Hunter Oliveri: the person behind the soundcloud rapper lil cxs
Walking into the recording studio 805Rogue in downtown Paso, Hunter Oliveri — better known as Lil Cxs on the PRHS campus — put on his headphones, walked up to the mic, and pressed record as he started hours of rapping. With 4,384 followers on SoundCloud and 3,195 followers on Instagram, the pressure is on to put out new music for his fans.
Oliveri has 19 tracks out on Apple Music, Google Play, Spotify, SoundCloud, and he recently launched an online store called Futurism with friend Ryan Friedling.
When his first song, “Diamonds ft. Young Braids,” dropped, suddenly Oliveri was thrust into small-scale fame throughout Paso Robles with 9,789 plays since he dropped the song. His following and success only grew from there: currently, his most popular song is “Gucci Down” with 130.1K plays on Soundcloud.
Justin Coria is another local rapper (known as Young Braids) who collaborates often with Oliveri. “Working with Hunter is extremely quick and easy. He literally makes music so fast it blows my mind,” Coria said.
The origin story behind Lil Cxs is one of an ordinary kid deciding to take charge and change something about his life.
“I saw a Genius interview on YouTube of Lil Mosey when he started getting famous because he dropped the music video for ‘Pull Up’ and I was like, ‘I can do that too’ so I just started rapping,” Oliveri said.
Although Lil Cxs doesn’t stand for anything, Oliveri has become a sort of beacon for all of PRHS’ rappers. Oliveri’s notoriety doesn’t last solely on campus; he is signed onto Interscope Records, which has signed world-class artists including Eminem and Billie Eilish.
One of Oliveri’s songs can be written in 15-30 minutes; his favorite out of what has been released is “Blue Strips.” He said the best music he’s written is not yet out to the public, which implies that he has continued to grow as an artist.
He further grew his audience when he released his new online store Futurism alongside Friedling; its namesake represents “clothes for the new generation.” While Friedling and Oliveri are just now working together, they have grown up alongside each other since the 3rd grade and are now best friends.
Futurism Shop offers 17 different designs at multiple different prices. The best selling shirt is the V-Lone Tee Shirt, selling out within the first few weeks of launching the shop.
Behind the scenes, the website requires a lot of time and money to be invested. Oliveri purchased most of the merchandise while Friedling bought the website URL and remaining merchandise as well. Friedling also designed the cover page for the website and made a promotional video to get the news out there.
This store makes Oliveri and Friedling some of the youngest and most successful entrepreneurs on the PRHS campus (some of the items are already sold out). Oliveri set up and runs the entire website behind the scenes and designed some of the clothing.
“As of right now, the website is only sort of a ‘rough draft’ and we’re going to be making big changes to it soon,” Friedling said.
Altogether, Lil Cxs is a phenomenon among PRHS and hopes to become a household name. With a growing audience and new music planning to be released in the future, Oliveri is rapping his way to the top.
