Lyrical Lemonade

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A music video powerhouse whose colorful visuals have launched some of hip-hop's biggest stars.

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24.2MYouTube followers

About Lyrical Lemonade

Lyrical Lemonade is the most influential music-video brand of the streaming era — Cole Bennett's Chicago-born empire that turned DIY rap videos into an art form and launched a generation of stars.

The origin is pure hustle. Bennett started Lyrical Lemonade as a hip-hop blog in 2013 while still in high school in Plano, Illinois, then picked up a camera. The early videos — shot cheap, edited with explosive creativity — became the definitive visual language of the SoundCloud rap explosion: hyper-saturated colors, animated overlays, and energy that matched the music bar for bar.

The videography is a hall of fame. Juice WRLD's "Lucid Dreams," Lil Pump's "Gucci Gang," and hundreds more — Bennett shot the videos that defined late-2010s hip-hop, working with artists before they were famous and making them look like superstars. The Summer Smash festival in Chicago turned the brand into a live institution; the All Is Yellow compilation album proved it could be a label too.

The aesthetic became the industry standard. Every rap video with cartoonish VFX and day-glo color grading owes something to Cole Bennett — he didn't just document the SoundCloud era, he designed how it looked. The YouTube channel, with its hundreds of videos and billions of views, is the archive of a movement.

Why people watch: Lyrical Lemonade videos are events — the premiere of a Cole Bennett video still feels like a moment in hip-hop. Rap fans who follow Travis Scott's spectacle or Kendrick Lamar's artistry are already living in the house Bennett helped build.

Previously covers Lyrical Lemonade because music videos still matter, and nobody makes them matter more. The lemonade is still sweet.

The empire keeps expanding. Summer Smash sells out Chicago summers, the compilation albums put Bennett behind the boards as an executive, and every new video still carries the unmistakable Lyrical Lemonade DNA — the colors, the chaos, the eye for talent before anyone else sees it. Previously covers the brand because hip-hop's visual history of the last decade runs through one camera in Chicago, and it's still rolling.

The blog era is the foundation everything else stands on. In 2013, Chicago was the center of the rap universe: drill had taken over with Chief Keef and Lil Durk leading a wave of young MCs, while Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa were riding a different, no-less-creative wave — and the whole industry was placing bets on who would break next out of the city. Bennett, seventeen and still in high school in Plano, Illinois, launched Lyrical Lemonade as what he calls "truly just a passion project," writing about the local scene nobody else was covering: video recaps of underground shows, interviews, and spotlights on local heroes like Vic Mensa and King Louie. He thought he wanted to study journalism. Film had other plans.

The videos became the second layer — and then the whole building. After a summer break in Chicago gave him the freedom to go all in, Bennett dropped out of college and started shooting. He was early to the SoundCloud rap wave in a way that now looks like prophecy: Smokepurpp, Famous Dex, Lil Pump's "Gucci Gang," Ski Mask the Slump God's "Catch Me Outside" (later hailed by Pitchfork among its favorite music videos of the 2010s). Then 2018 changed everything. Bennett shot "Lucid Dreams" for a then-unknown kid from Chicago named Juice WRLD — the video rode the song to number two on the Hot 100 — and their first collaboration, "All Girls Are the Same," did 96 million views and helped Juice land his $3 million Interscope deal. Bennett didn't just film the SoundCloud era. He gave it its face.

The Juice WRLD bond ran deeper than business. The two Chicago kids came up together, and when Juice died in December 2019, Bennett dedicated his year-end director's reel — 29 videos deep, including Ski Mask's "Faucet Failure," YNW Melly and Kanye West's "Mixed Personalities" (which required moving hundreds of feet of turf to a new warehouse 48 hours before the shoot on a midnight call from Kanye), and Lil Tecca's breakout "Ransom" — to his friend. The grief is part of the brand's story now; so is the loyalty. Summer Smash's gates have carried memorial murals to Juice, King Von, and Squeak Pivot — three Chicago kids, gone too soon, honored at the festival their city built.

Because Lyrical Lemonade was never just videos. Bennett launched the Summer Smash festival in 2018 with promoter Berto Solorio and his SPKRBX company, and it became the annual pilgrimage for rap's new generation — Douglass Park in Chicago, tens of thousands deep, the mosh-pit utopia Stereogum documented in 2021. He launched an actual lemonade drink in 2019 (the cans debuted at Summer Smash and ComplexCon, with limited-edition artist cans for Lil Tecca, Blueface, Polo G, and The Kid LAROI). He made "The Life of Lenny," a series of animated shorts about a wooden good-vibes mascot who cameos in the videos. He did brand work with Jordan and the Minions. The blog that started it all still spotlights unsigned artists — still the vital curator for a generation, still free.

Then came the album. A decade behind the camera, Bennett spent 2023 assembling All Is Yellow, released January 26, 2024, through a joint venture with Def Jam — the first Lyrical Lemonade album, with the brand itself as the overarching theme. The singles told the story: "Doomsday," built around a posthumous Juice WRLD verse with Cordae; "Stop Giving Me Advice," pairing Jack Harlow with British rapper Dave. The feature list reads like Bennett's contact list made manifest: Lil Durk, Chief Keef, JID, Kid Cudi, Lil Yachty, Lil B, Juicy J, Cordae, Latto, Joey Bada$$, Eminem. He shot a video for every song, with plans to stitch them into a visual album — the director becoming the executive, the curator becoming the label.

The mainstream videography is a hall of fame on its own. Eminem's "Godzilla," co-starring Dr. Dre and Mike Tyson. Videos for Kanye West, J. Cole, Justin Bieber, The Kid LAROI, Lil Durk, Polo G, Post Malone, MGK, blink-182 — and Jack Black's "Peaches" from the record-breaking Super Mario Bros. movie. Two BET Hip-Hop Award nominations for Video Director of the Year. A Streamy for Best Cinematography. A YouTube channel past 24 million subscribers with 10.9 billion views — the archive of a movement, still growing.

The aesthetic is the legacy. The bright hues, the neon animation flourishes, the little lemonade-carton logo in the corner of every frame — a decade of rap videos now carries Bennett's DNA whether he shot them or not. He took the DIY energy of a high school blog in the cornfields outside Chicago and turned it into what one writer called the new MTV for Gen Z: a media empire that does events, film production, shows, videos, merch, and now records. Rap fans who follow Drake's reign or Travis Scott's spectacle are watching artists whose visual world Bennett helped invent.

Previously covers Lyrical Lemonade because music videos still matter, and nobody made them matter more — or made more of them matter. Ten years in, the lemonade is still sweet, and the camera is still rolling.