Digicore

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Digicore is a genre of music that took shape entirely online. Teenagers built it from bedrooms, trading tracks through Discord servers and SoundCloud accounts. Digicore artist d0llywood1 described the scene bluntly: "We're all digital kids who met each other on the internet and so make music that sounds like shit we found on the internet." The genre grew alongside hyperpop in the late 2010s and early 2020s, pulling from hip-hop, electronic music, and a handful of niche internet subcultures. But where did the name come from, and why did it change more than once before it settled? Which artists built its first communities, and how did a sound built in bedrooms spread across TikTok, streaming charts and national music criticism?

• 2. Naming A Genre

  ›

  The word "digicore" first appeared in the 2000s, as a shortened label for a separate style called "digital hardcore." Decades later, an online community of teenage musicians on Discord repurposed the term. They used it in the late 2010s to separate themselves from the hyperpop scene that already existed. The modern name is a portmanteau, joining "digital" with "-core," a suffix borrowed from "hardcore."

  Artist Bladee and his collective Drain Gang, made up of Ecco2k, Thaiboy Digital and producer Whitearmor, inspired the earliest version of the sound. That early style was known as "draincore," an online rap sound built on their influence.

  In late 2019, artist lonelee, founder of the record label teardrop digital, coined the modern use of "digicore" to replace "draincore." Quinn became the first artist associated with the label. By 2021, curator Billie Bugara popularized the term further through a SoundCloud playlist she titled "digicore."

  The style was originally treated as a subgenre of hyperpop. Later writers described it instead as developing alongside the hyperpop movement, a distinct branch rather than an offshoot.

  For a time, the community used "robloxcore," "hyperpop" and "glitchcore" as interchangeable stand-ins for "digicore." The terms later split into names for related but distinct styles.

• 3. The Digicore Sound

  ›

  Most of the artists who shaped digicore's sound were between 15 and 18 years old when the microgenre began. That youth produced a sound built on heavy autotune, layered melodies and stacked instrumentation, high-pitched breathy vocals, sing-rapping, sharp 808s and rapid hi-hats.

  The autotune itself traces back to Bladee, whom journalist Kieran Press-Reynolds called a "central reference" for the technique. Nightcore's sped-up, pitch-shifted style shaped the genre too. Digicore differs from hyperpop mainly in its heavier reliance on trap production, though the two scenes still overlap.

  Writing for The Face, Press-Reynolds described the genre as shaped by "the world of Discord servers, Minecraft, and the type of musical intuition that could only have been nurtured through years spent consuming YouTube beat tutorials and a cracked copy of FL Studio." He added that the music captured "the angst of coming of age during a pandemic."

  In 2025, Sheldon Pearce of NPR argued the two genres are often confused. "Digicore is hyperpop, but hyperpop isn't necessarily digicore," he wrote, describing hyperpop as digicore's "parent genre."

  The genre's visual identity leaned on internet memes, glitch aesthetics, old-internet nostalgia and short-form video culture, paired with lyrics that were introspective, depressive or ironic. Like hyperpop, the digicore scene built close ties to LGBTQ culture, drawing primary influence from queer aesthetics. Several key artists identify as gay, non-binary or transgender.

  Heavy vocal modulation, part of the genre's core sound, doubled as a tool. Artists used it to experiment with gender presentation and androgyny in their voices. Two of the scene's earliest hubs, Helix Tears and Novagang, would end up defining what belonging to that community actually meant.

• 4. Influences And Pioneers

  ›

  Writer Billie Bugara summed up the genre's range bluntly: artists "pull from genres as wide-reaching as midwestern emo, trance, and even Chicago drill." She defined digicore, in turn, as simply "not Hyperpop and not Glitchcore."

  Jersey club and Brazilian funk fed into the sound as well, alongside crunkcore, a genre that had circulated on MySpace more than a decade earlier. Named influences include rapper Duwap Kaine, BBY Goyard, Sybyr and pop star Charli XCX.

  Two artists get singled out as pioneers across multiple sources: Yungster Jack and David Shawty. BrooklynVegan credited the pair as "responsible for the Soundcloud scene's transition from emo rap to hyperpop."

  Not every artist embraced the label. Rapper 2hollis drew from the same influences but would later reject the term outright.

• 5. The Early Scene

  ›

  In 2018, a scene figure named Dalton launched a Minecraft and Discord server. It quickly filled with some of the era's most talked-about young artists: Quinn, Kmoe, Glaive, Ericdoa and Midwxst.

  A year later, the rise of hyperpop duo 100 gecs pushed the community to rename its sound "digicore." The new name set it apart from the hyperpop wave it increasingly resembled. Other early hubs formed around SoundCloud collectives, including Bloodhounds, Slowsilver03, Varsity, Graveem1nd, Co-op and Goonncity, alongside Helix Tears and Novagang.

  The scene's popularity climbed in 2020, during COVID-19 lockdowns, as teenage artists stuck at home turned to making music. According to The Face, the pandemic pushed 100 gecs to delay their world tour twice, yet their audience kept growing. Thousands of new members joined the band's subreddit, and 100 gecs even staged a charity festival inside Minecraft. That momentum spurred a wave of American producers to try the intense new sound from home.

  TikTok, particularly its "Alt TikTok" corner, helped spread the sound further through viral video edits. Two songs drove it: "NEVER MET!" by CMTEN and Glitch Gum, and "Pressure" by Yungster Jack and David Shawty.

  In 2021, Jane Remover released the digicore album Frailty, earning praise from Pitchfork and Paste. The Fader called it proof that Remover had become "the face of digicore," while NME separately named her a "digicore pioneer." She had previously pioneered a different microgenre, dariacore.

  Kieran Press-Reynolds, writing for Pitchfork, compiled a list titled "A Deeply Incomplete Canon of Hyperpop-Digicore." It spanned artists including Oaf1, Dreamcache, Valentine, Capoxxo, Twikipedia, Lei, Kurtains, I9bonsai and Kmoe. The list also featured Brakence, D0llywood1, Quannnic, Dante Red, Angelus, Fortuneswan, Funeral, Blxty, Tropes and Lucy Bedroque.

  Digicore's spread would go on to shape newer microgenres, among them sigilkore, jerk and hexd.

• 6. Diversification

  ›

  New York rapper Xaviersobased emerged from the digicore scene, building his early work directly out of its sound.

  Rapper 2hollis took a different path. He drew on digicore-associated artists but rejected the label outright, releasing a 2022 diss track titled "Fuck digicore ass shit."

  Once hyperpop broke into the mainstream in the early 2020s, many artists moved toward the digicore label instead. Some wanted to dodge hyperpop's reputation; others felt the term simply fit their sound better.

  By 2024 and 2025, the scene had absorbed rage music, taking cues from artists like Playboi Carti and Yeat. Jane Remover's third studio album, Revengeseekerz, released in April 2025, was described as a cross between rage and digicore. Rage artists Che and Prettifun have also been described as drawing on digicore's influence.

  In 2025, NPR's Sheldon Pearce wrote that post-100 gecs versions of the genre had assimilated rap "as they have everything else." He said the sound was still mining the 2010s SoundCloud era, calling it "foundational for many born in the 2000s."

  Pitchfork noted a separate genre, laptop twee, drawing from twee and indie pop, occasionally overlapping with digicore. The publication pointed to the song "love quest" by ASC as an example.

  In 2026, the publication No Bells named rapper zayok "the future of digicore." The Fader, meanwhile, described Philadelphia rapper Slayr as making "heart-on-his-sleeve digicore." The label had outlasted the teenagers who coined it, still being handed to newcomers years into the genre's evolution.

• 7. Helix Tears And Novagang

  ›

  Blackwinterwells formed Helix Tears in 2018, building an American-Canadian collective around some of the scene's most technically gifted artists. Its roster included Twikipedia, Babs, 8485, Quinn, Quannnic, Kuru and Midwxst, alongside Blackwinterwells himself.

  In April 2021, Alternative Press magazine filed the group under glitchcore, calling it "SoundCloud's most exciting rabbit hole of glitchcore/hexD emo-rap transcendentalists." Rapper Midwxst told Dazed magazine that "Everyone in helix tears and NOVAGANG" performed with "different styles, sounds, aesthetics and lives, but having a group of musically gifted people allows us to make music without boundaries."

  Novagang took shape between 2018 and 2019, founded by an artist known as Prblm, who built the name from his alias "Nova" plus "gang." The Fader reported that artist Stef co-managed the group alongside Prblm. Stef avoided the term hyperpop, describing Novagang's sound instead as "a very eclectic sound."

  In 2022, Novagang released its debut collaborative album, H.T.N.G. On the 6th of August 2023, a sequel followed: H.T.N.G. VOL 2: JUDGEMENT DAY. On the 19th of August, the collective played a sold-out New York City show headlined by Osquinn and Xaviersobased. Exodus1900, Kasper Gem, Zootzie, Gv1nn and Strgurrl also performed. The group had also collaborated previously with Midwxst.

  Fader journalist Jordan Darville wrote that Prblm, performing under the alias dj yzma, "deconstructs modern music's obsession with pop-punk and so-called 'emo rap' into shards of spacious and compelling sound art." Darville credited Novagang with giving a "freewheeling outsider's perspective to the world of experimental rap." Rapper Nettspend has said he found support and community within the group of rappers and beatmakers associated with Novagang.

  Rolling Stone magazine summed up both collectives together, writing that Novagang and Helix Tears "feature artists of variously different styles and sounds, but find community with each other in their shared rejection of stylistic limits." Even so, magazines still couldn't settle on a single label for the sound, an argument that would keep playing out across glitchcore and robloxcore.

• 8. Glitchcore And Robloxcore

  ›

  Glitchcore first surfaced as a term inside the breakcore scene, long before it came to describe anything digicore-adjacent. The style leans on heavy audio effects, autotune and pitch shifters chief among them, plus vocals chopped into rapid, glitch-like fragments.

  Writing for Complex, Press-Reynolds broke down David Shawty's technique on the track "Dancing on the Sidewalk Lights Flicker": a voice "spliced into fragments, placed in front of nearly every bar, like punctuation." He transcribed Shawty's vocal as "D-d-d-d," warbling under what Press-Reynolds called "a ludicrous amount of aural Botox (Auto-Tune, pitch shift)."

  NME writer Kyann-Sian Williams described the shift plainly: "Now hyperpop has morphed into glitchcore, the latter defined by high-pitched vocals layered atop impaling 808s and wailing hi-hats that stop and start all over the place. Basically, glitchcore is hyperpop on steroids."

  Stef, a producer with Helix Tears, insisted there is a real difference between the two genres: "Hyperpop is more melodic and poppy whereas glitchcore is indescribable." Sheldon Pearce of NPR wrote in 2025 that glitchcore and digicore are "terms often used interchangeably, only furthering confusion about what any of these words actually mean," with communities splitting into factions that resist media narratives.

  Alternative Press pushed back on lumping every artist into the category. The magazine noted that musician glaive is "sometimes mislabeled as a glitchcore or hyperpop artist" since he "doesn't glitch out his beats all that much or rely on PC-processing of his vocals."

  Glitchcore also built its own visual language, borrowed from glitch art: fast, cluttered edits, frequent flash warnings, and a technique called datamoshing. d0llywood1 waved off the genre label entirely, calling glitchcore "an aesthetic, like the edits," rather than a real style of music.

  A related term, robloxcore, traces to late 2020. Two artists, lungskull and lieu, built early buzz by uploading and "bypassing" music directly into the game Roblox. Their songs "Foreign" and "Threat" found an audience inside the game itself. TikTok helped the style spread further, alongside Roblox audiomaker games such as DigitalAngels and CriminalViolence.

  One track crossed over from inside that world: Yameii Online's "Baby My Phone" peaked at No. 2 on the Spotify Viral 50 in March 2021.