The borderline minstrelsy of ian’s industrial debut was both a stroke of genius or the top of hip-hop as we all know it. Certain, a mixtape filled with low cost Flockaveli kind beats and bars about “throwing money in your brodie head” is perhaps in poor style coming from a white child born in 2005—particularly when it’s been made to appear to be the child comes from cash. However what makes ian’s ascent so unusual is that earlier than he blew up for displaying his face, he was already making the perfect music of his life. In 2023, ian’s Instagram was non-public and nameless, his SoundCloud a library of plugg rap at its most avant-garde. The DIY recordings he posted on-line tethered strained melodies to uncanny sound collages: His raps seesawed between vainness and self-scrutiny, floating over spectral advert libs and textured percussion that bled into samples reduce from haunted amphitheaters. At occasions the songwriting was pained and candid. “Mama advised me that she proud, I nonetheless don’t assume I’ll be sufficient,” he raps on the iokera-produced “Reminder,” inflecting his voice like Izaya Tiji in his darkest hour. Behind the veil of anonymity, ian thrived off experimentation.
The veil lifted in January with a snippet of “Wimbledon,” a trap-leaning speaker-knocker that led to a whole lot of feedback alongside the traces of “Rattling, this white boy can rap!” ian fed into the following hype and by no means regarded again, recycling dated entice tropes because the viewers swarmed. 5 months after Valedictorian, follow-up Goodbye Horses doubles down on the system: Younger Chop replicas and manufactured rapper speak. Solely this time there’s a cool Chief Keef characteristic. It’s unlucky. The manufacturing is stiff and stuffy the place it’s meant to really feel rapturous, backdropping flaccid hooks and verses that hardly mirror the expertise of the artist on the helm. Other than some dim highlights, Goodbye Horses comes throughout like 2K Sports activities menu music: the kind of songs that make you need to mute the TV.
“Until I Die” is one in all a number of 2024 ian songs designed to rattle your cranium in the identical means that “John” and “Laborious in Da Paint” nonetheless do over a decade later. As a substitute it plods by way of horn fanfares and a corny synth lead that sounds prefer it was ripped from Common Present. The smug nonchalance of ian’s cadence within the refrain feels gimmicky (in case you’re speaking numbers out the gate, you higher slide like Bossman Dlow). The identical goes for “3.5” and “Loco.” On “Older,” he tries channeling the melodrama of Future’s Excessive Off Life and stumbles instantly: “Dad and mom getting older/Bigwigs tryna brief me/Cross me the doja/I’m tryna be lifeless by the morning.” Neglect the earnest use of “bigwig” in a ache rap tune: ian’s perceived wrestle pales compared to artists making actual balladry on this vein—plus the doja gained’t kill you, dawg.
