Hearing the slayr version of rage music feels like a breath of fresh air. You can hear where he comes from. In interviews, he’s not shy about proclaiming the Playboi Carti Whole Lotta Red influence. He’s also from Philly and the Uzi flows are front and center. But what separates this new version of that sound he’s concocted, which has truly found its peak thus far within two 2026 projects Half Blood (BloodLuxe) and Avant Nova, is the luminescent quality of both the winding melodies he croons and the neon videogame-world beats he builds. He has done the best job thus far of giving rage the same brightness as the most saccharine pop music you can make.
slayr has only been making music and releasing projects since 2022, but his growth in individuality in that time is staggering. Going back to listen to his first tape lost files (exclusives) is fascinating. It’s reductive, almost everyone’s first project is. It feels like a mix of Carti, Uzi, Juice Wrld, Lancey Foux, and SoFaygo, but not an inventive amalgamation. But even then, when he was the closest to his influences, there was a sense that he had a deft ability in melodic pockets, both instrumentally and vocally, that would eventually lead him to the forefront. There are spurts of time within records where he sonically goes from a rage stage to an arcade, the vocals gain more electric sparkle, and the beats feel like Guitar Hero meets Mortal Combat.
slayr’s next project in 2023, Chaos (#B4Gaia), initially doesn’t feel like much of a true step forward until the very last song. “Power” proves that slayr found himself instrumentally before he did as a vocalist. I cannot for the life of me figure out what the sample used in the track is, but it sounds derived from the middle of a Soul Caliber sword fight. It’s chopped and warped to feel like a light beam bouncing off glass. He sounds a bit like Ken Carson here, but over a beat that only could be in his own world inside his mind. There’s a reason this song has 3 different iterations since the first one.
The transcendent vocals wouldn’t emerge next until 4 projects later on the intro to slayr’s song “Find Me Again” (a quite telling name) off his 2024 project Gaia 2. This marks the beginning of when his vocals would turn from flex-centered to a beautiful cry. As he searches for himself spiritually, his vocals naturally try to find their purest form. Over sparse yet momentous strings, he pleas for an unnamed entity to reach him at the heights he hopes to reach.
slayr quickly backed away from the vocal prolificness within the same song and for the rest of the tape, but would soon return to form. He would get close a couple times on 2025’s HeavenTunes, but later that year when slayr dropped Half Blood, everything would crystallize on the song “Sloppy Joe.” An ode to a lustful act has an undercurrent of intense desire for love, and anxiousness about how overwhelming it feels. You can feel him in real time coming up with his stickiest melodies yet juxtaposed against a beat that is as addictive to listen to as Ellie Goulding’s “On My Mind.” The staccato bass hits against bursting rainbow synths feels like you’re stuck inside the swaggiest version of Super Mario Bros. As he gets his most intentional, slayr also lets go and folds into his rounded potential as a synced artist in a flow state.
Half Blood (BloodLuxe) and Avant Nova maintain this energy throughout. They even delve deeper into slayr’s psyche filled with anxiety and restless youth. On Nova he even samples the fervent pop electro artist who also presented a solidifying project in 2026, underscores. slayr seems to know he has the potential now to become the first true rage popstar.
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