In 2016, the term “rap rock” strikes terror in the nation’s heart.

It brings back memories of the musical wasteland that was the early 2000s, where Jay Z and Linkin Park casually collaborated on an EP of mashups and Papa Roach not only existed but went triple Platinum. It was a time when metal guitar riffs, not trap beats, backed rap verses — and the songs that resulted from the unholy combination were regularly played on rock radio.

And, naturally, elementary school me loved it all.

But 10 years later, Young Thug, Travis Scott and a number of up-and-coming Auto-Tune crooners have replaced Linkin Park on my iPod nano — and my iPod nano is now an iPhone.

So when one of those SoundCloud rap startups, Los Angeles songwriter Lil Aaron, changed his Twitter bio to “rap rock” and announced his debut EP Gloing Pain$, it was concerning. Was Lil Aaron serious? Was it going to be trash? What even is rap rock in 2016?

Fortunately, the Halloween release of Gloing Pain$ proves that in the capable hands of Twitter’s favorite green-haired Auto-Tune user, even rap rock can still be fun, catchy and lively.

Breezing through seven songs in less than 25 minutes, the EP serves as an introduction to the artist version of Lil Aaron, a gifted songwriter who’s written indie pop hits such as Louis the Child and Icona Pop’s “Weekend” and Dev’s “Lowkey.” But while Gloing Pain$ shares the catchiness of Lil Aaron’s work with other artists, the songs on the EP definitely couldn’t come from anyone else.

“Let me tell you how I managed to get out/ Went from sleeping on my manager’s couch,” Lil Aaron raps on the autobiographical opening title track.

It’s a verse that appeared on Twitter before the EP’s release, over the beat to DJ Khaled and Drake’s “For Free” — but like everything else on Gloing Pain$, it sounds much more at home on the bed of distorted 808s, warped vocals and whining rock guitars, courtesy of SoundCloud production darlings Y2K, Dylan Brady and Brenton Duvall.

Perhaps the blend of rock and hip-hop works so well on Gloing Pain$ because Lil Aaron’s primary mode of performance isn’t spitting 16s, but instead the sing-songy trap of New Atlanta. “Stronger” is a mellow blend of faded trap balladry and freewheeling guitar solos, and the EP’s biggest banger is by far “Four More Drinks/Pink Fenty Slides,” a dual-sided track where both parts offer up sex and drugs while replacing the rock and roll with gritty, aggressive trap beats.

But Gloing Pain$’s biggest surprise is easily “Drugs,” a Good Charlotte-inspired power chord anthem about, naturally, drugs. It’s an incredibly catchy song that sheds the rap posturing in favor of straight-up pop punk. Admittedly, the combination of distorted Auto-Tune vocals and throwback instrumentation make the track divisive, but in the best way possible: It sounds like quite literally nothing else in music right now. Not to mention the fact that after one listen to the two-minute track, you’ll be singing “I only say I love her when I wanna fuck her” at the top of your lungs as the song pummels its hook into your eardrums.

But for all its sonic experimentation, Gloing Pain$ works because of Lil Aaron’s tight, catchy songwriting. The lyrics are as raunchy as they are clever (“Bitches in my DM, they all thinking that I’m famous now/ Girls from back in high school either love me or they hate me now”) and even the verses are apt to get stuck in your head.

“At the end of the day, I’m a pop songwriter. I write pop songs. I understand Top 40, and I understand what it takes to do that,” Lil Aaron said recently in an interview with pop music blog Project U.

And it shows. Even when the vocals on Gloing Pain$ are too distorted to properly understand (which happens frequently) or the beats delve into the ultra-dark, aggressive sounds of SoundCloud rap (like on the slightly too-long “Nightrider” or the rocky “Go 2 Hell”) the melodies break through the chaos. Because despite the “rap rock” label, Gloing Pain$ is pop music — and really good pop music at that.

3/4 Shells