Osquinn
Osquinn aka quinn aka catmother aka rifleman aka feeler
Quinn is originally from Baltimore, Maryland but is based in Atlanta, Georgia .
The first time I heard one of Quinn's songs was in August of 2020. I was scrolling through TikTok (because there was literally nothing else to do) and came across a video with her song "Foe" playing in the background. My initial impression was that she was just another person hopping on the hyperpop trend, capitalizing on the attention that 100 gecs got. I did enjoy her music, but I didn't really see it as unique until I heard her song "I Don't Want That Many Friends in the First Place." It still had that autotuned, sample-heavy production that "Foe" had, but it was a little cleaner. By the time I had found out about quinn, she was already branching out of the hyperpop genre. Quinn's sound and production has grown far past what I first heard in 2020. A lot of her music now sounds far moodier and has more depth than her songs back then.
FearDorian
From Atlanta, Georgia
I first heard FearDorian’s music when they opened for a Sign Crushes Motorist show my friend Kelly had dragged me to. Sign Crushes Motorist makes sad, shoegaze-y music, so I was shocked when I saw them perform (but thankful because I didn’t think I could handle two hours of a guy whining over a distorted guitar). I started actively listening to their music about a year ago when they released their album Leaving Home. Dorian’s music mixes samples from popular indie songs with drowned-out deep vocals and trap beats. The result is a dark, melancholic vibe similar to cloud rap, but with a little more edge. Even with Dorian's experimental/alternative edge you can still clearly see and hear inspiration from prominent figures in Atlanta rap—the beats with a lot of bass in them and despodent vocals feel very reminiscent of Carti and Gunna. Even the cover from quinn and FearDorian's joint project feels like an alt for Die Lit. But there is still obvious innovation in what they are doing because it sounds nothing like carti. They're like Young Thug if Young Thug exclusively listened to anime amvs and nightcore versions of indie songs. In the past year, I’ve seen Dorian play twice more, and each time I've heard them play, they bring an energy completely different than the the vibe of their songs. Dorian knows how to keep the energy up in a room and each set they play is lively and fun.
Ecco2k, Esdeekid, and Experimental UK Rap
From Stockholm, Sweden and Liverpool, United Kingdom respectively
The internet, with its ability to transport information across space nearly instantaneously, shrinks the distance between places—especially, in a scene like Experimental rap, where the production is so heavily influenced by internet culture. Because of this, it's tough to talk about the experimental rap scene in a specific location. For example, Esdeekid’s music is obviously inspired by UK drill, but his music also incorporates cloudrap and trap. A lot of alternative/experimental rappers come from entirely different cultural contexts; the music in the UK is widely dissimilar to the music in Atlanta, but because of the internet, they are inextricably linked.
Another example of this is Ecco2k, a Swedish artist and a prominent member of Drain Gang, a rap-ish collective. Ecco2k’s music is seminal to much of the digicore/hyperpop music happening now. You can see this in the Atlanta scene right now, evidenced by the dissociative, melancholic tilt that you hear in a lot of underground rappers’ music. (Also evidenced by the fact that Osquinn made a cover of Ecco2k’s “Happily Ever After"). Again this positive feedback loop of inspiration is made possible by the fact that the scene exists as much as it does in hip-hop forums online as it does in small venues and house shows.
A big reason this genre/music scene has gotten so online is that it is/was on the outskirts of mainstream rap. These artists, while inspired by the scene where they live, don’t conform to the expectations that mainstream rap music has, aesthetically and production-wise. I think it is because of the rejection of the mainstream that you see a lot of queer fans and artists in this medium (Osquinn and FearDorian are both LGBT, as well as a large portion of ecco2k’s audience). Essentially, this has to do with predominant forms of rap and hip-hop being hypermasculine and queerphobic. Because alternative rap rejects the mainstream, space opens in this genre to break down the expectations set by gangsta rap, i.e., homophobia and masculinity. This tension within the music—the hypermasculine lyrics of typical trap music contrasted with the feminine aesthetics of hyperpop—is what continues to draw me to the music.
