You know the vibe: face tatts, piercings, wild-coloured hair. The SoundCloud rapper, arguably one of this generation’s most recognisable aesthetics, is one of the internet’s most notorious archetypes. The patron saint of the brain rot generation. The speaker of baffling bars that make little sense. A precursor to an entire next gen of xanned-out zoomers with no hope for the future. Like his near relative, the cloud rapper – artists like Chief Keef, Yung Lean, Bladee – the SoundCloud rapper is digitally native, born out of an internet generation fluent in memes and trolling, whose lo-fi trap fusions attract legions of hyper-dedicated fans, hooked to radioactive beats delivered at opioid speed. The tracks themselves are pushed to the masses via viral stunts, questionable tattoos and very public feuds. 

Haters would say that the SoundCloud rapper has become cringe. Earlier this month, he became subject to debate when director Rupert Sanders chose to model his protagonist for the upcoming reboot of 1994 film The Crow off SoundCloud sensations like Post Malone and Lil Peep. “I hope people who are 19 today look at him and go, ‘That guy is us’,” he told Vanity Fair. The news backfired, with fans taking offence at the film’s attempt at turning beloved character Eric Draven into a terminally online sadboy – as per one X user, “Eric looks like he raps on SoundCloud”. Burn.

What makes the aesthetic feel so cringe in 2024 is hard to unpack. But it probably doesn’t help that what’s cool (aka that which scares the normies) will always become mid. What made the goth cool in, say, the 90s (the aesthetic the original The Crow draws on) was that it was countercultural. While having emerged from the underground, SoundCloud rappers have never hidden their ambitions for fame, and besides, the scene is so mainstream nowadays that anyone left is lining Billboard charts and having their likeness depicted in Hollywood.

There’s the white-boy rapper allegations, too; the stereotype of the percocet punk sadboy who says shit like ‘gucci’ while blasting out Smokepurpp. The aesthetic was first satirised on SNL back in 2020, with Timothée Chalamet and Pete Davidson cast as Smoke Chedda Tha A$ Getta and Guap Lord, respectively – otherwise known as Xan Mob, who perform their brainless track “Yeet” on air. Returning to screens at the end of last year, Chedda – dressed in a white puffer, obnoxious face tatts and bubblegum pink hair – mourned the loss of Guap, who got “lost in the sauce”, further bolstering the dumb rapper stereotype (see this 2016 Vice article: ‘Is Lil Peep’s Music Brilliant or Stupid As Shit?’).

It’s generally said that SoundCloud rap fell off in 2019 following the death of Juice Wrld in 2019. Another key figure in the scene, Lil Peep died from an overdose in 2017. As an aesthetic, the SoundCloud rapper marks a moment in online history when Gen Z was first beginning to shape pop culture through memes and internet humour, when SoundCloud was still in its heyday and streaming was yet to fully take off. A lot’s changed in the years since – the pandemic being an obvious seismic shift, also the monolithic rise of TikTok and its colossal influence on music artistry (Soundcloud went up for sale back in January). Unlike other internet-born contemporaries like Sad Boys and Drain Gang, the SoundCloud rapper’s larger-than-life aesthetic hasn’t passed the vibe shift, probably because it’s so mainstream. Chances are your mum doesn’t know who Bladee is, but Gucci high tops and Lil Peep? That runs deep.