What are your favourite rap songs about the need to conserve water in preparation for the forthcoming apocalypse?
Here's mine
Antipop *puke emoji*
If hip-hop has historically focussed on invincibility, this generation is fixated on mortality. Nihilism, taken to an extreme that feels almost competitive, has become its own form of braggadocio. The sound is a sincere expression of anguished youth, but it’s also a backlash against a previous micro-generation of hip-hop artists obsessed with self-actualization and revelry. Post Malone, a singer and rapper tangentially connected to the SoundCloud community, rose to the top of the Hot 100 toward the end of 2017 with “rockstar,” a song that makes success sound as joyless as possible.
In some ways, this movement is in keeping with the dreary sensibility popularized on the radio by such artists as the Weeknd and Lana Del Rey. A symptom—or perhaps a cause—of this dim world view is the widespread use of prescription drugs like Xanax. (Lil Xan is not short for Lil Xander.) It is difficult to grasp how these musicians can be so prolific and make such high-voltage songs while under the influence of substances notorious for putting people to sleep.