XXXTentacion
? (Question Mark)

Like it or not, in 2018 rap is the new rock. Everyone listens to it, everyone talks about it, and at least one new copycat rapper emerges every week with a hit boasting millions of views.

The refuge of these new rappers is Soundcloud, a platform similar to YouTube but with music instead of videos. Since the early 2010s, many rappers have found their fortune starting on Soundcloud before getting noticed by big names: among them is Xxxtentacion, but his story isn't exactly like the others.

First of all, you might be wondering who this guy is, and it's more than understandable: Jahseh Dwayne Onfroy, class of 1998, has been through a lot for an eighteen-year-old, he's been in and out of jail quite a few times, got into fights with people in the street (at the beginning he went viral for videos where he was seen going crazy in the streets and brawling with random people), irascible since childhood - it seems even as a child he injured a man with a piece of glass because he thought he wanted to harm his mother - and to top it all off, it seems he violently beat his ex to the point of causing her vision problems (however, this last point remains unresolved as the dynamics have not been fully clarified).

A choirboy, in short. But after this string of crimes and shady acts, the impression one gets of Xxxtentacion cannot possibly be positive. However, beyond the questionable behavior in his private life, it must be said that the music proposed by Xxxtentacion from his Soundcloud is very varied and always strays from the classic canons of today's rap (a.k.a. trap music or Soundcloud rap), to the extent that he has been elected as one of the pioneers of a "screamo" or lo-fi rap wave, using lo-fi/indie beats with distorted 808 basses. This with the hit "Look at me" in 2015.

After a pleasant, very melancholic album (17), xxxtentacion releases this "?" without much promo, just releasing a few songs (Sad, Hope, Changes) as a pre-release. The singles hint at a spiritual continuation of "17", meaning a melancholic atmosphere and less "electronic" (Changes uses only piano, while Sad and Hope are melodic wails over very chill and cloudy beats), but in the end Jahseh surprises everyone, but not quite in a positive way: "Question Mark" indeed fully respects the title: in the end, it's a hodgepodge of ideas rather than a real album, it has no precise musical direction and the mood is constantly reversed (it goes from a piece like "infinity", which is an old-school hip hop, to the emo-punk/screamo of "pain = bestfriend" with drums contributed by Travis Barker, to a generic cloud rap with "$$$" made with a twelve-year-old kid, then moves to the reggaeton joke "i don't even speak spanish lol", which is clearly a mockery but is rather disgusting in the general context...); many tracks are short, 1-2 minutes, and seem like demos made in a rush with sad lyrics or random screams. or with not even too inspired rap beats: in short, a decidedly experimental and absurd album, almost nonsense on one hand, but decidedly too redundant and poorly crafted. Beautiful songs are not missing but to enjoy the best of Jahseh one should definitely listen to the mixtape "Revenge" (his best work) and the good "17": hoping in the meantime he calms down (a nice chamomile wouldn't hurt) and clears his thoughts to find the right path in his music.