For its first 15 years as the prevailing youth culture in the Western world, rock ‘n’ roll stayed pretty vital. Then came the 1970s, a time of theatrical prog-rock geekery and mustacheod dudes ripping long-ass guitar solos. Kids of a certain mentality on both sides of the Atlantic craved something with more urgency and excitement, so they grabbed instruments they couldn’t necessarily play and launched the musical insurrection known as punk.

Today, hip-hop is king of the block, and although the state of mainstream rap is quite healthy, something akin to punk has been happening on the internet. Taking full advantage of platforms like Soundcloud, a new generation of artists unofficially headquartered in South Florida has circumvented traditional gatekeepers and introduced a divisive new sound marked by raw, aggressive beats and confrontational lyrics.

With dyed dreads and facial tats, Broward County upstarts XXXTentacion, Lil Pump, and Smokepurpp are making a racket and pissing off old heads. They had millions of fellow teens streaming their songs before the national press started paying attention. But are they truly punk, as publications like the New York Times have suggested? That depends on how you define that adaptable and contentious term. Debates over what is and isn’t punk are as old as the genre itself, and they often center on what attitude artists project with their music.

Debates over what is and isn’t punk are as old as the genre itself, and they often center on what attitude artists project with their music.

The South Florida crew is known for nihilistic lyrics about Xans, Glocks, and rolling up on your girl in a foreign. (Non-Floridian Soundcloud heroes like Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Peep, and Trippie Redd are generally more emo in their approach.) It can be bleakly funny, like when Lil Pump gets high with his grandma and takes aim at yours. The nimblest rhymer of the bunch, Ski Mask the Slump God, counteracts the grimness with constant references to cartoons and movies you haven’t thought about in years.

While gritty street narratives sprinkled with pop-culture references aren’t new for hip-hop, the brazen, unapologetic tone of these two-minute mosh-worthy recordings has sent shockwaves through the music world. It’s no longer just an underground thing: Smokepurpp has signed to Travis Scott’s Cactus Jack label, while Lil Pump’s self-titled debut mixtape reached No. 3 on this week’s Billboard 200. “What you gotta say?” Lil Pump asks on the opening track of the project, daring you to challenge the hedonistic lifestyle he’s described. This all plays into the purest notion of what it means to be punk: not giving a fuck.

On Ski Mask’s “Bird Is the Word,” he raises a middle finger to authority while simultaneously making a drug reference and quoting from “Surfin’ Bird,” a 1963 garage-rock tune later covered by seminal NYC punks the Ramones:

I’m flippin' the bird, the bird is the word

I’m flippin' that bird, the police are nerds I think outside the box

Ramones were GOATs, but of the original ‘70s punk groups, none embodied the spirit of young, loud snottiness better than the Dead Boys, whose 1977 debut album is actually called Young Loud and Snotty. Compared to peers like Blondie and Talking Heads, these Cleveland transplants were on some truly dark shit. Here’s the first verse from their signature song, “Sonic Reducer”:

I don’t need anyone

Don’t need no mom and dad

Don’t need no pretty face

Don’t need no human race

I got some news for you

Don’t even need you, too

In the last verse, lead singer Stiv Bators declares, “I’ll be a pharaoh soon / Rule from some golden tomb,” imagining himself towering over everyone who’s ever done him wrong. It’s a cynical, misanthropic dream that Smokepurpp seems to share on “Glock In My Benz,” though he’s motivated less by bitterness than he is by the simple desire to cruise through life as he pleases.

I don’t want no friends

I want no friends

Glock inside my Benz

No such thing as friends

While “Sonic Reducer” and other Dead Boys cuts like “All This and More” and “Caught With the Meat In Your Mouth” carry some cringeworthy misogyny, they’re tame compared to a lot of Soundcloud rap. (See: XXX’s “Butthole Girl!” featuring Tank Head, Robb Banks, and Craig Xen.) Speaking with Genius earlier this year, famed pop-punk producer and Goldfinger frontman John Feldmann argued that sexual content of any kind marks a key distinction between Soundcloud rap and punk rock.

“It’s the most graphic lyrics about hooking up ever, and that’s not what punk rock was about—ever,“ says Feldmann, a big fan of Soundcloud rap who’s actually worked with producer Ronny J, one of the scene’s sonic architects. "It was never about that. In any genre of punk rock. That was never the message.”

For a certain type of punk band, “message” is very important. If one definition of punk is not caring about a damn thing, another is caring about absolutely everything. The godfathers of this were the Clash, a London foursome who addressed issues ranging from hometown boredom to U.S. proxy wars in South America. “We’re anti-fascist, we’re anti-violence, we’re anti-racist and we’re pro-creative,” singer Joe Strummer once said. “We’re against ignorance.”

The Clash are part of a long lineage of political punk bands that includes Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Crass, Fugazi, Stiff Little Fingers, Anti-Flag, Against Me! and Bad Religion, whose PhD-packing lead singer Greg Graffin has a rather highfalutin way of describing the genre that, let us not forget, also encompasses Blink-182:

Punk is: the personal expression of uniqueness that comes from the experiences of growing up in touch with our human ability to reason and ask questions; a movement that serves to refute social attitudes that have been perpetuated through willful ignorance of human nature; a process of questioning and commitment to understanding that results in self-progress, and through repetition, flowers into social evolution; a belief that this world is what we make of it, truth comes from our understanding…

Graffin may be disappointed by the lack of questioning in Soundcloud rap. In a recent interview with Noisey, Smokepurpp defined the “movement” he’s part of as “ignorant.” Asked for tips on how to be ignorant, Lil Pump replied, “Stop giving a fuck.” In fairness to Purpp, who comes across as completely self-aware in his New York Times interview, messing with suspicious journalists is part of the fun. It was for the Sex Pistols, who swore on TV in 1976 and instantly became Britain’s most infamous punk group.

Politically speaking, the Pistols were a curious case. Their twin anthems “God Save the Queen” and “Anarchy In the UK” seem pretty nihilistic, but singer John Lydon, f.k.a. Johnny Rotten, claims that lines like “There is no future in England’s dreaming” and “I get pissed/Destroy!” come from a place of righteous anger. “[Nihilism] was a word that was thrown at me very early on in my career,” Lydon told Alan Light. “Ludicrous.”

But Lydon’s artistic intent almost doesn’t matter, because the Sex Pistols are remembered by many solely for their ability to shock people—another punk prerequisite, according to some definitions. Creating a spectacle was Pistols bassist Sid Vicious’ chief purpose for being in the band.

It remains to be seen how XXX will be dealt with by the courts or remembered by the public, but for now, like it or not, he’s the Sid Vicious of Soundcloud rap.

One of the most iconic images of the punk era is that of Sid onstage in Dallas in 1978, bleeding from the nose after being socked by a female fan. By most accounts, Vicious (real name: John Ritchie) was a good kid who took to the role of Pistols mascot a little too enthusiastically. He developed a nasty heroin habit, and in October 1978, he allegedly stabbed girlfriend Nancy Spungen to death following a drug binge at New York’s Chelsea Hotel. Sid maintained his innocence but overdosed before he could stand trial.

As a man accused of murdering his girlfriend, Sid is a problematic figure, to say the least. And yet he’s still worshipped as a symbol of punk’s outrageousness. Parallels might be drawn between Sid and XXXTentacion, who goes to great lengths on his turnt-down 2017 debut 17 to paint himself as a troubled soul and wrongly accused bad guy. (The album reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200.) XXX didn’t just get his nose bloodied onstage, he got knocked out, and his alleged crimes against women—including aggravated battery of a pregnant woman—suggest a pattern of sickening behavior that can’t be explained away by a chemically induced stupor.

It remains to be seen how XXX will be dealt with by the courts (his trial starts in December) or remembered by the public, but for now, like it or not, he’s the Sid Vicious of Soundcloud rap.

Or maybe he’s the G.G. Allin, a figure who’s mentioned way more frequently in conjunction with what’s happening in Florida and beyond. (Lil Uzi Vert loves the guy.) Like Sid, Allin is more famous for onstage mischief—in his case throwing poop at fans—than for any of his musical output. When Purpp spoke to HNHH about why the cover of his 2017 Deadstar mixtape recreates an old Allin photo, the rapper revealed himself to be less than a superfan and admitted his friend came up with the idea.

In that Deadstar cover image, Purpp lies in a coffin surrounded by photos of himself, a bottle of booze by his side. It’s classic romanticization of death, a time-honored pastime of goths and gangstas alike. Young rebellious artists are naturally drawn to taboo subjects, and charitable listeners might hear all the gunplay and sexual mayhem of Soundcloud rap as nothing more than juvenile button-pushing. After all, these guys are teenagers—younger than pop-punk heroes NOFX were when they recorded dopey tunes like “On the Rag” and “New Boobs.” Pop-punk has long been a safe space for immature young men, but because they’re white suburban bros, the sexism and homophobia tend to get overlooked.

Of course, subject matter and shock value don’t matter much if the music doesn’t go hard. Sonically, punk should be abrasive to outsiders and driven by a passion that compensates for any musical shortcomings. By these metrics, a song like Ski Mask and XXX’s “Take a Step Back” is punk as fuck. As Ronny J’s sepulchral bass rattles the skull, the screamed chorus vocals—”Fucked up, fucked up, fucked up, fucked up!”—crackle with rage. Much of 2017 Members Only, Vol. 3 tape is even gnarlier. A growling Slipknot sample underpins Ski Mask’s “Off the Wall,” while shredding metal guitars fit nicely with the shout-outs to Satan in closer “Bowser.” Everything sounds homemade, single take, in the moment.

The definition of punk outlined in the second issue of the seminal ’70s-era NYC fanzine Punk: “any kid can pick up a guitar and become a rock ‘n’ roll star, despite or because of his lack of ability, talent, intelligence, limitations and/or potential.

The DIY ethos so central to punk is also paramount in South Florida rap. If you’re a kid from that economically blighted area, you get to see people who look like you creating new identities and sharing exaggerated versions of their life stories with millions. Self-expression suddenly seems doable, just as it does for the Latino teens throwing backyard shows in the excellent 2016 documentary Los Punks: We Are All We Have. They use guitars instead of laptops, but the spirit is the same. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Smokepurpp remembered encouraging Lil Pump to record his first song using headphones for a mic. Ski Mask recalled he and XXX using “the worst recording set up” to make their early recordings. “But you could set it up anywhere, and that was the wave we were one,“ Ski Mask said. “The raw energy of that—the distortion—is our specialty and we used that to our advantage.”

Ronny J told Noisey that even though he grew up with Charlie Heat, a producer who’s now signed to Kanye West’s label, he resisted asking his friend for pointers. He wanted to learn the software on his own and develop the speaker-busting sound he describes like this: “Unorthodox. Out of this world. Just going against the grain, no rules. I never use music theory.”

That echoes the definition of punk outlined in the second issue of the seminal ’70s-era NYC fanzine Punk: “any kid can pick up a guitar and become a rock ‘n’ roll star, despite or because of his lack of ability, talent, intelligence, limitations and/or potential, and usually does so out of frustration, hostility, a lot of nerve and a need for ego fulfillment.”

It must be said that hip-hop has always been DIY music. And it’s been likened to punk since both genres were coming of age a few miles apart in NYC. Punks were some of the first white musicians to recognize the power and artistry of rap. Inspired by originators like Grandmaster Flash, who’d they’d tap as an opening act, the Clash offered their take on beats and rhymes with 1981’s “The Magnificent Seven.” That same year, Blondie released “Rapture,” the first song with rapping to top the Billboard Hot 100. Singer Debbie Harry name-checks Flash and Fab Five Freddy, who appears in the video.

In 1983, former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm Mclaren further hipped white kids to hip-hop with Duck Rock, a curious act of cultural appropriation that explored black music from Africa to the South Bronx. (Eminem interpolates a line from the album’s best known song, “Buffalo Gals,” on “Without Me.”) In 1984, Lydon teamed up with Afrika Bambaataa for “World Destruction,” an amalgam of post-punk and hip-hop that predated Aerosmith and Run-DMC’s “Walk This Way” by two years. By 1986, the Beastie Boys had long since traded the hardcore punk of Pollywog Stew for the boisterous party-rap that made them MTV stars.

Discussing early hip-hop in 2015, Lydon said, “If you ask Bambaataa, he’ll tell you it was punk music, quite proudly, and that’s how we were viewing it at the time, but it became a different genre and category, much to its detriment. Hip-hop, which was the original title, turned into rap, which became promo music for Taco Bell.”

Lydon’s dismissal of all hip-hop after the mid-’80s reveals an unfortunate ignorance on his part. But his greater point about rebellious youth movements getting co-opted by big business is worth considering. Luckily, whenever rap has drifted too far into commercial territory, something has come along to keep the music fresh. It happened with Public Enemy, gangsta rap, the post-Puffy backpacker MCs of the ‘90s, and Odd Future. All of them were labeled the punk rock of their day, too.

So far in 2017, Migos, Kendrick Lamar, Future, and Lil Uzi Vert have scored No. 1 albums. Hip-hop is in a much better place than rock was in the late ‘70s. It doesn’t need Soundcloud rap to slam the rest button and make everyone on the radio obsolete. And yet these South Florida rappers rage their way onto the charts, provoking extreme reactions on all sides. If they’re not punk, it may be time for a new definition.