With his latest project, the young rap upstart pushes the chaotic aesthetics of the internet underground toward the center of hip-hop culture
Maybe in the future we’ll see a documentary about the Gucci Fall/Winter 2026 show in Milan, the first collection from Demna Gvasalia at Gucci, and a seismic event within the underground rap world. Or, at least, the sort of underground. Walking the show were Fakemink and Nettspend, two pillars of what label execs and marketing gurus are betting speaks to the Gen Z zeitgeist.
Nettspend, occupies a corner of the rap that’s quickly gaining greater say in the genre’s shape and texture—a veritable youth subculture. Already, Nett’s 2024 project, Bad Ass F*cking Kid, served as a seminal mainstream moment for the 18-year-old artist, who signed to Interscope Records in 2024. That signing followed the strength of a string of viral hits, notably “That One Song” and “F*ck Swag,” from 2024, that established Nett as a formidable voice among his generation. Those tracks exhibited his penchant for vocal pyrotechnics that burst into plumes of raw emotion.
On Early Life Crisis, released on Friday, there’s less of that traditional sensibility around melodics and structure, leaning in favor of the maximalist “rage” style that’s come to dominate the online-centric underground. The results are mixed. On tracks like “who tf is u,” Nett’s able to wrangle a compelling cadence out of the sonic chaos. Raging 808s give his voice a cushion to land on, refracting its sharper edges into shape. Elsewhere, like on “Pain Talk,” featuring fellow underground crossover star OsamaSon, things get lost in the mayhem.
By now, the standard sound of rage rap — redlining drums deployed with abandon, frenetic, almost spastic chord arrangements, and often shouted, mantra-like lyrics delivered in an impassioned scream — has become a predictable shorthand for overtures to a younger audience. In Nettspend’s case, the sound ultimately weighs down everything he does well; his featherlight cadences get drowned out in the production maelstrom.
YoungBoy arrives on “masked up” and delivers the album’s most compelling and straightforward rap verse, managing to apply his southern flow to the underground zeitgeist, gliding over the beat’s rabid tempo. Next to YoungBoy in particular, Nettspend’s weakness as a rapper is hard to ignore—he’s still kind of distant as a narrator, and doesn’t quite evolve as a lyricist across this project, either. Still, there are enough moments of ingenuity — the sweetly sinister “
“Shades on” samples the 2013 single “23” by Mike Will Made-It and Miley Cyrus, and likewise feels like a potential mainstream crossover. The beat’s glossy familiarity pairs well with Nett’s vocals and offers a glimpse into how the rap world might metabolize the new sounds bubbling up from the underground. Nettspend’s music shines in its experimental corners, where the chaos briefly resolves into something more intentional. If the Gucci runway hinted at where youth culture is heading, Early Life Crisis sounds like a volatile but impossible-to-ignore early draft.
