I first posted Sheck on here early last year..good to see his journey so far.
The Story of ‘Mo Bamba’: How a SoundCloud Rap Track Goes Viral
Today, a rap recorded in 20 minutes can go from internet obscurity to a Drake-approved club smash. The artists Sheck Wes, 16yrold and Take A Daytrip show us how they did it.
It took the Harlem rapper Sheck Wes about 20 minutes to make the first defining song of his young career. He wrote nothing down and recorded it in one take.
In the year since that track, “Mo Bamba,” was uploaded without fanfare to the streaming service SoundCloud, it has grown, largely via word of mouth, from a regional internet curio to a surefire party-starter and tastemaker’s favorite, scoring Fashion Week events and Instagram posts by Odell Beckham Jr., Shaquille O'Neal and Hailey Baldwin. Drake, at a recent concert, ceded the floor to Sheck Wes, 19, to perform the song for a sold-out arena.
This is how a rap anthem can catch fire in 2018 — in patches, and then all at once.
Especially on SoundCloud, the go-to medium for internet-native rappers, a track made by a few promising musicians with little to their name can spread organically, leaving the traditional gatekeepers like record labels and radio stations to play catch-up. In Sheck Wes’s case, that meant a deal with Interscope Records, in association with Travis Scott’s Cactus Jack and Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music. The song also found its way onto soundtracks for the horror movie “The First Purge” and the new “NBA 2K19” video game.
Named for Mohamed Bamba, an N.B.A. prospect who grew up with Sheck and shared his African heritage, “Mo Bamba” features a beat by the producers Take A Daytrip (Denzel Baptiste and David Biral) and 16yrold (Jerry Cruz), who met online and decided to collaborate for the first time last summer at Take A Daytrip’s Soho studio. A looped keyboard melody, some deeply distorted bass and a simple drum pattern was all it took to inspire Sheck Wes, whose improvised, mantra-like chants rounded out the song’s lo-fi punk spirit.
Asked by the producers that night to revisit and refine his first-take vocals, Sheck declined, opting to add only his high-energy background ad-libs. Just like that, “Mo Bamba” was born.
Today, a rap recorded in 20 minutes can go from internet obscurity to a Drake-approved club smash. The artists Sheck Wes, 16yrold and Take A Daytrip show us how they did it.
It took the Harlem rapper Sheck Wes about 20 minutes to make the first defining song of his young career. He wrote nothing down and recorded it in one take.
In the year since that track, “Mo Bamba,” was uploaded without fanfare to the streaming service SoundCloud, it has grown, largely via word of mouth, from a regional internet curio to a surefire party-starter and tastemaker’s favorite, scoring Fashion Week events and Instagram posts by Odell Beckham Jr., Shaquille O'Neal and Hailey Baldwin. Drake, at a recent concert, ceded the floor to Sheck Wes, 19, to perform the song for a sold-out arena.
This is how a rap anthem can catch fire in 2018 — in patches, and then all at once.
Especially on SoundCloud, the go-to medium for internet-native rappers, a track made by a few promising musicians with little to their name can spread organically, leaving the traditional gatekeepers like record labels and radio stations to play catch-up. In Sheck Wes’s case, that meant a deal with Interscope Records, in association with Travis Scott’s Cactus Jack and Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music. The song also found its way onto soundtracks for the horror movie “The First Purge” and the new “NBA 2K19” video game.
Named for Mohamed Bamba, an N.B.A. prospect who grew up with Sheck and shared his African heritage, “Mo Bamba” features a beat by the producers Take A Daytrip (Denzel Baptiste and David Biral) and 16yrold (Jerry Cruz), who met online and decided to collaborate for the first time last summer at Take A Daytrip’s Soho studio. A looped keyboard melody, some deeply distorted bass and a simple drum pattern was all it took to inspire Sheck Wes, whose improvised, mantra-like chants rounded out the song’s lo-fi punk spirit.
Asked by the producers that night to revisit and refine his first-take vocals, Sheck declined, opting to add only his high-energy background ad-libs. Just like that, “Mo Bamba” was born.