The Unsettling Familiarity of XXXTentacion

XXXTentacion, creator of what’s now the in the country,is exactly the kind of artist who seems designed to make adults feel out of touch. But the funny thing is that if you listen to his album, , you’ll hear a young man trying to sound like a lot of different people who’ve come before him. When the 20-year-old Jahseh Dwayne Onfroy raps, he can seem like another of the that his generation is associated with, or like a conscientious underground rapper from the ’90s, sweating each syllable overtense snares. He does rock, too, emoting over simple and cinematic guitar or piano, as if in a Dashboard Confessional demo. When he screams, you might think of Minor Threat, orof Minor Threat’s many descendants. “The only person who inspires me is Kurt Cobain,” .