The Definitive Guide to DMV Crank Music

Eli Schoop offers a window into what's happening in and around the nation's capital.

Art by DJ Short

For the past half-decade, a region formerly known for go-go music has produced some of the most visceral, no-holds-barred street rap of a generation. DMV crank (that’s D.C., Maryland, Virginia, for those confused) is hyperrealistic and violent, akin to its spiritual counterparts, the drill ecosystems in Chicago and Brooklyn. But unlike those scenes, crank has not been co-opted by record industry vultures and the Brandon Buckinghams or Trap Lore Rosses of the world, opportunistic content creators who use street violence to line their pockets.

Its insularity has been rewarded by forward thinking, which resists algorithmic trends in favor of an organic approach to experimentation and a lack of adherence to common form. In DMV crank, “free car music,” and DMV rap writ large, we’re once again seeing how kids stricken by violence and inequality have parlayed their lived experiences into something genuinely avant-garde. Here’s a quick primer for a vast world.

Progenitors

Hoodrich Pablo Juan

It seems strange to attribute the DMV’s creative rise to an Atlantan, but Hoodrich Pablo Juan’s influence looms over the entire region. While his early mixtapes reflect the post-Migos and -Young Thug style that had permeated the mid-2010s (and featured Atlanta legends Johnny Cinco and Jose Guapo), it’s fittingly on 2019’s DMV that he evinces the quicktime, punch-in flow that would come to define crank. He was also tapped in to the wider landscape of DMV rap with features on songs by Goonew and Lil Dude, which bolstered his credentials among the up-and-coming crop of rappers who would go on to espouse his influence.

Xanman

Of the late-2010s DMV contingent, Xanman was the closest to breaking out nationally. He blended hard street shit with a crooner’s sensibility, tempering the aggression and providing an in-road for those who liked the testosterone of the music lowered. Collaborations with Lil Yachty and fellow DMVer Rico Nasty showcase his mainstream appeal, but it’s hitters like “Section 8” and “Slide Music” that made him a free car pioneer.

Lil Dude

Speaking of free car music, Lil Dude and Free Car Diddy’s “Free Car” gives a nominative origin for the subgenre. With fingerprints of Pablo Juan’s style all over, the song has a more measured, sinister languidity that would come to contrast with the insane beats that were on the horizon. Lil Dude, like Goonew and Xanman, was instrumental in the last decade of DMV exporting, lending features to one-time breakout star Goldlink as well as, surprisingly, Yung Lean.

Architects

TrapMoneyBiggie

The most compelling crank producer is, quizzically, a Cape Verdean-Dutch man who’s never even been to America. TrapMoneyBiggie’s style is wild and dizzying, featuring tinny drums and blown-out levels, all thrust into your face with his signature T-T–T-TRAPMONEYBIGGIE producer tag. His most successful partnership is with SlimeGetEm, a D.C. rapper whose draco toting belies his upbringing in Islam, as seen in songs like “Mashallah I Cooked Him” and “Bismillah I Drac’d Him.” Theirs is a match made in heaven, tales of street warfare and plain-spoken bloodlust compounded with beats that sound straight out of the ninth circle. But he doesn’t pigeonhole himself, as seen on “Skino Flow” with loverboy KP Skywalka, which juxtaposes crunchy 808s with a dreamy string section.

WaxBando

Similar to DGainz for Chicago drill and Maine Fetti for New York, WaxBando’s music videos helped catapult local heroes to internet-sensation status. Defined by miasmic filters and woozy visual effects that make you feel you’re smoking runtz with them, his videos are the jump-starters for almost every artist featured on this list, with seven of them hitting the coveted million views mark. You aren’t a player in DMV crank unless you have a Waxbando film.

No Savage

A multiple-time member of that million views club, No Savage is DMV crank’s most viral member, for better or worse. Classics like “Dedication,” “Come 2 Far,” and “Critical” with Gizwop showcase a more traditional side of crank that’s palatable to newcomers. But those view counts may be inflated due to his trouble with the law; he was most notably arrested shooting up a Tyson’s Corner mall in 2022, after allegedly spotting his opps. Free since 2025, it remains to be seen if he can recapture the momentum he had before imprisonment.

Stars

Nino Paid