Understanding Hip-Hop’s Rising Subgenre: Aesthetic Rap
At its core, aesthetic rap is a celebration of internet culture, and there was no better time to indulge in internet culture than during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of lockdowns, Zoom classrooms, working from home, and social distancing, our entire lives were led from behind a computer screen for several months. Pair that with the global insurgence of TikTok, and suddenly the entire world is connected digitally more than ever before in a war for everyone else’s attention.
There’s no surprise that Generation Z dominated this battlefield. There is not a single demographic of people that can navigate the internet and its trends better than the generation of people that have been using the internet for their entire lives. During this time, Gen Z did not wither away at home during the lockdown; instead, they found a creative outlet for their fantasies of a hedonistic lifestyle far removed from their own. Due to the unique circumstances of the pandemic, internet culture was in everyone’s crosshairs, and with more eyes on them than ever before, two teenagers worlds apart from each other rose to the occasion and took advantage of this opportunity.
On October 11th, 2020, at just 16 and a half years old and hailing from Las Vegas, Nevada, Nathan Fuller, largely recognized as 1nonly, released “Stay With Me,” a song that would go on to take TikTok by storm. The track is by far his greatest success, boasting over 300 million plays on Spotify. Lyrically, the song embraces and captures the vices of internet culture, such as money, guns, drugs, sex, designer clothing, diamonds, and cars. The lyrics illustrate a detailed sketch of the aesthetic of internet culture with bars like, “Two hoes, ten toes, new guap, countin’ bands / New whip, new chips, new kicks, Jackie Chan.” Make no mistake, Fuller does not live the life that he claims he does in his raps; however, it’s important to understand that was never the intention of the subgenre. It’s an appreciation of the image those vices create and an escape from the bleak and mundane reality of the COVID-19 lockdown.
The official music video for “Stay with me” makes the materialistic and lustful aesthetic of the subgenre abundantly clear. The video is a continuous 12 second loop that runs for the duration of the entire song. The loop itself is comprised of various clips pulled from the internet that range from Instagram thirst traps to famous rappers like 21 Savage hitting money spreads and flexing their diamonds. Fuller does not hold back in the slightest in his indulgence in internet culture, and there are zero hints of shame in his delivery. He acknowledges that there is something beautiful about the facade people sell on the internet, and he completely immerses himself in it.
“I think as young teens it was what we aspired to do, as we were enjoying life and internet culture.” - Luke Winther
Fullers contemporary, Luke Winther, also known as lilbubblegum, made a name for himself all the way from West Auckland, New Zealand, under similar circumstances. With nothing but his phone and the internet at his disposal, he seized the spotlight in the aesthetic rap movement when his single “af1” caught fire on TikTok in 2020. He effortlessly raps over the jazzy trumpet fused with 808s and snares, with lines such as “Skull ring, silver chain and a lock necklace / Doc martins, chain sparkling, ticking off my checklist / Band tee, wrist clean, all the things I'm flexin'.”
Winther explains the ‘aesthetic’ label to SNIFFER magazine: "I guess the name kind of comes from the internet era, using Tumblr photos and taking things from the early 2000s, and referencing a lot of pop culture stuff. Or referencing characters, TV shows, that sort of stuff.”
The subgenre goes to several lengths to fuse modern internet culture with early 2000s internet-era aesthetics. The 4:3 aspect ratio, camcorder HUDs, and grainy/distorted visual experience of aesthetic rap are equally as important as the sonic experience. Outside the control of the artists, fans of the subgenre across the internet had a hand in defining the aesthetic as well. Their role cannot be understated in curating aesthetic rap images, as made evident by some fan-made anime music videos eclipsing the official music video in terms of viewership. A fan-made anime music video for “Stay with me” has 20 times the views of the official music video. To put that further into perspective, the #animeedit tag on TikTok has over 260 billion views total.
It’s a bizarre yet satisfying combination only made possible by young creatives like Nathan Fuller and Luke Winther who pushed the boundaries of hip-hop with their escapist music. Today, the rappers have branched out from aesthetic rap, and have gone their own separate ways sonically in order to develop their own sound in the ever-evolving world of hip-hop music.
