When he was a baby, his parents split. His father headed to Seattle, and Tracy and his mom moved to Virginia Beach. “Whenever I’d get in trouble, my mom would send me to Seattle, and when I would get in trouble there, I’d get sent back to Virginia,” he says. Even though he found himself back and forth between two homes, Tracy spent the majority of his upbringing in Virginia Beach. “Virginia is just boring as fuck,” he laughs. “It’s just bland. No one is pushing to get out. You either work, you’re military, or you get shot or something.” Passionately involved in skateboarding and graffiti, Tracy describes his childhood as one full of rebellion. Perhaps it was this rejection of authority that led teenage Tracy to choose to move out and live with a group of friends in a tent in a Virginian forest, where he kicked off his musical career. “I started making music in that tent,” he remembers. “I used to steal a lot, so I had this shitty ass mic and a Macbook. I would go to McDonald’s to charge it, and then record in the tent.”

With no plans for the future, Tracy figured he’d eventually stop living a nomadic lifestyle and go back home. But his music soon began to gain traction. Nedarb Nagrom, who was already producing for the emo hip-hop collective GothBoiClique, reached out to the young rapper online and invited him to Los Angeles. Once in L.A., Tracy quickly joined the ranks of the GBC (which now houses artists Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, Coldhart, Horse Head, and many others). Influenced by Chicago drill as much as they were by early 2000s emo bands, GBC connected through Tumblr and SoundCloud long before they met in person. “It’s so weird that I moved to L.A. with them, since I knew Wicca Phase before Nedarb knew who I was,” Tracy says. In L.A., he met the late Lil Peep, who would become both his close friend and frequent collaborator. “The first day I met Peep we made a song without question,” he says. “Never in my life have I connected with someone like that. Literally the first day we met we recorded “White Tee” and shot the video.” Tracy and Peep laid down some definitive tracks together, releasing a slew of singles alongside their melody-heavy, sample-laden collaborative mixtapes castles and CÅSTLES II.