$NOT treats his music as a vessel through which he can express his darkest thoughts. He’s created a template for records fueled by raw aggression and spur-of-the-moment creative sparks, transforming genuine angst into something much louder and more immediate. He’s worked with some of the biggest artists in rap, having invited them into his world instead of conforming to theirs, and coming out on top. Now, $NOT is ready to make the most stadium-shaking music of his career by returning to the loud, abrasiveness of his earlier work. “When I’m in the studio, if I’m in the mood to make some sad shit, fuck it,” $NOT says. “I just say what’s on my mind that day.” The New York-born but Florida-raised rapper rose from the ashes of the Soundcloud era as an amalgamation of everything that’s come before him, an artist who’s comfortable wearing numerous stylistic hats and with the enduring spirit of a prize fighting boxer. He began making music in 2016 as a teenager in South Florida, uploading to Soundcloud syrupy Memphis-influenced raps as if he were a young Project Pat. And much like early Three 6 Mafia, $NOT’s music also features a brooding angst that’s always in competition with his urge to just say ‘fuck it’ and make the hardest song possible. $NOT has amassed more than two billion total streams across platforms, earning himself a cult following of fans drawn to his mix of Soundcloud informality and trap perfectionism. $NOT’s upcoming album was made with the crowd in mind and an urge to produce something that will get kids to actually move at stadium shows. The result is a head-banging masterpiece that’s both darkly energetic and effortlessly fun at the same time. “Nowadays it’s all cool to make slow music and vibe out but like, once you get on that stage and on top of fans, they don’t want to hear those songs,” $NOT says. “Kids will just stare at you if you play slow shit. Kids these days want to hear 808s, they want to get lit, they want to feel it.” On his latest single, „Cruel World,“ $NOT battles his conflicting emotions around a girl he feels snubbed by, ultimately deciding over an eerie piano-riff that he’s better off alone anyways. It’s vintage $NOT in the way that it feels like he’s exorcizing his demons in front of us in real time, unable to understand if he feels truly jilted or if he’s too prideful to admit he feels anything at all. “It’s a cruel world when you love that bitch, but you know that shit won’t last,” $NOT says. It’s similar in tone to “Billy Boy,” a 2018 song that was featured on the first episode of HBO’s Euphoria, introducing $NOT’s dark charisma to a wider audience for the first time. $NOT was born in Brooklyn before moving to Southern Florida as a kid. He spent three years in Philadelphia during middle school before settling permanently back in Lake Worth Beach, which is about 64 miles north of Miami. He came of age during the early years of Soundcloud infamy, where a genuine creative renaissance was taking place with artists like $uicideboy$, Juice Wrld, Lil Uzi Vert and Playboi Carti changing the game with a barrage of DIY music that sounded like nothing else before it. Florida was ground zero for the Soundcloud era, with artists like XXXTentacion, Ski Mask the Slump God and Lil Pump paving the way for $NOT’s early rise to fame. There’s a grandiose quality to $NOT’s last record, Ethereal, which was led by the A$AP Rocky-assisted “Doja.” The two recently performed the track together at Rolling Loud is what was arguably the festival’s highlight. The song — brash, loud and industrious — manages to capture that early A$AP Mob feeling so much so that, according to $NOT, Rocky even performs it when $NOT isn’t there. Ethereal was $NOT’s most experimental album to date, with the artist spending time trying out new flows and burrowing into more pop-leaning records, like “ALONE” featuring Trippie Redd, or the subtle guitar-centered “BLUE MOON” with Teddi Jones. It showed $NOT was comfortable pushing the boundaries of his sound into new directions, continuing to explore his own insecurities over a more diverse set of instrumentals.