Once you hear Xaviersobased, you’ll want to argue about Xaviersobased. Indifference is not an option because his music turns casual rap convos into First Take. Possibly it’s because you think his glazed vocals—sometimes pitch-shifted, sometimes layered so thick that they’re mystically fused together—absolutely suck. In some cases it may turn you into the kind of hip-hop conservative you used to make fun of.
Alternatively, maybe, you’ll see the light, and go on and on, like I do, about how it’s a borderline spiritual experience, one that will have you standing around with crowds of teenagers and skaters after midnight, below underpasses, at warehouse shows with unpronounceable names on the bill, or at more standard venues (where maybe you’ll get caught in a riot, or end up posted up next to a furry), just to listen to this babyface Upper West Side 20 year old’s blur of blown-out, totally zooted dance rap.
Two years ago, I was initiated into Xavier’s prolific and overwhelming churn of mixtapes and SoundCloud loosies with the self-produced “Crisp Dubs,” a lagging, rebooting single that spices up a sample from the soundtrack of an online porno gaming series. It’s so boundless that it had me convinced that I had just stumbled into the coolest shit and instantly bonded with anyone who felt the same, which is what underground rap is all about in a way. Hardly anything else in his catalog is quite like “Crisp Dubs” but it set the precedent for a style that pulls from so many different corners of popular and underground rap and online and regional cultures that pretty much nothing feels off limits. He can rap “Slap the shit out of a old nigga if he classist,” or a zillion iterations of “Two bad hoes in the trap tryna’ fuck me.” He can reimagine lost subgenres of New York or make a beat that feels like he hacked into Soulja Boy’s old GarageBand account. All for the purpose of making party rap that is infused with the DNA of party rap that came before it.
Xavier’s first (and surely not last) mixtape of the year, Keep It Goin Xav, is a bottle-popping celebration. Sprinkled with clips from his interview with the tape’s host DJ Rennessy—which are mostly annoying because Rennessy lacks the identifiable charisma of memorable mixtape hosts—it’s essentially a look-at-how-far-I’ve-come project. It’s nowhere near as humorless as that sounds, though, because the music is vibrant, improvisatory, and fun as hell. In a way, it’s of a lineage with so much of the 21st century’s great hangout rap made by those below legal drinking age, from the skater’s anthems to the bedroom-made rapalongs to the Magic City soundtracks.
If you were to single out a specific lodestar or two, it would be Keef and Lil B (“Based” is in his name). He’s well-versed in both. On “KeepItGoin,” he revives an early Keef flow to talk his shit about wearing a Goth Money Records T-shirt and chilling, as the stuttering instrumental goes nutty. The sped-up second half of “FanOut” is so swagged out it could revive the cooking dance on its own. He’s even got the BasedGod tendency for a why did he just say that moment. I’m thinking of when he rattles off, “White bitch and she playin’ with my hair” so casually amid all the chaos of “Finna Go Ot.”
The mixtape is less interesting when it slows down to the point that it would clear out a party and send everyone outside for a smoke break. Consider the half-assed “Google,” where he just seems overly stoned, or “Get High,” which is a pretty unimaginative glimpse at getting fucked up. It’s not that way for long. All the clipping and distortion of “This Far” is what it would probably sound like to record next to a jet engine. The clouded Auto-Tune croons of “UToldMeIWasAFuckUpGirl” have a gentle groove and the hypnotic effect of Duwap Kaine melodies. With “On My Own,” he shows that he can reinterpret the present with as much subtlety as the past, putting a dreamy twist on the handclaps and dancefloor commands of Milwaukee low-end.
But for all of the outside influences swirling around on Keep It Goin Xav, it’s New York rap through and through. Where you’re from is part of the story of a rapper—those roots alone can turn a cliché into part of a narrative, even if it’s unintentional. In the amorphous world of internet rap, artists often thread together so many different influences that the music turns muddled and anonymous. Xavier doesn’t have that problem. His music has a tinge of the fly, hustler anthems that might be the city’s greatest export since the cheese slice—it makes sense that he grew up a couple subway stops from Harlem.
For instance: “Special” premiered on New York’s current home for freestyles, On the Radar. You could picture lines like “Fuck the rap game I think they tryna’ ban me” rapped by French on an episode of Cocaine City when he was beefing with Jim Jones. Even “KlkMiHijo,” which producer Cj808 turns into a grand ATL trap build-up fit for a Gucci tape, uses Rennessy’s intro to set the tone. Finally doing his job as the host, he shouts all the girls in Dyckman, before Xavier digs out a slurred melody with a little Max B sauce. Not often is music this off the walls also this grounded. In or out, that’s what makes Xaviersobased worth fighting over.
