Yeah, there’s another viral rap sensation. I know, this happens basically every other week, but this is our reality. Some are cool as hell; some I hope to never hear again. There will be many, many more. This one is named ian. Yes, just ian. After a few years of uploading music to SoundCloud, he blew the fuck up in early 2024 through a combination of outrage clicks and undiscerning excitement. The reason was simple: He was a white guy dressed like a frat boy on his way to his 8 a.m. finance class who made technically OK music that sounded like he was in Slayworld, the internet-famous group that once included Summrs, Autumn!, Izaya Tiji, and Yeat. Yeat is white, too, but unlike Yeat, who tried to distract from his whiteness with the questionable use of turbans and alien-speak, ian leaned into his suburban white kid schtick: vanilla outfits (white tee, sweats, slides) and a From the Block video for his breakout song “Figure It Out” shot at an outdoor lunch with his sitcom-looking real-life family, where you can spot full wine glasses, a prep school hoodie, and an American flag swaying in the wind.
“Figure It Out” is the lead single to ian’s first full mixtape, Valedictorian, which includes artwork that mimics the “You know I had to do it to ’em” meme and premiered at a packed listening party on the streets of New York, blasted out of the sunroof of a minivan. It’s probably his best song, though that isn’t saying much. Through his slurred, ATL-style melodies, he delivers a sprint of catchy flexes like, “Can’t choose what color I’m feelin’ today, thank God it’s a two-toned watch” and “My big brother like Marshawn Lynch, he’ll run through somebody.” The official Lyrical Lemonade video (anywhere there’s a popular rapping white boy, you’ll find Cole Bennett) even includes a cameo from Marshawn Lynch, which is pretty cringe because you just know the joke is supposed to be Tough, Black ex-NFL star hangs out with suburban white rapper.
That right there explains the problem with Valedictorian: It’s making a joke out of the music and culture it’s trying to swagger-jack. Everything is so tongue in cheek: Look, isn’t it so funny that a college-age white kid who you could imagine playing lacrosse at a New England private school has a mixtape hosted by DJ Holiday, famous for talking his shit on some of the greatest Gucci Mane and Chief Keef projects? “This the coldest motherfucker I seen in a long ass time, dressed white as hell though,” says Holiday, laughing (probably in disbelief about how much he’s being paid). “Fuckin’ rich ass prick.” Look, isn’t it so funny that he’s got beats that sound like old Zaytoven (all except one by producer Sxprano)? “Judgment,” with its calming strings and crafty drums, sounds like a replica of something Zay would have given to Yung L.A. Look, isn’t it so funny when he raps a bunch of car puns like Young Dro (“They go both ways in the Cullinan truck, the doors must hate each other,” from “Grand Slam”), or imitates the Auto-Tune melodies of Dirty Sprite-era Future (“Bentayga”), or wants so badly to be Chief Keef (“AirBnb”)? The irony is there to distract you from the fact that this is empty music. If you heard it without a face attached, you would click on it, observe that it’s a sauceless copy of its influences, and keep scrolling.
That said, none of Valedictorian is unlistenable—just devoid of any personality or imagination. Performing an amalgamation of melodic regional rap of the last decade or so, ian lacks the ability or intention to do anything other than replicate music that already exists. He’s not rewiring ATL swag of the past like Bear1boss or dissecting nostalgic dance rap like Xaviersobased. He’s just a white kid that has heard a lot of rap, and there are lots of them. After years spent falling down SoundCloud wormholes, I’m almost numb to white rappers that would probably do the surgery from Face/Off with Chief Keef or Young Thug if it were possible.
So my initial instinct with the ian phenomenon was to shrug and say it’s not that deep—at least he isn’t Lil Mabu or Brennan Jones, rappers so clearly making a mockery of the genre to feed their thirst for fame. At least there aren’t any nascent signs of a pop-country or indie rock pivot, not yet. But the more I think about it, there is something unsettling about ian’s fast rise. He’s stumbled onto a simple, repeatable blueprint that absorbs Black influences while presenting and marketing himself as if he isn’t. That might be scarier than all of the obvious rip-offs of the past, because suddenly you can imagine opening your eyes to see a mainstream rap landscape overrun with ians. (Introducing your Rolling Loud headliners owen, hunter, and dust1n, brought to you by Backwoods and Meta!) Another step toward the far-away, or not so far-away, day when we will have to remind the people around us about the Black roots of rap, because Spotify playlists sure won’t. Well, until then, see you next week when another rapper falls from the cloud.
