By his own admission, Comethazine's rap career was ignited by little more than curiosity, a $200 mic and the idea that anybody could be a rapper, so he might as well give it a shot. Now, some three years after he first started recording seriously, the East St. Louis, Ill. native is on the brink of legit stardom as a member of the 2019 XXL Freshman Class. 

Comethazine's first forays into rap found him attempting to ride the wave of conscious hip-hop—he says he mimicked the style of neo-boom bap stalwarts Joey Bada$$ and the late Capital Steez. However, after those vibes didn't get him the traction he wanted, Co decided to go the so-called ignorant route, and the subsequent results speak for themselves.

For the self-proclaimed "greatest fucking rapper in the world," things started moving really fast with the October 2017 release of "Hella Choppers," a song that helped introduce Comethazine to the music industry at large. About two months later, in December 2017, he dropped "Piped Up," the first song and video he recorded after signing to Alamo Records—and a phrase that has subsequently become his mantra. The video for the latter song has been viewed close to 9 million times on YouTube.

In August 2018, nearly a year after dropping "Piped Up" and signing to Alamo Records, Comethazine, who created his name by fusing the words cocaine and promethazine, consummated his hip-hop rise with Bawskee. Powered by "Walk," his maiden mixtape solidified his brand of high-octane raps centered more on fun than anything else. The comical, Cole Bennett-directed visual for that one has over 43.5 million YouTube views in less than a year.

"'Walk' I would say is the first song that really took off and started helping my career," Co tells XXL. While Comethazine says "Walk" assisted him in getting to where he's at now, he thinks it's the totality of his projects that earned him his fan base.

"When people like my music, they tend to like the whole damn body of work and not just one song," Co discloses. "Feel me, it's a lot of people drop a whole body of work and people only like one song."

With the stylistic malleability to jump from murmuring, Playboi Carti-esque, free-associative flexes to joyful gunplay that evokes images of Tay-K, Comethazine, who dropped off his second project, Bawskee 2, back in January, has an adaptable sound that feels like a checklist for SoundCloud rap hallmarks. That said, the 20-year-old rhymer adds a layer of playful mischief that makes the songs all his own. Now, he's trying to do the same for the rap game.

"What I'm bringing to the game is just a certain sound that's different than everybody else—some shit that everybody can't do. Feel me, everybody tried, but they suck at it," Co tells XXL. "As an artist, I bring a lot of not giving a fuckness."

Check out everything Comethazine's got to say for yourself by peeping his 2019 XXL Freshman interview for yourself up to.

See Comethazine Behind the Scenes at the 2019 XXL Freshman Cover Shoot

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