Fab Five #5: An Interview w/ Eli Schoop

Music critic Eli Schoop of Constantly Hating talks about his career so far, globalized pop stardom, hating on the computer, and his 5 foundational rap albums.

What separates us from monkeys isn’t any obvious physical traits, atomic construction, brain size, or a ability to stomach paying taxes to a tyrannical government. It’s not even the ability to make art or feel emotion; rather it’s being able to determine if something is “good” or “bad” with more complex reasoning than whether the subject in questions will satiated your hunger or kill you.

Constantly Hating is ran by writer Eli Schoop, a site that centers an at times complicated, but always passionate, disgust toward the most banal, overhyped, or personally offensive music the Internet has to offer. He’s torn apart Beyonce’s ode to American dance music, Renaissance, and the critics lauding it as a crowning moment for queer/black/club culture, described the Clipse’ comeback album Let God Sort ‘Em Out as “granite countertop soulless,” dubbed the boygenius trio “boring, vacuous facsimile of indie rock,” and christened Joyce Manor as “A band for people that were never really into punk, that tailor made themselves for Tumblr captions; forgettable, unremarkable, tired.”

But where does hate of this acidity come from, if not from the understanding of what it means to truly love? To really hate something is to feel at an apex level, to be protective or infatuated with something so much so that any creations acting as affronts to it are personal attacks on your core values, your very being. At 29, Eli understands what it means to feel and being unafraid to detail that thought process in a public forum is what Constantly Hating is all about. Trolling isn’t the goal, he’s just a proud nerd with his soul still in tact, despite 20+ years of exposure to the internet, numerical gradings of art, and his own legion of haters trying to wash it away.

Over an hour-ish long FaceTime call I picked his brain on broad concepts like the rap canon, cracked jokes about Chinese drill, and the 5 rap albums most foundational to his taste and creativity.

The following interview took place on February 19th, 2026 and has been shortened and cleaned up for clarity.

Anthony (The Linx): What got you interested in music writing?

Eli: I was just a fucking nerd who listened to a lot of music by the time I was in like, 6th grade. Me and my friends would go to the library and read Rolling Stone or watch MTV videos. This was around ‘07 or ‘08. We’d always be hype if they actually played cool videos. I wasn’t a pop or rap hater but I was just a big punk/metal kid. When they’d play Nine Inch Nails or Mastodon at 11PM I thought it was so cool.

In terms of writing though I started reading Pitchfork in 8th grade. I don’t think I really focused on the writing so much as the cool albums. That’s how I got into Dismemberment Plan, The Knife, etc. It still took a couple years because I was like “I’m in school why would I write on my own time?” but for my senior project I finessed it and got my advisor to sign off on me doing music reviews for my senior project. It was hella fake, I had no sponsor just writing reviews on Sputnikmusic and printing them out for our Senior project fair. I did a bunch of reviews for stuff no one else had done yet. Chuck Person’s Eccojams Vol. 1, No Label 2, The Minstrel Show, stuff like that.

I got into Ohio University for college and started writing there.

Where in Ohio are you from?

I’m from Cleveland.

Is it like a school paper still going on then or is it a website?

The radio network’s website. That’s where I met a lot of cool people who helped me along the way. A lot of editors, other writers. My editor from my junior year, Sam Tornow, was writing for TinyMixtapes and put in a good word for me, which led eventually to Bandcamp, ToneGlow, all that. That’s all up until about 2020.

Has writing always been your longterm goal in college or was this a side thing while in school?

I went for media studies so it was always there. I didn’t have the grades for the journalism school, so I went media studies *laughs*. I still got the basic properties of media like video editing, audio stuff, but writing is what I’m most passionate about. I knew all the jobs were disappearing by the mid-2010’s, and knew writing for a living was going to be hard. Even now I’m not a full time writer, I do freelance and some other stuff. It’s still what I want to do. Write a book, something like that.

I’m always interested in how people’s tastes morph over time. What sparked your early interest in metal and heavier music?

I started as just a rock kid. Green Day, System of A Down. American Idiot was my first album ever. I wanted to just gobble up whatever I could from the standard cannon classics. I didn’t listen to much Black American music when I was a little kid. My dad’s black and my mom’s white, but my dad is kind of a dork and doesn’t listen to much music. A real smart, academic guy, but not big in music. But my mom fucked with music and as a white Italian woman knows hella ball about reggae. We were listening to like Barrington Levy, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer. Outside of Usher and Akon on the radio that was really it. So punk and metal was more my thing from elementary to middle school.

Once you get older and more online, how was it sharing music with people around you? Like are you putting your friends in school on stuff?

I had my nerd friends who weren’t as into music like I was, but they’d still fuck with my recommendations. I was growing up in Cleveland Heights, which is more the suburbs of Cleveland but still like 80% black, so I got a good mix of other stuff. This is like when Flocka was popping, Kid Cudi vs. Drake was a real argument in the hallways. I only knew probably one song from each, but everyone had to go Cudi anyway because Cleveland of course. I was like “Drake, why is that a rap name?” It’s actually baffling still how he got this big.

But yeah I didn’t talk with music that much. I tried to get into what everyone else was on. I’d see at school dances what people would react to. Some people wouldn’t fuck with the white music, some people wouldn’t fuck with the black music, but everyone would do the Soulja Boy, or everyone would hit the Cupid Shuffle *laughs*.

The middle school dance classics.

It was still kinda segregated but it helped. I always had a propensity to not care as much about being a blerd, but a lot of cool stuff was still happening. Y’know that saying where “all the best music came out when you were 14?” There were just so many bangers. The Blog Era stuff, vaporwave, chillwave, Kanye drops Dark Fantasy, Tyler The Creator and Odd Future shifts everything. We’re still feeling the repercussions, even now, of the mainstream dissolving. A few years later Kendrick goes on to drop good kid, Frank Ocean does channel ORANGE and those are the last young massive superstars with critical and commercial appeal. Now you have commercial success’ like Olivia Rodrigo or Billie Ellish, and critical success’ like Geese but it isn’t the same. Maybe Bad Bunny but he’s not from online like them.

Yeah, him doing everything in another language makes it feel like he exists off to the side of everything.

And he’s a true arena superstar that doesn’t need any Anglo help at all. He exists outside of the American critical and commercial lens.

Yeah, that’s where I feel a person like Drake kind of gave him the alley oop. Obviously he’s Americanized in so many ways, but being literally non-American, eventually genre fluid set this new path. I see it with BTS too like how they’re big among young kids online but my mom has no idea who they are. Now after Bad Bunny language really doesn’t matter and that next wave is set up too.

BTS localized fandom and made everyone stans, but in the case of Bad Bunny it’s a regionalized pride from reggaton that makes every Latin country and the global south fuck with him. Maybe more global superstars will crossover now. Also might have to do with us losing global hegemony and being really fucking annoying Americans and no one likes us.

Yeah everyone is waiting for a non-English, non-Westernized entertainment pool.

We’re still waiting for the next Chinese superstar.

I’m ready for Chinese Adele when the time comes. Load it up. *laughs*

They’re gonna recreate Pop Smoke with Chinese Socialist characteristics.

Mao Ze Pop Smoke in the building!

Duuude. Meet the WU for real.

It’ll be him and all those Italian drill kids, if they’re still doing that.

I saw Chinese grannies in drill videos. Chicago to the world. I lived in Chicago too, so shoutout.

TinyMixtapes stops around the pandemic, where from there did you go? What became the next step?

It’s weird, because now I’m looking at my old things. I started doing stuff for Bandcamp, freelancing, but it wasn’t super regular. I don’t think I started writing a lot until I moved to New York in 2023. I still was with my ex-fiance, staying in Cleveland, doing odd jobs, writing on the side. But once I got here to New York you know….you just meet people from the computer. That’s how I met Mano and Millan, who I lived with at one point, a lot more people. Then I just had some pieces go viral. I wrote about how boygenius was dog shit, that went viral.

I first I found your stuff on NoBells in 2023 I think, that boygenius piece was after that or before?

I think it was after. I panned Renaissance on NoBells in 2022 and I realized I was having fun doing it. I didn’t do much hating before 2022, but I just got bored of the culture of celebrating everything, all the poptimisim. It was all around the end of Puja Patel’s Pitchfork, which I have a whole bunch of opinions on that don’t matter. I was just like “this shit sucks balls and no one wants to say it”. Like, you people don’t listen to disco or house, stop crowning this shitty dance record. I already had the Substack, but that’s when it really started getting around, causing problems.

The idea of Constantly Hating and panning these records, which you’re now known for most, was that something you already were on before the Renaissance piece or was it like “oh people like this, it gets more traction, let me focus on this”?

Both. I was already known as a fiery Tweeter who would say whatever and be annoying, but after I saw people enjoyed it, they wanted more haters, and actual criticism. Like 2 years ago we were in the culture of everything was like “the moment” or a “a soothing balm” or some shit and it was really boring. That inspired me to spice it up too. Not to just rage bait or clickbait but just really have my opinions out there.

Your Substack’s reach is pretty large now, do you ever regret being the person people expect to hate everything? It feels like you and Alphonse Pierre are the best at that and are the go to’s for a pan.

No, I think it’s fun. I find it funny when people are for example like “what do you think of that Geese, Eli?” expecting me to be a hater and I’m like “Eh it’s fine,” or just a real milquetoast opinion.

The curveball is the shrug now.

Right. Everyone wants that dopamine of seeing a hot take to jump towards, and obviously my more negative pieces do better, but I can’t lie or go into it without a passion about it. I don’t know how many pans I did on CH last year, like 3? I had my worst albums list, but I didn’t want to go crazy for each record at the time. But sometimes a record personally offends me. The Joyce Manor album came out and it was the perfect timing to deliver hating, and say “you guys are fucking losers for liking this”

You’re really biding your time, charging with hate.

I gotta charge before I go Super Saiyan, can’t just piddle it out.

I want to pivot to some albums. The 5 rap albums that inspired you to get more into rap, inspire you creatively, things you just really adore. What of the ones you selected came into your life the earliest?

1) My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West

Boring, but Dark Fantasy. There’s this really great essay titled Kanye Alive: The Limits Of Human Personality and that’s another reason I got into writing. I read it while I was on acid and it was really formative for me. See that’s hows how lame I am, doing drugs to read an essay.

It’s the full mind stimulation, maaan.

Like people were obviouosly calling Kanye a genius at this time, but it’s still after the “Gay Fish” stuff. It just argued that Kanye is really such a singular, unfiltered human being that it infects his music to an unfathomable way and we barely have seen that with any artist. Like he truly is the least restrained, Nietzschean example of a personal musician I can think of. Dark Fantasy is the idea of a musician putting themselves into their music…that’s that album to a tee. It really changed my life, and made me want to put that into Constantly Hating. That’s what I want to give back, an absolute fervor. It’s hard to go that hard. He’s on a different level.

I think we’re about the same age, because that’s one of the first albums I bought and got obsessed with. I had the version with all the alternate covers, the short film, I’m reading all the credits and was thinking this is just how everything was supposed to be. You don’t know any better. Then time goes on and you’re like “Oh no, he’s a psychopath doing alien stuff.” Are there any songs or moments that you’re still amazed by on the music side all these years later.

It’s hard. I’ve probably listened to every track 50 millions times, except “Hell Of A Life” which isn’t that good. It’s so maximalist, it just has every single kind of little note. The highs of “Dark Fantasy,” “POWER,” and “All Of The Lights,” then there’s “Monster” which I listened to again and it has fucking Rick Ross, Jay, Nicki with the most sparse beat ever. It’s just an 808 drum, a modulated piano, and a weird voice. You ever watch Adventure Time? You know Prismo? Just a pink guy, inside a pink box, but he’s the pink box, and the beat just reminds me of that. An amorphous…weird….it’s just so strange.

It’s stripped down to the God particle.

There’s so many classics. It’s unfuckwithabble.

Of your list, what’s one that creatively inspires you the most?

2) Man Plays The Horn by Cities Aviv

Man Plays The Horn. I know he’s a rapper, and raps on the album, but it’s more like jazz rap, sound collage, musique concrete. He just packs so many ideas into it. I’m not someone who enjoys much literal art, that’s just on its face good, there has to be some level of abstraction. For example, all the really literal indie rock / alt-country that’s popping right now is boring. Like cool you’re, describing things in your weird small town, awesome. But Cities Aviv is really in this haze, this miasma that’s not understandable, and I appreciate that. He’s just a really intelligent, smart dude. He makes me want to create.

Have you ever tried to make music on your own, or have you always just stayed a fan?

I’ve made a bit, but my urge to create comes as writing.

I know he has a ton of music out, and I like this album, but I really don’t go to him much. Is it more impressive to you when a guy has one great album and everything else is just whatever, or is the full artist career project with some hits and misses and mid more interesting?

I would say the former. I think people with a mediocre oeuvre can tap into something great by luck or circumstance. Some of my favorite albums ever are just artists tapping into something at the right time. It’s fun to be a fan of someone who has a great 9 out of 10 discography like Kanye or Outkast or Animal Collective or Three 6 but sometimes you can just tap into something and can’t get back.

Cities Aviv has a lot of older music that’s really good to, but not at all this sample based stuff. He used to be closer to like Death Grips. It’s cool to see an artist evolve and level up, but making this whole project is impressive.

What’s a more recent album, like 2-3 years old that breaks into this group?

3) Sisterhood by Lucy Bedroque

He just went fucking crazy with this. He’s been moving away from this sound, mashing his style with the prettifun and thirteendegrees° type stuff, but Sisterhood is crazy. I don’t understand how he did that. But you can say that about all the underground kids. Jane Remover, prettifun, whoever.

All the hyperpop slash raging Playboi Carti kids have been able to push the limits and still sound cool. Because all of that popped off during the pandemic, such an isolated experience, but still have melody and ability to grip everyone is amazing. Like I’d bet my life prettifun becomes a star, whether it’s the broader audience adjusting to the abrasiveness or they mellow it out, but that melodic ear is special.

Lucy deserves to become a star. I don’t know if they’ll ever make something like Sisterhood again. All that post-COIVD, internet brained, fried, but beautiful visual kai influence, Nintendo DS game music, and fucking card capture aesthetics is so crazy. It’s super omega classic.

How did you discover the album? Was it being in the Soundcloud trenches or did you get put on to it?

It was in the ToneGlow Discord chat with all the writers. It felt like playing a video game on some subconscious level that I’m not even really experiencing. I couldn’t listen to anything else for a week.

With your music background being less hip-hop centric, when you’re listening to this album or Cities Aviv do you ever syphon it off in a different category because they aren’t rapping super well despite the music being amazing?

I think it’s more of an evolution. When people are like “I’m not a rapper I’m an artist,” obviously that’s hella corny, but when I was in high school I learned to appreciate stuff like Flocka, or Finally Rich, 1017 Thug. All that shifted my paradigm. That’s all hella futuristic too, even if more traditional than Lucy or Cities Aviv. Hip-hop has always been avante garde, and sometimes that avant garde can be hood dudes from the projects and sometimes it came be more introverted, nerdy, online kids. At the end of the day it’s still all hip-hop. It all ties into a greater canon for me.

What’s another one you’re passionate about?

4) Young Rich N****s by Migos

I don’t think Migos got the same critical acclaim as Young Thug, or even Carti, but YRN is one of the greatest rap albums ever made. Obviously “Bad And Boujee” and Culture made them big, but on here they were so tapped in. All the triplet flows, the ad libs, everyone was going crazy, it’s funny as hell. Everything just gets into your head. Me and my friends would be in the car without music on just singing “trapping out the bando” or [in a more staccato phrasing] “I’m the bakers man.”

My freshman year I remember telling my friend “Dude, Young Rich Niggas is at least a 9” and them being like, “how can you say that?” Because trap still wasn’t treated as art, or in some high critical consensus. Migos were in such a crazy mode and deserved to be treated with respect. It’s not their [my friends] fault, but they just didn’t realize how sick it was going to be. Even though Migos never reached the heights of this again they influenced the culture so much, and I feel people don’t give them proper credit. It’s just a classic.

I love that project. I remember at that time like YG and Mustard were popping but Kendrick and Drake were really thee young stars. Migos were doing wizard shit but because it wasn’t rich in content it didn’t matter to anyone.

Right, that “crap rap” or whatever the phrase was pre-”mumble rap” to disparage it. Just because it wasn’t super complex thematically people just couldn’t understand that they were on another level.

Or the fact the tape is 18 or however many songs and 16 of them go.

Their batting average was crazy. That and then No Label 2. They were in a zone, hitting home runs like Barry Bonds. 73 home runs baby.

I was always fascinated with their career arc because they had such a high early peak, made mediocre music and looked done, just to bounce back above that original peak. That whole dab movement thing kinda brought them back, but that first 300 album Young Rich Nation, and the Rich N****a Timeline mixtape weren’t good. It was a real bottom out period, but then you get “Bad and Boujee” and we’re back.

Yeah their career arc was quite strange. A lot of Atlanta guys had one hit like Trinidad Jame$, Rich Homie Quan sort of even though he had “Lifestyle” and “Type Of Way” but he never got far out.

5) cLOUDDEAD by cLOUDDEAD

It’s another abstract one. I listen to DMV crank stuff I swear! I listen to normal guy music too guys, but cLOUDDEAD changed my life too.

I’ve seen you tweet about this album and still have never heard it or seen anyone else talk about it.

It’s another older Pitchfork weirdo classic. They basically invented cloud rap, but not the Clams Casino type. It’s very slow, more ambient type of stuff.

Like closer to a chopped & skrewed kind of thing?

A little. Imagine like…if you know any of the Kompakt stuff, like GAS, they’re doing weird ambient stuff. Then do weird samples and laconically rap. You know WHY?

I don’t.

He was in that, they're all from Cincinnati.

OK, I’m looking up now. Doeseone was apart of that? I’ve heard some of his stuff.

They were on the Anti-Pop Consortium thing. I just didn’t know music could sound like that. Same with Cities Aviv. It was just so fucking weird.

When you asked about the 5 albums that impacted me, of course I could talk about Stankonia, Low End Theory or Illmatic, and everyone knows those, but in terms of things that expanded my being and understanding of music, cLOUDDEAD is one of those for sure.

That’s more interesting anyway, I want to know the personal impact. Is there anything after this that you feel falls in line with this?

For sure, like MIKE. It’s less explicitly as weird as cLOUDDEAD, because you can tell they were definitely aiming to be weird, but all of the sLUMs adjacent people fall in that too. MIKE, Mavi, Earl, Standing On The Corner especially. SOTC is probably the closest analog today. They’re all people rapping, but they make the beat so envoloping that it becomes another aspect, more than simple rapper and beat. It’s rapper, beat, and another atmosphere that serves as a layer of fog within it. It can really fry or fully open up your brain.

When I try to geolocate where these albums land in the broader rap landscape, this album and most of the ones you named live in the space where the biggest music fans and diggers go on to archive them online with other music writers. They go on to be super important despite casual or older rap fans never hearing them. If there is any canon that still exists in rap music do you feel there’s space for these niche records, or would it have to be stuff we all agree on and know of?

I think it’s both for sure. Like that recent Pitchfork list. I think it went a little more on the side of being interesting rather than drawing from the canon. Like there wasn’t DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing for example, which I think is an extremely important record and is a critical classic, but I don’t think has that cache now. A lot of the weirdo backpacker stuff besides Funcrusher Plus didn’t get on there.

I think the canon does start to converge back after 10-15 years when you hear rappers point to specific things. Now you see thirteendegrees° pointing to Rich Kidz and Travis Porter, giving those guys shine. It’s like the famous saying, “Velvet Underground only sold 30k but everyone who heard it started a band.” Only a few people will hear certain records but when they’re heard it makes you change.

I don’t know if my picks will do that but influence is more important to the lineage of music than whatever the critical favorite of the day is. Especially now in hip-hop we’re going to see more niche favorites bubble up as we get more fractured. But maybe someone who’s really into Nine Vicious makes the best album of 2030. Someone could be inspired by mid could make us reappraise it by making something beautiful.

I have this broad conversation a lot with my friends about what belongs in the canon if we’re going to accept one. Trying to explain to someone not online heavy the importance of someone like MIKE, who is getting more popular but to casual rap fans is still on the fringes, is tough. I think a lot about the disconnect between super diggers / underground fans, and mainstream fans, and how it’s widened from the 90s until now. tw

It’s always been a thing. The disconnect between the musicians, critics and fans. There’s a famous WIRE Magazine article about the most important records in history, not the best but more like The Velvet Underground & Nico record that has stuff I’ve never even heard of that completely bursts open specific scenes. Sometimes you won’t know until later. The power of hindsight is not given to the fortunate. We’re all just kind of flailing to see what’s going to be good. I think being passionate, and vouching for what’s good, can change perceptions and make sure the right shit gets pushed.

Read and Subscribe to Constantly Hating here and put those 5$ paywalls to good use by commissioning Eli to write for your website.