$uicideboy$

Some artists bond over shared ambitions; $uicideboy$ promised each other they’d kill themselves if they couldn’t make it work. Formed in 2014 by New Orleanian cousins Aristos Petrou (Ruby da Cherry) and Scott Arceneaux ($crim), the group mix the grindhouse trap of early Three 6 Mafia with the anthemic release of 2010s emo-rap: Feel-good music for people who feel real, real bad (and kinda like it). Morbid as it is, the material can also be funny, albeit in an irony-poisoned kind of way: In one memorable line from “Mount Sinai”, Ruby describes being next in line for heaven and disqualifying himself by drinking insecticide; in another, from “Paris”, he raps, “Ruby was a motherf**king reject/Then I cut my wrists, and now I motherf**king bleed checks.” Petrou and Arceneaux have described the project as therapy and treat it as such, self-releasing music at an almost continuous clip and developing a cultlike fan base along the way. Their first official album, 2018’s utterly DIY I Want to Die in New Orleans, cracked the Billboard Top 10; their second, Stop Staring at the Shadows, followed in 2020.