The spectre of Gothboiclique is haunting underground hip-hop, whether in Asheville street rapper TopOppGen’s penchant for grungy guitar arpeggios or FearDorian’s interpolations of slowcore classics. Few artists within the new guard of emo-rap torchbearers, however, work to reinvent the sounds forged by Lil Peep and Black Kray like Le Citadell, a vast collective of indie-pop acolytes, plugg producers, and would-be pop-punkers. Much of the group’s output draws influence from the tape-worn angst of mid-2010s Bandcamp darlings like Julia Brown and the genre-agnosticism of fifth-wave emo. Survey the results of founding member Swords2’s productive 2025 for a summation of their wide-ranging tastes: Over the past year, he’s tapped his Rolodex of beatmakers to dabble in folksy, pastoral trap, bleepy emo anthems in the vein of Brave Little Abacus, and a self-produced baroque electroclash offshoot of his own.