The murder of Pop Smoke in February, after a shooting during a break-in at a house he was staying at in the Hollywood Hills, is a story many of us know all too well. “Dior” was supposed to be a game changer for Pop, whose life took breathtaking turns as he grew from a musically gifted church kid, to a streetwise voice of outer-borough discontent, to a newly minted hip-hop superstar, to another bright spot in the constellation of rappers taken away too soon, all of this before his 21st birthday (which would’ve been celebrated with a king’s welcome later this month). Pop Smoke wrote his first hit, spring 2019’s “Welcome to the Party,” in half an hour in his bedroom. Barriers to access lowered the cost of making beats and videos dipped and a new generation charged into the game. Couple that with the years it took chart authorities like Billboard to adjust to younger listeners who stream much, much more than they buy, and it explains why the last six years have felt like an explosion in the hit-making potential of New York rappers. Pressure on venues to avoid booking musicians with criminal records and bar owners’ reluctance to host rap fans complicated the path to stardom for artists in their own hometown. The tenuous relationship between New York hip-hop artists and police and elected officials pinched the tributaries that push local talent into the mainstream. It makes a kind of sense when you consider the rapper’s dismay about the well-trodden pathways between inner cities and upstate prisons, as expressed in “Dior” as well as in interviews, and the fact that the NYPD was on his back so much it literally had him removed from a festival bill. When New Yorkers took to the streets last month to press the mayor and governor for change, “Dior” was one of the songs that soundtracked marches. To call “Dior” the song of that summer is an understatement it hasn’t stopped playing outside since then. In July 2019, Canarsie rapper Pop Smoke dropped “Dior,” a classic Big Apple party anthem and a perfect argument for the global reach of drill, a dark offshoot of trap born in Chicago and adapted by scenes in BK and the U.K. (A week after the Shmoney dance Vine went viral, a different video ushered us into darker days as we watched the freshly slain Michael Brown baking in the Missouri sun, and a fresh, pained movement for equal rights began.) Three years later, during the hot, stressful summer of 2017, Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow” topped charts and rocked parties from Brooklyn to the Bronx, thanks to the Dominican-Trinidadian Washington Heights icon’s gruff sense of humor, a distillation of the rowdy spirit of aggressive New York rap reimagined for modern ears. Summer 2014, when Bobby Shmurda tossed his Knicks fitted into the sky in the “Hot Nigga” video and it stayed there, might be the last time we knew true peace. Music strengthens bonds and closes gaps in style and taste that divide the boroughs. It’s a beautiful sight when the entire city of New York gets behind the same song - greater still when it unites behind a homegrown talent. Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon is evidence of a star gaining his bearings, but as much as it is a product of a young and growing artist’s path toward refinement, it is also a document of his jarring absence.
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