Welcome To Miami: Meet Four Pandora Trendsetters Repping South Florida
During the ‘90s, the East Coast/West Coast feud seemed to be focused primarily on New York and L.A. But over the past couple decades, other cities have entered the fight, with Meek Mill repping Philadelphia, Mac Miller repping Pittsburgh, and Drake putting on for Toronto. Atlanta has become, as one critic put it, “hip-hop’s center of gravity” thanks to standouts like Future, OutKast, T.I. and Young Thug.
Now, it seems South Florida is nurturing a new generation of emcees long after the days of early Miami rap pioneers like the 2 Live Crew, Trina and Trick Daddy. Following in the footsteps of Denzel Curry, a new class of young rappers repping the 305 are showing signs of breakout success, particularly on Pandora. This week we have four South Florida rappers on the Trendsetters Chart, which ranks the up-and-coming artist who have seen the highest number of artist station adds on Pandora over the past week.
Read on for an introduction to each. Like what you hear? Listen to Pandora’s Gunshine State: South FLA Hip-Hop station.
Lil Pump
Age: 17
Chart position: #2
Standout track: “Flex Like Ouu”
Social network of choice: Instagram
Stats: Lil Pump has been on a rapid rise since the release of “Flex Like Ouu” in March. Over the past month, he’s seen the most drastic growth on Pandora — almost doubling his number of artist station adds, and increasing his track station adds by more than 350% month on month.
Hair color: A very lovely pink.
Ball Greezy
Age: 31
Chart position: #11
Standout track: “Feel My Pain”
Social network of choice: Instagram
Stats: While Ball Greezy has a pretty modest reach on social media — just 14,000 Twitter followers — he’s recently seen a rate of artist station adds of an artist with a much larger audience. Last week, the Bae Day rapper netted right around 3,000 artist station adds, allowing him to jump up two spots to #11.
Smokepurpp
Age: 19
Chart position: #12
Standout tracks: “WOKHARDT,” “Ski Mask”
Social network of choice: Instagram
Stats: Like Lil Pump and Ball Greezy, over the past 30 days, Smokepurpp has grown the fastest on Pandora. This month compared to last month, Smokepurpp has increased his artist station adds by more than 170% and nearly tripled his number of artist station adds. Elsewhere, he’s seen an increase in Twitter followers of 80% month on month.
Pouya
Age: 22
Chart Position: #14
Standout track: “Get Buck”
Social networks of choice: Instagram, Twitter
Stats: This week marks Pouya’s 33rd week on the chart, maintaining a very healthy number of artist station adds since last summer. But he isn’t seeing the same rapid growth as some of the new kids. His metric trend is “stable” — not slowing down, but also not growing. But some of his more recent releases are still growing on Pandora. “Death by Dishonor,” which he dropped in February, saw a week-on-week increase in spins of over 100%.
