The year was 2014. Atlanta was becoming the cultural epicenter of America and the premier export of hip-hop. At the center of it all, the bible of trap and drill music was being spread around the world by the likes of a dark wizard, Future Hendrix, and a Southside messiah, Chief Keef.

Trap music, the Atlanta subgenre made famous by Gucci Mane and Young Jeezy, was transforming into a fast-paced, melodic juggernaut. Drill music, a churning new cousin of trap born from Chicago’s gang epidemic, was a darker approach to Trap, filled with gunshot sounds and murderous ballads. Both subgenres play on darker themes of street life with the most glorious, catchy, and triumphant lyrics, making them perfect for the clubs, radio, and social media.

At the forefront of documenting these movements was Vice’s controversial 10-part YouTube docuseries, Noisey Atlanta and Noisey Chiraq. The series offered unprecedented access to the frontier of hip hop. But it did so with a voyeuristic lens, framing vibrant musical communities as spectacles of violence and criminality.

Today, we revisit Noisey's complex legacy—how its pioneering yet exploitative approach inspired successors like No Jumper, reshaped hip-hop journalism into sensationalist clickbait, and contributed to dire, real-world consequences for the artists it spotlighted. Ultimately, it asks a pressing question: In the relationship between journalism and rap, who profits, who suffers, and who decides what story gets told?

Noisey documented a music landscape that was changing fast. Coming out of the blog era on Tumblr and premier culture forums like ‘Kanye To The,’ where niche super fans curated music and drove the conversation of who was next up, YouTube and Soundcloud were removing barriers for artists to share their music with the world, carving new paths for fame, fortune, and virality. Chief Keef typified this new road to success; he began uploading music videos directly to YouTube while he was on house arrest, garnering millions of views and laying the blueprint for modern Internet Rap, where a teenager could become a rap superstar with an Interscope deal in a few months.

A new slate of superstar talent was bubbling in both hip-hop meccas Noisey covered: In ATL, The Migos were ascending the rap charts. Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan mesmerized the scene with melodic ballads. In Chicago, Chief Keef continued to trailblaze the drill movement, with a slew of upcoming stars, including Lil Durk, Fredo Santana, and Lil Reese, who took the internet by storm and captivated suburban teenagers across the nation.

Host Thomas Morton opens Noisey Atlanta by meeting Curtis Snow—introduced on-screen as an “Atlanta dealer and stick-up boy”—and immediately dives into questions about the drug game, its relationship to music, and the mechanics of trapping.

Instead of exploring the innovation and influence of Atlanta’s music scene, Noisey framed the city’s artists as products of crime, with Thomas spending as much (if not more) of the time staring awkwardly at the show’s subjects as they roll backwoods, tout guns, and throw money at strippers.

“This is a city where the only thing it takes to become a rap star is to have the right song played at the right strip club on the right night of the week. Where beneath the friendly country fried drawl lies an underbelly of Geto Boys-esque darkness and violence. Where a demented midget can scream ‘I’m straight outta the mud’ in front of an adoring crowd where a white nerd is rubbed by two asses, and a cop outside has to wipe promethazine off his boot cause even he’s in on the game.” -Thomas Morton

Noisey Chiraq followed a similar format. Getting up close and personal with the key players in the Chicago drill scene for raw and uncut footage of ‘Chiraq’ while occasionally jamming in a “big picture” question about drill’s relationship to Chicago’s ongoing struggles with crime and poverty.

This is not to say that Noisey was trivial or worthless. The series offered unprecedented access to the scenes in Atlanta and Chicago, whose cultural products had global reach. Noisey captured electrifying footage whenever it zeroed in on the music, style, and undeniable charisma radiating from the rap scene, and brought millions of eyeballs—and unprecedented exposure—to a new generation of rap stars and producers.

Telling a compelling story is one thing, but Morton frequently asked snitch-bait questions about open court cases and gang rivalries, effectively pitting the series' subjects against each other. He did a ride-along with the local police forces in Atlanta and Chicago, who were quick to dismiss the success of each city’s rap stars and focus on their ties to gang life.

Noisey’s reality TV-esque moments had real-world consequences. Footage from the episode featuring the Migos, in which Quavo is filmed standing casually with an AR-15, and Takeoff was shown holding a zip of weed, was later used to deny Offset's bond after the trio was arrested on gun and drug charges. In a call-in interview from jail to an Atlanta radio show, Offset called Noisey "the police" while insisting the creators of the documentary tricked them into showing off their guns and weed on camera.

In a 2015 interview, Thomas Morton was asked about this dynamic, and whether the series’ subjects were acting for the camera and playing up the guns and drugs.

Morton’s response was telling:

Oh sure, yeah. We were joking the other night about how they probably have to go and, like, borrow all their friends' guns. It’s something you’re always gonna have to consider. You’re not going to run into anybody who hasn’t considered what they would look like on TV. Everybody’s automatically gonna act for the camera. 

Acting or not, Noisey’s depiction reinforced a troubling blueprint: the most sensationalized depictions of street life became the narrative. Noisey’s success served as proof of concept for clickbait rap content and paved the way for podcasters who were ready to capitalize on a new era of rappers. While Noisey wasn’t the direct inspiration for No Jumper, Adam22’s podcast was built on the same tenets: bring in rising artists and give them a space to crash out, shell out info about street life, and say the wildest things you can imagine, all on camera.

In 2015, No Jumper was a small podcast and media brand. Adam22 was becoming an underground kingmaker of the Soundcloud era. He brought the biggest rising artists into a space designed for them to talk about their upbringing, music careers, drug(s) of choice, and whatever made it through the clouds of weed smoke.

Adam’s format was one of the first podcasts encouraging unhinged behavior and reckless discourse. The podcast hosted the rise of a plethora of underground superstars, including Lil Yachty, XXXTENTACION, Ski Mask The Slump God, Lil Peep, Drakeo The Ruler, Juice Wrld, and many more, who rose to superstar status.

While there is no question that No Jumper helped launch the careers of some of the biggest Soundcloud stars, the content became toxic as the empire grew, and it was clear there were ulterior motives at play. Adam hosted Famous Dex, who was known for struggling with drug addiction at the time, while he was strung out and high. He also platformed alt-right figures like Richard Spencer and Nick Fuentes, and former staff and guests allege a culture of exploitation and coercion began to seep through the content machine.

No Jumper evolved from a platform of empowerment to exploitation, laying the groundwork for the formula that anyone could enter the hip-hop media if they were willing to be loud, controversial, and omnipresent online, like 6ix9ine and DJ Akademics. Worst of all, these platforms played a role in shaping damaging perceptions of many of this era's brightest stars, who were put behind bars or are no longer with us.

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The digital platforms disseminating hip-hop media are actively shaping the perceptions of more people than just fans, especially when the general public lacks intimacy with the culture of hip-hop.

This has given hip-hop a tough rap over the years, especially from city government actors with agendas. Historically, this has resulted in rappers taking the fall for their city's untreated gang issues.

In recent years, the consequences of sensationalized reporting have become starkly evident. Meek Mill repeatedly faced prison time for trivial parole violations, with media outlets amplifying narratives about his past, undermining his case for reform. Young Thug became the focal point of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s RICO indictment, initially framed as necessary to curb violence but widely criticized as targeting artistic expression and disproportionately focusing on Black hip-hop artists. In this case, Thug’s lyrics were used without proper context by the prosecution to put them behind bars.

Legislation curbing the use of rap lyrics in court has passed in California and Louisiana. But federal trials, like the one Lil Durk faces, won't fall under state jurisdiction. And in a recent update to the rapper's federal indictment, prosecutors are treating his song lyrics as a confession. Lil Durk’s connection to gang violence in Chicago has also been exploited repeatedly by platforms such as No Jumper, framing him as inherently criminal rather than recognizing the complexities of the environment from which he emerged.

These platforms’ relentless pursuit of clicks and advertising dollars frequently prioritizes sensationalism over legitimacy and context, ultimately impacting artists’ lives and freedoms.

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Noisey leaves a complex legacy. It captured a pivotal moment in modern hip-hop where trap music transformed from a dead-end to a hypothetical escape route, leaving a generation of young fans and artists enchanted and inspired. But it also exploited the grim realities of life in low-income neighborhoods to deliver shock value, generating millions of views and dollars, and setting a troubling precedent for sensationalist content that platforms like No Jumper would soon emulate.

So, what should the relationship between hip-hop and journalism look like? Ideally, journalists with credibility, deep cultural knowledge, and genuine intent to uplift and contextualize the culture should steer the narrative, if not the artists themselves. Journalists like Frazier Tharpe, Wallo, Brandon Jenkins, and Andre Gee practice at this high level. There should be no room in hip-hop journalism for stylized snitch-baiting, especially from outsiders who take more than they give back to the culture. Coverage of the arts is often subjective, but it shouldn’t demand that artists answer for their work in court, with their lives on the line.

Ryan Olmsted (@42_douggggg) is the author of the substack 'The Casual Difference'

Photo curation by Erild Kondi (@kondierild)