2016 gave us Lil Peep, XXXTentacion and Playboi Carti — an era of SoundCloud rap remembered through Adidas Superstars, pine-green bomber jackets and every conceivable iteration of the Thrasher logo. Every year since, that memory gets replayed verbatim, followed by a low, reverent murmur about how that moment marked the closest humanity has ever come to world peace. Oh, how I wish we were back.
But look down at people’s shoes as you walk past Goldwin Smith Hall next time. The three stripes haven’t disappeared; they’ve morphed into brightly colored Sambas. Wired headphones still dangle from pockets. Open your phone and the loop reveals itself. History has recalibrated. Artists like Nettspend and Osamason are often framed as echoes of the past, slotted into familiar roles by listeners eager to map today onto what they already recognize. The tools are the same too; the commanding power of GarageBand remains intact, repackaged to soundtrack what could still become another formative year of someone’s life.
This evolution of creative musical freedom is no longer theoretical. It is already unfolding at scale. Every SOLD OUT banner on EsDeeKid’s North American tour offers tangible proof that trap continues to thrive. The sound has expanded outward, becoming stranger in both form and reach. There is a grit to his Scouse delivery that locks naturally into Fakemink’s distorted 808s, producing music that feels kinetic and restless, like it's designed for motion rather than permanence. What once pulsed through SoundCloud likes now moves through flights, merch tables and time zones.
Calling it “SoundCloud rap” oversimplifies its impact. The movement reshaped production, distribution and audience engagement. The platform mattered less than the opportunities it created. Immediate uploads were possible, gatekeeping was minimal and artists could take risks without institutional permission. A laptop, a cracked DAW and an internet connection were enough. Music surfaced faster than it could be refined, and scenes cohered before they could even be named. When SoundCloud lost cultural centrality, its infrastructure did not vanish — it dispersed. The conditions that made 2016 possible are now embedded across the internet.
Today’s underground reads more as diffusion than revival. No single platform commands attention, and no city or collective functions as a center of gravity. Fakemink, Nettspend, Xaviersobased, Osamason, Che, Feng and EsDeeKid operate within the same digital ecosystem. Their tracks circulate across overlapping repost pages, Discord servers and algorithmic feeds. Songs often come in fragments, short clips, distorted snippets, half-formed hooks, shaped by how they travel and how they’re composed. Producers such as wegonbeok play a central role, linking artists through sound rather than geography, identity or formal affiliation.
This decentralization reshapes how scenes emerge and dissolve. Where proximity once produced coherence through shared venues, recognizable styles or a common geography, influence now moves through feeds, flattening distance and hierarchy. Music spreads faster online now than through local scenes, a shift first made visible through SoundCloud ra. People are encouraged to release things fast rather than make them perfect. For some listeners, this sprawl can feel unfinished or incoherent, particularly for those accustomed to judging quality by polish. Speed imposes its own aesthetic pressure, privileging immediacy over refinement.
Repetition is a natural consequence of these conditions. References overlap. Aesthetics blur. Familiar sounds resurface in new configurations. What is often dismissed as imitation reflects shared constraints more than a lack of imagination, a pattern evident in the ongoing evolution of SoundCloud rap. Artists use the same tools, work on similar platforms and deal with constant demands for visibility. The past lingers because the mechanisms that produced it remain active, embedded in the ways music circulates and accrues meaning online.
The reverence surrounding 2016 benefits from distance. Time has compressed that year into a highlight reel, scrubbing away misfires and awkward experiments. The present unfolds without that editorial filter, exposing contradictions, audible failures and unresolved potential. This moment resists easy canonization because it continues to evolve.
That unfinished quality may be its defining feature. The infrastructure that once fueled SoundCloud’s explosion now exists everywhere, generating music that loops and refuses to settle. What we are hearing is history in real time — unstable, excessive and still deciding what it wants to become.
Aima Raza is a junior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She can be reached at ar2548@cornellsun.edu.
