slayr on Bloodluxe and making heart-on-his-sleeve digicore

slayr knew Half Blood was going places when he saw the YouTube reaction videos.

“I was like, ‘wait, this doesn’t normally happen for an artist of my size,’” slayr says on an early March call. “Then lo and behold, stuff is hitting a million, two million.”

slayr’s November album Half Blood has been a success on every front: viral moments, way more fans, a freshly-inked major label deal. The album marks a stylistic culmination of the North Philly rapper’s maximalist digicore, which draws inspiration from XXXTentacion! and Lil Uzi Vert as much as it does Eurodance and video game soundtracks. Slayr’s all-encompassing rage music fits neatly alongside that of collaborators like prettifun and Lucy Bedroque, but has a polygenre approach that reminds me even more of skaiwater, 100 gecs, and Jim Legxacy (who’s a big fan).

Blending together trap, EDM, and metal, slayr’s music is filled with plenty of brags and stunts. But beyond the bombast, Half Blood is deeply earnest. That’s helped his music to connect with listeners further afield from rap, like electronic popstar underscores, who recently flipped his breakout hit “Holding” in a set at Elsewhere. On Half Blood, songs like “Holding,” “The Sky,” and “Demigod” spotlight Slayr with his heart on the sleeve of his layered tee, cutting to the feeling no matter how cringe it could come across.

That’s also been something of a double-edged sword in the image-conscious SoundCloud rap community, who stereotype slayr fans as unkempt nerds, or else lump them in with white hyperpop listeners who don’t respect hip-hop. This discourse has become nigh-ubiquitous online, though it feels incredibly forced and slayr doesn’t pay it much mind.

“The whole aura thing — Why am I silencing myself just to look cool for a bunch of kids online?” says slayr. When I asked how he planned to celebrate the release of Bloodluxe later that night, he said he was planning to chill at home, then tweeted a pic of a brand new Nintendo Switch 2 over the weekend.

The FADER caught up with slayr ahead of the release of Bloodluxe to chat about finding his digicore sound, recording Half Blood, and inspiring Jim Legxacy’s “next shit” — plus slayr’s plans for the rest of 2026.

Tell me a bit about your life growing up.

I was born in North Philadelphia, as an only child on my mom's side. My dad, I have probably 6 to 8 brothers and sisters, but on my mom's side, I grew up an only child. It was relatively cool like, went to school, did what I needed to do, didn't really get into trouble like that.

Then we moved into the suburbs area where I met a couple of people, did different things. But in my downtime I just fell in love with being online. Then I learned how to make music by talking to people on Discord and it turned into what you see today,

What can you tell me about your fandom for Crush40?

When I was growing up, my dad got me a console, and there was a Sonic game on there. The game had the Crush40 songs on it, and I was just immediately in love. I didn't have any other consoles, so most I could do is go on YouTube and just listen to the rest of the Sonic songs without even playing the games yet.

Over time I just became a real huge fan, and that influenced my music in a way. [...] I definitely took away the Every couple of seconds, something different is happening aspect from their music, and harmonization, for sure.

When do you feel like the “slayr sound” first started coming together?

When I dropped “FOURTH GEAR CYPHER!,” it blew up to a point I didn't expect or could handle, so I didn't really take advantage of that blowing up really. I just let it sit, and took my time, really. I started to develop my next project, which was Gaia, and took inspiration from Pi’erre [Bourne], from Kanye.

I wanted to make something that seemed serious, ‘cause I was making rage, Whole Lotta Red type songs — I was like, “OK, this worked, let me see if this also works.” So I took elements of Pi’erre with transitions and Kanye with orchestral vibes, and that formed my more melodic sound.

Talk me through the recording process for Half-Blood. What was that journey like for you?

When I first started Half Blood, it was originally gonna be called Gaia 2.5, cause I wanted to make Gaia 3 pretty bad, and I was originally gonna make Half Blood an EP just to give people something until my next album. But then it just became a way bigger thing than I thought. I decided, “OK, let's actually make this something full length, see what I can do.”

I’m pretty sure it was either “The Sky” or “Death By MP3” I started with, and then I made “Sloppy Joe” a couple of days after that, then “24/7.” I made pretty much the rest of the songs around September, October, but then a week before I was gonna put it out, I made “Love Blur.”

I felt like I needed a better intro, ‘cause the intro was just gonna be “Demigod.” Which in hindsight is a good intro. It makes sense, like: “Demigod,” Half Blood. But I wanted something more impactful. I’m still a young artist, I felt like I could play around still and not have expectations [to consider], so I thought, “little anime intro in the beginning, I’ll fuck with that.” And boom, it just became what it was.

You incorporate a variety of musical styles into your sound. Sometimes you’ll have dance elements and rock elements on top of the rap stuff all in the same track. When you decide to have something dramatic happen in a song, how do you decide, “let’s go guitar solo” or “let’s go dance break?”

When I do dramatic things like that, I put myself in the listener’s shoes. If I were a fan of myself, how would I surprise myself if I were listening to this for the first time? Okay, this is pretty chill now, but if I wanted to keep listening to this song as a slayr fan, I would add a rock part here to keep people enticed, or I would add a drum and bass part here, or I would completely switch the pitch of the song. Really just to try something else, cause I feel like I have a good sense of when a song is dragging on too long or when a part is getting a bit repetitive.

“Paint A Picture” is lowkey on some New Orleans bounce shit.

“Paint A Picture” was a song I made back in July of last year. But it was a completely different song on the same beat. It was like, “I don't really like this song — but this beat is amazing though. So what can I do to fix that?” I just deleted the old vocals and tried it again with my mindset as it is now, and I was able to make that.

What did you and Jim Legxacy talk about?

Jim hit me in January, around the time where the album got took down. And he was like, “Where did ‘Holding’ go? I love that song.” And that was the first time he ever DM’ed me. I was like, “oh shit, what the fuck?” Like, “I fuck with you so much, I didn't even know you liked ‘Holding.’” And he was like, “That song is so good, it's inspiring my next shit.”

I was like, “wow,” cause he inspired me on this one. So just to know that one of my favorite artists is inspired by me in a way, it made me feel good, you know? And I was like, “OK when can I get you on a song?” He was like, “I’m in a break persian, but when I’m back on road moving, it’s time, I’ll let you know,” that type of thing. So you just gotta wait and see.

In the video for “Sloppy Joe,” you’re cribbing a lot of visuals from Persona 5, which also has an incredible soundtrack. Your music seems to mirror the way videogame music, which is procedurally generated, will ratchet up and down in response to whatever the player is doing. Could you speak to the influence of videogame soundtracks on your songwriting?

Sonic is a big influence on my music, but for my entire sound and the way I do things, it's based off Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, how they use their sounds in a way that no one else does. It would be the most bright game ever with the darkest moody sound of orchestral music and synth wave.

Yoko Shimomura, the composer for Final Fantasy XV, really inspires a lot of the things I do. She changed my whole thinking process. That’s where I took my biggest inspiration from, and I haven’t really tapped into it in a minute. I’ve been on my digicore run with Wa, but for my next project I'm definitely going to tap back into my whole Gaia thing and repurpose it with the talent that I have now.