hard to ignore.
This is “emo rap,” also referred to as “SoundCloud rap,” due to the overwhelming correlation of genre and platform. Traces of the subgenre can be traced back to before SoundCloud even existed, with artists promoting themselves on platforms like YouTube, but many credit Swedish rapper Yung Lean with the true conception of emo rap around 2013. Along with his two producers, Yung Gud and Yung Sherman, Yung Lean formed Sad Boys, a group that pioneered what was then called “sad rap.” In 2016, the genre began to seriously take off. Rappers like Lil Pump and Lil Uzi Vert followed with huge hits and millions of listens on SoundCloud, their success due almost entirely to self-promotion on the platform. Within the past few years, many of these young rappers like Juice WRLD, Trippie Redd, and XXXTentacion have made the charts and gained some serious recognition; they are changing the landscape of rap music as we know it.
Brightly colored dreads, face tats, and chains on chains on chains. These are typical characteristics of this breed of rappers. It would be hard not to recognize some of the most popular of these artists. Post Malone, despite not having started his career online, is associated with the genre due to his emotional lyrics and punk and emo influences; he quickly became one of the biggest stars in popular music with his first studio album, Stoney. Lil Peep and Lil Uzi Vert became two of the most prominent artists on the web with cult-like followings, and both ended up with record deals. Lil Uzi Vert began collaborating with the likes of Metro Boomin and Migos, and was recognized as an emo rapper with the drop of “XO Tour Llif3” in 2017. Lil Peep passed away in 2017 due to a drug overdose, but his music continued to hit the top Billboard charts after his death.
Similarly, XXXTentacion, who was killed in a robbery at the age of 20, has continued to top the charts with an album and multiple collaborations released in the months following his death. XXXTentacion was associated with 19-year-old Trippie Redd, who continues to lead the genre with songs like “Love Scars,” which deals with anger and heartbreak. One of the most notable rappers, due to his abrasive rainbow dreadlocks and ongoing legal drama, is Tekashi 6ix9ine, who is currently topping the charts with “FEFE,” a collab with veteran rapper Nicki Minaj. While these rappers have made it big, there is still a huge market for novice rappers producing music on streaming platforms.
While many of these artists have been picked up by huge labels and are selling tons of records, there is still a market for “underground” rappers, who typically stick to promoting their music on online audio sharing platforms, such as Soundcloud or last.fm. Here are the top 5 emo rap artists according to last.fm:
After the explosion of the genre, the media has quickly picked up on this phenomenon of teenage, internet-famous, millionaire rappers. Many news outlets have been following the messy and controversial legal issues of Daniel Hernandez, or Tekashi 6ix9ine, as he is more commonly known. The media continues to focus on two of the most popular rappers in the genre, XXXtentacion and Lil Peep, who have both passed away within the past year and a half, but continue to have their music released, posthumously. The media will continue to cover the never-ending drama that follows these rappers as the genre becomes more and more mainstream.
Here are some examples of emo rap and the artists that are heading the genre.
"Jocelyn Flores" was the second single and one of the top tracks off of XXXTentacion's debut album, 17. The song grapples with the suicide of a girl that was rumored to either work for or be involved with the rapper. The topics of pessimism, mental health, and numbness, along with the graphic descriptions are characteristic of emo rap, especially the work of X. The music reflects indie and R&B influences, and seems to contradict the severity of the lyrics.
The astounding success of this class of rappers is important to the music industry and society for a few different reasons. First of all, it demonstrates the sheer power of streaming and social platforms. These rappers, many of them at a very young age, promoted themselves entirely through social media and platforms like SoundCloud and were incredibly successful. Without having to answer to a label, like most artists, they were able to do whatever and rap about whatever they wanted, which is one of the contributing factors to the emergence of these over-the-top personas and much of the debauchery associated with the rappers. They are a whole new kind of rapper and they are finding themselves a place in the world of rap and hip hop, even if it means rebelling against genre standards.
Secondly, popular music defines generations, and while young people are known for their radical taste, this isn’t fighting-the-man, rebellious rock ’n roll. These rappers talk about depression, suicide, brokenness, loneliness, anxiety, mental illness, and drug abuse- all with a “f--- everything” attitude. And kids love it. Teenagers are the ones that shot the genre to popularity in the first place. The popularity of emo rap says something about this generation of music listeners. They have grown up in a world of school shootings, rocky political climate, and increased social isolation, and they like to know that they’re not the only ones who think the world is a messed up place. Emo rap validates their feelings. Whether that's a good thing or not, we will find out as the genre continues to grow alongside its millenial listeners and take its place in the world of rap.