An enigmatic new face in hip-hop emerging from the deepest depths of SoundCloud rap culture and scaling the highest echelons of Spotify stream counts, Californian rapper Lil Xan will jump on the Splendour in the Grass Sideshows bandwagon this July for a couple of exclusive, all ages sideshows in Sydney and Melbourne.

Originally hailing from Redlands, California, Lil Xan was first exposed to hip-hop while taking photos of his friends in the Low Gang Collective – a group of rappers that included fellow SoundCloud superstars Steven Cannon and Aris Ray. After his camera was stolen at a show,Xan decided to ditch the pictures and start rapping himself, a decision that paid off almost immediately.

Clocking up his first trip to Australia, Lil Xan (real name Diego Leanos) will arrive on our shores in a white-hot flurry of hard earned hype. A controversial spirit, his signature track Betrayed has been streamed close to 200 million times (its video is putting up similar numbers on YouTube), has gone gold in Australia and has landed the 21-year-old rapper at the forefront of a growing counterculture in the US.