Pop Smoke
Bashar Jackson grew up in Canarsie, Brooklyn, and turned a booming, gravel-throated delivery into the sound of an entire borough in less than two years. Singles like "Welcome to the Party" and "Dior" — built on UK drill production hardened with New York swagger — made him the face of Brooklyn drill before he was murdered during a home invasion in Los Angeles in February 2020, twelve days after his second mixtape's release. 50 Cent, an artist Pop Smoke had idolized, stepped in as executive producer on the posthumous debut album that followed.
Pop Smoke grew up idolizing 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin' era, and 50 returned the favor by executive-producing Pop Smoke's posthumous album — the swagger, ad-libs, and hook-first street records both share trace straight back to that mentorship.
listen forCue up 50's "In Da Club" next to Pop Smoke's "Dior": same blueprint — a menacing verse that snaps into an inescapable, radio-ready hook.
Brooklyn drill didn't appear from nowhere — Pop Smoke has talked about loving Chicago drill, the genre Chief Keef effectively willed into existence in 2012, and its stark, menacing 808-and-hi-hat template is the chassis every drill scene since has built on.
listen forPut "Love Sosa" next to "Welcome to the Party": strip away the UK-drill sliding bass and you're left with the same drill bones — hard, repetitive, built to be shouted, not sung.
Pop Smoke built Brooklyn drill by bringing UK drill's minimal, ominous sliding-bass production back across the Atlantic — the same lane Headie One and his UK peers had spent years carving out, working with the same pool of London producers.
listen forPlay Headie One's "18Hunna" against Pop Smoke's "Christopher Walking": that stark, sub-heavy bounce underneath a monotone flow is the shared UK drill skeleton.