Lately, I’ve seen a bunch of viral videos of rapper kllhhr’s blurry, catatonic plugg music unfurling over DMV werk clips and dance compilations. It’s the strangest microtrend I’ve seen online in a minute, but I stop and stare every time. kllhhr is nestled in a new crop of ambient nightcrawlers–dudes like hunnakay, 22, and the late tazparis–who’ve emerged in the wake of DPM, the Maryland-based pioneers of the muted arrangements they rap over. Flows are narcoleptic, drums are sporadic, and melodies are soft enough to live in a dollhouse. Not for nothing, we’ve also just witnessed MIKE and Earl go Speakerboxx/The Love Below with a lighthearted take on this sound with Surf Gang. Xang, DPM’s lead flagbearer since 2021, has had more time than anybody to make this niche his own. His latest tape, GroakDontCroak vol. 1, arrives at an inflection point: As ambient rap develops a tangible identity, he’s well-versed enough to experiment with its contours.
Everything that goes on in Xang’s world feels like it’s wedged between dusk and dawn. His 2025 tape, WOMB, embodied this through his pensive grumbles over wispy vocal chops; each bar that cut through the fog was steeped in sober gravitas. When GroakDontCroak retreads this territory, the impact is much heavier. On “gdc,” the vocal layering and sharp strings turn bleary stick talk into a dark soliloquy; Xang floods the mix with grumbled pep talks, fiery ad-libs, and a methodical flow he stretches like putty. Menace has always been his strong suit: The westly-produced “drunk” feels like night swimming through the River Styx. “stayin up” and “my type,” back-to-back tracks coasting on a sedative haze, make Xang’s embrace of the void feel comforting. “I’ll call it a day when I’m dead,” he raps on the latter. “Fully alive, my body on roxy, I’m doin’ aight.”
It’s interesting to see how Xang plays with the formula, though. The eerie ambiance reaches villainous heights on “circa,” undergirded by waves of synth bass and a sinister drone that spells impending doom. “You new niggas got no heart,” he raps disappointedly. More notably, since the bone-shattering drum experiments on last year’s Backyard EP (peep “ok”), the low-end is thicker and more resonant. theo’s “half full” beat sways back and forth with the sloshy interplay of rickety piano and 808 static; that lead melody hasn’t left my head since I first heard it. On “sup brody,” .cutspace and katebi unload literal machine gun clips into the DAW and splice in sputtering snares to craft New York drill for the apocalypse. “i aint get caught” ups the ante even further, prompting Xang to barrel through the choppy 808s you’d expect from Che or OsamaSon. That rage-type distortion is a trend I’ve definitely grown tired of, but the patented DMV flow he deploys works really well.
GroakDontCroak starts firing on all cylinders in the middle, where Xang lets loose on two of the liveliest, most fluorescent beats I’ve heard all year. As fitting as his gravelly delivery is on the eerie ambient plugg shit, the pocket he hits on mag’s hyperactive “new number” beat positions his cadence as a perfect foil for colorful synthplay. “Blood on the ceiling, it’s dope in the smoke,” he spits as chimes gleam over jittery drums like a disco ball. “new number” would make as much sense playing on a foggy dancefloor as it would in a living room full of spliffs getting passed around, which has as much to do with Xang’s rhythmic discipline as it does with mag’s digital psychedelia.
The reklus1ve-produced “demi lovato” takes that same smiley feeling and lets it sit in molasses: Wonky, Cartoon Network-type flourishes, bright streams of sustained melody, hypnotically sluggish 808s. Usually, the argument in favor of rappers “using their voice as an instrument” is reserved for throat-splitting, baby-voiced hijinx, but Xang’s rumbling baritone fits the criteria in its own way. Sometimes—primarily on “demi lovato”—his most unintelligible vocal stretches still elicit compulsive re-listens and spellbound head-nodding. Akin to Still Right Here, the recent debut from Xang’s right-hand man, Zel, GroakDontCroak vol. 1 burrows deeper into DPM’s macabre atmosphere while spiking it with sudden jolts of verve and bounce. Every familiar stretch feels refreshed, and every left turn feels eye-popping.
