Hey everyone, OthanyboyTano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a bit of a rant here, because I want to talk about Rage music and specifically two releases that just dropped, ones that should be making a splash given the names attached to them, but from what I can see are more or less landing in, like, dud territory.

Because for years now on this channel and also on my main, we have been talking about the ongoing exploits of the contemporary rap underground. Maybe not to the point where I'm analyzing every petty beef and drama and cancellation that seems to eat up a lot of the social media discourse around the style, but I've certainly been doing my best to pull it apart as an artistic trend, looking at its evolution from seminal and influential artists like Playboi Carti, and then the subsequent batches of new names and faces that have risen in his wake—many of whom have put their own respective spins on this very aggressive and noisy splinter-off of trap music.

It's an act that's worth doing primarily because it's become a dominant force in hip-hop music today. Because repeatedly, you see this style's biggest artists eating up stage spot after stage spot during festivals like Rolling Loud, taking up more space on things like the XXL Freshman lists. And, if rap music is a young man's game, which we hear repeatedly year in and year out, the choice that the youngest generation of rap fans has made the youngest generation of rap fans has made is clear in terms of what they would prefer to listen to and create. It's Rage, or at least some variation of it, that we've been hearing for the past six years.

That being said, the evolution we've been witnessing over the past five-plus years has been less-than-gripping from my perspective, with even a lot of the more relevant releases feeling like flashes in the pan or bloated slogs to listen to. Or near flukes even when they do manage to be pretty decent, or scratch some kind of visceral, noisy itch. That's really what a lot of these records do best. And I think the reason why is because many of these artists speak to a "pure sense of id," if you want to call it that.

And they're doing it in a way that few other genres are right now to the same degree. But I think that very specialization that makes Rage unique has also kind of like, left the genre in choppy waters without a rudder, a paddle, or a motor... anything. And, not to be reductive, because I don't think every artist making music influenced by Rage is falling for this trap. But often, it is the singers and rappers and writers and producers who are willing to experiment more with accessible sounds, structures, maybe digicore, or be a little more alternative with it.

They are usually the ones who are subject to the most ridicule in the scene or being categorized as "burger," whatever the hell that means. Because as edgy and as alternative as the scene would like to code much of the time with its references to vampires and its dyed hair colors and black clothing and grim visual aesthetics, there has been kind of, I think, an artistic weird orthodoxy that has been built up in this scene of music over the last several years that doesn't really seem to have borrowed any philosophical ethos from the various underground artistic scenes that Rage is obviously ripping off: metal music, goth music, punk music. It's like all the gatekeeping with no inclusivity or guiding philosophy.

And I think that's because the rappers and singers who are truly at the root of this style in terms of influence, they are themselves hardly left-field or alternative in any sense of the word, like Playboi Carti, Future, Lil Uzi Vert, Trippie Redd, all of whom have respectively made bangers and solid projects, sure. But if this is the range you're working off of in terms of, like, starting a new genre or new scene, you are going to inevitably reach an endpoint that is pretty vapid and guaranteed to be shallow, again, if these artists are your starting point. Which brings me to the two latest releases to come out of this scene that are kind of making me make this video in the first place.

That would be Netspend's VIRGINIA CREEPER EP and bleood's KILL YOUR IDOLS, both of which I found to be similarly boring, mind-numbing, and forgettable. Really, if you want to put a term to it: "Rage Slop." Really, the logical artistic end of a niche style of music based on extremity that has nowhere to turn for influence other than itself. Much like generative AI, sounds like vomiting out a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy until you reach a basically meaningless trend project with little artistic substance to speak of.

Again, "pure id," but not enough musicality or self-reflection to make it truly worth it. And what's even more disappointing is basically the regression both of these artists have shown to get to the points where they're dropping these projects now. Netspend had some kind of promising moments earlier on in his career, and whatever he was lacking you could kind of attribute to him being so young at the time. But fast forward to this VIRGINIA CREEPER project, and he basically has shown little to no growth over the period of time that we have seen him break onto the scene with one of his first big projects.

Then there's bleood over here with KILL YOUR IDOLS, who initially grabbed a lot of attention via his affiliations with Xaviersobased, and his rascal 51 project, a kind of unique rage album that brought in a lot of gore and metal aesthetics and at least had something in terms of very sticky, engaging, aggressive flows that felt very over the top and gritty, maybe a little more dark, extreme, and rock and roll than what a guy like Che was doing on Rest in Bass. But now with KILL YOUR IDOLS, "rage slop" has more or less softened that delivery into a series of very disorienting, half-hearted auto-croon vocal passages, many of which are messy and punched in and way too chaotic to glean much of anything from.

And again, while this stagnation is very disheartening and disappointing, I feel like it's more or less par for the course for a scene that actively punishes uniqueness and creativity. And look, while I understand the desire to look at this scene with kind of a bird's eye view and take sort of an armchair sociology or anthropology stance with an armchair sociology or anthropology stance with it, and look at the nihilism, the isolation, the hedonism, the social media trends and current times that seem to be inspiring it all, I feel like we've been hearing endless takes like this since, I don't know, like that viral clip of Billy Corgan reacting to being shown Yeat that one time.

"People talk about an artist like Yeat and they get lost in some of the lyrics, which are youthful and could be perceived as being ignorant. Definitely some of them are. But then, they also forget that. Actually, sonically and production-wise and feeling-wise, there's a lot of yearning to reflect the time going on. I hear someone struggling with the dissociative world. I hear a bunch of broken pieces. So what you hear is what on the surface sounds like an abusive technology. The Auto-Tune ain't working right. The loops are actually out of time. But I don't think that's on purpose as in a, 'hey, let's be clever and do this.' That's a, 'this is making me feel something that's fresh.'"

And while I do think there was some accuracy there to his statement through some shared experiential parallels between Gen X and Gen Z, the truth is though, these takes and these perspectives are not making the music sound any better because let's be real. These two records suck. They are thin, watered-down gruel, annoying pap that will be forgotten with the sands of time, because they bring so little to the table musically and lyrically. And really the only purpose they could possibly serve is basically creating enough noise in your headphones to prevent, I don't know, a lingering thought or emotion from entering your brain.

I guess if that is your goal, music is maybe the safest way to go about creating that effect so long as you're not playing it too loud, I guess. But that's about the most complimentary thing I can think to say about these two projects or any scene that might hold them up as artistic endeavors worth celebrating. Because, to be frank, many of the points that fans have been using to defend this style now for six years are kind of falling apart slowly.

"Oh, you don't get it. You're just unc. It's a thing for our generation. It's a 'youth thing.'"

Your youth movement is being spearheaded by a guy who's 30 and continually puts out features where vocally he's copying another guy who's 42. And nearly every "new record" we've been hearing is just a slight variation on the same thing we've been experiencing for like six years now. What's so "new gen" about that?

I don't know. Those are my thoughts. Let me know yours in the comments.

I'm sure you will. Over here next to my head is another video you can check out. Hit that up or a link to subscribe to the channel. Anthony Fantano, TRAN— forever.