The spectre of Gothboiclique is haunting underground hip-hop, whether or not in Asheville road rapper TopOppGen’s penchant for grungy guitar arpeggios or FearDorian’s interpolations of slowcore classics. Few artists throughout the new guard of emo-rap torchbearers, nonetheless, work to reinvent the sounds solid by Lil Peep and Black Kray like Le Citadell, an unlimited collective of indie-pop acolytes, plugg producers, and would-be pop-punkers. A lot of the group’s output attracts affect from the tape-worn angst of mid-2010s Bandcamp darlings like Julia Brown and the genre-agnosticism of fifth-wave emo. Survey the outcomes of founding member Swords2’s productive 2025 for a summation of their wide-ranging tastes: Over the previous yr, he’s tapped his Rolodex of beatmakers to dabble in folksy, pastoral entice, bleepy emo anthems within the vein of Courageous Little Abacus, and a self-produced baroque electroclash offshoot of his personal.
Whereas previous Swords2 outings tended to zoom in on a particular producer or sound for 15 to twenty minutes, The Lengthy Sleep acts as a sprawling overview of all this experimentation. Indulging his whimsical instincts, the rapper cycles between bizarre concepts and accessible cuts: If he’s not craving over cute, MySpace-era electropop on “All people Wants Someone,” he’s inviting skramz upstart and Worldpeace DMT affiliate 300SkullsAndCounting to screech over chiptune synths. Holding all of it collectively is Swords2’s distinctive vocal supply, an unpolished wail that remembers each Gothboiclique founder Wicca Section Springs Everlasting and Cap’n Jazz’s Tim Kinsella. The latter’s style for puerile material and sing-song melodies performs into Swords2’s homage to early-’90s emo. If Cap’n Jazz crooned about “kitty kitty cats” and a younger Isaac Brock tearfully said that “mice eat cheese,” then Swords2 can evoke photographs of “turtles with missiles” and “kittens with pistols” in earnest.
Swords2’s angst goes down best coated in a layer of sugary silliness. Take “Panda,” with its screwball Detroit-style beat festooned with squeaky synths and cartoon spring sound results. There’s a winking sense of irony when his tough-guy flexes namedrop millennial fundamentals like Harry Potter and microbreweries, however that irony attracts consideration to the same tropiness of conventional emo lyricism: What actually cuts by means of is the uncooked sentiment, and it’s Swords’ love for his Le Citadel brethren that transcends cheesiness. Opener “One Factor I Can’t Let Go” is the file’s most express nod to Tumblr-era twee pop, deploying skeletal drum machines and cute melodica to undergird Swords’ cracking vocals.
The Lengthy Sleep’s few flirtations with a extra polished sound have a dreamy attraction, however distract from the eccentricity that fuels its finest moments. “Stomping,” that includes Smokedope2016, is a convincing impression of what Lil Peep and Lil Tracy might need made with entry to modern jerk manufacturing, whereas the jackzebra collab “失望吗” harkens again to the sound of classic Drain Gang posse cuts. They’re respectable singles, however they’d slot in higher right into a separate venture. The Lengthy Sleep gives one thing for everybody who would possibly conceivably hop aboard Le Citadell’s bandwagon, together with some buzzy options that function outreach into adjoining scenes, however the newly transformed will discover even larger satisfaction in Swords’ EP-length releases. Luckily, there’s loads of these to go round.
