“Lo Key’s on his hater shit. I ain’t heard him rap like that since fucking Lets Get Violent”.
These words from the outro of “FXKE” from Lo Key’s brand new EP, LXVE, serve as the thesis statement for the project. Lo Key is fed up with the underground, pissed off at the scene and sounding like a version of himself that we haven’t heard in over 10 years. When he says we haven’t heard him rap like this since (fucking) Lets Get Violent, he’s referring to classic tracks like “King of Horrorcore”, where Lo Key asserted his dominance in the scene with a venom and hatred he’s rarely returned to since. LXVE is a 16 minute burst of anger at the music scene Lo Key has spent 20+ years in. Luckily, a hateful Lo Key is a lot of fun to listen to.
LXVE isn’t all viscous, though, at least musically. The EP opens with “HXPPY”, a cheerful sounding, very Super Famous Fun Time Guys coded song that begins with Lo Key and the listener frolicking in the ocean, surrounded by dolphins and good vibes. That is, until Lo Key pushes our head under the water and drowns us, gleefully. This musical bait and switch immediately gives way to the next four tracks of dense, claustrophobic, hate filled manifesto music.
Lo Key has a hit list and we’re all on it. Fake horrorcore rappers, internet commenters, wannabe influencers, fans who want “the old shit”, people who rep shitty artists to fit in, list makers, fake friends, everybody can get it. Shit, even people that don’t like short songs are on the chopping block.
This angry version of Lo Key has been mostly dormant for a while. Sure, he pops up here and there on recent tracks like “The Box” and “OMWTKYB”, but the majority of Lo Key’s output in the 2020s has consisted of rock music, Oracles, alien EDM and horrorcore collabs. All of this music has been excellent and has cemented Lo Key’s position as one of the most creative and talented artists in the underground, but sometimes showing isn’t enough and you gotta tell a motherfucker. And what is Lo Key telling us? Basically, he’s telling us to kill ourselves so he can live and create in peace without all the noise.
“FXKE” is probably my favorite song on LXVE. The beat goes crazy, updating the dubstep bass wobble elements that dominated Lets Get Violent and making them sound more tasteful and modern. Lyrically, the first verse takes aim at wannabe horrorcore rappers and $uicideboy$ clones who pretend they’re “diggin’ graves” while making watered down horrorcore and visually “put(ting) a hockey mask on top a fucking goofy bitch”. It doesn’t take a ton of “digging” to see what’s going on here.
Phony, mediocre, scary guy rappers have provoked Lo Key’s ire since the earliest days of his career, and in 2025 there’s a whole batch of these artists making waves in both the underground and whatever that tier is just above the underground but below the mainstream. The timing is perfect for the King of Horrorcore to make a return and gut some of these artists on the mic.
“FXKE” is also the song that directly references Lo Key’s past, both in the song’s musical outro, where a DJ cuts up samples from Lets Get Violent, as mentioned in the opening of this review, but also in the spoken outro after the song, where Lo Key’s long time friend and collaborator BadLuck taunts him and asks, “You can do the "Let's Get Violent" shit, but can you still pull off the "Follow Me" shit?”.
Follow Me, Lo Key’s first solo EP, turns 20 years old next month. Lo Key has been been doing this. The song that follows these taunts, “TRXST”, where Lo Key attempts the “Follow Me shit”, is not quite Follow Me shit at all, but something altogether better and more interesting. During the Follow Me era, much of the Lo Key lore wasn’t created yet. There weren’t Oracles, there wasn’t a Shadowland, all of that was in the distant future. But one thing Lo Key had a knack for since day one was murderous horrorcore that delved into the occult, into ghost stories and characterized him as something otherworldly and dangerous. This is where “TRXST” succeeds at summoning the spirit of Follow Me.
“TRXST” does something that is similar to 2023’s Portraits of Horror EP, by injecting the mystical elements of Lo Key’s music into a tried and true hip hop formula. Here, he takes the “Fuck you” of the rest of the EP and injects it with shadows plummeting into another dimension, with black birds bursting into an open, fractured sky, with Lo Key as a 4D hologram laid in the Acres of Taliman. These elements elevate this project from just “Fuck you” and puts them into the larger Lo Key universe. It places Lo Key, our narrator, in Shadowland where he watches us all run around like idiots and just seethes at all of it.
Lo Key and BatiBatt kicked off this year by stating, “In 2025, Everything Changes”, accompanied by brand new photos of themselves. Whether this was a tease at an upcoming project(the capitalization on “Everything Changes” is interesting) or just a general statement, the message is clear. After a somewhat quiet 2024, Lo Key and Bati are coming for our fucking necks in 2025 and LXVE appears to be just the start of it. Personally, I can’t think of a better way to kick the whole thing off than with a little 16 minute burst of angry, fuck you music that harkens back to some of the most popular releases in Lo Key’s 20+ year music career. Sometimes you gotta pop out and remind motherfuckers who you are, and that’s exactly what Lo Key did with LXVE. Chef’s kiss.