The music industry has lost two great artist in 2018, Lil Peep (Gustav Elijah Åhr) and Xxxtentacion (Jahseh Onfroy). It was sad and devastating for family and fans everywhere and no one could ever take their places. However, the music industry sees this as an opportunity to bank off the sadness and success that these artists have achieved. Artists that were not famous or heard of in the underground scene somehow are getting millions of views on songs that just seem to come out of nowhere.  

The artist Jumex sounds like Lil Peep and you can tell by listening to his music that it’s not an accident. His song Loner was posted on February 14th and has already garnered over 1 million views; it got so many views because it was requested by anyone who listened to anything Lil Peep or Xxxtentacion. The song itself is just pretty much constant sound-alike of the song Lil Jeep by Lil Peep but he says the word loner over 50 times, maybe more. His other song “Trapped” production is just an Xxxtentacion song with the music video of Lil Peep’s music video for his song “Life is Beautiful.” He is banking off of the sound and appeal of different artists and being used as a way to cut into sad fans looking for new music by the music industry. If you look at the comments section you would realize that the like to dislike ratio shouldn’t be what it is on any platform.

The same can be said about an out-of-nowhere artist named Baby Goth. She was an Instagram influencer who at the time was completely opposite to who she acts like now. At a point, she dropped an unsuccessful EP named Babyface (it should be noted that at that time her artist name was Bria Bueno). Now she is just a blatant rip-off of Lil Peep except for the way she sounds. It’s very obvious that her hands are guided and that someone is telling her what to do and say and giving her all the tools she needs to succeed. One of those tools is getting to collaborate with famous artists that until a few months ago she had never met. In her song “Swimming,” she has artists Trippie Redd and Lil Xan as features. This is without ever posting on any of her accounts that she knew or ever hung out with either of them or any of the celebrities that she has pictures with. If you look at the BTS for the video, you could see that the energy between the two of them and she was not affectionate at all. Her music wasn’t played that much and certainly not played enough for a big name production company to notice her.

The only thing we can do as listeners and viewers is to acknowledge these obvious attempts of the music industry. They try their hardest to make a quick buck off someone who says one word over and over again in every song but with blue hair or green hair. I say around this time next year there’s going to be a rapper that sparks the same discussion. I’m not saying anything about the people who like these artists; all I’m trying to say is look at the obvious signs that people that came out of nowhere didn’t come out of nowhere by themselves.