The State of the Dim Address

What's next for Lazer Dim 700?

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Required Listening

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State of the Dim Address

*Disclaimer: I’m not keen on genre tags beyond descriptors like “rap” or “hardcore,” but it appears that I might also be a hypocrite. Sorry.*

If you’re reading this, you’re probably at least familiar with the dominant sounds of the underground and nothing here will be news to you. For those who feign ignorance, it could even be that you’ve never intentionally listened to the stuff, but perhaps you heard someone playing it on a shitty bluetooth speaker on the train? And maybe you liked it? 

At this moment, the underground is humming with the spirit of avant guardians like Niontay and Tomibillsbigger; the deep pedigree of Chicago’s apocalyptic doomsayers; the free car-ers and sample-crankers from the DMV; and, for lack of a better term, the jerk-ers and uncategorizables like Tenkay, YT, and Rico Ace. Powering the subterranean above all else, though, are Atlanta’s long-dominant proponents of dark plugg. 

At its essence, dark plugg is back-of-the-classroom music: loud, abrasive, and at times violent. That is to say, this shit is good, often great. Plugg itself is a vast and varied genre that allows artists to effortlessly make it their own, and dark plugg takes its reach even further by incorporating themes from trap music. There are a million dark plugg type beats floating around YouTube and a million more loosies on SoundCloud. Any one of them could be a gem, but there are two sides to every coin. For all the gems, there are fifteen stinkers. Scene standouts have their share of duds, too, making it so that even the holy trinity of dark plugg — Slimesito, Glokk40Spaz, and Lazer Dim 700 — can be tough nuts to crack. 

For context: these three are the elder statesmen of this young genre, and they show no signs of stopping. Their songs are infinitely listenable and always intriguing, but there’s no good entry point for new fans. They are machines, and new tracks are posted every week, if not every day. Not one track will suddenly flip a switch in someone’s brain. To reap the benefits, listeners need to fully tap into their world, and their worlds are vast. Taking the plunge is worth it, but from the outside, the songs are outward threats upon square society’s sensitive ears, so it can be tough for greenies and aficionados alike to find a way in without a guide.

Fortunately, I’m here to guide you (at least across the surface).

Sito, Glokk, and Lazer all employ the tough and cryptic talk that has taken over rap, but like all dark plugg characters, they make it sound boring — in a good way! — as if they do shit every day. Their muted deliveries, used to croak blasé threats and unconcerned boasts, are two-dimensional at their most dynamic and rarely reach a volume above the aural threshold of pain. They could be saying the most unrestrained, egregious shit in the world (try Glokk’s “Jump out the window like Peter Pan, n**** gon' make him believe” or “Young n**** want a pistol, bitch, I want a tank” for starters), but their deliveries make it so these lines wouldn’t raise any eyebrows unless one disembodied brow happened to have its listening ears turned all the way up.  

By themselves, the lyrics are blissfully absurd and barely discernible—it’s the dark plugg accompaniments that bring the songs to life. The beats — helmed by guys with scrawled names like boolymon, tdf, perc40, and countless others — are what sets them apart. They are at once full of deliriant joy and hollow menace. They oscillate between brain shaking and sleep inducing, seemingly at will. One Osamason (perhaps the most major of the dark plugg players) track will have the most breathtaking sample ever, and the next will spin your sense totally out of alignment. “Talking 2 A Ghost” and “Trenches” instantly come to mind. Whether the sound leans more toward the “dark” or the “plugg” really just depends on if the artist charged their vape that morning.

In spite of their self-serious tendencies, dark plugg soldiers lead vivid, carefree lives — at least in their songs. For every threat and call-to-action, there are at least two moments of ebullient light-heartedness, expressed through a ridiculous comparison, a ludicrous boast, or an anecdote from some after-hours antic. Most often, it’s a potent mix of all three.

Take Slimesito (alter ego Eddy Bash) and “Demon,” his Philly tread-flavored anthem from 2021. On the F1lthy-produced track, Sito hits all of his favorite touchstones in just the chorus, which lands ten seconds in. He compares himself to Queen Latifah in the cult classic Set It Off, his most frequent self-mythologizing comparison and favorite celebrity. He boasts about his gaggle of women and their countries of origin (this time, Egypt). He recounts an awkward street encounter with an old teacher. And, on top of it all, he finds the time to tell us, verbatim, that his vida is “brazy.” On first listen, it's an inane and nonsensical track with a great, heavy beat. On the second and third listens, you’ll start to pick up the lyrics and process their patterns. Spend the next seven spins wisely and by the tenth listen, it’ll like you’re in on the fun. 

The same goes for Glokk40Spaz, Sito’s frequent collaborator and scene folk hero. Despite Glokk’s swings between jail and freedom, his output is consistently great, enough so that he has been propelled into the spotlight, thanks to a name drop from sigh iShowSpeed. Compared to Slimesito, Glokk turns his delivery up by just a hair, raising the volume from his inside voice to a stilly squawk. Otherwise, the two occupy the same lane, peacefully coexisting and working together when possible. 

Then there’s Lazer Dim 700, perhaps the toughest nut to crack, and somehow the most ascendant of all. Though he’s been on the ball since 2019 (back when he called himself luh4thagod), he caught fire in late 2023 off the strength of one-offs like “Asian Rock,” “Tony Dim,” and, somewhat recently, his true plugg heel turn “Laced Max.” Typically, his brand of music relies on maximally blown-out bass and muffled vocals, accented with, dare I say *Fantano voice* a beautiful amalgamation of twinkling stock keyboards, nervous hi-hats, and turbo rolls.

Lazer’s rise has been as drastic as it has been fantastic. One day he was toiling on SoundCloud, and in the middle of February, it seemed that, out of nowhere, he’d blown up the fuck up on X, probably thanks to power user billdifferen. By the next week, he’d blown up on TikTok and was priming himself to take over YouTube after filming a few crudely charming productions.

At the end of last November, Dim had just 541 subscribers on YouTube. By February of this year, he had amassed a touch over 3,000. After just one month, the count jumped to over 16,000 in March. In early June, he somehow had reached over 100,000 subscribers, and if he can keep his foot on the gas, he’s poised to hit 500,000 in about six months. It doesn’t hurt that he is hilarious and ever true to himself. It has been an astronomical come-up. That said, massive talent and success are heavy, and all it takes to get crushed is a single wrong move.

See, Dim’s quick rise at the hands of the internet (excluding the SoundCloud and YouTube warriors—we salute you!) prevented him from growing a real fan base before going nuclear, something that Sito, Glokk, and, to a lesser extent, Osamason haven’t yet had to deal with. This premature come-up has left him vulnerable to a mortal infection: the eboys, the indieheads, the TikTok-ers, and the Instagram guys. These swagless, clout-crazed, indie sleazeball rascals got their hands on him and his singular vernacular, and they’ve come this close to squeezing the life out of him. His brand of uninhibited aural destruction is so inaccessible that it somehow became the most accessible underground shit created since, like, IceJJFish or some millennial shit. 

The internet-centrics flocked to it in droves, and they have since used both “Blacklist” and “Laced Max” on TikTok until they were abused. They’ve posted random loosies on their Instagram stories for attention (namely “Winchester,” at least among the busters that I regrettably follow). They’ve played it for their friends and laugh and laugh, which is understandable; Lazer Dim makes objectively ridiculous music! But listening to it purely for the thrill and the shock is not only detrimental to our pleasure-saturated internet-addled brains, but it is also detrimental to the career of the artist. 

When someone listens to this kind of music solely for the schtick, the schtick quickly wears thin. As ridiculous as the music may be, Lazer Dim 700 doesn’t do this shit for novelty. He does it to push the boundaries of dark plugg, muttering crazy, cool shit over insane beats. The problem is that he does so in the most extreme way, allowing for scene interlopers and attention seekers to latch onto Lazer for a week or two, pummel his music into the ground, and leave him left for dead.

As a result, Lazer Dim is stuck between a rock and a hard place. His fans will continue to listen to the music regardless, but his popularity (and the revenue that comes with it) will diminish sooner than later because he didn’t have enough time to build a true army of fans between breaking through and blowing up. 

Compare this to someone like Osamason, who gained traction much more naturally and had time to build an organic following. For him, he had much more time to establish his audience between foundational tracks “Cts-v” and “Troops” (covered in NOTS VIII) and the release of Flex Music, thanks to a steady stream of rock-solid loosies. Lazer Dim didn’t have that kind of time. Instead of gaining popularity over nearly two years, he found fame (well, internet notoriety, at least) in just two months. 

On the other hand, every time Lazer levels up or collaborates with someone, he has the opportunity to remain relevant in the mainstream, make money off people who think his music is funny, and continue to record whatever he wants. He’s still in a position where he can’t lose, but he needs to be careful. Before he knows it, people might be laughing at him rather than with him.

Lazer Dim’s two most recent collaborations demonstrate his current position nicely. On Friday, the 13th of September, Lazer teamed up with the godfather Slimesito himself and laid waste to the scene (complimentary). On Slimesito’s “DANGEROUS,” he loudly effuses his signature sound into wonderful world of Sito with some help from producers goxan and kade. The duo does their thing to the highest, most cranium-numbing degree, bouncing off the walls with mischievous glee. It’s good!

That same Friday the 13th, Lazer found himself on Jones’s “Do Dat,” and the two laid waste to the scene (derogatory). This time, the final product simply sucks. From the go, “Do Dat” sounds off, and it doesn’t help that Jones sucks at rapping, writing, and picking beats. Lazer does his thing, of course, but Jones bites and jacks with abandon, poorly at that, and the product makes that clear. Where Sito gladly took Lazer’s sound and changed his own game for synergy, Jones jacked everything that made Lazer’s brand of dark plugg special and created the most derivative, soulless version of it. It’s not good.

“Do Dat” is what would happen if Lazer gave Jones a lite version of his sound and told him to try it before he buys it. It’s a lifeless, tired track that refuses to try anything new; it’s a derivative distillation of everything that was exciting at the beginning of the year. Which is all to say, not fit for Lazer. Lazer Dim 700 is a specialist, not an all-rounder. Why bother putting him on a track if you refuse to bring yourself into his zone?

The same goes for the fans and phoneys: why bother latching onto Lazer Dim 700 or any other ascendent, left-of-center artist if you’re just going to forget about them in a month? All that does is cheapen everything they've been working to develop while simultaneously oversaturating the market for the sake of some stupid “bit.” Instead of putting an early end to a good thing like Lazer Dim 700, you could just listen to Brennan Jones and get the exact same results. That’s the motiv operandi for artists like Jones: they just want instant recognition — they don’t care if they has to debase themselves to get it as long as their path is the path of least resistance. 

But hey — Jones, the weirdos that inspired him, and the weirdos in his wake aren’t totally useless. Lazer probably got a bag from Jones, and Jones is currently getting the clout that he so desperately desires, and I guarantee you that he doesn’t lose any sleep over the fact that his audience is largely IDF soldiers and sympathizers. Let’s be glad that the two will likely never work together again. 

As for what happens after an artist goes viral and reaches unintended audiences, I’m not sure what to think. Lazer Dim 700’s swift ascent to overexposure is nothing new, but it’s bittersweet to watch. If you’re a fan of an artist, you want them to succeed, but you still want them to remain your little secret. The minute they reach a heightened level of fame, they run the risk of selling out and losing that special so-and-so. In rare cases, they can “fall off” in terms of popularity and continue their artistic journey as if they never found fame, like the former GOOD Music signee Valee, who is now churning out better music than he ever did under Ye. There’s really no other viable option.

To quote a line often incorrectly attributed to Lao Tzu, “[t]he candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long,” to which I add, “it is up to the chandler what to do with the wax.” An artist can burn brighter than the sun and fade into obscurity after fifteen minutes, or they can use their fifteen minutes to melt the wax of their future and build the candle of the artist that they want to become. In the case of Lazer Dim 700, I’ll be here listening to whatever he puts out and talking my shit until the bitter end, whether it’s in fifteen minutes or fifteen years.