Masked Liverpudlian rapper EsDeeKid is the fastest-growing artist in the world right now, and fans are obsessed with uncovering his real identity. If it’s not the – now very overplayed – ‘EsDeeKid is secretly Timothee Chalamet’ meme, then it’s Reddit’s fixation on his similarities with underground rapper-producer DualSpines. To a certain extent, mystery is part of EsDeeKid’s allure – his videos are shrouded in darkness, and his lyrics are intentionally cryptic. So, why is everyone determined to ruin the fun?

There are no secrets on the internet, as the saying goes. Today, we have GeoGuessr experts working out the precise GPS coordinates of an image simply based on the colour of the grass; we’re given sneak peeks into Charli xcx’s wedding with George Daniel, and pre-teen videos of Fakemink were dragged out of the archives the moment he hit the limelight. In the social media age, fans feel like they have to be a part of everything, and it’s in this context that EsDeeKid’s masked identity is perceived to be particularly insufferable – for many fans, it feels like a right that has been denied to them. Meanwhile, it’s not hard to see how this culture of digging and doxxing would make artists want to be anonymous in the first place.

Still, we’ve been here before. EsDeeKid is not the only artist to pursue anonymity, and, over the years, many have had their secret identities – both willingly and unwillingly – revealed to the public. Below, from Frank Ocean’s Lonny Breaux to Aphex Twin’s extensive SoundCloud archives under the name user18081971, we look back at seven times an anonymous artist was revealed to be a familiar face.

FRANK OCEAN / LONNY BREAUX

While fans have long been awaiting a fourth project from Frank Ocean, taking everything from cryptic hints (there’s “not not a new album”) to Tokyo posters of evidence of their imminent musical salvation, many might be surprised to hear that there has actually been four projects already – that is, if you count this leaked compilation of his ghostwriting reference tracks. The tracks originate in Ocean’s early years spent as a songwriter in Los Angeles, composing songs for the likes of Beyonce, Justin Bieber and more under the pseudonym Lonny Breaux (which was borrowed from a nickname his grandfather had given him as a child, Lonny, and his surname, Breaux). Later, after Ocean began releasing as a solo artist alongside the Odd Future collective, the tracks were leaked on SoundCloud in April 2011. In a now-deleted 2011 Tumblr post, Ocean acknowledged the leaks, writing: “Let’s get this out in the open, the only songs that i, myself, frank ocean have ever released are… ‘pyrite’, ‘acura intergorl’ and, of course, the songs included on ‘nostalgia, ultra’. All other songs on the internet are a result of record industry email hacks/leaks that happened some years back [...] records that were never intended to represent me.” 

TOM HARDY / FACE PULLER / FRANKIE PULITZER

While English actor Tom Hardy might be known for portraying titular supervillain Venom on the big screen, fewer fans might be aware of the supervillains he embodies off-screen: rap alter-egos Frankie Pulitzer and Face Puller. The former first appeared on New York supergroup Czarface’s 2017 album Good Guys, Bad Guys, but, since the group were conceived to embody a fictional anti-hero, with in-character guest features from MF Doom’s alter-ego Viktor Vaughan, no one batted an eyelid at first. It was only when a mysterious artist named Face Puller appeared rapping on the soundtrack to Venom: Let There Be Carnage, that fans started to ask questions. Despite never being explicitly acknowledged by Tom Hardy himself, it was quickly pointed out that Tom Hardy’s Instagram caption included a hint to the name ‘Face Puller’, while fellow Czarface collaborator Vinnie Paz has since posted a picture of the actor along with Czarface DJ Esoteric, acknowledging the alter ego.

FLYING LOTUS / CAPTAIN MURPHY

Carrying on hip hop’s love of fictional supervillains is Captain Murphy, the alter-rapper-ego of Los Angeles producer Flying Lotus that was created in the run-up to the release of his 2012 cult-leader themed mixtape Duality. The character first appeared on Adult Swim’s Singles series in July of that year, rapping back-to-back with Earl Sweatshirt on the track “Between Friends” and announcing his debut project soon after. Due to Captain Murphy’s pitch-shifted, off-kilter vocals and proximity to fellow Odd Future member Earl Sweatshirt, fans initially theorised that he was actually Tyler, the Creator in disguise. The facade was eventually dropped with the mixtape’s launch party at LA’s iconic Low End Theory clubnight in December 2012. Performing live alongside Earl Sweatshirt at the show, Captain Murphy removed his mask at the end of the show to reveal that he was in fact Flying Lotus. 

SUGA OF BTS / AGUST D

As if being a member of perhaps the biggest K-pop act of all time, BTS, wasn’t enough, superstar South Korean rapper Suga also maintains a separate music career under the name Agust D (a combination of Suga spelt backwards and the initials of his hometown, Daegu Town). The alias debuted with a self-titled SoundCloud mixtape in 2017, featuring songs that Suga, real name Min Yoon-gi, had recorded on the side throughout his training with talent agency Big Hit Entertainment, with some dating as far back as 2011. Yoon-gi – who participated in the underground South Korean hip-hop scene under the name Gloss before joining Big Hit Entertainment – owned the alias from the start, stating that he created the moniker in response to the pressures of being a mainstream popstar and released the mixtape for free as a means of bypassing commercial pressures. “My company doesn’t get involved with [Agust D],” he told Grazia Korea in 2016. “There’s no need to consider the popular appeal and I composed [it] without dwelling on the ranking on music charts.”

PETE AND BAS / NINE AND DEX

OAP UK rap duo Pete and Bas’ music was actually good – like, so good, in fact, that it’s a wonder how no one got suspicious. In videos ranging from 2017 to 2023, the ageing pair rapped double-entendres in Cockney accents over drill beats about “sparking the lucifer” and patrolling the streets of London with handguns, and the duo even embarked on multiple UK tours in which they supposedly performed live. Questions were raised when other OAPs joined the fray – including the rage rap Scotsman Norman Pain and vulgar Yorkshiremen the Northern Boys – but it wasn’t until a separate, younger duo named Nine and Dex debuted that the jig was finally up. In a series of singles from 2024 into this year, the pair performed similarly well-crafted bars, but fans quickly pointed out the similarities between Dex’s vocals and those of the elderly Bas. From there, it emerged that Pete and Bas were both paid actors hired by Nine and Dex, who had created the acts as comedy. (Aliases aside, though, Norman Pain’s “Human Vermin” still slaps.) 

APHEX TWIN AND THE SOUNDCLOUD TAPES

Grammy Award-winning Cornish producer-DJ Aphex Twin has released under countless aliases over the years (including The Tuss, The Dice Man, Polygon Window and many more), but most enticingly was his secret SoundCloud alias, user18081971, created in 2015. Early uploads on the page were accompanied by the tag ‘#LikeAphex’, with one even featuring the caption: ‘like early aphex but I’d never heard of him when I wrote all these tracks im going to be uploading’. Still, people weren’t convinced – the tracks sounded exactly like Aphex Twin, with some even appearing to be early demos of previously released tracks. Eventually, in a 2019 cover story for Crack, the enigmatic artist owned up to the releases, explaining: “I’ve got all this music and I thought if I died what the fuck would my kids do? What would my wife do? They’d get really stressed out and they wouldn't know what to do with it all. So I just thought I’d give it away, then they don't have to think about it.”

BURIAL

One person Aphex Twin wasn’t, however, was South London producer Burial. His debut self-titled album made a massive impact when it was dropped out of nowhere in 2006 but, being the first music that virtually anyone had heard from him, and with very little information  about him online, people were convinced that Burial had to be an alias of an existing musician. In 2007, after Burial’s sophomore album Untrue was nominated for the Mercury Prize, the Sun newspaper speculated that he was either Aphex Twin or Fatboy Slim. The following year, Burial put an end to the rumours. “I’m a lowkey person and I just want to make some tunes,” he announced in a MySpace post along with the first public picture of his face. Burial was, in fact, just a regular guy, and it’s partly why his early releases are so treasured. With his hauntingly human take on UK dubstep, Burial’s albums embodied the feeling of being lost in the urban sprawl of early 2000s London.