Album Review: Suicideboys - I Want To Die In New Orleans

Choosing ugliness as an aesthetic is often disarming. Horrorcore, the rap genre that embraced the violent and macabre, had its time in the sun, walking the line between confronting and entrancing. The idea that $uicideboy$ represent a reinvigoration of the genre is lazy, and in any case, inaccurate. This is greater than the horrorcore that graced our earbuds in years gone by.

King Tulip has a whisper of optimism in its soaring mini-melodies. 10,000 Degrees is a reflective piece demanding thought and attention. Even when we approach the sounds we might have previously associated with the genre, we find works like Bring Out Your Dead; more paranoid than horrific. War Time All The Time is closer in tone to horrorcore, but even that track is not one dimensional. There’s nuance and drive to it; genuine creative pulse.

The biggest triumph of I Want To Die In New Orleans is the element of surprise. $uicideboy$ arrived with a reputation for dodging Wikipedia and thumbing their nose at the establishment. While this record is far from “approachable”, it is open; confident enough to shrug off labels and just be. And that’s more mature than horrorcore ever was.