May 27, 2025
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The breakout star of today’s hyper-online, borderline avant-garde underground rap scene, 17-year-old Gunner Shepardson—better known as Nettspend—is, depending on who you ask, a visionary, a harbinger of hip hop’s end, moderately interesting, or maybe just the most swagged-out teenager on the planet. Your opinion likely hinges on the year you graduated high school—or where you were on the night of December 18, 2023, when a mob of skaters and balaclava-clad SoundCloud rap devotees descended upon an industrial metal detector outside the Mercury Lounge after waiting four hours for Nettspend, xaviersobased, Yhapojj, and Phreshboyswag to make an appearance. For me, the answer somewhere lies in the reuploaded video for Nothing Like Uuu: a mesmerizing hyperpop-rap hybrid that somehow distills the essence of a month at Market Hotel into just two minutes. It’s a whirlwind of gratuitous fog machine smoke, mumbled Chief-Keef-Jr-isms about wanting to "get geeked all night," swirling synths straight out of a Doss DJ set, and, at the center of it all, Nettspend—the inexplicable teenager with black X’s on their hands, completely at home in the chaos.Â
Dec 30, 2024
when I tell you this guy will be the future of British music I am not lying. I don’t think I’ve been more confident in someone becoming a bonafide gamechanger. He is the most creative musician in the whole UK underground and he’s slowly but surely making his way up the ladder. please listen to his last mixtape and also every single he’s dropped so far for his black british music album because no one is making anything like him rn
Apr 15, 2025
🎶
If future generations wonder why hip-hop became what it became, they should look no further than Xaviersobased, the 21 year old native of the Upper West Side. Xavier dropped two albums in 2024 to much acclaim and fanfare — including a Best New Music at Pitchfork — and became a sui generis rapper of Gen Z. They’ll be talk about Nettspend being the future: Xavier, however, has been able to develop a signature style that is indebted to previous generations and still utterly modern and fresh.
It’s not just the hyperpop, the jerk, the trap, crashing into the cloud rap with Xavier, it’s the vignette songwriting on “Pediatrician”, where he recalls a time where he was watching noggin in the waiting room while looking at his spongebop wallet. “I had bands on me back then, I have bands on me right now”, he says, singing with a boyish nasal. On “You See Me”, he floats, over a Rainbow Road-like beat, saying “I didn’t speed down that strip.” Somehow, it’s both laconic and intense, perfect for the kids of Gen Z, who are growing up with worse resources but more knowledge of self than ever before.
The kid is laconic and understands stardom — I saw him do two songs at a warehouse in Soho and was shocked at how sober and focused he was. In 2025, Xavier will be leading the way.
Dec 30, 2024
