Bonnaroo 2022 Artist Spotlight: $uicideboy$

Like we’ve been doing for many years now, we’re making it our mission to help you get acquainted with many of our favorite acts from Bonnaroo‘s 2022 lineup. And, for the first time in three years, we finally feel confident that there definitely will be a Bonnaroo this year, after a postponement then cancelation in 2020 due to Covid, and an unfortunate rainout of last year’s would-be September event. Returned to its traditional timeframe of June 16-19, this marks Bonnaroo’s 21st summer and 19th installment, and features a largely new lineup for the festival’s much-anticipated return!

As we dig through the entire schedule, we’ll highlight a spread of performers spanning across genres and stages, big and small, new and old, to bring you some of the most interesting, lesser-known, and most highly-recommended among this year’s crop of artists. And as our time at ‘Roo approaches, we’ll also be bringing you some special features and full list-style daily lineup guides, to help you plan your weekend ahead of the fest. While these previews won’t span every artist, and might omit some more obvious must-see acts, we hope they’ll serve as a way to help you navigate Bonnaroo’s gargantuan lineup, and to make the most of your busy weekend on the farm!

Grab your tickets right here if you haven’t already, and read on for our Bonnaroo Artist Spotlight!

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Made up of cousins Ruby da Cherry and $crim, New Orleans hip hop duo $uicideboy$ have been one of the biggest underground success stories of the last few years, rising from the online buzz of self-produced, independently released and incredibly subversive mixtapes to selling out shows nationwide, collaborating with stars like Travis Barker, and becoming one of the top-billed acts at Bonnaroo. Before coming together (and allegedly making a suicide pact for their success) to take their career in music seriously, $crim started out DJing and honing his production skills in hip hop, releasing a few early solo efforts along the way, while Ruby da Cherry cut his teeth in the punk scene, playing in bands around New Orleans and releasing some early music of his own. Both of their backgrounds would prove formative, as while $uicideboy$ are ostensibly a hip hop project, they inject their music with raw punk attitude and sensibility, making their exact genre hard to pin down. Though they’ve only released two studio albums, 2019’s I Want to Die in New Orleans and last year’s Long Term Effects of Suffering, the duo’s output over the years, largely produced by $crim, has been staggering, boasting a 20-part EP series called Kill Yourself, and various other EPs (including a team-up with Blink-182’s Travis Barker and Korn’s James Shaffer) and mixtapes, the bulk of which dropped in just a four-year period. And while all of that has helped make them grow from a cult underground favorite to a bona fide success, the group’s thematic focus- often dealing with dark themes of violence, depression, satanism, sex, and suicidal ideation- has also frequently made them the subject of controversy. That raw, dark, and abrasive sound has also occasionally caused them to be lumped in with the recent emo rap scene, but from a production standpoint, they’re much closer to, say, Three 6 Mafia (or contemporaries like Germ or Ghostemane), than Juice WRLD.

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