Suicideboys Don’t Care for the Music Biz. They Got Its Attention Anyway.

The Louisiana rap duo Suicideboys have avoided nearly all the trappings of the contemporary music machine. They rarely grant interview requests and make the occasional public appearance with their faces partially covered. Still, Scott Arceneaux Jr. (known as Scrim) and Aristos Petrou (a.k.a. Ruby da Cherry) recently celebrated their biggest opening week on the Billboard chart yet: a No. 5 debut for their fourth album, “New World Depression,” last month.

“It’s kind of hard, dude,” Arceneaux, 35, said of dealing with their ever-growing visibility as one of the biggest independent rap groups in the United States. “It’s taken on a life of its own.”

Over the last decade, a passionate and adoring fan base has been drawn to Suicideboys’ blend of Southern rap rhythms and pop-punk melodies, all cloaked in the lush, depressive fog of internet-native hip-hop. They became underground heroes by making raw music about triggering subjects, which they relentlessly promoted on their own until their fan base snowballed into a force the music industry couldn’t ignore.

In 2021, on the strength of an audience they’d bootstrapped since 2014, they signed an eight-figure distribution deal with the Orchard, a Sony Music subsidiary, that was re-upped last year. Their semiannual Grey Day Tour — a mini-festival that’s featured similarly ascendant peers like the hardcore band Turnstile and the Florida rap aesthete Denzel Curry — has catapulted them onto the list of rap’s highest-grossing touring acts, taking in over $42 million and selling 431,000 tickets in 2023.

Video chatting on the day of their new album’s release, the pair were nestled in a room speckled with soundproofing materials at one of their properties deep in the Florida panhandle, their home outside of New Orleans. Petrou, with waves of dark hair cascading from under a backward baseball cap, spoke casually and with curiosity, positioned in the background, while Arceneaux often sat half-profile at the forefront, slightly bowing his bowl-cut mullet when he wasn’t speaking thoughtfully about their journey so far.

As cousins who grew up separately in the greater Louisiana area before coming together in New Orleans, Arceneaux and Petrou described their upbringings as chaotic. “Childhood was rough,” Arceneaux admitted. “There was always drama,” Petrou agreed. “Our parents would get into it. We’ve always remained close and very rarely let the family dynamic infect our relationship.”