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3 days ago | 
pitchfork.com | Kieran Press-Reynolds
One of my small joys during the pandemic doldrums was opening my SoundCloud feed to some of the most ridiculously crammed cyphers I’d ever seen. Anywhere from five to two dozen rappers would trade off every 30 seconds like a middle-school talent show. ivvys’ madcap “ig reels” restores the collaborative chaos of golden age digicore.
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1 week ago | 
gq.com | Kieran Press-Reynolds
Only seconds into the podcast, Adam Friedland shat himself. It seeped through his white linen pants onto his red camping chair, leaving “a little puddle of diarrhea,” per co-host Stavros Halkias, who spent the first minute after this happened guffawing like a hobgoblin. It’s a classic moment. But it’s not even the most ridiculous thing ever to happen on Cum Town, Friedland and Halkias’ weekly podcast with Nick Mullen, which amassed a serious cult fanbase over the six years it ran.
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1 week ago | 
pitchfork.com | Kieran Press-Reynolds
Electric jolts, apocalyptic bass thuds, bitcrush like a flamethrower of pixels: These are the hallmarks of something I’m half-jokingly calling “rage 2.0,” the hyper-cluttered sound of so much buzzy new online rap. It’s Ken Carson grunting over synths that slash like guillotines and Jane Remover shrieking against a wall of shuddering noise, the kind of rap that borders on maximalist EDM.
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2 weeks ago | 
pitchfork.com | Kieran Press-Reynolds
Instagram Reels used to be the place where TikTok trends went to die. It was the retirement home where yuppies would calm their souls with cashmere-soft capybaras and virtuous meal hacks, or get a mild buzz from aspirational travel montages and clips lifted from TV shows like Breaking Bad. But slowly this leftovers lounge became a shortform sideshow, convulsing with lunacy.
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2 weeks ago | 
yahoo.com | Kieran Press-Reynolds
Instagram Reels used to be the place where TikTok trends went to die. It was the retirement home where yuppies would calm their souls with cashmere-soft capybaras and virtuous meal hacks, or get a mild buzz from aspirational travel montages and clips lifted from TV shows like Breaking Bad. But slowly this leftovers lounge became a shortform sideshow, convulsing with lunacy.
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3 weeks ago | 
pitchfork.com | Kieran Press-Reynolds
Only months ago, British rapper fakemink was nowhere—firing loosies into the void, smoking at home, recording himself aimlessly walking around and getting hit by a car on IG Live. His comeup has been like a makeover montage: banger every month, cosigns flying nonstop (SZA, Camila Cabello, Jack Harlow). He seems to have bypassed the Hyperpop Daily universe and swung straight for the big leagues.
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3 weeks ago | 
pitchfork.com | Kieran Press-Reynolds
As culture fractures into a thousand algorithmic niches and madeup genres, it feels like there’s barely anything that hijacks everyone’s brains at once. In the 2020s, we’ve only gotten a few feeble shreds of musical monoculture in the US, like the Kendrick/Drake war and the near-universal outcry against The Idol.
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1 month ago | 
pitchfork.com | Kieran Press-Reynolds
Lately, Bladee’s music has sounded like someone with a black hole in his stomach trying to irradiate his torment. Desperately reaching for the light, he’s exorcising his demons by recording a 30-track epic, reading books about alchemy and the occult and, for some reason, releasing an AI video game with James Ferraro and Microsoft. With increasing fame, his mission to escape ego and become King Nothingg has only gotten harder.
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1 month ago | 
pitchfork.com | Kieran Press-Reynolds
The TikTok begins with a video of YouTube music reviewer Anthony Fantano dissing underground artist Nettspend’s debut album, BAD ASS F*CKING KID, saying he’s “not really a super skilled rapper.” There’s a pause with a fabricated Wikipedia entry saying Fantano is of Jewish descent (the actual page says “Sicilian descent”), and then a barrage of flashy Nettspend clips zip across the screen, woven into bursts of military gliders and colossal temples.
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1 month ago | 
yahoo.com | Kieran Press-Reynolds
Illustration by Chris PanickerThe TikTok begins with a video of YouTube music reviewer Anthony Fantano dissing underground artist Nettspend’s debut album, BAD ASS F*CKING KID, saying he’s “not really a super skilled rapper.” There’s a pause with a fabricated Wikipedia entry saying Fantano is of Jewish descent (the actual page says “Sicilian descent”), and then a barrage of flashy Nettspend clips zip across the screen, woven into bursts of military gliders and colossal temples.
