The Faceless Post-Reality Innovation of Untiljapan

Art via Evan Solano

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Ladies and gentlemen, pimps and players, this is Anthony Seaman.

Every few years, I’m singed to ash by rap music. I watch from afar as the tides shift and a new generation of rappers, producers, video directors, social media platforms, media outlets, and shady execs rise to overtake the land once ruled by Old Gods I knew best. The latest Gen-Z ditches promo for private Discord servers. They opt for more chaotic sounds as they rummage hyperpop and death metal equally for untapped loops. They grow more vulgar in their subject matter, entirely uninterested in using flowery illusions to camouflage their drug habits and womanizing.

On the periphery of this Gen-Z takeover is untiljapan, an artist who is more ghost than man. At 22 years old, the Atlanta-raised rapper-producer is an Interscope signee with a handful of EPs and two proper albums (Safe Travels and trompe l’oeil). He’s a fan of Future, The Weeknd, Camille Saint-Saëns, Can, ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ, and Mike Dean. More importantly: he’s building a catalog from his shadowy arts studio buried within an onyx mine in the Czech Republic, allegedly. While currently opening on Lil Tecca’s European Dopamine Tour, he’s become the center of an automobile assembly factory strike in Germany and was featured in a to-be-released episode of Peaky Blinders. Also, alleged. The truth of untiljapan is there is no truth.

Since 2020, we’ve seen a crew of underworld rap impressionists like japan crash through every channel of the music industry. These artists aim to capture and blur the reality of the emotional rollercoasters that define their day-to-day lives rather than create detailed tales of turmoil and success. Antagonists aren’t people with justified motives, they’re opps. Lovers are objectified and dehumanized into “that bitch” and “these hoes.” The pain of life can only be described as “fighting demons” or “beating the odds.” These broad strokes allow young fans to fill in the catch-all terms with applicable people in their lives, creating a Mad Lib of their own life rather than a voyeur to an artist’ journey.

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At the apex of this wave is Yeat, a now multi-platinum Taco Bell-sponsored android-voiced hellion, who was once also a spectre shrouded behind designer headwraps and posts typed up from a keyboard that only Martians have access to. Che and Osamason have recently gained critical adoration for maximizing the limits of rage rap also from near anonymity, cleaning up their social media presences to appear as fresh faced reborn characters each release. Rising still are Nettspend and Lazer Dim 700, both becoming the subject of exotic wonder to cultural journalists looking to stay hip with the kids in an attempt to understand why the deepest corners of TikTok have meme’d them into the limelight.

Playboi Carti and his transgressive Whole Lotta Red era gave them all the blueprint. It proved hiding oneself, whether behind camera filters, redlined 808s, designer leathers, opaque lyrics or silence, is how you cut through in a world where turning yourself into a brand has become the norm. What Carti and his successors figured out is that what brings fans to your music, your tour, to fully buy into your world, is creating scarcity, allowing the art to be the only path in.

Untiljapan dove off the scarcity cliff. In terms of press, there is just a single bite-sized TikTok interview to his name along with a couple fan-made video essays trying to uncover his mystique by sewing together his past through circumstantial evidence dotted along the fringes of the internet. His Instagram and X posts, what few exist, are contextless photo dumps. This cryptid-like presence in mass media and internet circles is a refusal of the modern music act blueprint. The agency gained by creating distance from stan communities, dodging vulturistic media, and turning down influencer deals with auraless brands feels like a bold redefinition of being on the come up. This new meta of faceless and densely barricaded, slow-building acclaim has become the Gen-Z model.

What we do know about untiljapan is that he’s a gutsy innovator. Untiljapan’s proper 2023 full-length debut, Safe Travels, became a fork in the road of his scene’s evolution. The record rejected the anarchistic rage sound Carti popularized. Safe Travels swallowed listeners into songs with siren temptations. Dreamy riffs gave way to unsettling atmospheres and all-out cacophony. It was as if all those Atlanta rap collaborations The Weeknd had stashed up over his career became sentient, fortifying the cavernous gloom of Metro Boomin’s melodies and self-hating hedonism Future built a legacy on.

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Untiljapan’s 2025 album, trompe l’oeil, (a 19th-century French phrase referring to optical illusion art) converged multiple waves of Soundcloud rap, electronica, live instrumentation, and however you want to classify Frank Ocean’s Blonde. Slicing through the cyborgish vocal manipulation that rules the album, there’s an earnest youngin’ working out his feelings, failing at times to make proper words but still relaying the perils of heartbreak on a guttural level.

It doesn’t always land. The songwriting on trompe l’oeil paces around the outlines of a feeling rather than exploring a full concept. Untiljapan’s mushy Rylo Rodrugueiz and Lil Keed-influenced punch-ins make me beg that he’ll follow the footsteps of Kanye and hire a ghostwriter (verse one of “More Möet” could be all ad-libs and hold just as much meaning), but how effectively he translates his own seesawing emotions is preternatural.

“Yayo (White Paris)” throws the steady hi-hats and slapping snares of Memphis rap in a blender with hair metal guitar riffs before the beat swirls into a psychedelic digitized choir. I hear the standout cut “Wolf In Sheep Clothing” and become overwhelmed by fluttering pixie dust coated piano keys, crushing sub bass, and fuzzy guitar sections melting into untiljapan’s grumbling fantasies of becoming a wartime consigliere. There’s little conflict, just a fiery sense of duty leading his warbles. He’s taken the role not of rapper or singer, but of a ringmaster.

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The new sonic religion of rap was formed on our screens, not on the blocks of the Bronx. It’s one that treats My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy as the Old Testament with Barter 6, Luv Is Rage, DS2, and Whole Lotta Red as the Four Gospels. Many in japan’s class have risen in status, getting major deals that a decade ago would boost them into a new stratosphere of fame and creative cache, yet they feel like antiquated moves in today’s landscape.

The old school thinking of what makes a star has never felt more dead; streaming and social media numbers are juiced by corporate playlisting and bots, big name media coverage feels destined to reach niche audiences rather than the general public, award shows have long lost value, and any corporate sponsorship hollows out whatever cool an artist holds.

Every other institution in my lifetime has crumbled, and it feels as though the multi-tendriled hip-hop star-making complex that’s revolved around artists commodifying their image after 50 years may also be on life support. A new world is upon us: fame is unneeded and niche community is king. Untiljapan is capable of becoming the lead curator of this complexly fractured generation, provided he can find the balance between his insurgent brand of musical experimentation and off-record anonymity.

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