2024-25 Underground Rap Scene

Che

Che (real name: Chase Shaun Mitchell) started making music in 2021 with his hit songs on TikTok titled “Agenda” and “Off Tha Lot (remix)” which remixed the original song by Yeat. Agenda blew up initially as a meme and “GifTok” audio but then led to people actually checking out and listening to Che, who was then named CheRomani+. He shortened the name in 2023 with the release of his first album titled “Closed Captions”. He said in an interview with On The Radar Radio: “I just rebranded it. I think it look a little better.” In 2023 he released the aforementioned album Closed Captions which had some more hit songs like bluberry bakwood, blac chyna, and sol. Closed Captions Had more of a PluggnB feel to it with the more wavy beats and chill vocals.

After the success of Closed Captions, Che went on to drop a very widely enjoyed project titled crueger which had an EP leading up to it. Before Crueger had 2 songs: Japan & Tony Tony. Both of these songs are favorites of his fanbase and are widely requested at shows. crueger itself is one of the few songs from his early albums to be played at his shows on his tour in 2025, that song being “Sayso". These 2 albums focused on more Chicago Drill and had harder beats and feels.

10 months later, Che released one of the most popular UG rap albums that year, that being Sayso Says. It’s very rare to see certain smaller artists getting the first listen over a much larger artist like Destroy Lonely; on August 30th, 2024 we saw way more people playing Sayso Says over Love Last Forever. Sayso Says has one of the best tracklists I've ever listened to, some of the best songs on the album in my opinion are “SASKA YOU MADE IT”, “ENJOY YOUR LIFE”, and “CUT OFF YOUR HANDS”. Che will still play songs from this album at shows, although being very different from the style he creates and performs now.

After Sayso Says, i didnt think Che would be able to release a better album, but then on July 18th, 2025 Che released REST IN BASS. Rest In Bass was such a generational album that I still play it on a daily basis. Che went from more experimental and electronic to what can be described as glitchy rage rap. Rest in Bass doesn’t have a single miss in its 18 songs. When I was on a drive to Chicago to see Che for the Rest In Bass Tour, I had listened to Rest In Bass over 3 times on the drive there. Some of the highlights of this album were: “MANNEQUIN (ft. XavierSoBased)”, “DIOR LEOPARD”, “EARDRUMMER”, and “BA$$”. Like I said before, there are no skips on this album, and I can listen to it over and over and not be bored of it. With DJ Rennessy being in the background of the songs, it makes every song feel complete.

Che’s most recent album released on Christmas day, 2025. This album was marketed as a deluxe to rest in bass, being titled REST IN BASS: ENCORE. Rather than Encore being a deluxe with a couple songs added, it ended up being a full 14 song album with multiple hits like: “DIE HARD”, “MONSTER”, and “DIRTY SPRITE”. The second half of Dirty Sprite was put as a snippet on Che’s secondary Youtube Channel: REST IN BASS . On that same channel he released multiple snippets for the original REST IN BASS album, teasing what songs he would sample. As of now, Che has a tour coming up where he will be in Columbus at the King of Clubs venue on April 21st. Che also has a performance at this year's Rolling Loud Orlando which I personally will be attending.

This past friday, March 27th, Che released an EP on soundcloud, and a single pack on spotify. The singles on spotify were titled "Million Dolalr Mansion", and "Promoting Violence". The Soundcloud exclusive EP was titled Fully Loaded, and included a three more songs: "White Folk", "Tattoos", and "Kittens". Interetingly enough, the cover for this EP uses the famous graphic used by Crystal Castles that depicts Madonna with a Black Eye. Che has always shown his love for the duo that was Crystal Castles, often sampling them like in the song "My Favorite Color is Red". On a Recent Instagram post, Che announced that he would be playing those songs on the upcoming Encore Tour that I had previously mentioned.

Osamason

Osamason (real name: Amari Deshawn Middleton) was born here in Columbus, Ohio but began to create music while he was raised in Goose Creek, South Carolina. In his first year, 2022, he would drop random singles like most artists; the most popular and my personal favorites from this year are: “Rehab”, “Tony”, and “On Me”.

In 2023, Osamason would begin to hype up his first album titled OsamaSeason. He would release one of his best and most popular songs, “Troops” as the lead single for OsamaSeason. Around this same time, he would release a collaborative EP with artist Ohsxnta. This song sadly was removed from most streaming platforms but was a heavily enjoyed tape for the time it was up. Around the same time as Troops, Osamason released CTS-V which is a huge single that I still hear people playing to this day. When OsamaSeason released, he was still unsigned which means all the success of his songs “LambTruck”, “Lil O”, and “X & Sex” went directly to him, and would lead to him being signed to Atlantic Records under the sub-label Motion Music.

Later in that year, he would tease Flex Musix, an upcoming album that was teased with the single “Trenches” that had focused on heavy bass over a melody. He would tease the album further by releasing a trailer, followed by the album cover which was a recreation of an iconic photo of rapper Future holding stacks of money in a studio. Osamason would recreate this and would go on to be the official cover when the album released on December 8th, 2023. This album would solidify his style with songs like “All Star”, “Blonde”, and “Pop” which has become a crowd favorite at concerts, to the point crowds will recreate the main melody of the song. After the release of Flex Musix, Osamason would go on to release a deluxe version titled “Flex Musix (FLXTRA)”. The most popular song off of FLXTRA was “Freestyle”, which would have one of, if not the best underground music videos. FLXTRA had also added songs that topped Osamason’s spotify and apple music charts such as: “Flxr”, “Kills”, and “Cartel”.

Besides a collaborative tape with Glokk40Spaz, Osamason took a year off from albums after FLXTRA. Although, he would release 5 of his best singles to date: “Withdrawals (ft. Nettspend)","Popstar ","ik what you did last summer”, “Just Score It”, and “The Whole World is Free” which ended up being the lead single to his next album titled Jumpout. Jumpout was teased for a little while, and ended up releasing on January 24th, 2025. Jumpout was the first Osamason album to chart on billboard and peaked at 151. Jumpout contained some pretty solid tracks such as “Ref”, “Made Sum Plans”, and “Frontin”. Another impressive thing about this album was how high it was rated on each “top rap albums” ranking; on Rolling Stone, Jumpout placed 66, Complex was 28th, and the highest came from Paste which he landed 8th. The somewhat deluxe released only a week later, although it would only include 2 songs titled “Luv” and “Logo”.

Normally, after a big album like Jumpout, an artist would take some time off, although Osamason would go on to release his next album, Psykotic, on October 10th of the same year. Psykotic had been built up over the months prior, with him wearing a varsity jacket with the Psykotic logo on the back. He would also tease merch on his Instagram stories and through a now deleted secondary Instagram account. When the album released, a lot of songs quickly became hits such as “Habits”, “FMJ (ft. Che)”, and “WorldWide”. Psykotic ended up peaking at 81st on the billboard 200, now the highest he’s been on the billboard to date.

As of now, Osamason is working on his next album that is currently untitled. He is also performing at Rolling Loud Orlando and also has a feature on Nettspend’s Early Life Crisis which released March 6th, 2026.

Nettspend

Nettspend (real name: Gunner Shepardson) was born on March 27th, 2007 and began to make music around 2022-2023. His first single on spotify is titled “On Me” and was released with another rapper using the similar Jerk Rap style the Nettspend used at that time named YhapoJJ. On Soundcloud is a different first song titled “dub prod JJ1da” which released in 2022 as well as On Me.

He didn’t start to blow up until later in 2023 when he dropped the track titled “shine n peace” which a very unique beat behind it and began his rise when he would begin to release more popular tracks like “we not like you” which also released in 2023 and would get a music video on The Toxic LifeStyle along with a future song that year featuring Osamason titled “Wake Up” and would have another music video. The one song that started to make him more and more popular was “drankdrankdrank” when he dropped a triller (a short video on the app Triller previewing the song). This video became so popular for him being just some little white kid from Virginia and people often recreate the video to this date.

2024 had a very strong start for Nettspend where he released 4 of his most popular singles: “2024 Freestyle”, “40 (with XavierSoBased)”, “Nothing Like uuu”, and “Withdrawls with Osamason”. Nothing Like uuu would be one of his most popular songs overall, and would top his relevant songs on spotify, until an unfortunate situation happened. Later in the year a popular youtuber named “thayerperiod” would release this video that would get it taken down by showing that it had an uncleared sample for the melody from artist “Ella Mai” who would go through with removing the track from all platforms besides soundcloud. This also happened around a time he was having tons of popular songs removed either due to him using other peoples beats when he first started, or had been hacked and had songs removed.

The same thing happened a separate time but made less sense and it was due to a Deftones sample on the song “That One Song”. It was a very confusing situation due to the fact that Deftones seemed to be initially on board with the sample, but due to troubles with said sample, it was taken down. This one made a little more sense due to Deftones being much much more popular and known, and not wanting smaller artists to sample their music for free.

After all of the troubles with sampling, Nettspend would go on to tease his first ever album titled BAFK for censoring reasons. On December 6, 2024 he released the album which had 15 songs and no features. Some of the most notable songs are “Shut Up”, “Skipping Class”, and “Beach Leak”. This album would begin to have him blow up, and around this time he’d begin to start being seen with celebrities such as Pi’erre Bourne and SZA. Nett would really start to shift his style to more beats produced by “OK” and “gyro”. These producers mode beats similar to the rage beats used by Osamason who had done multiple collabs with Nettspend at this point. Later in the following year, 2025, Nettspend would release a handful of singles such as “Impact ft. XavierSoBased”, “gone too soon” which had 2 songs titled “her friends” and “stressed”.

After this group of singles released, he began to tease his next album titled early life crisis. Although songs would start to be played at shows and there’d be little snippets here and there, Nettspend wouldn't give a release date until January 2026 where he had a mask on that had “ELC Feb 24” which led people to wait for the album to drop on February 24th. On the 23rd, he would post a video similar to his other promos that promoted it like a helpline or wellness center that would delay the album an extra week until March 6, 2026.

Once March 6 came around, we got the album after he teased the merch and tracklist that contained a feature from Osamason and NBA Youngboy. Thankfully, the album lived up to the expectations that people set for it and the Youngboy feature, a song titled “masked up”, was one of the best tracks on the whole album, later getting a music video. Other songs I personally enjoyed were “plan b”, “halftime”, and “shades on”. I'm glad this album released and he announced a tour before the album was released, where he will be here April 22nd at the Newport Music Hall, which is one day after Che is here at the King of Clubs. After early life crisis released, he was later seen on an Instagram post with Paris Hilton after one of the tracks was named after her.

XavierSoBased

XavierSoBased (born Xavier Lopez) began to release music in 2019 as XavierSoBased and hadn’t really done too much until his first EP in 2020 titled “Axajwjn 124643 Jahsnbje” which was then followed by his first mixtape titled with. With was somewhat well received as it was his first main mixtape released, and was hosted by D9lton who had really just been a youtuber and interviewer that Xavier was cool with.

Xavier’s success didn't begin to show until he collaborated with unknown producer Kashpaint. Xavier and Kash released a song titled “Patchmade” which would blow up on TikTok and other social media platforms, and would end in Xavier releasing another few mixtapes that year, the one that was most popular was titled And 3. And 3 had one of Xavier’s more popular songs now, titled “Skippn Class”.

Around this time, roughly 2021, Xavier would create the famous underground collective known as 1c34 (Standing for One Chance). 1c would begin the “jerk revival” with heavy snares, beats that are more so easier to dance to, along with more choppy melodies. 1c34 would build up other artists such as: ksuuvi, ss3bby, Backend, bloody!, Elibanss and cranes.

Xavier was still most definitely the standout of 1c34, especially after he released one of–if not–his most popular mixtape to date titled with 2, the sequel to the original with mixtape. With 2 would have some of his most popular songs such as: “love hate”, “softer” and “what zit tooya”. Eventually, love hate became one of his most popular songs and is something Xavier always performs at shows, similar to softer which blew up more after he released the music video for it, that featured nettspend. In the same year, Xavier released another popular mixtape titled keep it goin xav. This tape would have some of his other popular tracks such as “need me”, “special” and “this far ft. Nettspend”. Even though with 2 was much more popular, I think keep it goin xav is something his fanbase likes to hear more of, especially when performing.

In 2025, Xavier released the EP that kicked off the first Riverside Tour, titled Once More. Every song on this EP is good on its own, but the most popular ones have to be “uncomfy ft. Osamason” and “worth it”. The Riverside Tour was one where some of the major 1c34 members went on tour together, hosted by DJ Rennessy who had previously DJ’d tours for Nettspend, other Xavier tours, and Osamason.

On January 30th, 2026, XavierSoBased would release his first studio album, titled Xavier. Although it wasn’t really anything different from what he’s already released, it was still cool to see Xavier release his first full studio album after years of only releasing mixtapes and EPs. A lot of people have compared it to keep it goin xav stylistically, which is definitely a compliment to the album.

As of right now, Xavier is on the second version of the Riverside tour, and will be joining everyone else on this list at Rolling Loud Orlando this year. Just this past December, he performed at Newport Music Hall as a part of the 2025 Riverside Tour.