Flo Rida
Tramar Dillard grew up in Miami Gardens' Carol City neighborhood, cutting his teeth as a hype man in the orbit of hometown Miami-bass pioneers 2 Live Crew before launching a solo career on Poe Boy and Atlantic. His 2007 breakout 'Low' (with T-Pain) topped the Billboard Hot 100 for ten weeks and became one of the era's best-selling digital singles, and he spent the following decade as a reliable manufacturer of maximalist club anthems built on interpolations, festival-sized hooks, and EDM-pop production. Rarely a critical favorite, he made an art of the crossover smash - 'Right Round,' 'Club Can't Handle Me,' 'Good Feeling,' 'Wild Ones,' 'Whistle' - fusing rap cadences to dance-floor immediacy.
Flo Rida came up inside the same Miami-bass ecosystem as 2 Live Crew - his brother-in-law worked as a hype man for the group, and Flo Rida himself performed as a hype man alongside member Fresh Kid Ice early on. He has repeatedly credited the group's booty-bass party energy as foundational, saying in interviews that they are still inspiring his music today.
listen forThrow on 2 Live Crew's 'Move Somethin'' and then 'Low' - hear the same uptempo, bass-forward Miami party engine: a chanted, call-and-response hook and a rhythm built to move a club floor rather than to be studied.
Flo Rida has named Run-D.M.C. among his early influences and singled out their Aerosmith collaboration 'Walk This Way' as a formative lesson in how to cross over into different genres and still make hot music - a crossover instinct that runs through his own habit of welding rap verses to borrowed pop and rock hooks.
listen forPlay 'Walk This Way,' where Run-D.M.C. bolt rap verses onto a rock riff, then 'Right Round,' where Flo Rida raps over a wholesale lift of a 1980s new-wave hook - both turn a genre collision into a radio smash.
Flo Rida lists LL Cool J among the artists he grew up on, naming '2 Live Crew, listening to Run-DMC, LL COOL J early on' as his formative rap diet. LL was a template for the charismatic solo MC who could carry a melodic, radio-friendly crossover single without a group behind him.
listen forSet LL's playful, hook-driven 'Around the Way Girl' against Flo Rida's 'Whistle' - both are flirtatious, melody-first pop-rap where a solo rapper rides an unmistakable sung or whistled hook aimed straight at radio.