617 Hip-Hop

Representing Massachusetts to the best of its ability is something Fasscoupe takes very seriously, and that is something he has done very well. From opening to Lil Uzi Vert at back to back sold-out dates at the House of Blues to working with the likes of Lil Baby and Rich the Kid, Fasscoupe has been able to bring Massachusetts’ underground rap to the spotlight.  Fasscoupe began to make music in 2014 and was inspired by his older brother to do so. He mentioned “My older brother used to play CD’s around the house, he would play Dipset, G-Unit, and more. That is how I started to fall in love with hip-hop.”  Something Fasscoupe has credited to his success thus far is his experience in the music industry. He continued with “I am able to give something that really has no expiration date on it. To leave a legacy for people to follow or admire.” These experiences have been able to come from some of the biggest names in music, especially from when he worked on his track “Pray For” whic

        In honor of one of our first media opportunities just over one year ago, we wanted to share some of the photos we took from the Sammy Adams concert at Paradise Rock Club in Boston on our website! Check them out! Thank you to Sammy Adams and his management for this opportunity!

Since 2014, Michael Christmas has been one of the most recognizable artists in Boston. From landing on tours with Logic and Mac Miller to being recognized by some of the hip-hop industry's biggest websites such as XXL and MTV, Michael Christmas has been able to make a name for himself. On December 18th, Michael Christmas released his newest album “Hiding,” which features tracks such as “I Heard” and “Cinderblocks” which features Kota The Friend.  Who or what inspired you to make music? I got very inspired young by the comedians. When you’re a kid listening to your favorite artists and picking up small things from them is how you learn how to rap. The cool kids, Wiz, Dom Kennedy, Stalley, and the whole backpack era shaped my young teenage raps. But the comedians I fell in love with I think shaped the way I think and approach everything. The goal is always to do music the way my favorites do comedy. Tell my stories no matter how tragic, in a way that people can laugh rather than

From New York, Francc is an artist anyone from the Boston area needs to pay attention to and add to their playlists. Francc’s sound is a mix of hip-hop, pop, and EDM, and has seen quick success with the music he has released. With songs such as “Timezones,” “Past Due,” and his most recent single “Between Us,” Francc has been able to accumulate over 550,000 streams on Spotify alone.  In August of 2019, Francc released his first project on all streaming platforms. The project was titled “Raw Therapy,” and songs such as “Up 2 Something,” “Love It When,” and “Out of Mind.” This project was something that was very important to Francc as he described it in an Instagram post saying “I made this music because at the time, in the moment, this music made me feel alive. It healed, it motivated, it was FUN, it was WHOLE.” Francc is someone who is familiar with Massachusetts talent, even being from New York. This past December, Francc had the opportunity to go on tour with Boston’s Boy

Boston artist Rapta has the ability to touch on every sound in the hip-hop industry, from a song that will make anyone jump up and down all the way to a slow melodic song you can relate to, Rapta can do it all. The self-taught artist spent his early years teaching himself Ableton and Protools, shortly after starting college, Rapta dropped out of college at Bridgewater State University to pursue music full time. Rapta immediately gained buzz around the city by releasing songs such as “Lies,” “Chiefin,” and “Know Your Sign.” In 2016, Rapta headlined his own 12-city tour around America, and a year later performed at the House of Blues Boston. Outside of music, Rapta also created the collective Luv The Plug with a group of close friends and business partners. Luv The Plug would do creative work such as shooting videos and designing clothes.  As you learn more about Rapta and his music, you notice the importance of “Leo” in his music. With his first album being titled “Leo,” and his

  Starting to make music at the age of fifteen, Wavy Ry considers himself as more than a rapper. He is an artist. Wavy Ry describes music as “an art, not a trend.” At the beginning of this year, Wavy Ry was able to release a track called “Replace You” which featured Chief Keef’s Cousin Matti Baybee. Wavy Ry had the opportunity to take a trip and stay in LA for a while to get in the studio and network. While talking about the trip, he mentioned “ I came across Paramount studios and locked in a session. Paramount has had so many great musicians that have recorded there. literally some of the people I grew up listening to have recorded their best tracks in Paramount Studios. So being there and walking through that type of Atmosphere, seeing all the plaques on the Walls from Ice Cube and Lil Wayne to Guns N roses, Linkin Park, Flo-Rida, so any of them throwback 2000 vibes were made there it was just dope to be there and actually record a song in the same booth as Icons.” He was

Heath240 is the rapping by-product of the working city of Boston, Massachusetts, and the highs and lows of his past. He combines Hip Hop/R&B with Bedroom-Pop, then juxtaposes a light-hearted delivery with darker lyrics. His distinct sound, unwavering energy, and versatile flow poise him as one of the most promising up-and-comers in the music industry.  Heath spent most of his time growing up in Jamaica Plain, MA. His name, Heath240, was created from his address, 240 Heath St., where he spent most of his time. “As a kid I often felt too black for the white kids but too white for the black kids” says Heath. He was first introduced to Hip Hop through his dad playing the "Carter III" between basketball practices. This ignited his curiosity and exploration for the genre.  He faced adversity at a young age when both his mentor and friend passed away. To get a fresh start, he transferred to a new school in the suburbs but was riddled with depression and anxiety. These feel

The multifaceted producer and artist JORD4NEVERDIED has been able to work with some of Boston’s hottest up and coming artists ranging from Vintage Lee, Pistola, Connis, Donald Grunge, and many more. Throughout his career as a producer, he has become very close with Vintage Lee who he went to high school with. JORD4NEVERDIED is now Vintage’s go-to producer. However, this took hard work on JORD4NEVERDIED’s part. He originally started out just recording Vintage Lee and shortly after that, he started giving her beats. Now he has been able to learn from her through watching the way she works at her craft and traveling to Atlanta to record with her.  JORD4NEVERDIED’s time as a producer has now developed into recording his own music. He recently released a track titled “SLOWLY,” which has quickly hit 10,000 plays on YouTube. When we talked to JORD4NEVERDIED about his music, he said “I am just being myself in my music, I want people to relate to me and see who I am as a person through my m

At the age of 17, Diz knows how to let his emotions out and make people understand the demons he deals with. On October 2nd, he released a project titled “Black Water,” which features songs such as “To See Is To Believe” and “Orange Blossom.” This project by Diz was straight from the heart and described it as going through some “dark shit.” Going into his freshman year of highschool, Diz started to make music with his friend Ziggi. Since then he has had some amazing opportunities, Diz mentioned “ my group Illegal Advisory we played a sold out show at the Middle East Downstairs, but even more important than that to me is being able to explore my own sound. That's made me so much more confident in my music and it's given me more drive to keep exploring and to be myself.”  When it comes to his sound, Diz knows he is different, he explained “I think my music is a lot different than a lot of other artists right now. I'm not going to say if it's better or worse bec

Currently residing in LA, B.Cave is a rising artist and producer. He started producing over four years ago, and rapping seriously a little over a year and a half ago. He credits a lot of his inspiration as an artist to the late Mac Miller, saying “ one of the main reasons why I’m doing what I’m doing today is because of Mac Miller. After having been the soundtrack to my middle school/high school days, he developed into an amazing artist in all aspects of music and that became something I really strive for in my music as well. Even though i never got to meet him, he taught me a lot about chasing your dreams and following your passion in life, while still having fun along the way and I am forever grateful for him and his music.” B.Cave has been able to build a great team around him. Including working with Booming Bay Management Group, and all kinds of artists and producers he has been able to work with in the past months. A few of the people that are most important to him are

When Wiill was at the University of Connecticut working on his transfer applications, he started to find a serious interest in music. He would always mess around and freestyle at parties and attract crowds around him, and people would always try to get him to put his freestyles on SoundCloud. He now finds himself at Boston College with over 10,000 monthly listeners and over 300,000 streams on Spotify. Wiill’s brother Zach always made music. Will described this as “ the driving force in me making the change from a fan to an artist.”   Something Wiill has been told a lot is his music never has the same sound. Will elaborated on this saying, “all my music is so different will either be my greatest attribute or something I’ll struggle with my entire career.” He wants to push the boundaries of music like artists above him have; Wiill mentioned Mac Miller, Tupac, and Kanye as a few artists that have pushed this boundary. Wiill described his versatility, saying, “I think it’s a blessing. I do

      "Twenty-three-year-old Springfield rapper Championxiii, born Kayson Christopher Acuna, has garnered quite the Internet following nearly overnight. In what started out as a part of his video series “rappers be like” on the short video sharing app TikTok, Championxiii’s hit single “Becky” touched the global viral charts of Spotify while generating millions of streams across YouTube & Apple Music. 
        Inspired heavily by the music of the 80s, Championxiii kicked off his music career at the young age of 13 finding comfort in creating R&B, Rap and Spoken Word, which he shows flashes of across his 30-minute project Champion Status. Championxiii’s ceiling remains to be seen, but if the loads of fans rapping “Becky” on their Instagram stories is any indication, superstardom could be on the way." - Championxiii We had the opportunity to link up with Tik Tok star and CEO of Splash Championxiii. The Springfield, Massachusetts born rapper talks about his journey

When Young Cautii was in elementary school, he knew he wanted to be a rapper. His cousin moved to Boston from California, they became very close. Every day before school, Young Cautii’s cousin would play him instrumental beats on the way to the bus. This motivated him to finish his schoolwork early so he could write lyrics in his notebook. Since then, Young Cautii has been able to release songs with impressive numbers. He currently has three songs on Spotify with over 100,000 streams.  Mentioning Young Cautii’s songs with big numbers, he couldn’t do it alone. His career changed positively when he met his producer FiFi. He said “He's a Boston based engineer but takes his talents all over the world. When I started to work with him he helped me perfect my sound as an artist which is key to your existence in the music industry. His spaced out, futuristic trap soul beats plus my personal melodic, catchy delivery, and lyrics helped me create songs like “Phone,” “One Night,” and

     One of the best-known record labels in Massachusetts is Van Buren. One of the people who founded it is Jiles. Van Buren has one of the most one of a kind stories to it. Jiles said, “Van Buren Records before that it was just Van Buren, it was just a group of friends there was no music involved. It was me, Felix, my boy Moe (who doesn’t make music he is into fashion), there was a fourth member who is a friend of ours and still is a friend of ours. We were fashion kids at that time; we were best friends, then it turned into a record label after we all started taking music seriously. Obviously, with the VB name me and my friend came up with that name through the show Seinfeld. We always loved the episode with the Van Buren boys, so we just called ourselves Van Buren.” When Jiles was in high school, he made a couple of SoundCloud songs and just put it on the platform with no promotion. Jiles never saw himself taking his music seriously. He always saw himself working behind the scenes.

One of Boston’s best up and coming artists is Suffolk County Inc. artist TDrape. He only started rapping three or four years ago but has made waves in the music industry. He is currently most known for his songs “100 Racks,” which features Calboy, “My Life,” and “No Comment,” which, when combined, accumulate to over one million streams.  TDrape has always been inspired by the city around him. When asked what inspired him to start music, he replied, “Growing up in the neighborhood I come from. There’s I don’t want to say too much poverty, but there are people of color I want to make a change.” He continued to express his love for the city, saying, “Boston means everything. It's the best city; it's where I come from, it's my life right here. So I’m trying to turn shit up. Boston is where it's at; it's my city.” While working on songs, TDrape has been able to learn from the people around him. One person he has had the opportunity to work with up clos

Aristotle Jones is a rapper, singer, producer out of Boston’s Berklee College of Music. After being worked on for two years, Aristotle Jones has released his newest project, “The World IS Flat.” When describing this project, Aristotle Jones said, “I’ve put more work and dedication into it than anything else I’ve ever worked on before.” When listening to this project, you notice Aristotle Jones’ one of a kind self-made beats and the hardcore old school energy he brings. In the album, he is also explaining his “unique take on hip-hop in the era of uncertainty and conspiracies.”  According to his bio, Aristotle Jones, “Combines the intellect and wit of his namesake with distinctive self-produced beats, Aristotle aims to create unique and idiosyncratic music that pushes the envelope of traditional hip hop. A perfectionist at heart, he values quality over quantity, sharing his finely tuned music in order to contribute his stamp to the world of artistic expression.”  With “