- GOV’T NAME: Sierra Lucas
- AGE: 23
- REPPIN’: The Bronx
- X: @scar_lip
- INSTAGRAM: @scar_lip
- TIKTOK: @scar_lip
- NOTABLE RELEASES: Songs: “This Is New York,” “No Statements,” “Blick,” “Blick (Remix)” that includes NLE Choppa; Visitor Appearances: Swizz Beatz’s “Take ’Em Out” that includes Benny The Butcher and Jadakiss
- LABEL: Epic Information
- CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Debut EP Scars & Stripes coming later this yr.
- WHO ELSE SHOULD BE PART OF THIS YEAR’S CLASS: “We’d like Large Yellow. We’d like Connie Diiamond. We’d like freaking 41. We’d like them as a result of these are younger artists that’s been grinding and put in work in for years, they usually making noise.”
- INFLUENCED BY: “DMX actually taught me at a younger age that even a person might cry. He was a tricky, sturdy man, proper? However he cried on the finish of his exhibits. He put his life into his poems. He confirmed me actual life, not simply the cash, the jewellery, the success. And he confirmed me how he struggled with real-life issues and habit and despair, however he nonetheless rises. And that’s what I take from DMX. Particularly in my life.
E-V-E. That’s my woman. Lauryn Hill. As a Black girl rising up, after I was just a little woman, and I’d see Lauryn Hill on my TV display screen with the nappy hair and the darkish pores and skin, moisturized with the cocoa butter. I’ll have a look at the digicam and be like, She seems to be like me. Once I look within the mirror, I see darkish pores and skin. I see nappy hair, and it’s lovely.”
- AS A FRESHMAN IN HIGH SCHOOL: “I skipped class on a regular basis. I really didn’t even end highschool. I went to Job Corps to complete highschool. I didn’t get my GED. I obtained my highschool diploma. I used to be a fighter and a nasty child. As a result of while you’re younger within the hood, you be combating individuals and sh*t. I used to be beating bi**hes up as a result of I’m from the hood. That is the sh*t I do.
I beat bi**hes up, and that’s what I did in highschool. It was deep-rooted in trauma, previous trauma that I by no means obtained out, and I simply took it [out] on others. However I by no means beat any individual up for no cause. It was at all times a cause I beat bi**hes up.”
TRUTH ON BEING AN XXL FRESHMAN: “[It’s] a giant deal for me as a result of I at all times watched XXL. Particularly in my teen years, at all times watching artists and stuff, like celebrities that I look as much as, celebrities I really like on this platform. As a Freshman, that’s the most important factor you would be. And it’s vital to be right here. That is an accomplishment. It’s like, I’m that bi**h now. I’m stamped.
I deliver my genuine self [to this class]. I’m bringing a realness. I’m bringing the ache and the ugly reality to the XXL. Uncooked feminine vitality, real-life vitality. New York vitality. I really feel like I’m bringing hip-hop again on the map. I’m bringing that uncooked feeling again. That uncooked feeling, we ain’t felt that in a very long time. And everyone’s doing their factor, you are feeling me? All people brings various things to the desk. However that is simply what I deliver. And I’m pleased with it, and I’m standing assured.
I really feel like a number of my life has been simply to show to individuals, like, that I’m vital. Ya’ll gonna see me as a result of I by no means actually felt seen. Immediately’s my mother’s birthday. She died. And the day of the XXL, I used to be going to go to my mother’s grave. It was like, that is actually massive. I actually labored my option to get right here.
[When the cover releases] I’m going to pop some bottles. Most likely exit to eat with my staff and my fam. [My fans] really feel like they’re my household. After they see me on the XXL [cover], they’re going to be a proud sister or a proud mother, or a proud dad.”—As advised to Bianca Torres
Watch ScarLip’s 2024 XXL Freshman Freestyle
There are only a few up-and-coming rappers within the present state of hip-hop who exude the kind of uncooked emotion that ScarLip brings within the sales space. The 23-year-old New York Metropolis native personifies the cruel realities of a younger Black girl being raised within the gritty streets of the Bronx. ScarLip has confronted unimaginable trauma all through her life, and she or he makes use of these wounds as motivation to flip the script within the type of a blossoming rap profession. She poignantly pours her coronary heart out in her 2024 XXL Freshman freestyle.
With highly effective ardour delivered by way of her dynamic vocal capacity, ScarLip’s freestyle is a tattered but inspirational self-portrait painted throughout an a cappella canvas. The sheer ache in her voice matched with harrowing tales of an unfair life are masterfully crafted to evoke compassion from even essentially the most hardened souls. Alongside an underlying portrayal of self-driven hope, Scar joins the 2024 XXL Freshman Class with a vehemently visceral autobiography in rhyme type.
“As a Black woman within the system, I used to be taught to hate myself,” ScarLip painfully remembers earlier than rapping in regards to the horrors of foster care that she confronted following her mom’s premature demise when she was simply 12 years previous. “Raised in a Black dwelling, in the event you discuss again, they seize the belt/I used to be jumped from home to accommodate, you do not know how that made me felt/Two years later, I grabbed the knife, I used to be able to kill myself.”
Very similar to a phoenix rising from the ashes, ScarLip lays all of it on the road with fireplace and ferocity—the identical attributes which have carried her alongside her disadvantageous path to success. “You do not know sh*t about my life, cease saying that you simply care/The place was you at when he was touchin’ me? None of y’all was there/The place was you at when my mom died? None of y’all was there/I used to have this spark in me, you see, they took that glow in me/Need me to inform you ’bout my life with out you even understanding me?” she spits.
As ScarLip’s lyrical ode to her unfavorable upbringing continues all through the verse, she shines a lightweight on the unhappy societal norms individuals in comparable conditions face all too usually. “Ain’t no completely happy ending, ain’t no happiness for me/Instructed my uncle I need to rap, he advised me that was only a dream/And desires advised come true for Black women that seem like me/So, therapist, please inform me, what do you see while you have a look at me?” Scar continues.
The Large Apple MC may be very a lot conscious that her darkish depictions of deep-rooted despair, whereas relatable to so many, set her other than different rhymers in a hip-hop panorama filled with lavish life and wealthy flexes. When requested what she brings to the rap recreation as a part of this yr’s XXL Freshman Class, Scar says, “I am bringing a realness. I am bringing the ache, and I am bringing the ugly reality to XXL.”
She additionally understands the kind of affect her story can have on a sector of rap followers who can usually be neglected. “Should you’re not assured in who you’re and the way you look, and there isn’t any voice for those that’s simply younger women that seem like me, they are going to be insecure pondering they should seem like this and seem like that,” ScarLip tells XXL on the Freshman cowl shoot this previous Could. “That is why it is at all times good when artists and musicians characterize themselves confidently and as themselves as a result of it simply exhibits us we might be ourselves.”
Nonetheless, by all that, it is not essentially all wrestle and strife for ScarLip at this second in her blossoming profession. The truth is, by her dirty bars and boisterous voice, ScarLip has been capable of rapidly align herself with a few of hip-hop’s most elite gamers of all time together with essential cosigns from Busta Rhymes, 50 Cent, Jadakiss and her high-profile mentor, Swizz Beatz.
After breaking by to the rap recreation’s mainstream in 2023, with “This Is New York,” ScarLip was invited to carry out the menacing Large Apple anthem in her dwelling borough alongside Snoop Dogg ultimately yr’s Hip-Hop 50 Reside live performance at Yankee Stadium. The look made approach for ScarLip to slip on standout collabs with the likes of Benny The Butcher and Jadakiss, each of whom she matches lyrically on the music “Take ’Em Out.” Her most profitable music thus far, “No Statements,” has raked in practically 4.5 million Spotify streams and earned ScarLip her first look on Billboard’s Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart.
Watch ScarLip cathartically overcome tragedy in her 2024 XXL Freshman freestyle under.—Joey Echevarria
Watch ScarLip’s 2024 XXL Freshman Freestyle
Watch the 2024 XXL Freshman Class Revealed
No hindsight music unit displayed.
See the 2024 XXL Freshman Class Artists and Producer
Supply hyperlink