The Aggressive Beauty of DMV Crank, 2024’s Most Exciting Rap Subgenre

Yes, D.C. rapper Skino put out a song powered by a sample of “Gangnam Style” this year—but it’s far from just another lazy flip desperately seeking virality. Where the original smash hit is a candy-colored trot, “Maurice Scott”—produced by TrapMoneyBiggie and named after a reality show contestant who was caught up in a cheating scandal—makes those same EDM whooshes concrete-hard, as sharp-edged drums and cowbells crash into each other with the force of a city bus blindsiding a clown car.

That chaos gives the recognizable melody a menacing feel, and Skino takes full advantage of it. Like many rappers from the Washington D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area, otherwise known as the DMV, Skino’s words land just a little ahead of the beat, blurring the line between punching in one bar at a time and just letting it all spill out. His writing is straightforward—bits of gunplay, the occasional clunky metaphor—but combined with his rushed delivery and the jagged exuberance of the beat, “Maurice Scott” is a delirious headtrip that keeps the listener pleasantly off-balance. It’s a prime example of DMV crank, the cacophonous rap subgenre that was everywhere this year.

Crank is one of the latest offshoots of Chicago drill, a movement that’s been repackaged and contextualized many times across the last decade. But unlike UK or first-wave Brooklyn drill, which centered on dark, warbling production and gravel-throated street dispatches, or the creative horniness of the sexy drill pioneered by Cash Cobain, DMV crank has more in common with the zany ambitions of sample drill mixed with the already-delirious speed of the DMV’s established street-rap scene. (Locals seem to prefer to call the style “freecar music,” named after the kind of plateless vehicles often used during robberies in the area, but the term “crank” has stuck online.) 

Crank is largely defined by its frenetic pace and outré sample choices. Many of the beats, produced by mainstays like TrapMoneyBiggie, Ehuncho6, and HeyArnold, are distractingly pretty, pulling from the same musical well as early 2010s cloud rap or plugg. Then those elements are mixed into fast, booming drums, amplifying a sense of aggressive beauty that dovetails with the scene’s sometimes-numb, sometimes-harrowing writing.

Street rap doesn’t need the Billboard charts’ approval, but several players in the scene have started to gain serious traction in the States this year. Household names haven’t come sniffing around the scene’s edges just yet—unless you count Earl Sweatshirt’s barnburner of a verse on D.C. native El Cousteau’s “Words2LiveBy”—but since I spent a lot of time with crank music this year, I felt compelled to hone in on a handful of rising stars within this still-developing universe. 

Much of Skino’s album Youth Madness asks the question: How far can you bend an otherwise-serious rapper’s style with kooky beats before it snaps? Take “Double R,” which turns Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk,” one of the most recognizable pop hits of the 21st century, into a bed of vocal grunts, drums, and cowbells that snap and crunch like those dollar bang pops you buy on the 4th of July. “Chokehold” veers toward the maximal, with twinkling chimes, laser blasts, and deafening Yeezus-type 808s consuming everything within earshot, while “Money Murda N Bills” rides along a trilling piano line and skipping hi-hats that sound like they’re constantly phasing between dimensions. Skino’s voice, gruff yet slightly nasal, is the gravitational force holding the music down, his run-on raps filled with stories of sex, robbery, and gangland politics. Youth’s cover couldn’t be more apt for the role he plays in his music. It depicts Skino, hoodie draped over his bowed head, standing in the middle of a post-apocalyptic cityscape. A handful of skulls are scattered on the street in front of him; a murder of crows takes flight behind him.

If Skino’s persona is built around a more traditional flash of bravado, then crank’s other stars come at the style with a decidedly more tender approach. To hear Nino Paid tell it, there’s little romance or fun to be had out in the street. With just over 800,000 monthly listeners on Spotify alone, he’s far and away the most popular crank rapper of the moment, and the duality at play in his music helps paint a complicated—and compelling—picture of a man on the verge of a breakthrough. At just 22, the D.C. rapper spent a grip of his youth shuffling through both the foster care and jail systems, experiencing worlds of pain and desperation. Those heavy reflections make up a good portion of his music, but he finds plenty of motivation, too. 

On his 2023 breakout single “Pain & Possibilities,” his memories are haunted by long-abandoned corners and slain friends, but he has too much to live for to wallow in self-pity. “Nigga, I’ll do whatever it take for the win/Throw me the ball, I’m dunkin’ it in,” he says. Nino finds strength in his family and floats through HeyArnold’s violin crescendos and bass plunks with purpose, a soul reanimated and ready to relive the worst to reach the best.

Nino’s debut project Can’t Go Bacc wades deeper into those waters, confronting alarming visions of the past on the way to reap future rewards. Sometimes that’s literal, like on “JB Couch,” which moves from Nino reminiscing on conversations in an old friend’s basement to befuddlement at the hangers-on attracted by his newfound fame. Other times, shimmering productions from CxcaineBeats and Fendimadeprada illuminate stories of having to enter therapy at 9 (“When I Was Young”) and burying realizations of how much he’s like his father in a haze of drug dealing and chilling with the homies (“Black Ball”). 

Unlike Skino, Nino’s music is so personal that pressing play on any song can feel like an invasion of privacy. But his mindstate is never dire enough to make him too stoic or stone-faced. On “Evolve,” his future is clear to him, but he’s still “high off a Perc in the spot with my hand on my gun,” like he hasn’t moved at all. The song exists somewhere between pain rap and flex rap, and it absolutely floored me the first time I heard it.   

Fellow D.C. rapper Jaeychino also slyly plays into this sense of duality. On his single “Hope,” he raps over the same HeyArnold beat Nino used for “Pain and Possibilities.” But where Nino unpacks his trauma in the past tense as he’s itching to move forward, Jaeychino is firmly rooted in the present as he raps in an unyielding monotone. There’s no partition separating listeners from what’s happening—they’re right next to him while he’s mourning a murdered friend and wiping tears from his eyes, or spending pre-fame money on $1,000 jeans and mink coats for lovers. Every Jaeychino song is a panorama of his life laid out to music—his past, present, and future being experienced all at once, like Watchmen’s Dr. Manhattan.

To match that relentless writing and delivery, he has an appetite for ambitious beats that scrape at the edges of crank. The usual punishing drums bubble underneath every beat, but Jaey has more of an ear for the ethereal and cosmic than his contemporaries—he would’ve fit right into the Clams Casino and Main Attraktionz era of cloud rap. He can rap over anything, from JPxlo’s hazy Jhene Aiko sample flips on “Boosie Aiko” (Jaey’s nickname is Boosie) to Opium-indebted, subwoofer-shredding 808s and synth stabs on “Happy Bday.” Many of his projects move from song to song with no transitions or fadeouts, the sounds spreading into each other like layered watercolor paint.         

This year, Jaeychino dropped five full-length projects on streaming services, most notably the three entries in his Artwork series. This trilogy synthesizes his appeal into short and powerful bursts, but my personal favorite has to be Artwork III—the beats are grander, the rapping and perspective are sharper, and the slew of features from regional talent like ST6 JodyBoof and Lil Xelly add just enough outside color to complete the mosaic. At the center of it all, Jaey’s worldview comes through clearer than before, for better and for worse. Outside of an unsavory Trump endorsement on the opening track, he’s a kid grateful to be able to memorialize fallen friends and family, make clever basketball metaphors, and step to Instagram gangsters who are only tough behind computers. “Give back to my hood, I got love for the youth/Man, I’m still the same nigga in them dirty-ass boots,” he says on “Pr4y,” a vow to stay loyal to his roots without falling into a rut.

Despite its turbulent nature, I’ve found solace and focus in crank music this year. I see the parallels between crank and drill in form and content, but there’s an energy crank taps into that eludes many of drill’s other offshoots. Crank finds balance in a volatile mix that goes beyond contrast for contrast’s sake. By setting their dark stories against comparatively bright and energetic production, the artists behind this style are creating the brighter tomorrow they all envision for themselves.

Feeling the vibes? I’ve compiled a playlist of some of my crank faves below, for paying subscribers only. Please sign up to gain access.