A year ago, Diego Leanos was onstage at a concert taking photos of SoundCloud rapper $teven Cannon when his camera was stolen. After the theft, he decided to take up rapping, because studio time was cheaper than buying a new camera.
Now known as Lil Xan, the 21-year-old former Xanax dealer is the newest face of the âsad rapâ movement. Sadness itself isnât a new theme in hip-hopâjust look at Tupacâs musicâbut the wave of rappers led by Lil Uzi Vert and the late Lil Peep (who recently died of an overdose) share a connection to another genre: emo. In a recent Noisey Raps profile, Leanos calls his hometown of Redlands, California, âDeadlandsâ with the contempt of a disaffected suburban youth.
Lil Xan will release his debut LP, Total Xanarchy, sometime this year, but his breakthrough single âBetrayedâ is an upbeat banger cut with flashes of pain. Over producer Bobby Johnsonâs hazy, piano-driven trap beat, Leanos raps about sex, drugs, and money in his signature raspy voice. But by the end of the song, heâs barely able to mumble, âXans gonâ take you/Xans gonâ betray you,â referencing his addiction to the prescription anxiety medication. On âSlingshot,â Leanos reminds listeners that his struggle with minor celebrity, addiction, and severe anxiety is ongoing: âI donât pop fucking Xans/I might pop a Norcoâ (a prescription painkiller heâs also trying to quit).
Leanosâ cautionary, anti-Xanax lyrics almost seem like the hip-hop version of an afterschool special, with the maximalist melodrama of emo. But this isnât emo that centers on angsty white kids living in McMansions; instead, it reflects the experience of kids growing up in the middle of the Great Recession, the foreclosure crisis, the opioid epidemic, and the rapid gentrification of American cities that force poor people of color further to the margins. Lil Xanâs first singles only begin to describe it.