walking upstream…
Pop Smoke
sourcesWikipedia — Pop Smoke (overview) · Complex — Pop Smoke Forever · DJ Mag — These are the most exciting UK drill producers right now (Headie One/808Melo lineage) · Grammy.com via Wayback Machine — How Pop Smoke Shaped New York's Drill Rap Scene Well Into the Afterlife (Chief Keef as drill originator) · NME — One year on
In 2018, at a Brooklyn recording studio, Pop Smoke's friend Jay Gwuapo got too high to record and passed out, so Bashar Jackson, a Canarsie kid who'd traded a basketball scholarship for street life after a heart murmur ended it at 15, stepped into the booth just to see if he could rap. He grabbed a beat off YouTube from an unknown London producer named 808Melo and made "MPR." Eighteen months later that pairing, a Brooklyn growl draped over 808Melo's sliding UK drill 808s, had produced "Welcome to the Party," the song of New York's summer, and the debut mixtape Meet the Woo. He was shot dead in a Hollywood Hills home invasion on February 19, 2020, twelve days after his second tape dropped; his debut album arrived that July, executive-produced by his idol 50 Cent.
the sound in question
2019
Welcome to the PartyPop Smoke
walk the tributaries ↓
50 Cent2000s · East Coast hip hop / Gangsta rap / Hip hop
When Pop Smoke's manager Steven Victor arranged for him to sit with 50 Cent, it wasn't a courtesy call, it was the plan. "50's career arc is something that he admired a lot," Victor said, and 50 heard it come back at him: "I struck a chord in him. I would hear influences in some of his choices. He says things in the same tone as me." Pop Smoke knew it too. Cutting a West Coast-leaning record with Roddy Ricch, he balked: "No, man. I'm going to sound like 50 Cent. I want to sound like Pop."
listen: upstream & heresource: XXL — How Pop Smoke Went From Hoop Dreams to Becoming One of New York's Hottest Rappers (bio, 50 Cent fandom, 808Melo discovery) ↗
2003
In Da Club50 Cent
2020
Hotel LobbyPop Smoke
listen for"In Da Club" set the template Pop Smoke's producers kept reaching for: a chanted, radio-ready hook riding a spare, hard drum pattern, menace kept just beneath a grin. Producer Swirv built "Hotel Lobby" the same way, saying the beat itself "had a 50 Cent vibe to it" before Pop Smoke had heard a note of it, and once he did, he built a whole song around that feel. Listen for how both hooks do the same job: turning a threat into something you shout along to.
Chief Keef2010s · Chicago drill / Hip hop
Before Pop Smoke arrived, Brooklyn drill was already living in Chief Keef's shadow, the Chicago rapper who, critics agree, "hand-delivered" the genre to the masses in 2012. Pitchfork's Alphonse Pierre heard the debt directly in Pop Smoke's growl, writing that he "sounded like a kid raised on a strict diet of Get Rich or Die Tryin', Finally Rich, and Newports," pairing Keef's breakout album with 50 Cent's as the two records that built him. The chant-and-ad-lib architecture Keef pioneered is the chassis every drill scene since, Brooklyn included, has built on.
listen: upstream & heresource: Pitchfork — Pop Smoke ↗
2012
Love SosaChief Keef
2019
Welcome to the PartyPop Smoke
listen forPut Chief Keef's "Love Sosa" against "Welcome to the Party" and the shared drill skeleton is obvious once you strip away 808Melo's UK-inflected slide: a single chanted phrase repeated until it's inescapable, riding a stark, minor-key loop built more for shouting than singing. Both rappers let their ad-libs do as much of the record's work as the words, an inheritance the genre never shook.
Headie One2010s · UK drill / Hip hop
Pop Smoke, by his own account, had never listened to UK drill before he stumbled onto producer 808Melo's beats on YouTube and cold-messaged him. But the sound he built his catalog on wasn't invented for him. It was forged two years earlier, when the East London producer sent beats to Tottenham rapper Headie One and got back "Know Better," the record DJ Mag called "the crown in his jewels," the track that put 808Melo on the map before Pop Smoke ever found him. The lineage runs through the beatmaker, not through Pop Smoke's own listening history.
listen: upstream & heresource: The Independent — Pop Smoke ↗
2018
18HunnaHeadie One
2019
Christopher WalkingPop Smoke
listen forPlay Headie One's "18Hunna" against "Christopher Walking" and you hear the architecture 808Melo carried across the Atlantic: a stark, sub-heavy bounce, drums that lurch rather than march, under a flow that stays low and unhurried instead of rushing the beat. It's the same bones Headie One's early records set, Pop Smoke just laid a Brooklyn growl over them instead of a Tottenham monotone.