Internet rap

• 1. Introduction

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  Internet rap, also called online rap, began as hip-hop that traveled through the blogosphere in the late 2000s. The British magazine Dazed once said of Lil B, "he's the father of 'Internet rap' and probably follows you on Twitter". The joke lands because the music grew up inside internet culture, memes and digital communities, and its first name was blog rap. Unlike traditional hip-hop, it was shaped mainly by the web and born in online communities. Its story raises a few questions. How did a handful of blog favorites turn into a sprawling underground? Why did a label that began as an insult become a badge of identity? And how did one loose idea split into dozens of tiny genres, each with its own look, sound and set of rules?

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• 2. An Insult Becomes a Badge

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  Music journalist Alphonse Pierre, writing for Pitchfork, noted that the phrase "internet rappers" was once a dismissive label. The "SoundCloud generation" later made it popular, and the artists it described began to wear it with pride.

  Writing for The Guardian, journalist Emilie Friedlander looked back at the blog era, when bloggers "were trawling the internet to uncover the next great bedroom producer, internet rapper or hyper-specific musical trend." She added that internet rap shared the "collagist, hyper-referential approach to sound" of chillwave, another internet microgenre.

  Online platforms still define how this music moves. Artists tend to favor SoundCloud for distribution, and their songs are shared and promoted through YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. Many internet rappers reach mainstream success, yet the label is still tied to alternative and underground rap.

  The scene itself began mostly as trap music. Only later did it give rise to a crowd of internet microgenres and subcultures.

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• 3. Forerunners

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  In 1997, on a track called "DJ Clue Freestyle", Canibus rapped, "I'll battle you on the net, I'll battle you in the flesh." That line makes him the first rapper to reference the Internet in hip-hop, during the mid-to-late 1990s.

  Canibus soon put his own website on the map. The address www.canibus.com was promoted alongside his debut album Can-I-Bus in 1998.

  In 2002 he launched MicClub.net, named after his second album, Mic Club: The Curriculum. There he shared music and lyrics and talked with fans. That made him one of the earliest rappers to run a personal website as a creative and promotional platform.

  In 1998, Florida rapper Trick Daddy also nodded to the web and its visual style. His album www.thug.com took its title from the URL of his official website.

  Neither man had a scene to join yet. That would take roughly another decade.

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• 4. The Blog Era

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  Soulja Boy is credited as the first rapper to have a Twitter account. He and Lil Wayne were the influential names who embraced social media in the late 2000s, when the Internet was still a novelty that the music industry had not absorbed. Soulja Boy had grown up alongside early social media and used it to shape his image.

  Their fan bases grew largely from freely sharing songs through online music videos. That showed a skeptical industry that giving music away online could build an audience and make money, which was an unpopular idea at the time.

  Vice writer Kyle Kramer tied Wayne's appeal to the web itself. He wrote that "the lawlessness of the internet matched the disorder of Wayne's music and the frenzy with which he was working." In his telling, Lil Wayne in 2007 "promised creativity unbounded by any rules."

  The name blog rap came from where hip-hop artists of the 2000s mostly released their songs. Other genres spread through blogs too, which produced early online scenes such as blog rock and bloghouse. Early internet rappers worked mainly on Myspace and on the mixtape-sharing site DatPiff, which became an influential hub for the movement. Asher Roth, B.o.B, Kid Cudi, Mickey Factz, Wale and Charles Hamilton stood out among their peers, gaining attention mostly through music blogs.

  By 2009, Lil B had emerged, and his success was linked largely to internet virality and an embrace of broader online trends. He and his producer Clams Casino are credited with pioneering cloud rap, a trap-based subgenre. His popularity inspired a generation of rappers who drew on online spaces, movements and memes.

  Producer Metro Boomin wrote on Twitter, "Lil B is responsible for a lot of careers man. A true hip hop pioneer."

  Cloud rap itself is marked by ethereal, ambient production and lo-fi aesthetics. Soulja Boy, for his part, drew from crunk and snap rap, two hip-hop subgenres of the early 2000s.

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• 5. Crews and Collectives

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  In 2012, The Guardian credited a long list of groups with bringing back the "hip-hop crew." The list included Taylor Gang, A$AP Mob, Black Hippy, Pro Era, YMCMB (Young Money), Most Dope, Maybach Music, Odd Future and Raider Klan.

  By the early 2010s, collectives such as Brockhampton, Metro Zu, 88Rising, Soulection and Ruby Yacht had also gained prominence. Artists kept proliferating on blog-related sites like Tumblr and distributed music through SoundCloud, YouTube and Spotify. Danny Brown and Tyler, the Creator ranked among the other influential figures.

  The term hipster hop emerged for artists whose internet rap reflected hipster culture. It was applied to The Cool Kids and, again, to Kid Cudi.

  After Lil B went viral, the wider scene began to reach larger audiences. Its rappers also drew on Waka Flocka Flame, Gucci Mane and Juicy J. Chicago's Chief Keef helped pioneer and popularize drill, and his style shaped both mainstream trap and online rap scenes. Drill began in Chicago in the early 2010s and is known for dark beats and violent, raw lyrics. It later built scenes in the UK and across the United States.

  A darker current appeared in 2012. Black Kray's Goth Money, Wicca Phase's GothBoiClique and the cloud rap pioneer Bones drew on witch house, which led to emo rap. That style merges trap and cloud rap with the themes and look of emo and alternative rock. Lil Peep, XXXTentacion and Juice WRLD later brought it into the mainstream. Kray's early work with Working on Dying also helped shape tread music.

  In 2013, the Swedish cloud rap artist Yung Lean saw his track "Ginseng Strip 2002" go viral. His look borrowed from seapunk and vaporwave. Amarco called him "by and large a product of the internet and a leading example of a generation of youths who garner fame through social media." The Swedish collective Drain Gang, made up of Bladee, Ecco2k, Thaiboy Digital and Whitearmor, pushed online rap further still.

  Meanwhile, experimental and industrial hip-hop acts such as Death Grips, JPEGMAFIA, Clipping and Injury Reserve were building their own corner of the online underground.

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• 6. SoundCloud Takes Over

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  During the mid-to-late 2010s, SoundCloud became the central hub for a new wave of online hip-hop. South Florida's scene shaped the sound of the era, drawing heavily on collectives such as SpaceGhostPurrp's Raider Klan and Metro Zu. Denzel Curry, Lil Tracy (Yung Bruh) and Lil Peep came out of it. So did Lil Pump, who went viral in 2017 with his single "Gucci Gang."

  XXXTentacion, Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Yachty and Playboi Carti were labeled together as soundcloud rap. Internet rappers had been posting on SoundCloud for years. Only in this period did the term attach itself to a particular sound.

  The label mumble rap followed as a pejorative. It targeted the off-kilter lyricism and unclear cadence and delivery of these rappers.

  Playboi Carti's label, Opium, produced notable artists such as Ken Carson and Destroy Lonely in the late 2010s. Both reached wider popularity in the early 2020s. Artists tied to the label pioneered a fashion style called opiumcore, which drew from punk and alternative fashion. The internet-driven look of the wider underground scene was also noted as an influence on high fashion.

  Phonk was another sound that moved through these platforms. Pioneered by SpaceGhostPurrp, it draws heavily on 1990s Memphis rap and horrorcore, with lo-fi samples, chopped and screwed vocals and cowbells. Offshoots such as drift phonk were widely popularized on SoundCloud and TikTok from the late 2010s into the early 2020s.

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• 7. Extremely Online

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  Rolling Stone described the underground rap scene of the 2020s as "extremely online." Discord servers and games such as Roblox have been noted as influential. Collectives such as Novagang and Surf Gang rose during this period, and a rush of new microgenres emerged or matured.

  Pitchfork's Kieran Press-Reynolds wrote that American rapper Nettspend "bleached his hair, and promptly became exalted on subreddits and Discord servers as the Bieber, or the Cobain, of fried internet rap."

  Each scene had its own names. Luci4, Islurwhenitalk, Odetari, 6arelyhuman, Kets4eki, Cade Clair and Asteria rose in the sigilkore and krushclub scene. Summrs, Tana, Kankan, Iayze and Autumn! led the plugg and pluggnb scene. Yeat, Osamason, Yung Fazo, Prettifun and Che defined rage, while Xaviersobased, Nettspend and Yhapojj stood out in jerk. Some of these artists later moved on to other styles.

  Lithuanian rapper Yabujin and the collective Reptilian Club Boyz were influential acts, and 2hollis, Sematary and Rich Amiri were other notable names.

  The sound also spread across borders. In the United Kingdom, Lancey Foux, Fimiguerrero, Fakemink, Len and YT led the way. In China, Bloodz Boi, Billionhappy and Jackzebra emerged. In Argentina, the SwaggerBoyz collective, led by AgusFortnite2008 and Stiffy, spearheaded the scene.

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• 8. A Field Guide to Microgenres

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  Plugg took shape in the mid-2010s and is noted for dreamy, minimal beats built from synth pads and bell sounds. Around 2013 it came together as the production style of the Beatpluggz collective, which included Atlanta producers MexikoDro and StoopidXool. Its influences range from Zaytoven, Project Pat, Juicy J and Gucci Mane to the snap rap group D4L and the Paper Mario soundtrack.

  PluggnB fuses plugg with contemporary R&B, pairing soft melodic vocals with dreamy synths. It emerged in the late 2010s and gained popularity on TikTok in the early 2020s. Dark plugg grew out of the DMV trap scene through Surreal Gang producers such as XanGang, Orcery and Eddie Gianni. The Guardian called it a "micro-trend." Ambient plugg, pioneered by wifi and Izaya Tiji, trades lyricism for mood, with glitchy ad-libs and meditative synths.

  HexD is built on heavy bitcrushing and sped-up, pitched-up vocals, and producer she_skin is credited as its pioneer. Hexcastcrew member Stacy Minajj coined the term with a DJ mix called Rare RCB hexD.mp3, released on the 15th of June 2019. The mix samples and remixes Reptilian Club Boyz.

  Sigilkore started on SoundCloud in the late 2010s. It combines cloud rap and trap, and its lyrics lean toward occultism, blood and vampires. Krushclub branched from it in the early 2020s, mixing Jersey club with bitcrushed sounds, cartoonish lyrics and video game energy. Digicore rose alongside hyperpop with heavy autotune and pitched-up vocals. Jerk, rebuilt in the early 2020s by producer kashpaint and rapper Xaviersobased with his collective 1c34, blends fast tempos with elements of cloud rap, digicore, Milwaukee lowend and plugg. Lowend itself is a Milwaukee style of heavy bass, slowed beats and fast claps.

  Terror plugg, also called extremo-plugg, uses distorted 808s, eerie melodies and intense vocal delivery. Its unconventional 808 production sparked a wave of virality on TikTok and Instagram between 2024 and 2025. Pitchfork's Kieran Press-Reynolds called New York rapper Yuke's 2024 single "ian goin" "the logical excruciating endpoint of the 'terror plugg' style."

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