Artist Profile: Pop Smoke

Pop Smoke was an amazing artist to many, but unfortunately, he was killed due to a home invasion in L.A. gone wrong on February 19th 2020. This is his life story and how we went from selling drugs and guns to becoming a famous rapper overnight. 

Bashar Barakah Jackson was born on July 20, 1999, and was raised in Canarsie, Brooklyn. Pop had a rough life, but things started looking good. He was a great high school basketball player, but his career ended when he was diagnosed with a heart murmur, so as a kid he turned to selling drugs and guns just to get some money. For example, in just the eighth grade he was found with a pistol at school. He was then put on house arrest and had to wear an ankle bracelet for 2 years. 

He started making music at 18, making little rap songs. When he was with Smoko Guap in the studio, Smoke Guap fell asleep and Pop Smoke went in the studio just to try and he made his first song MPR,  which instantly blew up on Spotify. Then he came out with his single Welcome to the Party, which was one of the biggest songs of the summer (2019). During that same summer, he released his first album on July 26th called Meet the Woo, having no features and songs like Welcome To The Party and Hawk um. After he gained some more traction on February 7th, 2020, he released his new album Meet the Woo to 2. According to a sales report “Meet the Woo 2 debuted at number seven on the US Billboard 200 chart dated February 22, 2020, earning 36,000 album-equivalent units (including 5,000 pure album sales) in its first week. This became Pop Smoke’s first US top-ten debut on the chart.” With Dior being the biggest song on the album. 

At this point, Smoke was getting big kids songs with some of the biggest names in the music industry like Travis Scott, Quavo, and Lil Tjay, and was making music with some of the biggest designers in the world like Virgil At Paris fashion week. Pop Smoke released his first post-death album Aim For The Stars, Shoot For The Moon on February 19, 2020, which would have been his 21st birthday. Pop Smoke had 50 Cent finish the album after Pop’s tragic death on February 19th, 2020, after a home invasion went wrong. The album put up crazy numbers with songs featuring artists like Lil Baby, Dababy, 50 Cent, Rody rich, Fivo Foreign, and others. According to www.b7illbroed.com, Pop Smoke was 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, giving the late rapper his first chart-topping effort. The set was released on July 3 via Victor Victor Worldwide/Republic Records and bows with 251,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending July 9. 

Pop Smoke will always be remembered for helping start the drill movement in New York and just showing that you can really get it out the mud no matter where you come from.