I spent the weekend trying to familiarize myself with a new wave of emo-rappers coming out of the Le Citadell collective. My favorite of the bunch is xxffcyuvcui, an artist whose music is a lot more accessible than his cartoonishly un-prounceable name would suggest.

I missed the first wave of emo-rap. In the mid-2010s I was listening to Real Emo and Real Rap and also, like, Courtney Barnett and just didn't develop an actual emotional connection with Lil Peep or x or even Yung Lean. I find it funny that I'm more primed to appreciate emo rap now at age [redacted] then I was during its first hurrah, because I did establish an emotional connection with most of the internet-native rap that followed in 2016's wake. All of the stuff that's informing the beginning of an emerging emo-rap renaissance.

All of this is to say that xxffcyuvcui sounds kind of like blackwinterwells or very early glaive, except without the crispy production and synapse-frying jubilance of proper digicore. His pair of 2025 albums (neither on Nina) are surprisingly durable listens mostly because xxffcyuvcui has a real knack for intuitive melodies and caption-worthy melodrama.

"misuse," a Nina loosie that's not on S*otify, is an excellent entry point. "I might just take a bullet for anyone that asks," he warns over a beat that does a lot with a little. This is emo-rap for the xaviersobased generation. Emo-rap for today's 17-year-old's and also today's [redacted] year old's.