So...Lil Xan, right?
Just a few weeks ago, the 22-year-old rapper (happy birthday, Sept. 6) and his girlfriend Noah Cyruswere pledging "ride or die" to each other on their wistful rap-pop hybrid single "Live or Die," the 18-year-old sister of Miley Cyrus showing off her own range to great effect.
"They threw me in / and now I'm drowning in the deep end," Lil Xan raps. "If I'm religious, you're the one that I believe in / You've been here with me to help me fight all my demons."
That was then, however. Now he's on his own. And whose fault that is has devolved into a engrossing game of he said, she said.
Or perhaps more accurately...he posted, she posted.
"I love rap and I still wanna rap," Lil Xan told Billboard last month a few days before "Live or Die" dropped. "But I wanna be more of a pop public figure, iconic kinda dude."
So far, he's got the public part down, for sure.
The Redlands, Calif., native, whose real name is Diego Leanos, is among the current crop of young artists who rose to fame with the help of platforms like SoundCloud and Youtube and, of course, thanks to social media, where Xanarchy has taken hold.
He's amassed 4.8 million followers on Instagram (which, in this moment, is 400,000 more followers than Noah), and regularly brings fans along for the ride via Instagram Story, where, for instance, he's publicizing a private birthday celebration he's having Thursday night, with VIP invites available to 30 lucky fans who emailed his people in time. "I want all the homies there, too—let's get lit," he said (weed being a running theme on his account).
"I love my fans to death. Never deny a fan a picture, they know that," Xan told Billboard. "Xanarchy is like one big family…It's a brand, it's a lifestyle."
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