617 Hip-Hop

      "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