So imagine building a multimillion dollar global
empire, right? But you build it on a literal
suicide pact. Right. It sounds like a movie plot.
It really does. You claw your way out of the
absolute darkest corners of addiction. You cultivate
this massive, intensely loyal cult following
based on a deeply abrasive, totally anti -establishment
aesthetic. And then at the very height of your
power, you just completely tear that image down.
Exactly. You tear it down to publicly preach
the gospel. It's wild. It is. Welcome to today's
Deep Dive, everyone. We are pulling from a really
comprehensive Wikipedia documentation of the
underground hip hop duo Suicide Boys. We're going
to chart a course through their history, their
sprawling discography, and honestly, their really
intense personal lives. Yeah. And we really need
to set the stakes for this right from the opening
minute. Because when you look at the raw data
of their careers, you know, this goes way beyond
a typical music industry biography. This is a
profound case. study in the mechanics of extreme,
like, do or die motivation. It's a look at the
deeply destructive psychological traps of sudden
fame. And ultimately, it's a story about the
radical, almost dangerous pursuit of personal
truth. Yeah. And if you are listening to this
right now and thinking, I don't listen to abrasive
underground rap, what could this possibly have
to do with me? Just stick around. Yeah, definitely
stay with us. Because to understand how they
built a global hip -hop empire, we actually have
to look at the incredibly mundane, dead -end
reality they were trying to escape. Right. A
reality that, honestly, a lot of people can probably
relate to. To understand why millions of people
connected with their extreme messaging, we have
to travel back to 2013 to the suburbs of New
Orleans. Exactly. Yeah. So the foundation of
this duo is two first cousins. You've got Scott
Arseneau, Jr., who produces and raps under the
name Scrim. and Aristos Petrou, known as Ruby
de Cherry. Right, Scrim and Ruby. Yeah. And what
is really striking about their origins is how
completely at odds their backgrounds are with
that terrifying edgy image they would eventually
become famous for. Oh, it's night and day. It
is. I mean, Scrim was a DJ who essentially bought
his first laptop with drug money. He went to
Delgado Community College, DJ'd local parties,
and spent three long years working retail. Doing
what exactly? Selling used furniture. Selling
used furniture. Wow. And he didn't even leave
that furniture job to pursue music, right? He
was fired. Yeah, he was fired because he got
hand tattoos. Right. And we have to remember,
in the early 2010s, getting your hands tattooed
wasn't just like a trendy aesthetic choice. No,
no, no. It was a physical permanent resignation
letter from polite corporate society. It was
this visceral marker of alienation that basically
guaranteed you were never going to work in a
traditional office. Absolutely. It was burning
a bridge. Yeah. And then you look at his cousin,
Ruby. His father, Pavlos, was a Greek Cypriot
immigrant who actually arrived in the States
on an athletic scholarship and became a soccer
coach. Oh wow, I didn't know about the soccer
scholarship. Yeah, so Ruby had a fairly... structured
early life. He played the violin when he was
seven, picked up the drums at 10, and eventually
started playing in a local punk band called the
Vapo Rats. Vapo Rats, great name. It really is.
But right up until 2015, which is well into the
lifespan of the Suicide Boys project, Ruby was
still making his living working as a waiter at
his father's restaurant. So they were basically
two guys in their mid -20s. working dead -end
jobs, dabbling in solo music projects that were
going absolutely nowhere. They were nowhere fast.
Right. And they were just suffocating under a
profound dissatisfaction with the direction of
their lives. I mean, Ruby was incredibly disillusioned
with his punk band because his bandmates were
just too apathetic. Yeah, they didn't have the
drive he had. Exactly. And that shared boiling
frustration between the two cousins became the
catalyst for everything that followed. OK, let's
unpack this because this is where it gets extreme.
Very extreme. They channeled that frustration
into a terrifyingly absolute commitment. They
formed Suicide Boys under a literal blood pact.
Yeah. A literal pact. The terms were simple,
right? If their music career didn't grant them
a viable way out of their current lives by the
time they turned 30 years old, they would both
commit suicide. Yeah. Scrim later described the
moment in an interview as literally cutting their
hands, bleeding, and making a pact that there
was absolutely no Plan B. No plan B, it's the
ultimate burning the boat scenario. We usually
think of motivation as moving toward a reward,
you know? You want the promotion, you want the
corner office, so you work hard. Right, positive
reinforcement. But they completely inverted that
psychological mechanism. They metaphorically
put a gun to their own heads and said, succeed
or die. It is the most extreme possible version
of stripping away your own safety net. It really
is. Because if you don't have a backup plan to
fall back on, you have no choice but to push
forward. And from a psychological and frankly
a branding perspective, that stake setting is
exactly why their music resonated so deeply.
Yeah. This wasn't some dark edgy marketing gimmick
cooked up by executives in a boardroom. Right,
it wasn't manufactured. Exactly. The despair
was a genuine reflection of their reality. And
listeners, especially young listeners dealing
with their own alienation, possess this incredible
radar for inauthenticity. Oh, teenagers can smell
fake angst from a mile away. They absolutely
can. So the raw life or death foundation of Suicide
Boys allowed them to forge this deeply authentic
connection. The audience could feel that the
desperation was real because the creators had
literally bet their lives on it. And because
they had no plan B, Their creative output wasn't
just prolific, it was frantic. Oh, frantic is
the perfect word. To explain how they broke through
the noise of the internet, you can almost compare
their early release strategy to a brute force
cyber attack on the music industry's algorithm.
That's a great way to put it. Right. Because
starting in 2014, they didn't just like drop
an EP and wait to see how it performed. They
launched the Kill Yourself EP series and they
systematically released 20 different iterations
of it. Parts 1 through 20. Parts 1 through 20.
That volume is staggering. I mean, alongside
mixtapes and standalone releases, they were just
flooding the underground scene. In 2015 alone,
they released major projects like High Tide and
The Snake's Nest, and My Liver Will Handle What
My Heart Can't. Those titles alone are so evocative.
They really paint a picture. But the real tipping
point was a collaborative EP called Ooth Eyed
Weaside. Oh, yeah, with Pouya. Right, working
alongside an already -established South Florida
rapper named Pouya. That project acted as this
massive funnel, drawing a huge new audience into
the dense musical universe they had been rapidly
building. We should probably break down what
that musical universe actually sounded like because
it was entirely self -produced by Scrim, right?
Under the pseudonym Bud Dwyer. Yes. but Dwyer.
And if you have never heard a Suicide Boys track,
picture a collision of several distinct underground
genres. You have cloud rap, which features these
hazy, almost dreamlike, echoing beats that make
you feel like you're floating. And then you layer
that over, trap music, think heavy, rattling
808 sub bass and rapid fire hi -hats. Then you
inject the vocal delivery of punk rap, which
is Aggressive, raw, heavily distorted. And then
the lyrics. Right, the lyrics draw heavily from
emo rap, focusing on deep introspection, emotional
vulnerability, and depression. It was a wildly
innovative alchemy of sounds, and it was heavily
influenced by the regional aesthetic of Memphis
rap, specifically 3 6 Mafia. Right. They actually
sampled 3 6 Mafia's early tapes extensively.
And while that practice drew some mixed reactions
from former members like Gangsta Boo. Yeah, not
everyone loved it. No, but the founding member
Juicy J recognized their genius. He embraced
them, mentored them, and even enlisted them to
produce his own mixtapes. That's a huge cosign.
Massive, which meant these two underground artists
were suddenly producing tracks for massive mainstream
names like Ace A Rocky and Cardi B. Okay, but
wait, I have to stop and challenge the core of
their aesthetic here. Sure, let's do it. Because
alongside that musical innovation came an incredibly
controversial, abrasive image. I mean, they were
leaning heavily into satanic imagery and aggressively
offensive, violent lyrics. Yes. If you have millions
of depressed, alienated kids listening to you
and you are constantly feeding them pentagrams
and lyrics about suicidal ideation, I mean, isn't
that just glorifying darkness for a paycheck?
How does that actually help a listener who is
struggling? That is a vital question. and it's
one the artists themselves had to address frequently.
What's fascinating here is that Scrim explicitly
stated in interviews that the satanic imagery
was never literal devil worship. Oh, really?
Yeah. He described it as a metonym. A metonym.
Right. A metonym is a figure of speech or a symbol
where a thing is called not by its own name,
but by the name of something intimately associated
with it. For suicide boys, satanic symbols were
a metonym representing their deep disgust with
organized religion and a metaphor for the manipulative
destructive effects of money and hard drugs.
Okay, I see. They were using the most extreme
visual symbols available to communicate extreme
internal states. But does the average 15 -year
-old scrolling SoundCloud understand what a metonym
is? Or do they just see the darkness and internalize
it? That is the risk. That is definitely the
risk of utilizing shock value. However, you have
to look at the function the music serve for the
audience. Scrimm frequently referred to their
recording process as therapy. Therapy? Interesting.
Yeah. Because when a listener is trapped in a
dark psychological space, hearing someone else
speak their most taboo, horrifying thoughts out
loud isn't necessarily a glorification of those
thoughts. For millions of fans, it functioned
as a pressure release valve. Oh, like it externalizes
the internal pain. Exactly. It's a form of extreme
commiseration. When they named incredibly bleak
songs after mundane local New Orleans streets
like Audubon or Tulane, they were telling the
global audience, we are sitting in the exact
same darkness you are. The paradox there is just
devastating though. The therapy of the music
was acting as a life raft for their fans, but
behind the scenes the reality of the creators
lives was completely collapsing. It was falling
apart. By 2018, they made the transition from
underground phenomenon to mainstream success.
Their debut studio album, I Want to Die in New
Orleans, dropped and immediately hit the top
10 on the Billboard 200. Huge moment. Huge. They
launched massive nationwide gray day tours, packing
out venues with artists like Denzel Curry. They
achieved the exact thing that was supposed to
save them from their 30th birthday suicide pact.
And yet that very success almost killed them.
Right. Here's where it gets really interesting.
The transition from the underground to the mainstream
is rarely smooth because the infrastructures
are entirely different. In the underground, you
operate like a pirate ship, right? You can grab
a sample, wrap over it, and release it directly
to your fans. Yeah, nobody's really policing
it. But in the mainstream, you were dealing with
corporate fleets and lawyers. In 2016, they released
a massive track called Antarctica that sampled
a song by the EDM producer, Deadmau5. Uh -oh.
Yeah. Deadmau5 publicly accused them of copyright
infringement for publicizing his intellectual
property without consent. And that legal friction
resulted in Antarctica, which is arguably one
of their most emotionally resonant songs, being
forcefully pulled offline for nearly four years
before they finally cleared the sample in 2021.
Four years is a lifetime in the music industry.
It really is. But dealing with copyright lawyers
was absolutely nothing compared to the personal
toll the fame was taking. Think about a time
you thought achieving a goal like getting a promotion,
buying a house, moving to a new city would magically
fix your baseline stress or unhappiness only
to find out it just multiplied it. Yeah, fame
acts as a massive amplifier, not a cure. Precisely.
The money they were making didn't solve the deep
depression they had been rapping about for five
years. It simply provided infinite capital to
fund the addictions they were using to numb that
depression. Exactly. And late in 2018, rumors
actually started swirling that Suicide Boys had
broken up after a series of highly ominous tweets.
I remember that. The fans were panicking. They
eventually clarified that the group was still
together, but they were dealing with severe personal
crises, specifically surrounding Scrim. Both
Cousers were struggling immensely, but Scrim's
addiction to hard drugs brought him to a terrifying
rock bottom. He admitted in an interview that
at one point his addiction were so all -consuming
that he was literally luring people on Craigslist
just to rob them, solely to feed his habit. Unbelievable.
They had all the money, all the fame, billboard
charting albums, and he is robbing strangers
on the internet just to survive the day. You
cannot out -achieve your internal demons. You
really can't. The very pain that built their
empire is now systematically dismantling it.
Which brings us to the radical pivot of their
story. Yes, the pivot. If the first half of their
career was defined by chasing a destructive escape,
the second half, running right up to where we
sit today in 2026, is defined by a shocking total
paradigm shift. A complete 180. Yeah. It began
with the basic need to survive. In February 2019,
Scrim, fully committed to getting sober, utilizing
12 -step programs and intensive therapy. Go for
him. And the following year, in October 2020,
after an intervention organized by their management,
Ruby checked himself into a rehab facility. Today,
Ruby remains sober aside from smoking marijuana.
That period of intense personal healing obviously
required a hiatus, but when they returned to
the studio, their output proved that sobriety
didn't kill their creative drive. Not at all.
They released a string of highly successful projects
that maintained their massive commercial momentum.
You Had Long Term Effects of Suffering in 2021
and Sing Me a Lullaby, My Sweet Temptation in
2022. Yeah, both huge albums. They even dropped
the Yin Yang tapes in 2023, which was a fascinating
creative exercise where they fully adopted a
lo -fi Memphis vocal style. It proved they could
still experiment and push boundaries without
the drugs. And by 2024, they dropped New World
Depression, further solidifying their reign.
But the most shocking twist of their entire career,
the moment that truly tested the loyalty of their
fan base, arrived last year in 2025. This is
the part that still blows my mind. Yeah. They
released an album titled, Thy Kingdom Come in
August, followed by a surprise Christmas release
called, Thy Will Be Done. The duo completely
abandoned their anti -religious stance. The visual
and thematic transformation was staggering. Scrim
physically covered up the iconic pitchfork tattoo
on his forehead. He started wearing a diamond
cross. During a livestream in April of 2025,
he publicly revealed his conversion to Christianity.
Just put it all out there. Yeah. He explained
that surviving his addiction led him to a genuine
belief in a higher power. And he didn't just,
like, stumble into it emotionally. He spent years
quietly listening to debates and studying apologetics.
Which is the intellectual, historical, and philosophical
defense of religious doctrines. Right. He treated
it like a debate case. He analyzed the evidence
for Christ and decided he believed it. He admitted
he was terrified of being judged by his heavily
anti -establishment fan base, but he stated he
had seen enough miracles in his own recovery
to feel no embarrassment. And it wasn't just
Grimm operating on an island either. In a July
2025 Billboard interview, Ruby was sporting a
camel hat with Jesus written across the front,
covered in ichthys symbols. The Jesus fish, right?
Exactly. The classic Jesus fish symbol, which
originated as a secret code used by persecuted
early Christians. They openly shared that they
now pray together before every single show. Scrim
stated he firmly believes God put them in their
position of immense influence to save a hundred
thousand souls. The marketing shifted just as
radically as the music. The album Art for Thy
Kingdom Come featured walls of crucifixes and
deep orthodox Christian iconography. Yeah, very
striking visuals. They traded the dark glitchy
music videos for a series of documentary style
promos on YouTube that actually featured local
church choirs and powerful real life testimonies
from people in New Orleans. It is a complete
and total inversion of their original aesthetic.
Well, look at the broader landscape of the underground
hip hop scene they operate in. It is a world
built entirely. on being as dark, gritty, and
anti -authoritarian as possible. Right. That's
the whole brand. In that specific context, finding
religion and getting completely sober is actually
the ultimate most dangerous punk rock rebellion.
So what does this all mean? Like, I love that
analogy. In a scene built on darkness, finding
the light is the real rebellion. They essentially
rebelled against their own rebellion. I love
that phrasing. And if we connect this to the
bigger picture, if we step back and view this
entire timeline from 2013 to 2020, we see that
their core mission actually never changed. How
so? Back in 2014, their goal was to connect with
people who are suffering, right? To make them
feel less isolated in their pain. Yeah, the commiseration
we talked about. Today, their method has simply
shifted. Instead of commiserating with their
audience in the darkness, they're actively trying
to pull people into the light. We mentioned their
solo side projects earlier, like Scrim's 2024
album, Lonely Boy, and Ruby's punk -infused releases
under the name Duck Boy. Right, right. They have
consistently used their music to process their
exact state of mind in real time. This pivot
isn't some calculated marketing strategy. It
is the honest, documented result of surviving
the abyss. Whether you share those religious
beliefs or not, you just have to acknowledge
the immense courage it takes to look at a multi
-million dollar empire you built on a very specific
dark image, realize that image is literally killing
you, and decide to tear it down to rebuild it
in the light. It takes guts. They risked alienating
an incredibly dedicated cult -like fanbase because
they chose their personal documented truth over
maintaining a safe, consistent brand. It is one
of the most remarkable journeys of survival in
modern music. Two guys selling used furniture
and waiting tables turned a desperate blood pact
into a global phenomenon. They systematically
hacked the internet's attention span, survived
the deepest trenches of addiction, and completely
inverted their worldview from satanic shock value
to Christian apologetics, all while maintaining
their status as undeniable underground legends.
Which leaves us with a really fascinating dynamic
to observe as they continue to tour and release
music today. It raises an incredible question,
one that goes far beyond the mechanics of the
music industry and touches on the very nature
of human connection. What's that? When an artist's
entire foundational brand is built on shared
trauma, alienation, and darkness, what happens
to their art and their audience? When the artist
actually heals, can a cult following survive
the salvation of its leaders? Man, that is the
perfect question to leave things on. Think about
what happens when you strip away your own safety
net, free fall into the dark, and somehow manage
to build an entirely new foundation out of the
ashes. Thank you for joining us on this deep
dive. Keep questioning the narratives, look for
the mechanics behind the art, and keep seeking
out the incredible human stories behind the music
you listen to. Until next time.