{"id":512980,"date":"2026-06-27T00:35:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T00:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/512980\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T00:35:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T00:35:13","slug":"an-introduction-to-the-ambient-rap-scene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/512980\/","title":{"rendered":"An Introduction to the Ambient Rap Scene"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since Whole Lotta Red<\/a>, the rage rap arms race has been chugging along, but how much more of the maximalist production styles, rabid flows, and \u201cpunk\u201d aesthetics, designed to soundtrack the gnarliest moshpits (and sell a lot of band tees), can we take? I\u2019ve been feeling this fatigue since the combo of OsamaSon<\/a>\u2019s Jump Out<\/a> and Che<\/a>\u2019s Rest In Bass<\/a> hit the e-streets. Sure, both tapes pushed the distorted pandemonium to the brink, but they also stripped away the regional specificity of the Opium-born sound, creating a replicable formula that has more to do with havoc than any musical lineage. It\u2019s a placelessness that I felt a lot this year, as memeable rage rap 2.0 artists like Slayr<\/a> and 2Slimey<\/a> became the talk of the web; it wasn\u2019t that the music was that bad, it was just that it felt secondary.<\/p>\n

Around the same time, I was having daily conversations with Olivier in the Big Cond\u00e9 Nast offices about a new producer-forward scene emerging on SoundCloud that seemed to be running in the direction opposite of rage. Pulling from the minimalist nightmares of DMV and Philly drill, plugg\u2019s swaggy bounce, pre-pandemic Lucki\u2019s stoned fatalism, wonky StepTeam drums, and video game soundtracks, these incredibly quiet and hermetic ambient tracks became our latest obsession. Often made by anonymous rappers and producers with a monkish dedication to their craft, this isn\u2019t rap for the live show but for the headphones, music where every muttered word and barely-there snare matters. Sometimes these songs are uncomfortably raw and honest, other times they\u2019re sort of silly in their near-nothingness. I know \u201cunderground rap\u201d has become a lazy shorthand for all Rolling Loud-core music, but to me, this is really what it is. Here are 11 songs we\u2019ve been sending back and forth to each other.<\/p>\n

suckrball: \u201calone\u201d (prod. by 1act)<\/p>\n

Within ambient rap, a sprawling SoundCloud terrain that\u2019s almost solely dictated by vibes and melody, suckrball<\/a> stands out as a lyrically vivid bloodletter. He\u2019s a big part of SIE\u2013an internet-first, dispersed collective\u2013alongside other introverts like 22<\/a>, sheroy, hunnakay, and kllhhr. Backed by aching spirals of piano, \u201calone\u201d drops suckrball into a moonlit, hours-long drive with a girl he trusts more than he realizes. He sees right past her, but she\u2019s a crutch for him regardless\u2014at least for the moment. \u201cI get real tired of hearing yo\u2019 voice, but never knew how to break it off,\u201d suckrball admits, dour and nervy. As his tussles with grief and sobriety and heartbreak appear in flashes, so do red and blue police lights. \u201cI don\u2019t know what I got in my bag\/Shit could be over,\u201d he laments, and the pain of that realization cuts deep. \u2014Olivier Lafontant<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since Whole Lotta Red, the rage rap arms race has been chugging along, but how much more of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409,200547],"class_list":["post-512980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music","tag-off-the-dome"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}