$uicideboy$: New Orleans' Dark Underground

New Orleans' Dark Underground

In 2013, two cousins from New Orleans — Scott Arceneaux Jr. and Aristos Petrou — made a pact. No plan B. Music or nothing. They started uploading tracks to SoundCloud under the name $uicideboy$, and within a few years, they'd built one of the biggest underground followings in hip-hop without a major label, without radio play, and without anyone's permission.

Going by Scrim and Ruby da Cherry, the duo created something that didn't exist before them: a fusion of New Orleans trap production with punk energy, emo vulnerability, and horror-film atmosphere. Their music dealt openly with depression, addiction, and suicidal ideation — subjects that mainstream hip-hop mostly avoided. It resonated with millions of listeners who'd been waiting for someone to say the things nobody else was saying.

Scrim handled most of the production himself, building beats that owed as much to Three 6 Mafia and Memphis rap as they did to New Orleans bounce. The duo released a staggering volume of music — dozens of EPs, mixtapes, and singles — before their 2018 debut album I Want to Die in New Orleans hit number nine on the Billboard 200. The title said everything about where they came from and what they were feeling.

Collaborations with Travis Barker followed. Platinum certifications stacked up. Their independent label, G*59 Records, proved that you could build an empire from New Orleans without selling out to anyone. They kept releasing albums through the 2020s, each one expanding their sound while staying rooted in the darkness that defined them.

In a twist that surprised longtime fans, both cousins publicly embraced Christianity in recent years, incorporating religious imagery into their 2025 album Thy Kingdom Come. It's the kind of evolution that makes sense when you consider that New Orleans has always been a city where the sacred and the profane live side by side.

$uicideboy$ proved that New Orleans could produce something entirely new — not jazz, not bounce, not traditional hip-hop, but something darker and stranger and completely their own. They did it from the city that raised them, and they never left.