The music of Adam McIlwee is an acquired taste. Both as the frontman of the emo band Tigers Jaw and as the rapper/singer Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, his voice sounds galaxies away from what might traditionally be considered “good.” He sounds instead like a demented bird, or someone making fun of music. But he is deadly serious. It’s that unshakeable earnestness that allows him to rise above the constraints of his natural talents. If his music is not dead on impact when it reaches your ears, it will eventually travel down to your soul and stay there.

I was a slow convert to Wicca’s cause, at first accepting the popular wisdom that he sucked. But after seeing him live with Lil Peep two years ago and feeling the immense passion of his fans firsthand, I was forced to reconsider. Some months ago, following his signing to the popular emo label Run for Cover, I sent a note to his publicist asking to hear any new music he was working on. The label sent over an early copy of his album Suffer On, which has since been released. Wicca produced the album himself, and not relying on outside artists to shape his sound allowed him to bend the music to his will, not the other way around. Acoustic guitars, signifiers of his past in traditional emo, were splashed across the album alongside staccato trap beats. He’d clearly worked on his voice as well, and while he still sounded odd, he seemed newly confident in that weirdness. “I am in pain and I keep it a secret,” he sings on the bluntly titled “I Need Help.” He’s so severely off-key, you just know he means it. The final effect is something like a slurry Woody Guthrie trying out new rhythms. I loved it.

My coworkers, though, weren’t exactly fans of the music. When it seemed clear we wouldn’t do the profile his publicist was hoping for, I quickly sent an email explaining why: “Hey just wanna be straight up with you, I am definitely the only person here that is into the music. I realy [sic] really like it but hard to get stuff to happen when that's the case...reeption [sic] has not been great. Will let you know if that changes (ive been trying!) but at the moment not sure what im gonna be able to do.” The publicist responded that it was “totally fine” and invited me to Wicca’s upcoming concert.

Several weeks later, I was scrolling through Instagram and spotted a few lines of text on Wicca’s account. Looking closer, I saw it was a screenshot of the email I’d written to his publicist, reproduced verbatim (almost: my misspelling of the first “really” was intact but the missing “c” in “reception” had been added). The note was preceded by a preamble from the publicist saying, “Touched base with [my name crossed out] at [crossed out but legible] Pitchfork today. See his response below.” There was a second image in the post. I slid right to see it. It was a white sweatshirt with the text of the email printed on the front. He was selling a limited run for $50 each. The caption said “suffer on…”

This is, weirdly, not the first time a rapper has used my emails about not covering their music as part of their marketing. Seven or eight years ago, when I was an editor at The FADER, Machine Gun Kelly’s manager used to write me frequently looking for coverage. Despite his vast fanbase, the Cleveland rapper’s calculated rebel persona wasn’t something I felt was a fit our publication. One day, his manager sent me a link to a video Kelly had made for another publication. In it, he freestyled while someone pounded out a beat with their fists. Overwhelmed at the music’s uselessness and the manager’s continued insistence on not taking a hint, I finally wrote back that I could not foresee a time when Machine Gun Kelly would be covered in The FADER. I spelled foresee wrong. I only remember this years-old typo because Kelly put a copy of the email in his music video, and went on Twitter to tell his fans to send me hate mail. The amount of them who chose to make fun of my misspelling was surprising. The amount of them who promised to do gross stuff to my dead body was less surprising.