Quadeca started his channel in 2012 as a FIFA gameplay account under the handle quadecax8, years before Benjamin Barajas Lasky ever thought of himself as a rapper.
He didn't upload original music until 2014, and it was "Insecure," a 2018 diss track aimed at KSI, that actually redirected the whole channel — the video has been watched close to 36 million times and effectively launched his music career overnight, a strange way in for someone with formal ambitions as a songwriter.
Voice Memos, his 2019 debut album, started distancing him from that diss-track origin, and the records since — From Me to You, I Didn't Mean to Haunt You, and 2024's Scrapyard, his most critically acclaimed to date — trace a real progression from YouTube gimmick to an artist building glitchy, ambient-leaning hip-hop on its own terms.