The Sadboi Industrial Complex
Cover Art: Pinterest
According to the Urban Dictionary, ‘sad boys’ are described as “a person who wears bucket hats, drinks Arizona Green Tea and listens to Yung Lean”. However, it goes without saying, there’s a lot more to it. The origin of Sad Boys, which we can also consider an offshoot of softbois, cannot be pinpointed. Men have been emo about their feelings and gaslit girls since the beginning of time. However, if we were to define the pioneering genre that helped Sad Boy come to be, it would have to be 90s indie and more importantly The Smiths.
Ask any dude that enjoys collecting vinyl and The Smiths will be one of their defining artists. Before his problematic thoughts on race, immigration and many things that he should not be speaking about were revealed, Morrissey was a source of comfort to many (and unfortunately still is). Despite his pretentiousness, he challenged what toxic masculinity was and made emotions seem cool, thus, paving the way for the Sad Boy sound.
Indie music was at the reign of the Sad Boy movement until 2010 when Kanye West released 808s and Heartbreak followed by Drake’s Take Care, both albums emphasized that despite the fame and the fortune, these men were still heartbreakingly lonely. Drake bore the brunt of the Sad Boy title, being mocked and memed for it. However, both Kanye and Drake paved the way for a whole new generation of artists, one that was more in tune with their feelings no matter how corny they may be. Artists ranging from Frank Ocean, Khalid, to the collective that the genre is named after – The Sad Boys.
After dominating indie boys’ vinyl collection and the radio, the genre moved onto the confines of the internet and more specifically on SoundCloud, allowing music to emerge from teenagers’ bedrooms out of their hometowns and across the world. The Sad Boys’ style mixes the conventional aspects of rap, boasting about gold chains but merging it with lyrics about sadness and drug dependencies. Along with this era of Soundcloud, rap became the infamous gothboyclique which includes Lil Peep, who along with Yung Lean set the stage for a whole new evolution of the genre – ‘emo rap’. Emo Rap is influenced by the post-Kanye hip-hop era but also merges in lyrics dealing with topics such as suicide, depression and heartbreak. Lil Peep without a doubt helped define a new era of music, comforting a generation of fans for doing what his peers did before him, challenging the idea of what a boy should be and making feelings cool. It also showed just how harmful addiction could be, with the unfortunate deaths of Juice WRLD and Lil Peep bringing more notability to the genre.
Sad Boy music has truly been able to transcend all genres as it moved into pop and back into the charts with artists like blackbear and Joji dominating Spotify playlists with catchy choruses that at their core still retain their Sad Boy energy. It’s also present in the new upsurge of pop-punk pioneered by Machine Gun Kelly and TikTokers-slash-musicians produced by Travis Barker.
All of this proves that there is truly a Sad Boy for every genre, bringing to light issues about mental health, addiction and the overwhelming feeling of loneliness and heartbreak that toxic masculinity doesn’t always want to address. So does that mean that this music is solving these issues? Not really. Yes, Sad Boy music has helped to normalize emotional vulnerability and getting in touch with one’s feelings but when commodified and turned into pop hits, it can also wind up glorifying addiction, abuse and self-medication.
Like many things in life, the Sad Boy music trend needs to be observed with caution. Many of the artists mentioned previously have helped challenge harmful stigmas around male mental health which are usually ignored, with suicide and addiction rates for men being staggeringly high. However, the Sad Boy genre can be very detrimental to women and still largely excluding queer artists. XXXTentancion, an infamous Emo-Rap artist, was glorified by many despite being charged with horrifying instances of sexual abuse and having made homophobic statements, and he’s not the only one. As the genre progresses even further into the mainstream, we need to remain cautious about the artists we are giving a platform to. Everybody should be allowed to be in tune with their feelings and watching mental health be normalized can only be a good thing. However, if this is done at the detriment of those around them, it might be time to eradicate the Sadboi trend once and for all.