Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are
turning the lights down low and turning the bass
up until the windows rattle. For sure. We're
looking at a figure who, in a frighteningly short
window of time, and we're talking really just
between 2018 and 2020. didn't just make music.
No, not at all. He completely redefined the sound
of New York City. We are talking about Bashar
Baraka Jackson, but you know him. The world will
always know him as Pop Smoke. Yeah, this is a
heavy one today. It's heavy because of the tragedy.
Obviously, a rising star cut down at just 20
years old. Just 20. It's unbelievable. But it's
also heavy because of the sheer weight of the
cultural shift he instigated. You know, sometimes
artists change the game over a decade. They like
chip away at the statue until it looks different.
Right. A slow evolution. Pop Smoke took a sledgehammer
to it in about 14 months. That timeline is what
I want us to really obsess over today. 14 months.
That is barely enough time to learn a new language,
let alone create a whole new subgenre of music.
And that's really the mission of this deep dive.
We have to acknowledge the tragedy and we will
get into the details of that night in the Hollywood
Hills, especially with some, you know, pretty
significant legal updates from 2025 that bring
some closure. A lot of people might not even
be aware of those updates. Right. But if we only
look at this as a true crime story, we are missing
the bigger picture. We need to look at the mechanics
of this cultural phenomenon known as Brooklyn
Drill. We want to understand how. How does a
kid from Canarsie go from playing drums in a
church to having 50 Cent executive produce his
album all in the blink of an eye? And to do that
justice, we're pulling from a massive stack of
sources today. We've got biographical records,
discography notes, some very dense legal filings
regarding his arrest and the murder trial itself.
And we also have the chart data, which details
a posthumous success that is, frankly, unprecedented
in hip -hop history. It's just off the charts.
So let's set the scene before we get into the
biography. If you were in New York or really
anywhere with a subwoofer in the summer of 2019,
you felt this. Oh, you couldn't escape it. It
wasn't just a sound. It was a physical vibration.
It was that gravelly, voice -deep, smoke -filled,
aggressive, and those sliding bass lines. And
the woo ad -lib. Woo! It was atmospheric. You
know, New York hip hop had been having a bit
of an identity crisis for a while. You had the
classic 90s boom bap era, Nas, Biggie, Wu -Tang,
unforgettable stuff. The golden age, for sure.
Then you had the glossy, club -ready 50 Cent
era in the 2000s. By the late 2010s, the center
of gravity had shifted south. It was all Atlanta
trap. All Atlanta trap or Chicago drill. New
York was almost, you know, importing culture
rather than exporting it for the first time in
a long time. Pop Smoke grabbed that energy by
the throat and dragged it back to Brooklyn. But
the fascinating thing is he didn't do it with
a traditional New York sound. That's the twist.
That's the whole story right there. Right. And
we're going to unpack that weird geographical
hopscotch in a bit, how London played this huge
role in a Brooklyn story. But let's rewind. Let's
go. back to Canarsie. Because to understand the
woo, you have to understand where Bashar Jackson
came from. Absolutely. So Bashar Baraka Jackson
was born on July 20, 1999. He's a summer baby
born right at the turn of the millennium. Wow.
And his background is the quintessential New
York melting pot story. He was born in Brooklyn
to a Jamaican mother, Audrey Jackson, and a Panamanian
father, Greg Jackson. That Caribbean influence
is just massive in Brooklyn. It's not just background
noise. It's the food, the slang, the rhythm of
speech. You can almost hear that patois cadence
in his rapping later on. You really can. It's
in the DNA of his flow. But I love this detail
about his name. We always wonder where these
stage names come from. Pop Smoke sounds like
it was cooked up in a marketing boardroom. Yeah,
like it was focus group. Exactly. But it's actually
really organic. It is. It's a collision of two
different worlds, which is a theme you see a
lot in his life. His Panamanian grandmother used
to call him Papa. Okay, so that's the family
side. That's the family side. It's the soft side.
And then as he got into the streets and hung
out with his childhood friends, they gave him
the nickname Smucko Guap. Smucko Guap. So you
take the Papa from Grandma. And the smoke from
smocko. And you get pop smoke. It's a perfect
blend of the home and the corner. That's incredible.
And speaking of the corner versus the home, his
childhood wasn't a straight line. The source
material says he attended nine different schools
while growing up in Canarsie. Nine. That is a
chaotic amount of moving around for a kid. It's
instability, plain and simple. And you see this
duality in his early life that is really striking.
On one hand, you have this image of him as a
child playing African drums in his local church.
I love that detail. It tells you rhythm was in
him from the beginning. It's a very grounded,
spiritual, community -based upbringing. It teaches
you rhythm. It teaches you how to perform in
front of people. But on the other hand, by the
time he's in eighth grade, he's being expelled.
For what? For bringing a gun to school. Eighth
grade? That's what, 13 or 14 years old? Exactly.
Extremely young to be carrying that kind of hardware.
And that led to two years of house arrest on
a weapons charge. Two years. So you have a kid
who is clearly talented, clearly has rhythm,
remember the drums, but who is already getting
pulled into a very dangerous orbit. Here's the
big what if moment of the story. I think a lot
of people assume that because he was so good
at rapping, he always wanted to be a rapper.
Right, that it was the master plan. But music
wasn't actually plan A, was it? No, not at all.
Plan A was the hoop dream. And he wasn't just
playing pickup at the park. He was good. He was
a point and shooting guard. Seriously good. Serious
enough that he actually moved out of New York
to Philadelphia to attend Rock Top Academy. Rock
Top is a prep school specifically known for basketball.
It's a pipeline. So he's trying to get out. He's
trying to get away from the trouble in Canarsie,
trying to focus entirely on the sport. He saw
a path. So imagine a timeline where Pop Smoke
is a starting point guard for the Sixers or the
Knicks. We're watching him on ESPN instead of
listening to Dior. It's a whole different world.
What happened? Why did he leave Rocktop? It was
a medical diagnosis. He was diagnosed with a
heart murmur. Wow. Just like that. Just like
that, the basketball path was closed off. He
was forced to leave the academy. And I think
if we want to understand the psychology here,
we have to look at that moment deeply. It's devastating.
You're a teenager, you have a dream, you have
literal way out of a dangerous environment, and
then your own body betrays you. It creates a
vacuum. You have all this drive, all this aggression
and energy that you were channeling into sports,
and suddenly there's nowhere for it to go. And
where does it go? The streets were what was left.
He eventually turned back to street life. And
the sources suggest this was a pivot point where
the energy he was putting into sport needed a
new outlet. But, and this is the surprising part
for anyone studying his discography, the music
didn't happen immediately. He wasn't one of those
kids rapping since he was five. No, this is the
part that blows my mind. He didn't start rapping
seriously until 2018. 2018? That's barely two
years before he died. It's incredibly rare. Usually
you see years of bad mixtapes, years of finding
a voice on SoundCloud. Pop Smoke seemed to arrive
fully formed. So what was the spark? What happened
in 2018? The story goes that he was visiting
a Brooklyn recording studio with a friend, another
rapper, named Jay Guapo. Okay. Pop wasn't even
there to record, really. He was just hanging
out. but jay guapo got too high and fell asleep
no way and pop smoke probably bored and curious
decided to jump in the booth that is such a legendary
origin story you fell asleep so i took the mic
It's like something out of a movie. But this
is where we get to the birth of the sound. Yeah.
Because he didn't just rap over a Jay -Z beat
or a generic Atlanta trap beat. He picked something
very specific from YouTube. Right. And this is
the choice that changes everything. He rapped
over a beat he found on YouTube produced by a
guy named 808 Mellow. 808 Mellow. And this is
the technical shift. 808 Mellow isn't from Brooklyn
or Atlanta. He's a UK producer. From London.
At this time, the UK drill scene artists like
Skepta, groups like 67, they were making this
very specific type of dark, minimal music. OK,
I want to pause and unpack drill for the listener
who might hear the term but not know the mechanics.
We know drill started in Chicago, right? Chief
Keef. Lil Durk, that whole 2011, 2012 era. That's
the first wave. Chicago drill was very aggressive,
very violent. Lyrically, drill is slang for shooting,
but musically it was often chaotic. It had high
tempo, rattling high hats, very trap influenced.
Okay, so that's the Chicago sound. What happened
when it crossed the ocean? When that sound migrated
to the UK, the British producers changed it.
They scripted it down, they made it ghostlier,
they almost made it more... What specifically
did they change in the production? What should
you be listening for? The key difference is the
bass. In UK Drill, they use these sliding, wobbling
888 bass lines that sound like a distorted sine
wave. If you listen closely to a Pop Smoke track,
listen to how the bass doesn't just hit on one
note. It moves. It moves. It slides up and down
in pitch. It creates this woozy, unsettling feeling.
And they made the hi -hat patterns more jittery,
more syncopated, less straightforward than trap.
It became moodier, almost like horror movie music.
And Pop Smoke, sitting in a studio in Brooklyn,
hears this UK sound and realizes, what? This
fits my voice. This is me. Exactly. American
drill artists weren't really using those UK beats
yet. It was seen as a London thing. Pop Smoke
took that UK production style, specifically Ado
Hay Mello's beats, and put his Brooklyn flow
on top of it. But his flow was totally different
from the British guy's. Completely different.
The British rappers are often fast and skittery.
His was deep, gravelly, and had that Caribbean
-inflected swagger. That fusion UK beats plus
Brooklyn voice, that is what we now call Brooklyn
drill. He created a hybrid genre. He created
it in that moment. It's like he was the missing
instrument that those beats were waiting for.
The track he recorded that day became NPR Panic
Part 3 Remix. And it started to bubble. It did.
Not long after, in January 2019, he drops Flexin.
But then comes April 2019, the song that changed
the atmosphere, Welcome to the Party. Oh man,
that song. Welcome to the Party was a seismic
event. Produced by 808 Mellow, of course. Yeah.
It's minimal, it's menacing, and it's incredibly
catchy. It's undeniable. Within days, maybe weeks,
it stopped being just a local track in Canarsie.
It started ringing out of cars in Manhattan,
in the Bronx. You couldn't walk down a street
in New York that summer without hearing it. And
it bridged the gap back to the UK, right? Because
the UK scene immediately recognized their sound.
They did. Skepta, who is... Basically, the king
of UK rap and grime jumped on a remix. That was
a huge cosign. But then Nicki Minaj jumps on
a remix. And that signals, OK, this is mainstream
American now. It's not just a niche drill thing
anymore. Precisely. You had the king of UK rap
and the queen of US rap both anointing this kid
who had been rapping for, what, six or seven
months. It's the definition of a meteoric rise.
It validated the sound on both sides of the Atlantic
instantly. And the industry noticed fast. We're
not talking about a slow courting process where
A &Rs are watching him for a year. No, they pounced.
Rico Beats, a well -known producer who knew pop,
introduced him to Stephen Victor. And Stephen
Victor is a heavy hitter. He worked with Pusha
T. He was an executive at Universal. A serious
player. So the connection was made. And in April
2019, the same month, Welcome to the Party drops
pop smoke signs to Victor, Victor Worldwide,
and Republic Records. Let's just pause on that
timeline. First time rapping in a booth in 2018.
Major label deal by April 2019. That is lightning
speed. It's unheard of. It usually takes artists
years to get that kind of paperwork. So what
was it? What did they see? It speaks to the charisma.
Stephen Victor has said in interviews that he
saw it immediately. This wasn't just a rapper.
This was a star. The look, the voice, the energy.
Pop Smoke walked into a room and the temperature
changed. You just can't manufacture that. So
now we're in the summer of 2019. He releases
his debut mixtape, Meet the Woo. And this is
where he really starts building the discography.
It wasn't just a one -hit wonder situation. No,
he proved he had staying power. Meet the Woo
dropped in July. You had tracks like War with
Lil TJ, which was interesting because it showed
he could collaborate with more melodic rappers.
Right. He wasn't just a one -trick pony. Not
at all. You had 100K on a Coop with Cowboy. But
then on that same tape, you had Dior. Dior. I
mean, if Welcome to the Party was the introduction,
Dior was the coronation. That's a perfect way
to put it. Mike Amiri, Mike Amiri, Christian
Dior, Dior. It became an anthem for everything.
Why did that specific track resonate so hard?
Well, Dior is interesting because it's a fashion
flex. which is a staple of hip -hop, but it's
done with such aggression and such a low -key
menace. It made high fashion feel tough. And
musically, it's just infectious. It's the 808
Slides. It's that bass line. It was a slow burn
that just never went out. It was on the first
mixtape, but it kept growing and growing. It
actually became his first posthumous solo hit
later on because people just kept playing it.
It had legs. It had serious legs. It resonated
globally because it was aspirational but grounded
in that gritty sound. And by the end of 2019,
he's not just a Brooklyn phenomenon anymore.
He is getting invited to the biggest tables in
hip hop. He shows up on the Jack Boys compilation
album. That's the Travis Scott connection. Being
on the song Gaddy with Travis Scott is a massive
stamp of approval. Travis Scott is one of the
biggest curators in the world. So that put him
on a whole new stage. A global stage. That track
came out in December 2019. And it gave Pop Smoke
his very first Billboard Hot 100 appearance.
He was breaking into the national mainstream.
He wasn't just a drill rapper anymore. He was
a hip hop artist, period. So we roll into early
2020. The momentum is insane. It's just building
and building. He drops Meet the Woo 2 on February
7, 2020. And this project was huge. It debuted
at number seven on the Billboard 200. That's
his first top 10 project. He has Quavo on there,
a Boogie Witta hoodie, Vivio Foran. He is solidifying
his place as the leader of the new school in
New York. And he was getting ready to hit the
road. He was about to physically take this to
the people. Right. He was teasing the Meet the
Woo tour. It was scheduled to start in the U
.S. in March and end in the U .K. in April. He's
about to take this local sound global in a physical
way. He was going to bring Brooklyn to London.
It felt like the coronation was complete, like
this is the guy now. It really did. But as we
know, there were shadows creeping in. And this
is where the story gets complicated. Because
while the music was skyrocketing, the legal issues
were starting to pile up. And there's this one
specific incident in January 2020 involving a
Rolls Royce that just feels unnecessary. It's
an unforced error. Completely. That's so baffling.
It is baffling. And it really shows his age,
his youth. So on January 17th, 2020, Pop Smoke
is returning from Paris Fashion Week again, showing
his status as a fashion icon. He's at the top
of his game. And he lands at JFK Airport. And
he gets arrested by federal authorities. The
charge is interstate transportation of a stolen
vehicle. Grand theft auto. For a Rolls -Royce
Wraith, this is not a subtle car. Not at all.
It's a $375 ,000 car. The narrative from the
legal filings is that he borrowed it in California
for a music video. Okay, that happens all the
time. Right. The owner said the agreement was
he would return it the next day. But investigators
believed Pop arranged for it to be transported
on a flatbed truck all the way back to New York.
From California to New York. Yes. And this is
the part that makes you realize how young and
maybe naive he still was about the spotlight.
He posted it on social media. He posted a photo
of himself with the stolen car on social media,
on Instagram and Facebook, with a different license
plate, but still. And where did they find the
car? It was recovered at his mother's house in
Canarsie. Oh, man. It wasn't exactly a sophisticated
heist. It feels like a kid showing off a toy
he wasn't supposed to keep. But the consequences
were severe. But digging into the sources, it
seems like the authorities were using this car
theft charge as a hook for something else. That's
the clearer subtext here. They weren't just interested
in the Rolls Royce. No. After the arrest, police
questioned him about a non -fatal shooting in
Brooklyn from June 2019. They claim they had
footage of him driving a car in reverse near
the scene. So they're trying to connect him to
other crimes. And the sources indicate they were
really pressuring him for information on the
Crips and the GS9 street gangs. GS9, famously
associated with Bobby Shmurda and Rowdy Rebel.
Correct. The NYPD has been trying to dismantle
that structure for years. And Pop Smoke stood
his ground. He refused to talk. He refused to
snitch. Which is a code in that world you just
don't break. You don't break it. But because
of this, the system came down hard. He was charged
with the grand theft auto, had to post a $250
,000 bond, and crucially, he agreed to stay away
from known gang members as a condition of his
release. Which is practically impossible when
you're a drill rapper performing in New York.
Your entourage, your security, your childhood
friends, they are often from that world. It hindered
his career immediately. He had to cancel his
performance at the BK Drip concert. at King's
Theater in Flatbush because authorities warned
there would be known gang members in the audience.
So they were boxing him in. They were squeezing
him. So even before the tragedy in L .A., the
walls were closing in a bit, legally. So let's
move to February 2020. He's in Los Angeles. He's
renting a house in the Hollywood Hills. Right.
And here's a detail that always sticks out to
me. The house was owned by a real housewife.
Yeah, it's one of those weird pop culture intersections
that reminds you how small the celebrity world
is. Oh. The Airbnb was owned by Teddy Mellencamp
Arroyo from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
and her husband. It's just such a strange, specific
detail. It is. It was a beautiful home high up
in the hills. It should have been safe. It's
not an area you stumble upon by accident. And
it was February 19th, 2020, just 12 days after
Meet the Woo 2 dropped and hit the top 10. 12
days. He was at the peak of his initial wave
of success. What happened that night? It was
a home invasion. In the early hours of the morning,
around 4 .30 a .m., a group of individuals broke
into the house. When he was there. He was there.
Pop Smoke was shot and killed during the confrontation.
He was 20 years old. It sent a shockwave through
the world. I remember waking up to that news
and just not believing it. It felt like he had
just arrived. He was just getting started. It
wasn't like hearing about an old legend passing.
It was like watching a movie get turned off in
the first act. It was the extinguishing of so
much potential. And for a long time, there were
questions about who did this and why. Was it
targeted? Was it an assassination because of
the gang ties the police were investigating?
Or was it just a random robbery? Exactly. There
were so many theories. And we actually have a
significant update on the justice side of things
moving all the way forward to 2025. This provides
the context we were missing for years. Yes. The
legal proceedings took a very long time. as they
often do in complex cases. But according to our
sources, on February 21, 2025, there was finally
a conclusion for the adult defendant. A man named
Corey Walker was sentenced to 29 years in prison.
He pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and
home invasion. So it wasn't a murder charge in
the end. It was a plea deal for voluntary manslaughter.
Yeah. And there were others involved, right?
Younger individuals. Yes, three other individuals
were involved. Because they were minors at the
time, their cases were handled in juvenile court,
but they were also convicted via plea deals.
So what was the motive, according to the prosecution?
The conclusion was that it wasn't a hit ordered
by a rival gang. It was essentially... A robbery
gone wrong. Just a robbery. A robbery driven
by social media posts that inadvertently revealed
the address of the Airbnb. So they saw him flashing
cash or jewelry online, figured out where he
was. He had posted a picture of some gift bags
he received, and the address of the house was
partially visible on one of the labels. Wow.
It's the cautionary tale that hangs over this
entire generation of artists. The danger of oversharing
your location. It's a tragic mix of modern technology
and old school street crime. so let's pivot because
usually when an artist dies that is the end of
the artistic output maybe a few unreleased tracks
come out they sweep up the cutting room floor
and that's it It's the end of the story. But
with Pop Smoke, the afterlife segment of his
career is almost as big, if not bigger, than
the life itself. And that is largely thanks to
one man, 50 Cent. This is a fascinating chapter.
In March 2020, not long after the murder, 50
Cent goes on Instagram and just announces it
to the world. He's going to executive produce
and finish Pop Smoke's debut album. 50 saw a
lot of himself in Pop, didn't he? That same kind
of energy. He did. He saw the energy, the charisma,
the New York grit. 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die
trying to redefine New York in 2003. He saw Pop
Smoke doing the same thing for 2020. A passing
of the torch, in a way. And 50 had a very specific
personal motivation. He promised to get Plop's
mother to an awards show. That was a goal Pop
had, to take his mom to the awards. 50 Cent took
that on as a personal mission. He wanted to fulfill
that promise. That's powerful. So 50 hits the
phones. He calls Drake. He calls Roddy Ricch.
He calls Chris Brown. He mobilizes the industry
like a general. He curated the album, Shoot for
the Stars, Aim for the Moon. But it wasn't without
controversy. Remember the cover art debacle?
Oh, the Virgil Abloh cover. I remember that vividly.
It was all over Twitter. People were furious.
Virgil Abloh, God rest his soul, was a genius.
But he designed the original artwork. And when
it was revealed, the fans, they hated it. They
felt it was disrespectful. They called it lazy,
rushed, like it was done in 10 minutes on Photoshop.
There was literally a Change .org petition with
tens of thousands of signatures asking to change
it. And they actually listened. which is rare
for a major label rollout. It's almost unheard
of. They did, in a very rare move, they swapped
it out at the last minute. And Pop's mom chose
the final one, right? She did. She chose the
final design. The chrome rose against the black
background, designed by Ryder Rips. It was classy,
dark, and iconic. It fit the music much better.
And the album's release was also pushed back
slightly. Right. It was slated for June, but
got pushed to July out of respect for the George
Floyd protests that were happening. Instead,
they released the lead single, Make It Rain.
Which featured Rowdy Rebel. Recording his verse
from prison over a collect call. You can't get
more New York than that. So the album Shoot for
the Stars, Aim for the Moon finally drops in
July 2020. And the numbers, they are staggering.
It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200.
It was massive. But here's the stat that blows
me away. The one that really shows the dominance.
What is it? All 19 tracks from the album entered
the Billboard Hot 100. Every single song. That
is dominance. That is Michael Jackson, Drake
-level dominance. For a debut album. A posthumous
debut album. It is. For the night with Lil Baby
and Day Baby hit number six. What You Know About
Love, which sampled Ginuwine, hit number nine.
He was everywhere. He was the soundtrack of the
pandemic summer. You couldn't escape the woo.
You really couldn't. And he kept making history
even into 2021. This wasn't a one -off. Right.
His second posthumous album, Faith. released
in 2021, also debuted at number one. That made
Pop Smoke the first artist ever to have their
first two posthumous albums debut at the top
of the charts. It's just a level of success that
he never got to see. Never. And we even got to
see him act. He played Monk in the film Boogie.
And he wasn't just like a cameo. He was the main
antagonist. He was the rival basketball player,
which is so ironic given his own life story.
And he was good. He had that natural screen presence.
It wasn't forced. It just adds another layer.
To the tragedy, he could have been a true multi
-hyphenate star, rapper, actor, fashion icon.
He had the charisma to carry a film. No question.
So let's try to synthesize this. We have a kid
with a heart murmur from Canarsie who, in under
two years, connects the U .K. and U .S. drill
scenes, becomes the face of New York rap, dies
tragically, and then dominates the church from
the grave. It is the definition of a shooting
star. Bright, fast, and leaving an afterimage
that lasts a long, long time. He reintroduced
the Brooklyn drill sound to the world. He proved
that New York could still innovate, that it didn't
just have to rely on nostalgia for the 90s. He
took the cold, mechanical sound of UK beats and
injected it with New York swagger. And he gave
a voice to a specific feeling, that feeling of
being invincible, even when you are vulnerable.
You cannot say pop and forget the smoke. Precisely.
And if we connect this to the bigger picture,
think about the trajectory he was on. He had
just cracked the top 10 days before he died.
He had 50 Cent in his corner as a mentor. And
he had the work ethic. Remember, he recorded
all that music, two full albums worth of material,
plus mixtapes, in just a year or so. He wasn't
lazy. Not at all. He was constantly working.
So here's the final provocative thought I want
to leave with you today. We look at the landscape
of hip -hop right now. It's fractured. It's shifting.
If Pop Smoke survives that night in the Hollywood
Hills, if he goes on that tour, if he continues
to evolve that sound, it's like, does New York
hip -hop look completely different today? I think
it's impossible to say it wouldn't. He was pulling
the center of gravity back to the East Coast.
Does he become the Drake or the Kendrick of his
generation, the undisputed top guy? I think he
absolutely had the potential to be a global superstar
on that level. He had the melody. the aggression,
and the look. The genre lost a potential king.
We missed out on a decade of evolution. A heavy
what if to end on. If you haven't listened to
him in a while, go play Dior or Welcome to the
Party today. Listen with fresh ears. Hear the
church drums from his childhood, hear the London
rain in the beat, and hear the voice of Canarsie.
It's a sound that will never truly clear. Thanks
for diving in with us. We'll catch you on the
next one.