How Plaqueboymax’s livestreams reimagined the rap underground

Xaviersobased, Nino Paid, Lazer Dim 700, and more reflect on how In The Booth and Song Wars created a new, more crowdsourced vision of rap in just over a year.

From its inception in May 2024 through the first half of 2025, Twitch creator Plaqueboymax’s In The Booth sessions reigned as the livestreaming era’s most consistent hit-making machines. Challenging artists to record a song on camera while the now-22-year-old streamer manned the DAW, the series served as a conduit between buzzy next-gen rappers and young fans who spent late nights glued to the chat. If you couldn’t escape a viral rap hit during that period, from DDG’s “Pink Dreads” to Cash Cobain’s “Trippin on a Yacht,” there’s a solid chance it debuted on a Max stream, only to be clipped and passed around by rabid fans, pre-release.

In The Booth’s success has attracted higher-profile rappers like Sexyy Red, Quavo, and Will Smith, hoping to make hits of their own. But consistently, Max’s most intriguing guests have been underground artists. Sessions with Lazer Dim 700, Summrs, and Hardrock felt more natural; their come-ups arrived in a contemporary landscape dominated by instant IG Live access and streaming-era demands for new content.

And it was the underground that helped solidify Max’s streams as appointment viewing. One of his most popular shows is the Song Wars series, in which contestants remotely drop into the stream to participate in a single elimination tournament decided by judges. A pair of February streams that included artists like Yung Fazo, Molly Santana, and Lazer Dim 700 helped solidify the series’ status as appointment viewing, making the already frenetic pace of underground rap culture feel even more immediate and personal.

Challenging contestants to record and present tracks in short notice, the streams made fans feel like they could be in the room alongside Jace! as he dropped a new diss track, or were feeding off the energy of a whimsical Lazer Dim loosie in the studio. This parasocial intimacy would serve as a proof-of-concept for In The Booth, providing rap obsessives an even greater level of access to their favorite artists. Since then, Jace! retired from Max’s tournaments after becoming a fixture, wary of being pigeonholed as a “Song Wars rapper.” Lazer’s contributions earned him back-to-back MVP nods from Max and the judges, and included his now classic pluggnb track “Asian Rock”.

“When I first met him, they was already on the Song Wars,” Lazer Dim tells me over a Zoom call. “He called me up and was like, ‘join real fast,’ so I got on. And from right there, that’s when I started blowing up.”

Max was impressed enough by Lazer’s rambly, hypnotic flow to invite him over for a one-on-one stream that May, shortly after Max joined FaZe Clan and relocated to the streaming collective’s content house. Posted in a barely-furnished room, the duo was on a mission to experiment outside of Lazer’s signature dark plugg wheelhouse, rifling through packs from rage-rap experimentalist OsamaSon and New York City swag-rap auteur Xaviersobased. Faded after a hit off Lazer’s too-strong blunt, Max struggled to determine whether an hour or two minutes had passed; Lazer paced the floor, snickering like a trickster god.

“Look, I let him smoke and he done got high,” Lazer laughs. “At first he ain’t want to do it, but I peer pressured him. That’s why I said it on the song.”

Struggling to suppress his laughter, Max still managed to find the “hoodtrap xaviersobased emotional jerk type beat” that would become “Laced Max,” Lazer’s most-streamed single to date, and a stylistic departure from his then-typical bursts of punched-in non-sequiturs over power drill 808s and dissonant synth arps. In just 20 minutes, the pair recorded, mixed and performed the song live on stream, even attempting to lay down a scrapped Max feature within the time frame.

“It pushed my career,” Lazer says. “Not even just a little bit, it pushed it a lot. The way the songs we did were, it ain’t really my usual style. It gave me exposure to different kinds of people.”

The stream served as the blueprint for In The Booth and was a landmark event for each creator. It proved that Max’s loose, chat-fueled production style could translate into platform-defining hits, and gave artists a space to test new sounds in front of thousands without the polish or pressure of a label rollout. Thanks to this formula, lucky viewers who tuned in would occasionally watch a bottle capture lightning in real time.

Xaviersobased knew his single didn’t have a chance. Placed on a Song Wars lineup against stars-in-the-making OhGeesy and Babytron as well as Song Wars vets like Jace! and BenjiBlueBills, Xavier decided not to play things safe. “I kinda figured how it was gonna go,” the New York City swag-rap auteur remembers, “so I just played the rawest song and hoped for the best.”

That track, “Double Whammy,” prompted a lukewarm response from judges, but the chat loved it. Max invited him back for an In The Booth stream that would reveal how the more avant-garde arenas of rap’s underground can flourish in the format. The droning, minimalist sound of Xav’s 1c34 collective was now front and center.

Though jerk beats styled after their work had been the cheat code that turned “Laced Max” and “Pink Dreads” into viral hits, neither song matched the eerie, brooding tone of Xavier’s on-stream sessions. His final work of the night, “fieldtrips,” is his personal favorite, in which he and Max trade bleary-eyed verses over a bassy wall of digital strings and crumbling drums.

The chat’s contributions can get far more granular. In October 2024, PG County beatmaker Sxprano joined Ian, who was in the process of rolling out his Goodbye Horses album, for a studio session and sushi dinner on Max’s channel. Sxprano wasn’t initially sure what sort of beat he wanted to chef up while on stream, but the chat began clamoring for one that sampled NewJeans’ Kpop hit “ETA,” which had played as FaZe’s JasonTheWeen hit 100,000 subscribers on Twitch just a week earlier.

“It was lowkey on demand,” he says. Though the pressure initially sent Sxprano into a panic as he tried to navigate the unfamiliar collection of drumkits on Max’s computer, he eventually found the chat’s presence welcoming. “It’s not like you’re timed, but you feel like you gotta deliver right there in front of everybody. After a bit, I got into it, started talking to the chat, adapting as I went. It puts you on the spot in a good way.”

For Sxprano, it’s the unique, off-the-cuff energy of streaming that imbuing the final result of his In The Booth session with an element of surprise. And while he had direction from the chat, he didn’t feel like he had to compromise anything. “In every part of your life, you should be yourself and when I was there I could really be comfortable doing that.”

“It definitely changes things,” says Nino Paid, who recorded one of his signature songs “Coolin” with Chicago emcee BabyChiefDoIt and Max on stream in November 2024. “You feel a little bit more pressured to do something else instead of being in your regular comfort zone. A lot of artists don’t even record in front of people.”

Since its debut, In The Booth has carved out a raw new lane for rappers looking to perform online. Will Smith can hop on jerk beats; entire cities’ scenes can converge on single points; era-defining stars can crash and burn. But that volatility cuts both ways. In a rap ecosystem dominated by livestreaming, newer artists who aren’t as comfortable providing constant access to themselves risk being overlooked entirely.

“It’s like the tech industry runs hip hop today and music is this secondary thing,” Virginia rapper $ilkmoney told The FADER in July. “You gotta play video games for hours and then go, ‘Hey, like the song, guys!’ and then make people go, ‘Oh, yo, he’s actually pretty good at making music.’”

For better or for worse, the growth of streams like In The Booth means that fans can demand—and access—the sort of behind-the-scenes views that were once sequestered to an artist’s inner circle or hackers looking to sell ill-gotten, unreleased songs on the black market. Whether In The Booth is a panopticon-era talent show, a revolutionary development in how artists create and share, or something in between, the show’s format will be a hip-hop staple for years to come. When Xaviersobased is the OG for a new generation of teenage rappers, In The Booth and its kin will still be finding moments of unrefined creative joy and transmitting them live, their artists eagerly awaiting feedback from the chatbox.