From basement to billboard: How Chicago’s own Cole Bennett helped make SoundCloud rap go from a joke to a juggernaut with Lyrical Lemonade
How one person single handedly turned SoundCloud rap from a meme into a movement—launching careers, shaping a generation of music, and redefining how artists can break into the industry.
artwork by Eliana Schiller
If we’re talking about capturing lightning in a bottle, know that Cole Bennett did it with a camera. Starting out as a blog in his high school years, Lyrical Lemonade was Bennett’s personal outlet—a place to document Chicago’s local underground rap scene. But on his 16th birthday, everything changed. His mom gifted him a video camera—a portal to a world he didn’t yet know he was about to shape. Bennett soon started directing music videos for up-and-coming Chicago rappers. What he failed to realize was that he was inadvertently building a platform, a pipeline, and eventually, a culture.
At the same time Bennett was learning to direct music videos in his parents’ basement, a new kind of rap was exploding online in the second half of the 201os. Raw and chaotic, SoundCloud rap was often noted by loud and distorted 808s, hedonistic lyrics, and an endless number of rappers whose names started with “Lil”. It was destined to be controversial. To the traditionalists, it sounded like noise. They labeled it “mumble rap,” claiming that the lack of focus on lyricism was a disservice to the genre. Songs like Lil Pump’s “Gucci Gang” were memed into oblivion and written off as a joke by critics. But what the critics failed to realize was that not everyone was laughing at it. Some were playing it on repeat. To a new generation of kids on the internet, the sound was all that mattered.
The accessibility of the Soundcloud era was its biggest advantage. Anyone with a laptop and a cheap microphone could upload their songs and be famous. This led to a surplus of great unfiltered music to be found online—a fountain of talent that just needed marketing and support. And, of course, Cole Bennett was there to dive in headfirst. Juice Wrld—arguably Bennett’s most famous protegee—only had around 2,000 followers on SoundCloud when Bennett offered to direct his music video. After Bennett directed two of Juice Wrld’s videos (one of which now boasts over a billion views), Juice had tens of millions of listeners.
But why were his music videos popular? In a lot of ways, Cole Bennett’s directing style mirrored the very music he helped bring to the mainstream. His videos didn’t always follow a traditional structure. In fact, there was rarely a narrative, polished cinematic storyline, or Hollywood-esque production value. But that was exactly the point. Like SoundCloud rap itself, Bennett’s work was spontaneous, chaotic, and full of energy. His quick cuts, wild color palettes, surreal animations, and random visual effects weren’t there to make sense, but they definitely felt right. Bennett’s videos captured the spirit of the artists he worked with. The music video for “All Girls Are The Same” by Juice Wrld, which now boasts well over 400 million views, featured a colorful collage of floating heads, hand-drawn animations that could’ve been made by an elementary schooler, and surreal edits that felt less like a studio production and more like something pulled straight from a teenager’s imagination—and maybe that’s exactly why his videos were successful.
Soon, the Lyrical Lemonade logo at the start of every music video stopped meaning “I made this music video” and instead began to function as a sort of stamp of approval. It’s almost like it was saying “This isn’t just a music video—this is an artist worth paying attention to.” Every song Bennett directed had high expectations and would chart, regardless of how unknown the rapper was at the time. Juice Wrld, Lil Mosey, Lil Xan, Lil Skies, Lil Tecca and countless other artists who were underground now boast tens of millions of listeners on Spotify with songs that have billions of streams—all from a music video with Cole.
Unfortunately, like most trends, the SoundCloud era eventually began to fade. Many of the rappers Cole Bennett helped propel to fame slowly drifted out of the spotlight. Some left willingly, choosing to retire from music, while others struggled to maintain their momentum, falling off. Others even fell victim to the lifestyle their music often glorified. Tragically, artists like Lil Xan and Juice Wrld overdosed (with the latter being fatal) and left behind a generation of fans mourning what “could have been”. However, Cole is still doing big things. Lyrical Lemonade has grown far beyond its blogging days, hosting massive music festivals annually in Chicago with big names like Chief Keef and Don Toliver, releasing branded merchandise, and even launching a feature film project. Bennett now works with some of the biggest names in mainstream rap—from Eminem to Lil Yachty—and still taps into the underground occasionally, proving that he wasn’t just part of a trend, but part of the culture himself.
In the end, Cole Bennett didn’t just film music videos—he managed to capture a rare moment in time when the internet, youth culture, and raw creativity collided together to shake up the music industry…and he did it all with just a camera.
edited by Asher Ahabue
artwork by Eliana Schiller