There might be more than one other rapper taking their name from one of America’s most popular anti-anxiety medications, but Prince George’s County, Maryland’s Xanman raps better than any of them. The only thing faster than the 19-year-old rapper’s flow is the prolific pace at which he releases music—Xan has released almost 30 projects on mixtape-hosting service Spinrilla in the past three years, though only a handful of those have made it over to Spotify. He’s been making music for much longer than he’s been releasing it: Xan started rapping at age 5 and had his own studio by the time he was a preteen. A six-month stint behind bars on undisclosed charges briefly interrupted his output, but he’s been grinding harder than ever since his release in May. He’s released multiple projects this year, but Broken is the first that approaches retail-album length.
Given his age, Xanman’s extensive discography is made even more impressive by being mostly self-produced. Like the state he hails from, Xan’s beats—which he refers to as “Xanstyles”—split the difference between North and South. There’s heavy Zaytoven influence to the glittering keys, MIDI strings, and organ swells on songs like “Broken, Pt. 1,” but an undeniable East Coast love that comes through in his affection for hip-hop instrumentals that he’s barely old enough to remember, like 50 Cent’s “Many Men,” Mary J. Blige’s “Family Affair,” and Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing).”
Whether his words arrive over straight-up trap or something more soulful, Xanman has a fondness for hashtag rap, using punchlines to detail his plans to cause physical harm: “Flava Flav/You get clocked in the head,” “I put that bitch underground/Harriet Tubman.” At its best, Xan’s love of non-sequiturs gives his lyrics a light surrealism, but it encourages some cringier instincts: casual homophobia, jokes about Paul Walker’s death, and some especially regrettable bars about R. Kelly and Bill Cosby.
Even then, he lets out his soulful side enough to keep the whole project mostly serious. For as many colorful metaphors Xanman comes up with to describe his guns, there’s an underlying sense of heartbreak, as the album title and cover indicate. His hooks are more often repeated expressions of emotional uncertainty—“Why you gotta be like that?”; “Have you ever been in love?”; “How would you feel?”—than declarative statements.
In classic DMV fashion, Xanman doesn’t let the beat dictate the direction his flow takes, almost as if he’s in competition with it. He crams words into tight spaces and lets them spray in rapid bursts, sounding most at home over menacing, mosh-ready beats like “Brick Paper” and “Back Up.” Reigning rap queen Rico Nasty shows up for a co-signing spot on the remix to “Gucci Down,” the closest thing Xan has had to a hit thus far.
Xan’s vocal delivery is the kind we’re used to hearing digitally manipulated, but he’s comfortable enough pushing himself into different registers, from a gruff low end to a twinkling falsetto, that he doesn’t need a computer to do it for him. Xanman has a mixtape series called “Luther Xandross,” which seems to suggest how he’d like to think of himself: as a soulful vocalist, not just a rapper. It’s hard to catch every single word he says, but the skill is clear enough.
