The Rise of Rage Rap

Graphic by Jonah Weintraub

By: James Kelly

While rage rap has been around for almost ten years, the subgenre has really just taken off recently, specifically during the pandemic. With artists like Lil Uzi Vert, Yeat, Playboi Carti, and all of his Opium label’s signees taking off, rage rap is officially making its way into the mainstream and is not trying to distance itself from its roots. 

Rage rap has very direct influences from punk and metal rock, mainly surrounding the music itself. The dark and almost gloomy aesthetics that compliment the young subgenre all are very reminiscent of metal and punk from the 1970’s. Playboi Carti even based the album cover for his most recent album, Whole Lotta Red, off of “Slash”: a punk-rock magazine from the 70’s. As for the music itself, the live performances of rage rap are also affected by the early punk rock concerts, which were all based around high- energy crowds that the artists feed into. Even the fashion sense of rage rap, while still having a modern touch, is still heavily influenced by the art-like style of punk rock artists.

The idea of rage rap’s creation does not have an obvious beginning. While early songs off of Future’s 2015 record DS2 have been seen as almost “rage-like” “I Serve the Base” being an example, unquestionable “rage rap” finally had it’s breakout moment in the 2021 track “Miss the Rage” by Trippie Redd and Playboi Carti, which directly refers to their type of music and energy surrounding it as “rage.” 

The genre itself has been solidified lately by Playboi Carti’s label, Opium, which has cultivated a group of 4 artists: Playboi Carti, Ken Carson, Destroy Lonely, and Homixide Gang. The “magnum opus” of rage rap, Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red, while not having stellar reviews from critics and fans alike at release, slowly became one of the most influential LPs of the 2020s. Recently, Ken Carson and Destroy Lonely have both released career-changing albums in A Great Chaos and NO STYLIST, respectively, with the former even out-streaming Offset’s newest LP, Set It Off, after releasing on the same day. 

It would be disrespectful to talk about rage rap without talking about the most compelling rapper of the new decade – Yeat. If any artist has truly gone mainstream totally based on their rage rap work, it’s 23-year-old rising star. Since first going viral on TikTok in 2021, Yeat has become increasingly popular over the past few years. He has already had two top 10 albums and made his way onto a Minions movie trailer. Most recently, Yeat’s feature on Drake’s new album, For All the Dogs, fought with J. Cole’s cameo on the same project for #1 on the Billboard 100. While Yeat did end up having to settle for #2, this competition with one of the biggest names in hip-hop is a cherry on top of a run that has shown the marketability of rage rap in the mainstream. 

Rage rap has been on the come-up for the past few years, cementing its place in rap and even sneaking into the forefront of the culture. With whole labels like Opium being centered around rage rap and artists like Yeat finding new ways to infiltrate the mainstream, rage rap has found a place to stay in artist’s discography and listeners playlists alike.