“I know it’s some haters in here,” mixtape demigod DJ Holiday taunts at the top of “Never Stop,” the third track of Gen-Z rapper ian’s debut mixtape Valedictorian. It’s a common statement—especially in the braggadocious community of hip-hop. Released at the end of May, Valedictorian has potential: a consistent flow from ian; abundant influences; and a general aversion to taking himself seriously. The deluxe version of the tape is less than half an hour long, but it’s attracted a massive amount of attention. The project hit No. 54 on the Billboard 200, its impact readily apparent to those who are immersed in hip-hop culture.
There are already scores of fans who are willing to show up and show out for ian, such as the hundreds of people in New York City who popped up for an impromptu Valedictorian listening session that featured ian hanging out of the sunroof of a Suburban, playing his music from a faulty speaker. When the speaker stopped working, the crowd continued energetically chanting his lyrics, a clear display of excitement and dedication.
While ian has built a respectable fanbase in a short amount of time, not all of the attention around him has been positive. You see, ian is a 19-year-old white rapper. He began posting edits and mixes to his SoundCloud page in 2018, under the name suburbancerberus. He then began producing beats for other underground artists, before releasing his own music in 2022. His early releases were more in the vein of cloud rap and emo-rap, whereas Valedictorian is strictly a trap project.
The concept of a white rapper isn’t novel, nor is it new. The Beastie Boys’ debut album, 1986’s Licensed To Ill, became the first rap LP to top the Billboard 200 chart. It took more than a decade, from hip-hop’s August 11, 1973 birthday, to be taken somewhat seriously, as opposed to a passing fad. And the album to grab the genre’s spotlight first was created by three Caucasian men who were nowhere near its beginnings, nor its foundation.
The story of representation is as old as time. We, as humans, want to see ourselves reflected in the content we observe outside of ourselves. That applies to all levels and types of creation, including hip-hop. Women rappers like MC Sha-Rock, Roxanne Shanté, Salt-n-Pepa, and MC Lyte fought for their positions in hip-hop, inspiring other female artists who later followed in their footsteps. The same applies to white rappers: the Beastie Boys paved the way for artists like Aesop Rock and Eminem, the latter of whom is the best-selling rapper of all time.
In 2017, Nielsen Music determined that R&B/hip-hop represented 24.5 percent of all music consumption in the U.S. That number also represented the largest share of any genre and marked the first time R&B/hip-hop was the top genre in the country. Statistically, white listeners are a huge part of why that feat was possible.
A thesis from 2007 written by Janise Marie Blackshear referenced studies that placed white Americans’ consumption of hip-hop at a significant portion of the total listenership. “In fact, it has been noted by many scholars that over 70 percent of hip-hop’s consumers (music purchasers) are suburban, middle-class Whites,” Blackshear wrote. “Because of hip-hop’s expansion, in-group members have had to deal with issues of granting admittance to White, suburban youths who have embraced the culture as if it is their own.” The shift from consumer to creator was bound to happen.
It’s been nearly two decades since this research, but all signs point to the continuance of white dominance in hip-hop spaces. Rappers such as the Chicago MC Noname have spoken out about the overwhelming majority of white people at her concerts. “Whats funny is most black artist are just as uncomfortable performing for majority white crowds but would never publicly say that out of fear and allegiance to 💰,” she tweeted, then deleted, in November 2019. “Which isnt a bad thing necessarily cause n*ggas gotta eat but yall wouldnt be up and arms if I quit workn @ McDonalds. When I go to work, thousands of white people scream the word n*gga at me. and no I’m not changing my art so it is what it is.”
Kendrick Lamar, arguably the most popular rapper in 2024, was faced with the complicated relationship between hip-hop and white fans in 2018. While performing at the Hangout Festival in May of that year, he invited a white female fan onstage to give her own rendition of the high-energy song “m.A.A.d city” from his 2012 album good kid, m.A.A.d city. The fan proceeded to rap the N-word multiple times, despite groans and boos from the crowd. Kendrick stopped the performance and told her she couldn’t say that word, but the damage had already been done. (It should be noted that this occurred just four years after Kendrick Lamar lost the Best Rap Album Grammy to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s The Heist, despite good kid, m.A.A.d city’s uber-popularity among fans and critics alike.)
With new eras come new artists, like ian. His splashy debut has caught the attention of his industry peers, including the vocal and opinionated Tyler, the Creator. During an August interview on Mav Carter’s Mavericks podcast, Tyler expressed his disdain for ian’s come-up, without naming him directly but with plentiful dots to connect. “It’s some kid right now—this white kid, regular Caucasian man,” he said. “And he’s, like, mocking Future and Gucci Mane—like, rap music—and people are like, ‘This shit hard!’ It’s not even, like, satire, like ‘I’m just joking, I’m just mocking.’ And I hold rap music so close to my heart ‘cause this shit changed my life and everyone’s life around me, and I’m a nerd about the shit. This is, like, weird. I’m looking at it, and something about it don’t even sit well, in comparison to someone like a Mac Miller or Eminem, who it didn’t seem like they was mocking it. They had a genuine love for it.”
Bu Thiam, ian’s manager, replied to Tyler on Instagram almost immediately: “Yo, I signed Ian and I’m from Atlanta,” the Columbia Records Executive Vice President and former Ye manager wrote. “He sounds nothing like Gucci or Future lol. It’s called influence. I never thought I’d see the day where you become old and hate on the youth lol.”
Tyler, the Creator had an unconventional, hard-earned entrance into hip-hop. In 2007, he co-founded the alternative hip-hop collective Odd Future. Their debut mixtape, the calamitous The Odd Future Tape, was released in November 2008. On Christmas Day in 2009, Tyler independently released his first solo mixtape, Bastard—he was 18 years old. This project was my introduction to Tyler’s idiosyncratic mind. The content largely centered on gore and other unpleasant topics, with biographical details sprinkled in, but his passion for the craft of hip-hop was palpable. He produced his own beats, wrote his own lyrics, directed and shot his own videos, and designed his own cover art. Despite his best efforts, he still couldn’t get coverage of his work on the popular websites that dominated the blog rap era, like 2DopeBoyz and Nah Right. (In fact, “Fuck 2DopeBoyz!” became a rallying cry for his collective.) Tyler saw cultural titans and gatekeepers as the enemy, and he worked to prove his worth out of spite. So, it’s understandable that his perspective of an artist like ian would be less than admirable.
The urgency to detect the fake from the real, the culture vultures from the authentic, isn’t unfounded. Post Malone is perhaps the most referenced example of a white artist doing a bait-and-switch, culturally: he began his career with the 2016 trap hit “White Iverson,” and continued to work in the hip-hop sphere until 2022. Then, with his self-titled 2023 album, he split off into pop, before settling into country on 2024’s F-1 Trillion. Post Malone’s inclination to avoid settling into one genre has rattled the hip-hop community, and made listeners feel like the artist used rap as a stepping stone to his true identity.
Unlike Post Malone, ian sounds almost like a human form of AI: he’s consumed a heap of information—in this case, trap music—and distilled it into a digestible “message” that errs on the side of inauthenticity. In his attempt to connect with potential fans, ian has also tapped into the zeitgeist. The cover of his Valedictorian mixtape features a replicated image of a meme from 2014. When the one-time “King of the Teens” Lil Yachty invited ian onstage at the Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash music festival in June, ian attempted to recreate the exact entrance that Yachty did at the same festival in 2021, skipping onto the stage and waving his microphone in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans. Compared to Yachty’s moment, which spawned its own series of memes, ian’s presence looks clunky and contrived. Instead of forging his own path, ian is dedicated to rehashing other people’s viral moments and movements, as a means of connecting to an audience that otherwise wouldn’t know he exists.
Like every white rapper before him, ian is being tested in the fires of hip-hop credibility. Is he bringing something new to the table? Are his rhymes reflective of his lifestyle? It’s not unjust for the creators and consumers of hip-hop to ask these questions. Mimicry is rampant; originality is a commodity. On his most popular song, “Magic Johnson,” ian raps: “I’m just tryna be myself / I got everybody mad at me for it.” Only time will tell if he’s actually speaking his truth.
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