Electric jolts, apocalyptic bass thuds, bitcrush like a flamethrower of pixels: These are the hallmarks of something I’m half-jokingly calling “rage 2.0,” the hyper-cluttered sound of so much buzzy new online rap. It’s Ken Carson grunting over synths that slash like guillotines and Jane Remover shrieking against a wall of shuddering noise, the kind of rap that borders on maximalist EDM. Now there’s L.A. producer-performer Lucy Bedroque, whose mixtape Unmusique smashes into the fray so deliriously that some fans are saying it’s what they wished Carti’s MUSIC sounded like.
But Lucy isn’t a Carti clone nor someone who’d likely identify under the “rage” banner. He spawned in the SoundCloud underworld, orbiting scenes like sigilkore and the collective GREED—a dust bowl of sickly, dissonant rap. With their old collaborator kaystrueno, Lucy pioneered “maplekore,” the duo’s nickname for an impressionistic sound inspired by the aughts South Korean MMORPG MapleStory. What distinguished their music, especially on the cult tape SISTERHOOD and their 2024 EP Fête de la Vanille, was its tantalizingly flowery, near pastoral textures. The mixes are crunchy—dated and degraded like an mp3 lost on an old hard drive, but with a dewy twinkle. Imagine mosh music for a Jane Austen regency ball, rap as pretty as a forest glade swishing in the wind. Everything had a conceptual bent: There was a character named Glutmother; “sisters” that made up different emotional sides of Lucy Bedroque, struggling to unite in harmony.
There’s still some of that delight here, like “Cara Mia,” a wistful jaunt that sounds like a cross between Ecco2k and a computer sputtering as if it had been infected by malware. But for the most part, the mixtape sacrifices the fairy-sprite frailty that gave Lucy Bedroque an edge. Instead, Unmusique unleashes some of the most turbocharged rap of the rage era.
This is Lucy’s first release with a label—deadAir Records, where he’s sonically at home next to people like Jane and kuru—and it’s got some of his cleanest mixes to date. Highlight “Ultraviolet” smacks like a supersize Sprite’s worth of sucrose, with wave after wave of synthy sweetness. He hits a delicious stride on “2010 Justin Bieber,” locking into the beat like it’s a piece of armor. With such acrobatic vocals, it’s a struggle to parse some of the lyrics, which makes it tempting to treat them as pure sound. But inch closer and, between the textbook flexes and “she wanna eat me up like pasta” filler, it’s hard not to crack a grin. He disses 25-year-old vampire cosplayers and laughs at his friend for “seeing baphomet off that fake Runtz”; he declares that he can beat Michael Jackson in a danceoff and convince the notoriously enigmatic and prolific fan-hater Izaya Tiji to love his supporters.
Heartfelt vision leaks into every choice he makes. X-ray the song skeletons and you’ll find a patchwork of influences you can imagine a young Lucy listening to at formative stages of their life: a frolicking, decelerated sample of Imogen Heap here, then “Cat’s Eye,” which uses Gigi Masin’s “Clouds” as a cosmic canvas for his pleas and frustrations toward a relationship gone awry. Lucy once pulled rhythm guitar from Linkin Park’s “By Myself”; now they’re rewiring the riff from Green Day’s “Holiday” into a beat that conjures up breakdancing cyborgs. The production lineup culls from every corner: Besides Lucy Bedroque himself, there’s StudyGroup’s cranes; skai (OsamaSon, Ken Carson); ivvys (StepTeam); 9lives (Kanii, Odetari); his frequent collaborator egobreak, who seems to know exactly how to sculpt around his voice. Every producer has their own style, but the beats have all been clearly made bespoke for Lucy’s mala-mouthed rap.
It's hard to keep the energy consistently all-out infectious for a tape this length. Some songs, like “Smackdown,” could’ve been shelved, while others make you crave a little more sparkle and oomph; they’re missing a key melodic run or gorgeous intro to give them a memorable identity. Compression and clutter are most effective in small doses. The mixtape’s title is almost as bold as Carti calling his album MUSIC. Maybe Lucy’s trying to signal that he’s not like the swarm of rage copycats, or that his style is so frenzied it’s more like raw noise than songwriting; or maybe it’s an attempt to unlearn well-worn tropes. But whatever you make of that seeming disavowal of musicality, there’s no missing the gushing overflow of sounds jubilantly flooding every second.
