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The Last Days of Pop Smoke
The Brooklyn rapper was on the verge of an international breakthrough when he was killed in February. Here is the story of his whirlwind final months, told by those who knew him best.
The rapper Pop Smoke was a leading figure in the Brooklyn drill scene. His posthumous full-length album is being released in July.Credit...Ryan Lowry for The New York Times
By Jon Caramanica
Every so often, though far less frequently than it used to, New York hip-hop mints an ambassador, someone who’s faithful to the grit of the city’s musical legacy while possessing the charisma to transcend it.
- June 25, 2020
So it was with Pop Smoke, the Canarsie growler who was the most impressive rap newcomer of 2019. For the last couple of years, Brooklyn has been fertile turf, growing a scene — drill — with a sound that’s rowdy, muscular and sinister. In Pop Smoke, it found its most intuitive voice, someone who reveled in bad-guy bluster while using it merely as a first step toward something much more ambitious.
In short order, he strung together a wild run of breakout singles (“Welcome to the Party,” “Dior,” “Gatti,” “Christopher Walking”) that accelerated him toward hip-hop’s upper tier. The songs were menacing but surprisingly fleet, a crucial balance that satisfies both ground-level fans and those peering in from outside. The speed with which hip-hop superstars like Travis Scott and Nicki Minaj were gravitating toward him for collaborations portended great things, suggesting that the king of New York might someday become the king of everywhere else, too.
he was shot and killed in a still unsolved Los Angeles home invasion. He was 20 years old.
The months leading up to Pop Smoke’s death were packed with promise and adventure, persistence and trial. Interviews with 18 of his friends, colleagues and collaborators tell the story of this vital period — the intoxication of rapid career ascent, the persistent barriers the police put in his path, the exponentially growing crowds, the exponentially more expensive clothing, a multi-hour sit-down with 50 Cent, a high-wire video shoot in the streets of Paris and the recording sessions that would become the foundation for his first full-length album, “Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon,” which will be released on July 3. These are edited excerpts from those conversations.
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50 Cent, center, and Pop Smoke at a Miami party in February, just weeks before Pop Smoke’s death.Credit...Johnny Nunez/Getty Images
October, 2019
Following a blistering summer in which “Welcome to the Party” became ubiquitous, Pop Smoke’s small club performances were rapidly expanding to larger venues. He filmed his first movie role, as the basketball-playing antagonist Monk, in the chef and author Eddie Huang’s directorial debut, “Boogie.”
rappers dropped from the lineup of the inaugural New York edition of Rolling Loud, hip-hop’s signature festival.
TARIQ CHERIF (co-founder, Rolling Loud) He was undeniably the hottest in the city, period. He had the actual support of the real people in the city, real gangsters, real positive people, everything in between. We believe that if the law says you can be free, then you should be able to perform at our show.
freestyle, the combination of the texture of his voice over that 50 beat [“U Not Like Me”], you could tell that it was well thought out. He knew what this moment was going to do, even maybe more so than me and Milk did in the moment.
PANDYA At Astroworld, he was super excited to know that Travis had handpicked that lineup. They ended up meeting for the first time that afternoon. It was all these people that he was fans of but hadn’t met, just to see that love and energy for them to embrace him and welcome him as one of their own. He’s playing Ping-Pong with Quavo, he’s eating wings and Thug comes up to him. He met Marilyn Manson and had no idea who he was.
Pop Smoke’s music was heavily influenced by U.K. drill; his main producers were all British. After he finally secured a passport, his first overseas trip was to England, the home of the sound that carried him to fame. What he found there was a rabid built-in fan base, and kinship from the country’s stars, including Skepta, who invited him out on the road as an opener.
BENJAMIN LUST (A&R, Victor Victor Worldwide) You wouldn’t believe the hoops and bounds we had to do to get a passport. After we supplied everything, they asked for 10 more forms of identification to prove he is who he is. We had to give his transcript from high school, his contract with Universal Music Group.
a video for Pop Smoke’s “Shake the Room,” featuring Quavo.
arrested by the F.B.I. at Kennedy International Airport in New York for transporting stolen property across state lines, in connection with a Rolls-Royce Wraith that was reported stolen from Los Angeles. He’d already been arrested by the N.Y.P.D. on Dec. 3 for possession of stolen property; this marked an intensification of law enforcement pressure.
PANDYA Literally we get stopped at customs. You get the printout when you go through the machine and both of us came back with an X on it. They come out and ask for him by name and bring him into the back room. He got out in the afternoon. He was supposed to perform that night at Yams Day [a concert honoring the hip-hop executive ASAP Yams]. We tried to sneak into Yams Day, too. The plan was to walk in through the front door, and then we would somehow get backstage. We got through the metal detectors, but people started to see him, and then one of the security guards recognized him and they radioed to somebody else and then police came and they were like, “Look, get out of here. Otherwise we have to arrest you.” At least they didn’t arrest him.
LUST I’d be going to court with him pretty much once or twice a week. He was fully taking it in stride. Not in like a too-cool-for-school or a naïve way. He’s saying, this is what I expect, I’m blowing up — this is how they respond. He had a very street-smart attitude when it comes to the police.
PETER FRANKEL (Pop Smoke’s attorney) I think that law enforcement believed that they had a lawful basis to make the arrest, but it was clear that there was other information that they were after. They told him as much. I think Pop was at peace with the reality that he was always going to be interrogated and a source of their interest, because he knew that he would never give anyone any information about anybody.
VICTOR I told him the next six months while the case is going on, as long as you don’t do anything wrong — don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t do drugs — you’re going to be fine. The chances of you going to jail is very low.
LUST We were making no more mistakes. He didn’t need that external motivation of me saying like, no, let me take the champagne glass out of your hand. He very much had self control. He saw the bigger picture in his career and how it wasn’t worth it.
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Credit...Ryan Lowry for The New York Times
PANDYA In Miami during Super Bowl weekend, I felt there was people there watching. He had certain restrictions on his case, where you can’t associate with certain people or drink or drugs. I feel like it was definitely agents in those clubs, people who looked extremely out of place. One night we were at Booby Trap and we had some people from a streaming company and some label execs from Universal, not your typical crowd at 4 a.m. And there was detectives who looked even more out of place to me than those guys did, you know?
The day after his airport arrest, Pop Smoke had a meeting with someone who would permanently alter his perspective on his career: 50 Cent. In a sense, he’d been leading up to this moment for months. 50 represented, to him, the possibility of a career without compromise.
50 CENT The experience was a little weird. Because when I first started talking to him in the office, I was watching and he would look down at his telephone. He was typing at the same time. And there was a point where I’m like, is he listening? I got up so I can kind of see what he was doing, and when I got to the other side of the table, he wasn’t not paying attention to me, he was just writing what I said down. Dead serious.
VICTOR 50’s talking to him about, you know, “Do you want to be in ‘Power’? Do you want to do movies?’” Later on, 50 would tell me, he was like studying him. Because he’s like, yo, I want to know, is he mocking me? Or does he really like me? Is that his real voice, is this really how he acts? Or is he playing a character?
So through that 50 realizes, oh, this kid is really like me. He’s really about that action. He was asking Pop leading questions. Pop is answering them. And he’s like, “Bro, you do not want to be doing that. All the guns, you got to stop that right now. I get it. It’s something that’s necessary because of the life you lead and the people that’s around you, but you, you, you can’t be doing that. Because they’re waiting for you to [expletive] up. And your friends are not really your friends. They’re waiting for you to [expletive] up, too.” He was like, “You could either continue down that path and there’s a high chance that you’ll end up in jail or dead, or you can do this.” Pop is like, “What’s this?” He’s like, “What I got going on! I sold 30 million records. I’m rich. I’m doing movies. I can get anybody on the phone. I could do anything. And this could be you.” I think after that, he realized that he could be himself and be a megastar.
ANGIE MARTINEZ (host, New York’s Power 105.1) 50 felt like he saw something in him that reminded him of himself — he told me that.
VICTOR He’d be with me and it’d be all good and he’d go back to the hood, because he loved the hood. It wasn’t until I took him to go see 50 that he completely did a 360.
In February, Pop Smoke released “Meet the Woo 2.” The drill scene in which he’d found his first footing was still active, with a few other rappers signed to major label deals, but he was already expanding his sonic approach beyond that sound into more radio-familiar styles.
PANDYA When you have something that’s hot, your phone is ringing off the hook and any phone call you make is just getting picked up first ring. Any crazy idea that Steven had it was like, all right, cool, we can do it.
MARTINEZ I really hadn’t been doing any interviews yet [after recovering from a car crash]. When they asked me about Pop, it just felt right. When he came, he showed up with these incredible cookies and flowers, which is so sweet. We did this great interview, and then my favorite part was that he stayed in the studio with me, he was playing me new music. He played me a girl song. It reminded me of this old Lost Boyz song, “Renee.” He didn’t know it. I gave him homework.
PANDYA We had a listening party in Brooklyn, and that was like a tense night, dealing with the police and making sure that went off without a hitch. When that was successful, that was like a sigh of relief.
QUAVO His album release party, I think the police tried to shut it down. I still pulled up — I showed up even when everybody was out of the building. I was the last person to walk in, just to let him know I was there.
50 CENT The first two tapes versus this album? You’re going to see that we really just lost something big. He said to me he wanted to take his mother to an award show. I would like to be able to do that.
RICOBEATS He told me he’s going to start telling kids, don’t go the gang route. He was trying to be a better person. In the last two months, he was completely changing. In the environment he was in and the things that he went through, it was hard for him to show that big heart that he had. He always had to be on defense. That really wasn’t what he wanted to be every day.
SKEPTA He’s really missed. That one hit London hard. It’s the first time we’ve embraced someone and they’ve embraced us the same — not for no clout, it was real.
50 CENT What you see when you talk to me is what happens when you get rich. What happened to Pop is what happens when you die trying.
VICTOR It’s been stressful but also kind of a relief to be working on finishing the album — it’s like he’s still here. Because once the record is out, that means he’s really gone.
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