High Times With The Black Beatles

After going multiplatinum, Rae Sremmurd wrecked cars, bought pet monkeys and made a wild triple album

- Jonah Weiner

IT DIDN’T MAKE THE NEWS, but a couple of months back Slim Jxmmi drove his Ferrari into a fence. “It was a beautiful Ferrari,” says his younger brother, Swae Lee. Together they make up the pop-rap duo Rae Sremmurd; they’re in their home studio in the suburbs north of L.A. “I played chicken with traffic,” Jxmmi explains. “I woke up from this party, don’t even know where my shirt was, got in the Ferrari, no shirt on.” A few blocks from his house, he blew a red light, overcooked a turn and crashed. “Drove home with the front dragging on the ground,” he says. Swae shakes his head: “He fucked that motherfucker up.” Jxmmi grins. “It was a rental. I just got my license, so now I’m actually gonna buy myself some cars.” Meaning he didn’t have a license when he crashed? “You can do anything without a license,” he replies. “I got pulled over once doing 160 on the highway. Got off with a warning. Said, ‘Shit, Sremmlife!’ ”

For the brothers of Rae Sremmurd, “Sremmlife” is an all-purpose motto connoting a nonstop whirl of partying, money spending and, on occasion, vehicular death-tempting. If Swae seems unflappably laid-back, Jxmmi is wilder, more intense. He tells me he’s got a baby on the way, but impending fatherhood clearly hasn’t slowed him down. You can hear the difference in their personalities in their music – Swae slipping into silky, lover-man melodies; Jxmmi rapping with scowling aggression about haters – and you can see it in their live shows. In 2015, Jxmmi jumped off the stage at Governors Ball and split his leg open. “I’m like a stuntman for real,” he says, hiking up the right leg of his blue boxing trunks to show off a gnarly horseshoe-shaped scar on his thigh.