2025 Was the Year of the Great Crash Out

Editor’s note: This article mentions mental health crises and violence. If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, the 988 Lifeline is available 24/7 via phone, text or chat.

In June, The Guardian noted the term’s dominance. In July, British Vogue titled it the “mood of the year.” There’s an entire TikTok page dedicated to “the top crash outs of 2025.”

People of all backgrounds are on the fritz, and musicians across genres are singing about it.

The ever-growing list of hip-hop songs with the term in the title includes a popular track from Lihtz, Fridayy and Meek Mill, as well as songs from local artists like San Francisco’s Lil Yee, Vallejo’s DaBoii and the Bay Area’s king of slang, E-40, on a track with Nebraska’s King Iso.

There’s also a “Crash Out” house track by Ray Volpe, and pop songs by Mimi Webb and Taylor Acorn, both titled “Crashing Out.”

The term is undeniably popular (even my third grader uses it).

But why now? The idea of losing your marbles has been around forever, and the specific lingo of “crashing out” or “being a crash out” has been around for years.

Memphis rapper Blac Youngsta dropped a track with that title in 2020, and the late Young Dolph, also from Memphis, released one called “Crashin’ Out” two years prior to that. So why, in 2025, is The New York Times running an explainer on the term?

Well, to be frank, it’s applicable.

Given the general aggravating gist of society and the amount of time humans spend under surveillance, it’s a no-brainer that people are being pushed to the edge and then caught on camera, “in 4K” as they say.

On top of being the hot term of 2025, this year has shown that there’s a spectrum to crashing out, and I think it’s high time we discuss the varied ways that people are pissed off.

Young Money’s crash

Sometimes it’s subtle, reported only through news headlines that leave readers to wonder: What really made Drake sue his own label’s parent company, Universal Music Group, asserting that they were overly promoting rival Kendrick Lamar’s diss track against him? Is this a serious legal matter, or is this an old fashioned Canadian crash out unraveling over an extended period of time?

Other crash outs have been loud, bold and embarrassing, like that of Drake’s label mate, Nicki Minaj. Recently, the lyrical queen of hip-hop Barbies has used social media to take unwarranted verbal assaults at a long list of people, including Jay-Z, Miley Cyrus and Cardi B. Minaj also took to social media announcing that she’d be dropping a new album in March 2026, a follow-up to 2023’s Pink Friday 2, before recanting her statement.

“Ok I’m not going to put out the album anymore. No more music,” she wrote in a now deleted post on X. “Hope you’re happy now,” she concluded, tagging Jay-Z’s “@sc” account and signing off, “Bye, Barbz.” She later doubled back and said the album is back on for next year.

The cogent crash

As far removed from our lived experiences as it might seem, the notable tailspins from celebrities, athletes and entertainers are extreme examples of things we all face. After all, we’re all humans with a wide range of emotions; they just happen to have a lot more attention on them.

Take for instance, Justin Bieber. I’ve never been in his shoes, but I know it’s frustrating trying to rationalize with the irrational.

“I’m a dad, I’m a husband,” the pop star said to a paparazzi photographer earlier this year. Bieber, “standing on business,” tried to explain to the camera person that provoking him to get something juicy on camera was out of pocket. Unfortunately, he fell for the trap and the clip went viral.

Another example is Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve in game three of the WNBA semi-finals. I’ve never coached a professional team, but I know the feeling of fighting for what’s right — at least from my angle.

In the final seconds of the game, Phoenix’s star forward Alyssa Thomas stole the ball from the Lynx’s superstar Napheesa Collier, causing a collision that left Collier’s leg injured. No foul was called, and Reeve lost it.

She stormed the court and chewed out a referee. Players and members of her coaching staff held her back as she was ejected from the game, eventually making her way to the locker room.

In a post-game interview, Coach Reeve called out the higher-ups in the WNBA, and said assigning those specific referees to a game of that magnitude was “fucking malpractice.”

The political crash

2025’s crash outs came in a variety of fascists fashions.

There’s the awkward shouting match of a meeting between Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy and U.S. President Donald Trump from last February, which ended with president Trump saying, “This is going to be great television, I will say that.”

There’s the revealing meltdown of former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who, in the final days of his failing campaign for mayor of New York, made an extremely racist remark. Cuomo, in conversation with popular podcast host Sid Rosenberg, took shots at Zohran Mamdani, who’d eventually be elected as the first Muslim mayor of New York.

“God forbid there’s another 9/11,” said Cuomo during the interview. “Can you imagine Mamdani in the [mayor’s] seat?” Rosenberg laughed and responded, “You know, I could. He’d be cheering.”

Iconic crash outs

And then, there’s the self-imposed obliterations of former icons, like Diddy.

The disgraced former Bad Boy Records mogul is currently serving time for two counts of transportation for the purposes of prostitution. At his court hearing this summer, during which he was acquitted of the more serious charges of racketeering and sex trafficking, Combs reportedly went through a series of emotions as his courtroom crash out was illustrated in watercolors.

There are terrifying crash outs, like that of former NFL star Antonio Brown. A long list of questionable actions on and off the field came to an alarming point earlier this year, as Brown was arrested in Dubai by U.S. Marshals and extradited to Miami on charges stemming from an incident in May where Brown, allegedly acting in self-defense, fired gunshots into the air after an altercation at a nightclub.

A call for help with mental health

On the note of football and guns, even more horrifying were the actions of former football player Shane Tamura, who this summer walked into a building that houses the NFL’s headquarters and killed four people before killing himself.

Tamura left at least two notes behind, apologizing for his actions and asking people to look at his brain for the degenerative disease often linked to football players, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

“Study my brain please,” Tamura reportedly wrote in a note found in his wallet.

His story, like so many unfortunate instances, serves as a reminder that the far end of the crash-out spectrum reveals the truth: It’s actually a mental health issue.

The way the term has become so relatable and commonly used shows that we all have some mental exercising to do. Too often we joke about things that are serious matters. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism for the madness, but clearly there are times when the mechanism fails.

Crash-out clarity

In searching for a singular theme of 2025, I reviewed the big ideas, notable people, astonishing feats and major happenings that we’ll read about in the history books. And it’s clear: This year had it all.

The saying “6-7” is annoyingly catchy. Bad Bunny is a musical savant. Labubus made millennials reconsider the ridiculousness of Beanie Babies. Foodies grew fascinated with the term “tenderism.” The films Sinners and KPop Demon Hunters took over the silver screen. And the only way to settle the debate about athlete of the year is to put A’Ja Wilson and Shohei Ohtani in a dance battle.

The year started with a heinous attack on partygoers in New Orleans. Months later, gun advocate Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while on stage in Utah. Last month, two members of the National Guard were shot in Washington D.C; one of them, Sarah Beckstrom, was killed.

This year the U.S. government went to war with other countries, as well as DEI programs, the TikTok app, fisherman in the Caribbean, immigrants and its own employees via the longest government shutdown in this country’s history.

All of that, plus so much artificial intelligence that George Orwell is probably spinning like a wind turbine in his grave.

But the act of losing all constraints and letting the world feel your frustrations, only to be left with post-crash out clarity and the results of your actions — that’s what I’ll remember about 2025.

The healthy instances, times when a person was righteously perturbed, as well as the ego-driven, self-destructive actions and the horrible occurrences that took the lives of others and pushed me to reflect on our collective mental health.

Maybe it’s just how we human in 2025.

The range of emotions and the varied ways we go about expressing ourselves, it’s something that no bot can replicate. At least not for now, but who knows what 2026 has in store.

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, the 988 Lifeline is available 24/7 via phone, text or chat.