Gen Z can't rap. What are they good at? Do they at least have good taste? That's what I'm trying to figure out with this series of reviews. Liking Young Thug hasn't been cutting edge in almost a decade. Liking Carti or Yeat isn't enough- we need to go underground.

I'm subjecting myself to Blog Era SoundCloud Era Tik Tok era rappers so you don't have to. My net is wide, and my expectations are low. Do your worst.

REVIEWED

#01 Lancey Foux - LIFE IN HELL (2022) @Lystra ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
#02 Will Cherry - ULTRAVIOLET (2022) @Lystra ⭐ ⭐ ✨
#03 GoVanni! - LUST4LOVE (2022) @Lystra ⭐ ⭐
#04 Summrs - What We Have (2021) @fun ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
#05 Queef Jerky - Queef Underground (2023) @MeezyMestizo ⭐ ⭐⭐ ✨

QUEUED

Babydrill - Drill Season (2022) @Degausser
Bladee - Icedancer (2018) @lordslime_
Destroy Lonely - ᐸ/3² (2020) @LD
Glokk40Spaz - Dont Get Took Off 3 (2020) @LD
Izaya Tiji - Volume 13 (2020) @LD
K Suave - Sexually Active (2021) @Melz
Lil Shine - Lovesick (2023) @user_offlineforeve
Luh Tyler - My Vision (2023) @Degausser
sgpwes - Luna (2022) @Melz
Surf Gang - SGV1 (2021) @lordslime_
Xaviersobased - install (2022) @nosejabs
Yuno Miles - Knock Knock It's Santa B**** Pt. 2 (2022) @Drain_Cook

Lancey Foux - Life In Hell (2022)

"Money feels like ecstasy, money make her cum"🤑

Starting things off British- not very promising. I'm already familiar with Lancey, but I haven't checked in as much since rage became trendy. As for how "underground" he is- he's signed to a subsidiary of Universal Music Group. I guess we're using the Melz definition of underground.

At 22 tracks, and with unintelligle or negligible lyrics, this is all about the melodies and beats.There’s a lot of meandering baby voice. None of this is fatal- but is there enough personality to get it over the hump? Thugger, Future, Yeat. The Looney Tune, the womanizer, the tweaker. Who is Lancey? I still have no idea.

I'll say this, he is more polished and flexible than a lot of guys in this lane. He's always had a professional sounding product, and he's more ambitious on this record than the average Opium peon. He knows how to write a song. He can make World on Fire and Pendulum and Lies Will Set You Free. He's a descendant of Ye, of Trav, of Carti the innovator as opposed to Carti the guy who just made WLR. I wouldn't call Lancey a rage beat anime YouTube thumbnail rapper at all really.

He is, however, kind of anonymous in the same way someone like Tory Lanez is: clearly talented but endlessly derivative. Tracks like Ride Til You Die are laughably late to the vaporwave and retro wave party- which isn’t to call them bad. This is just not a rap album. It’s not. He’s got next to no bars. He plugs in a few purer songs at the end which make Carti/Keem/Yeat sound like Nas. There’s not even a reason to pull the lyrics up and read them.

This is a lookbook. It’s a showreel. It’s mercifully diverse and well made. The vibes and textures are on point.

Will Cherry - ULTRAVIOLET (2022)

"She just had to jump up in them jeans; I like 'em healthy" 🍑

Let's get it out of the way. You can tell this guy is more of a producer and musician than he is a rapper. That's not a bad thing. That comes with sensible song structures and strong progressions, he can sing a catchy hook, and for an independent artist everything sounds really tight. So what's the drawback?

Does anyone really want a whole project from the 3rd or 4th best guy in Brockhampton or Save Money? Cause that's what this feels like- like how the worst guy in Flatbush Zombies is also the producer and visionary for their entire style. I think if Will Cherry was a key member in a group, that would be something.

As is, I don't think he's a strong enough personality. There's not really a story here. It's kind of like how scientists go into deep sea caves and rediscover a one thought extinct species- but for the blog era. He's good at separating rapping from singing, not compromising on the two, but when he's rapping the bars are not hitting for me. Some of them throw me off entirely.

If you can avoid the potholes, if you're a bedroom producer type perse, you might enjoy this more than I did. It might even be aspirational. So while this was a painless experience, I have listened to it a half dozen times front to back, it's not as memorable as it is commendable.

GoVanni! - LUST4LOVE (2022)

"I feel like a shell on a snail" 🐌

I was listening to these albums until I felt like I had a grasp on them, but there's not much to grasp here. I'm tired of looking for something that isn't there.

The outro should be the intro to serve as a kind of disclaimer instead of a preamble to whatever is next. He apparently knows he's just filling a niche. He namedrops rage, but I feel like hyper-trap or something is just as fitting given the level of manipulation going on here.

The moments where they kind of chop and screw this nightcore adjacent music was actually cool though. Finding a way to incorporate that more would be a nice signature. Otherwise the only thing that stood out was how many layers of vocals would be wound together at once. So yeah, more hyper-poppy than just rage.

I wouldn't call this grating. I wouldn't call this bad. It's just pretty sparse and well tread ground. There's not a lot of text to study. It didn't stir anything in me. A few years ago I found this artist Juju on SoundCloud, and I wouldn't mind someone like GoVanni! trying to bridge his sound into that.

If WLR and 100 Gecs were ever countercultural, at some point someone will turn it into actual pop music. It's just a race to see who gets their first. That's the freedom you get being anonymous and underground. You don't have to play by anyone's rules. So why bother?

Summrs - What We Have (2021)

"In this b**** with a wrinkled shirt, but you know I keep a iron though" 👕🔫

I remember the first time I heard YNW Melly's Slang That Iron and how refreshing it felt. Combining R&B melodies with street blues wasn't exactly cutting edge then, but in a post-Rod Wave world it's almost old hat. PlugnB crooning reminds me of that original novelty. It found a home besides sample flips with a bigger focus on vocal engineering. It's that contrast between subject and presentation compounded by skittery bloops and glacial synths.

This isn't grating. It's not rage. It's very laid back and serene at its best- pretty even. It's a short project so Summrs easily finds enough variation with his flows and melodies to distract from his Future junior bars. However, he doesn't have the understated pop sensibility of Future. Instead, we drift along as he falls behind and catches up with his flows like an experienced drunk driver.

The vibes are there, but it's kind of shallow for the mood it captures. The substance is the substances. The smartest component is the runtime. I'd much rather run this back 2-3 times than hear a stepped on, album length version. I'd rather chase the high than come down.

Queef Jerky - Queef Underground (2023)

"I wanna make you my Seth Mac-Darlin'" 🥺👉👈

Looking back, you might be able to connect Das Racist to weird Twitter or iLOVEFRiDAY to Vine/Tumblr. Sometimes a group captures a period of the internet in a very succinct way. Queef Jerky is the first group that sounds like doomscrolling. Their based freestyling and pop culture grab bag has to be plumbed from the backwaters of Discord. This is the generation of zoomers on ADHD meds whose older siblings subjected them to Adult Swim a few years too early. Just add midwest brain rot for good measure.

I usually reserve "algorithimically generated" as a pejorative for uninspired commercial art. When it comes to Spotify or Netflix, that holds. This is the first time I can use it a compliment. This is the stable diffusion vortex 100 Gecs made possible. It's the coffin birth of the internet. It's noise and nonsense and casually schizophrenic podcast riffs.

This is smoking mids and doing improv comedy over electronic music, but it's not lazy- it's just organic. The way they constantly pivot from sound to sound and repurpose off the cuff quips into polished and catchy refrains shows how capable they are. It's like when the Beastie Boys were making Rick Rubin produced frat rap. Out of the artists I've reviewed so far, I'm the most curious about their future. Is the magic in the chaos? Can they refine it and mature it? Most likely they just kind of peter out and disappear. That's the internet.

K Suave - Sexually Active
Yeat - Up 2 Me
Ken Carson - X
sgpwes - Luna

These 4 projects encapsulate the different variations of “rage” IMO

Replace Yeat/Ken and that'll be my next challenge.

quote my post where i said u are out of touch

or any post where i used the word "rage"

Starting things off British- not very promising.

-the lyrics are ass true
-u didnt mention colors which is the best song
-i still dont know why u mention rage cus i never mentioned that
-Ride til You Die doesnt sound like vaporwave or retrowave its much more akin to 80s new wave as that is essentially what this whole album is
-dont rly see the tory comparison, tory as an artist is mainstream oriented and is in a different lane entirely

decent review, u got it right for most of it.

Which new wave acts? Someone like Weiland is much closer to that. That's usually like one synth and some live instrumentation, not to mention the distinct vocal style. This is all much more synthetic imo.

I made a pretty narrow and specific Tory comparison in that they are capable, dynamic artists who come off more like sponges and jack of all trades than trailblazers in themselves.

real for checking out lancey, wasn’t a big fan of this one besides a few great songs on there - he waited too long to drop it and eventually fumbled the right time

i surely prefer FRIEND OR FOUX, beautiful album and a personal classic to me, one of my favourite albums of 2019 and i think he’s never gonna top that sadly

yea idk my concept of new wave was basically just like 80s pop/soft rock, i feel like thats where the sonic inspiration comes from

idk about the tory comparison it just feels kinda random to me

sexually active is a good pick if you wanna go for a rage album, im not even a big k suave fan but that one is pretty good to me

Need a third besides Suave & sgpwes for my next challenge.

Never heard a Bladee record or a Surf Gang record before @Melz @Lystra

bladee and surf gang both goated definitely listen, they some of my favourites!!!!

with bladee its hard to choose just one that id recommend to you, im a huge fan so i’d really start with deletee and go through his whole discography to truly hear the evolution of his sound in different phases, he got some very unique work

icedancer is the most mainstream one though so id prolly go with that, working on dying tape could be a great introduction too, very unique and distinctive sound

with surf gang id just go with sgv1, great tape and i think it should serve as a good introduction to all the surf gang artists, im currently listening a lot to the new sgpm tape with serane (french artist), love it

or you can listen to the new realyungphil tape that dropped tonight, im gonna listen now and im sure its gonna be amazing, he’s a close surf gang affiliate and all the beats on that one come from drain gang camp (gud, woesum and sherman)

Should have listened to Friend or Foux instead

^from surf gang id definitely check out babyxsosa closer though, she’s my favourite and has sooo many great songs and she’s very versatile

polo perks is amazing too, allyndale dr some of the best songs i heard all year

Listen to summrs - what we have (only 14 mins)

yeah, definitely a better choice than anything from sgpwes, he’s got some songs but overall he’s just whatever

luna is not bad though

@Lystra finished the trilogy

xaviersobased - install

NMNL better

lol dope thread. Reminds me of what big ghost fase used to do except for the new wave and taken more seriously. You could do something with this

Lotta dope writers on here

is there a zoomer lil b?