Curated playlist
Pop rappers
- FabolousFabolous got his name by misspelling "Fabulous." The Brooklyn rapper freestyled on Hot 97 as a teenager.
- Kanye WestKanye West recorded "Through the Wire" with his jaw still wired shut. A 2002 car accident had shattered it.
- Drake (musician)Drake's 2006 mixtape Room for Improvement sold roughly 6,000 copies and earned him $304.04.
- TimbalandTimbaland taught himself to DJ with his left hand after being shot at 14. A co-worker shot him at a Red Lobster.
- Fergie (singer)Fergie, born Stacy Ann Ferguson, sang on a song that held the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 straight weeks in 2009. That song, "I Gotta Feeling," stayed at number one longer than any other song that year. By then her records had…
- Pharrell WilliamsPharrell Williams, the American musician, songwriter, record producer and fashion designer, was once behind a startling share of the songs on the radio. An August 2003 survey cited by The Age found that his production duo, the Neptunes,…
- Lil WayneLil Wayne left school in tenth grade after his mother found a gun in his bag.
- Will SmithWill Smith turned down the lead role in The Matrix to make Wild Wild West. He later called that choice a mistake.
- MC HammerMC Hammer started out as an 11-year-old selling baseballs in a parking lot. The Oakland A's owner hired him on the spot.
- Missy ElliottMissy Elliott and Timbaland wrote and produced nine tracks on Aaliyah's 1996 album One in a Million.
- Sean CombsSean Combs founded Bad Boy Records, which launched the Notorious B.I.G. He was later sentenced to four years in prison.
- Doja CatIn August 2018, Doja Cat uploaded a homemade music video in which she fantasized about being a cow. Within a week it had passed three million views. The American rapper, singer and producer was born Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, and the…
- LL Cool JLL Cool J became the first rapper to receive the Kennedy Center Honors in 2017.
- KeshaKesha's big break in 2009 came from walking into a recording session by accident.
- Travis ScottTravis Scott, born Jacques Bermon Webster II, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter and record producer from Houston, Texas. Within a single twelve-month span, three of his songs entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number one. No artist…
- Chris BrownChris Brown, born Christopher Maurice Brown, has sold more than 140 million records worldwide. That total places him among the best-selling music artists in the world. Across his career he has collected 219 awards from 566 nominations, and…
- KSIKSI once answered his teacher's question about quitting college with a single figure: around £1,500 a month, earned from YouTube. That, he said, was more than the teacher took home. He recounted the exchange in a 2014 interview. The…
- Iggy AzaleaIggy Azalea, born Amethyst Amelia Kelly on the 7th of June 1990, told her parents in 2006 that she was going to the United States on a holiday with a friend. She was shortly before her sixteenth birthday. The holiday never ended. She…
- Nick CannonNick Cannon is an American comedian, actor and rapper who once hosted a stunt in which a human cannonball was fired into slime. It happened at Nickelodeon's 2005 Kids' Choice Awards, and the ceremony called it the slime stunt. The moment…
- Kid CudiKid Cudi was born Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi in Cleveland on the 30th of January 1984. One day, while he was working at the BAPE store in New York, Kanye West came in and bought a few jackets. Cudi had forgotten to remove a security sensor…
- MGKMGK, born Colson Baker and known for years as Machine Gun Kelly, took his original stage name from a gangster. The nickname belonged to George Kelly Barnes, a criminal of the Prohibition era. The man who borrowed it became a rapper,…
- Mac MillerBlue Slide Park, an album released on the 8th of November 2011, sold 144,000 copies in its first week and landed at the top of the US Billboard 200. No debut album distributed outside the major label system had done that since Tha Dogg…