In an interview early last year, rising Atlanta rapper Tezzus made a prediction about the music industry that sounds more perceptive as time goes on. “It’s gon’ be no such thing as ‘mainstream’ [or ‘underground’], especially with the internet,” he told Overlooked. “It’s just music. All the platforms gon’ clash.” This idea’s been stewing in my brain ever since. No one has to compete for airplay or video placements or even Billboard slots anymore to get exposure; the online algorithm is both a free-for-all and the end-all-be-all. That reality is what makes regionality in music so compelling nowadays. There are entire worlds that you’ll never find if you don’t swipe away from what’s placed in front of you.
The Black music coming out of South Florida right now makes up a couple worlds on its own. A lot can be seen as “post-Kodak” street rap: The jiggy soporifics of Bani and Mike Lary, the brisk get-rich-quick schemes of El Snappo and DaRainGo, the strained melodies that have turned Loe Shimmy into a star. Separately, you still have ex-City Girls JT and Yung Miami making solo club hits. But also making considerable noise is a Miami-based alt scene built by the queer youth of the Haitian diaspora, where genre comes second to kineticism and compulsion. Enter multidisciplinary duo B0YG1RL, a beacon in this scene who, with the help of SoundCloud czar prblm, have scribbled their own blueprint with enough force to tear a hole through the page. “Punk” gets used to describe almost anything lately, but the label truly fits EXIT 2B, an album that mashes kompa, bouyon, electro-pop, reggaeton, and baile funk with enough precision to beget a nimble sense of freedom and looseness. It’s already B0YG1RL’s third album of the year, but it feels most indicative of a clear-cut vision. The music is occasionally delicate, oftentimes abrasive, and never not liberating: a constant stream of raw, unbridled exploration.
B0YG1RL is an “audiovisual project” helmed by Angela Rio, a Honduras-born visual director, and June “Tété” Vinette, a vocalist and producer who grew up in Broward County. The trans duo have been at work as B0YG1RL since 2023, writing every song together as they’ve built a cinematic identity and formed bonds with producers around Miami. They’ve cut their teeth alongside Masisi, a local queer, pro-Black arts collective that’s inverting the meaning of the anti-gay Haitian slur it’s named after. B0YG1RL’s EXIT 2B, titled for the closest Miami highway exit, feels like a hybridized extension of Masisi Radio, where live DJ sets sift through tempos and styles—jungle, footwork, ambient, kompa, etc.—like laundry. It’s an antsy, concise, out-of-body hodgepodge of songs that never sit still, like everyone involved was moving frantically out of fear of getting bored.
Critical to the success of this record are Novagang, a producer-forward, internet-based rap group who’ve worked closely with xaviersobased, quinn, Nettspend, and other underground graduates. The vast majority of EXIT 2B was produced, engineered, and mastered by Novagang founder prblm, an unsung digital craftsman who’s Haitian American and from Miami himself. His cavernous, tender-hearted solo tape, Veire Dawf, was one of my favorites from 2024, and it’s crazy how far away it is from EXIT 2B. If Veire Dawf was a private meditation, EXIT 2B feels like an exorcism at a houseparty. The feeling is there in the colossal, death-defying low end of “Machine” and “Declaration,” the promethean kompa sway of “Little Haiti” and “Burn,” the clash of light and dark melodies on “Bon Dieu” (“Good God”). It’s beautiful, it’s messy, it’s the sort of lightning in a bottle you can only get from treating your DAW less as a tool to go viral and more like a pathway toward divine experience.
Singing almost exclusively in Creole, B0YG1RL’s Vinette attacks nearly everything in his wake with ravenous intent. Everything here feels like a full-blooded celebration: He shoots out beams of wobbly AutoTune on “Burn” and belts croaky, puerile chants throughout “Take Me Home.” On “Bél” (“Beautiful”), he lashes out over brutal phonk stabs and laser beams, pleading, “Fete avec moi” (“Party with me”) like a zombie who found life from a molly pill on the bathroom floor. His airy, Ecco2k-like vocal strain over the hyperactive rhythms of “Love + War” sounds like E if it was recorded in a favela. Vinette’s approach is extremely rough around the edges, and at times it can be grating, but it’s all by design; his energy is matched by Novagang soldier Kay Nive$ on “RAGE & RAVE” and supplemented by Isabella Lovestory’s wispy, catlike finesse on “Soleil.”
Maybe the most endearing part of EXIT 2B is how spiritually aligned it feels to Haiti. Performing in Creole is one thing, but there’s also a triumphant, egalitarian militancy to Vinette and Rio’s songwriting that’s intrinsic to the Haitian diaspora. Without understanding what’s being said, one might easily assume that the lyrics invoke the druggy, party-centric atmosphere of the music. Instead, on “RAGE & RAVE,” for example, Vinette sings, “Nou tout nan liy/Nou pral batay/Nou pral genyen/C’est pwoteje, elimine, dezentegre/Nou pa pé (We’re all in line/We will fight/We will win/To protect, to eliminate, to destroy/We’re not afraid).”
Since becoming the first nation to successfully defeat its enslavers and claim independence in 1804, the people of Haiti have prided themselves on resilience and hard work. Over 200 years later, in America’s biggest pocket of the Haitian diaspora, that spirit lives on. Vinette kills his oppressors on “My people will destroy you” and thanks God for the fruits of his labor on “Machine.” “Nou se fanmi, nou lib pou tout tan,” he sings over the scathing-hot drums of “Declaration”: “We are family, free forever.” That sensation is all-encompassing. B0YG1RL and Novagang’s EXIT 2B brings us a few steps closer to that post-hierarchal utopia Tezzus was talking about last year. All forms of music and all walks of life seem to live here in harmony.
