$uicideboy$ are enthusiastic sample flippers who regularly return to the well of classic Memphis rap for sonic inspiration, but it’s no longer just imitation they’ve grown confident and skilled enough to break out of the confines of their established sound. But despite their hardcore reputation and fatalistic lyrics, the pair effortlessly ease into lighter modes: “Smile at my casket/I’m at peace with my death,” croons $crim on “Forget It,” over a syrupy beat of almost Drain Gang-like trance pop. Suicidal thoughts are a constant presence on Long Term Effects of SUFFERING, and their bars are filled with images of psych wards and alienation. Pain brings with it the possibility of healing, and on “The Number You Have Dialed Is Not in Service,” they offer wary words of encouragement to the desperate, despite the song’s punchline: When $crim, feeling suicidal, calls his therapist, the only answer is a dead-end intercept message.
But the duality in their work also allows space for positivity.
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$uicideboy$ are more than capable of straight-up buck-wild tracks like “WE ENVY NOTHING IN THE WORLD.,” essentially a disconnected series of nihilistic images of extreme violence. $crim has been particularly vocal about his struggles with opioid addiction and substance abuse, and on Long Term Effects of SUFFERING, the group’s past tapestries of violence have given way to more genuinely felt songs like “Life Is but a Stream~,” which tearfully expresses how the side effects of addiction can drive away the people you love. Across subsequent releases, the flows sharpened, the production grew more composed, and the subject matter took on a more personal focus. or Jackie Chain, just delivered in a slower drawl, with archetypal boasts about cocaine bumps, hit-and-runs, and hook-ups. Buddy Dwyer’s on-air suicide or Bill Clinton playing the saxophone, feel almost more like the blunted blog rap of Big K.R.I.T. Their first mixtapes, adorned with memes like R. Ruby spent his teen years playing in punk bands, and both cousins grew up under the influence of the local Cash Money, but they were drawn to different kinds of rap music as they grew older, a binary that’s fairly evident in their music: Ruby stuck to the classics, crediting more lyrically driven artists from Wu-Tang to Souls of Mischief as touchstones, while $crim fell in love with the head-banging hi-hats and gun sounds of Waka Flocka and Chief Keef. At the age that Lil Peep or XXXTentacion were dealing with sudden fame, Ruby and $crim were broke and trying to get their shit together, which might be why their music is so effectively cathartic: Though they often rap about celebrity, they have experienced what it’s like to be an adult without any kind of success, not just fighting the demons in your head but struggling, in a very real, material way, to survive. Ruby and $crim, who are both in their thirties, are older than most of their artistic peers. Their work hinges on a central question: When you’ve defined yourself by a professed desire to die, how do you sustain a thriving career based on your trauma? Long Term Effects of SUFFERING makes it clear that the anguish is no gimmick, but rather part of an almost Zen philosophy: For $uicideboy$, all of life is suffering, and it’s in that suffering that their work finds its meaning. As their status has grown, so has their focus, and their once prolific release schedule has slowed. With no radio hits and little in the way of mainstream American press, the duo has amassed a substantial following, to the tune of hundreds of millions of streams and collaborations with Travis Barker and Korn’s Munky.
Of the many rappers who followed the aesthetic formula laid out by SpaceGhostPurrp and Raider Klan-lo-fi samples, hotboxed ’90s nostalgia, and an atmosphere that evokes witch house as much as horrorcore-few have built as stable a career as $uicideboy$, the New Orleans-born cousins Ruby da Cherry and $crim.