The past 12 months have generally been good ones for hip-hop. It has reasserted a commercial dominance first noted in 2017, when Nielsen Soundscan figures from the US suggested eight of the 10 most-listened-to artists in the world were rappers: new albums in 2018 by Drake, Travis Scott and Post Malone have been hugely successful, while seemingly tangential figures such as Metro Boomin have found themselves debuting at the top of the US album charts.

But as 2018 draws to a close, no genre’s future looks as simultaneously bright and grim as the subsection of hip-hop most commonly called SoundCloud rap. It has proved the biggest talking point in hip-hop, a divisive recent development that broadly speaking seems to turn older listeners into 2018’s equivalent of dads huffing from behind their newspaper at Top of the Pops, angrily protesting that its practitioners look idiotic and that their music barely qualifies as hip-hop – a considerable portion of Eminem’s comeback album, Kamikaze, was devoted to telling them they couldn’t rap – while younger fans flock to its raw sound and no-filter lyrics in staggering numbers. The US charts in 2018 were liberally flecked with music audibly made in its image, from Juice WRLD’s Lucid Dreams to Lil Skies’ poppy I Know You; XXXTentacion was the fourth most-streamed artist in the world on Spotify in 2018. Clearly this is not a fact lost on other members of what you might call the hip-hop establishment, particularly Kanye West. I Love It, his single with one of the subjects of Eminem’s ire, Lil Pump, was a huge hit; his guest appearance on XXXTentacion’s album Skins spawned endless controversy and headlines; when he and Nicki Minaj appeared among the guest stars on 6ix9ine’s album Dummy Boy, one writer skewered their appearance as “relevance-seeking”.

But big sales figures and big name co-signs are only one aspect of the SoundCloud rap story. XXXTentacion was murdered in June while awaiting trial on horrendous domestic abuse charges. 6ix9ine, frequently accused of assault and on probation for a sexual abuse case relating to a 13-year-old, is currently facing life in prison if convicted of federal racketeering and firearms charges. Trippie Redd, a rapper embroiled in a feud with 6ix9ine, has twice been arrested this year, first after getting in a fight with rapper FDM Grady, and then after allegedly pistol-whipping a woman. Lil Pump spent what he said was “a couple of months” in jail this year on a parole violation. Eighteen-year-old rapper Tay-K is currently being held without bail on charges of murder and aggravated robbery. Lil Xan went to rehab for opioid addiction; Lil Peep died last year after overdosing on opioids. Allegations of sexual misconduct resurfaced around Adam 22, whose No Jumper podcast has transformed itself into a media empire on the back of SoundCloud rap, spreading its tentacles into gig promotion, artist management and a clothing line. He has denied the allegations.

Even by the standards of a genre in which legal problems or a little spilt blood have never harmed anyone’s commercial prospects – it’s worth noting that Kodak Black is currently a fixture in the UK and US charts while awaiting trial for sexual assault – this is eye-popping. Moral panics surrounding music are nothing new, and they are invariably overblown, but nevertheless, there is something striking about a genre in which virtually every one of its major players is either in trouble, in prison or dead.

Theories abound. Perhaps SoundCloud rap simply offers a voice to marginalised, disaffected American youth, and that it’s easy for marginalised, disaffected American youth to slip into criminality and violence. Almost too depressing to countenance is that these artists’ behaviour is instead inspired by a desire for notoriety.

It is a scene mediated not through the standard channels, but directly, via Instagram and Twitter, and one way of cutting through the noise of social media is to become infamous. Without wishing to belittle the mental health or addiction issues that some artists clearly suffer, there often seems something performative about their drug use: the birthday cakes shaped like Xanax tablets or prescription bottles, the Instagram videos of Lil Peep in various states of drugged disarray. When Tay-K was placed under house arrest, his reaction was not merely to cut off his ankle monitor and flee, but to announce he was doing it on Twitter. While on the run, he shot the video for his breakthrough hit The Race, a track that commented on events as they were happening: “I ain’t beat that case bitch, I did the race.” In a scathing appraisal of 6ix9ine’s career, meanwhile, Pitchfork suggested his involvement in gang-related crime came about after he had “spent years desperately searching for a way to catapult himself into the limelight … when all other tactics proved to be disastrous failures, he dealt himself to a well-known set of Brooklyn-based Bloods that saw [him] as their meal ticket. In exchange, he viewed this as an opportunity to land the credibility he sought.”

XXXTentacion’s popularity jumped while he was in jail on an aggravated battery charge – the defining image of his career was his mugshot – while The Race was released the day police caught up with the fugitive Tay-K, its popularity soaring when the story hit the news. The charitable assessment is that audiences see these artists’ lives as bound up with the music’s unmediated, no-filter rawness; the uncharitable assessment is that fans are getting a vicarious thrill out of watching people’s lives fall apart, just as fans of late punk rock icon GG Allin apparently got a kick from watching a clearly mentally ill man mutilate himself, assault others, rack up arrest warrants and head in and out of prison.

Just as no major record label would ever have dared release anything as noisy and disjointed as XXXTentacion’s breakthrough hit Look at Me, it’s tempting to suggest that no major record label would have allowed his behaviour – or indeed Lil Peep’s drug problems – to go unchecked without trying to intervene, even if said intervention was founded on nothing more altruistic than protecting their investment. While labels aren’t always champions of pastoral care, a New York Times profile noted that when SoundCloud rapper Smokepurpp signed to Interscope, the label had immediately advised him to deal with his drug use. But the internet-enfranchised ability of today’s artists to go it alone, without a record label, means that oversight won’t always be there.

What happens next is a big question. Is there an audience for a cleaned-up version of SoundCloud rap, where artists follow the kind of advice given to Smokepurpp, and keep out of trouble for the sake of their careers? Do a new generation of artists emerge in place of those deceased or incarcerated, just as troubled and damaged and destructive as those they have replaced? Either way, it’s inconceivable to imagine SoundCloud rap going away: it has proved too successful and influential.