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I'm so impressed with where @LilNasX has taken his new EP — totally freed from genre, taking his sound in so many different directions, and embracing a new, complex visual aesthetic. Internet kids are so goddamn talented.
Before the Old Town Road explosion, his work was utmost Internet, and ahead of the curve, some of it capturing 90s-kid nostalgia and 80s vaporwave with aesthetic loops. Like this, from Titanic. Others in meme compilations.
After all, Nas built his career riding internet waves. He was a tweetdecking Nicki Minaj stan on @NasMaraj, famous for spawning the choose-your-own-adventure scenario thread genre, using the 150k platform to promote his music — until the Mar '18 meme purge nymag.com/intelligencer/…
This nostalgic webpunk angst has quietly reshaped the internet underground over the last 2 years. Much of the aesthetic came out of Russia in nostalgic fan edits and remixes. It bubbled to the surface in looping YouTube Live radio GIFs and niche memes.
We see this aesthetic — and this nostalgia for a world never known, hardly experienced, or only witnessed in Hollywood heyday — most apparent in mallwave. I tried the full mallwave experience for myself, and it blew me away. melmagazine.com/en-us/story/th…
We even see these vaporwave and punk edits appearing in the political realm from the very-online with Yang-pill and Tulsi content. They're largely a youthful anti-war, anti-establishment, and neo-internet protest.
I don't believe it is a coincidence that this new visual language is bubbling to the surface as the malls close, as the doors shut on a world before persistent connection. It comes at a time when diseases of despair and stimulus are bombarding youth.
It is telling that this aesthetic arrived out of Russia, a country where the teenage suicide rate is 3x the world's — and is becoming the mantra of the west's very-online, while labor force participation among 20-34 men is reaching Great Depression lows.
Before his career was tragically shortened, it was Lil Peep that resonated across Eastern Europe. The emorap genre he pionereed, and the emo Bart Simpson imagery that flowed in its wake, leaves ripples of Cyrillic 2 yrs later. He & his rise were a symptom. 
An edit for XXXTentacion's Teeth, bootleg boy's 2017 's u i c i d e' reads: "The story of a father unable to control his grief after the death of his son. A mother and daughter struggle to cope with the fathers suicide, and are left to grieve two dead"
These are some of the comments on bootleg boy's edit, which has 17,367,231 views. The pinned comment reads 'RIP X 💔' and was posted on the day of the artist's murder.
Despite the saturation of Spotify, it is YouTube where these feelings are expressed, where the comments are left, and where the dreary anime loops play as the lonely seek-out late-night presence in the lo-fi and chillhop live chats.
It's not a coincidence that the streaming lo-fi culture has a symbiosis with anime: lo-fi was born out of a nostalgic recollection of early-2000s anime that captured the mood and burgeoning underground culture of feudal Japan. medium.com/@ochialexander…
Most fascinating is not the lo-fi music, but the conversation and presence it brings. It's almost a counter-culture, a desire for the simple-internet to come back before those doors shut for the last time too. They're a time-capsule.
Lil Nas X's EP embraces this nostalgic, looping visual language. C7osure shares many commonalities with the lonely lo-fi that stormed YouTube, but it took the dreary anime aesthetic somewhere new.
The visual languages of the nostalgic internet are in a lot of ways a cultural reckoning — a protest of FaceTune, likes, broadcasts, of loneliness, and the sinking feeling of modern life. It birthed the hyperrealist cyborg protests of an exhausted medium.
The glossy, metallic, and surreal are a build up of this angst. How we see ourselves in this digital-physical hybrid is changing. The future feels like it is on the tip of our tongue—but an increasing weight in the air foretells an algorithmic oxygen power grab just as close
This is so well captured in Rodeo, Nas' first new track to feature his country sound and yeehaw agenda aesthetic.
As he explores new sounds, unconstrained by genre, this cyborg-punk, metallically visual aesthetic feels like one of the most descriptive pulses on the internet, and society.
Lil Nas X gets it — and he is again ahead of the wave. Consider me a fan.
Pretty much 👇
