Episode 1: The Flossy

Some radio interviews are getting to know you sessions and some some are coronation I do a little pop smoke impersonation baby don't you? Hello Wait That's the sound of a man on top of the world Someone who knows he's the new king in New York pop smoke This is aggressive He's joking around with radio legend Angie Martinez on her syndicated show on New York's power 105.1 February 7th 2020 and he's 20 years old Pop releases very first song a little over a year before and in that short time he's become one of the hottest rappers in the game He was visiting Angie to celebrate the release of his brand new project Meet the Wu 2 she wanted to know how pop was adjusting to his sudden celebrities Do you feel like you have to be more careful now because you're a public figure? I'ma say give like a message to my young niggas you feel me like niggas like us come away we come from we can't afford to fuck up We can't afford to slip up make no mistakes because they watch and they they want us to Less than two weeks later he'd be gone shot during a robbery of his Los Angeles air B&B The suspects in the case local gangman pop smoke pop smoke rising New York Pop smoke and shot and killed in what appears to be a home invasion robbery Pop's hero has died he was 20 years old and the Hollywood Hills this morning The music world isn't shot has always search for the shoot Welcome to Complex Subject pop smoke from Complex Networks and Spotify Studios I'm your host punch I'm a DJ a media personality you might know me from working with 50 set Young and May even the infamous Takashi 69 I've been outside let me tell you why I'm him it goes back to one word one place Konaughts that's the neighborhood in Brooklyn where pops from that's where I'm from to I met pop way before to start back when he was just one of the crypts from the town when he started rapping I gave him advice I tried to guide him a bit I played his records in the clubs I was sending his records out to everybody I even tried to get an a tour overseas in fact I was almost as DJ but that's a story for another day see the thing about pop smokes voice hello is that it was so unique and so captivated you're gonna hold new sound into the mainstream it's called Brooklyn drill it's just like a new flavor new sound a new movement I'm saying new vibe and put New York back on the map and for a quick second we was at the center of hip-hop again there's a million people in Brooklyn trying to make it as a rapper you actually did yeah six months never looked so good in this game you are pop story though it's the story of how rappers use their gang ties all of the gang beef to get to the top of the game there's something about what happens on the underground that somehow always gets into the offices the industry in the streets should is all braided you can't separate it especially in khanasi this is episode one the philosophy by the end of 2018 there was a hunger to crown the next king in New York it had been a few years since a real New York rapper had taken over the game one who was rough and rugged who sounded like the streets they came from see cardi was already a superstar to kashi six nine well we know how that ended mr grand as do you recognize anyone in the courtroom who was a member of nine tray when you were a member yes and a boogie is from the bx but he's such a melody rapper it's hard to hone them as the king in New York but in 2019 pop smoke changed everything as he brought the sound of his neighborhood into the mainstream we had our new king before there was a pop smoke there was bshar jaxon we're gonna go into his neighborhood khanasi the flaws my family moved to khanasi in the eighties back then it was mostly an Italian and Jewish neighborhood but in the nineties things changed a lot of people from the Caribbean moved in like the jaxons bshar's parents his mom is from jameka and his dad is from panamum and in 1996 they moved into a two-story duplex in khanasi with a young son of basi bshar was born three years later the houses on each one on fifth just one block over from where I grew up so growing up we were a full home it was me and my mom and my dad this is a bbasi jaxon pops old a brother we were really sheltered at first we used to play with the kids on the block ride our bikes you know there's a lot of people who have memories of us playing basketball in our backyard growing up it was you know it was it was like any kid you know just like during your own little bubble and everything seen in perfect one thing that made the jackson house special there was always music so we had all that like apple centric kind of our fro music in our life you know especially reggae and bshar you love my dad and all that you know the panamena in the Spanish side of everything so couldn't tell him nothing he was panamena forever pop also had other musical influences he liked the smooth stuff i grew up listening to like like aren't being sick this is pop token of DJ semtex with the vand draw emzane what's that crazy it was this crazy James brown Michael jackson emzane boys the man that type of vibe emzane and i grew up in a church it was a whole bunch of guys who were going around in my house that church that was st. Paul community baffness the church has a super tight knit community and has a strong emphasis on the arts this is where bshar jackson first started performing and for a while this was kind of his second home i knew he was part of the brats we had at st. Paul Carla gettens is a minister at st. Paul and she first met pop when he was just a little kid they running and playing hide and seek and you know just they shouldn't be running in the church that's always no running in the church but of course she remembers that pop was slick even back then bshar had a sweet disposition about him even when he got in trouble he was smooth his way around and about it he would walk up and hug you high and kiss you not knowing that somebody got it but he's already in trouble one time pop took center stage at the biggest performance of the year the worry of dance so the first time i saw that dance bshar was in the front line to see the confidence and he knew the steps he had every beat down pack and then one day he jumped and flipped and he landed on his feet and he just punched the ear like yes i got it even during those early performances the folks watching could tell that little bshar was some special at just eight years old his confidence moved everyone around him even his older brother i remember the first time he wrote his first like song and he performed it at like something we call when i watched this elementary school kid was writing songs and performing them everybody loved it that was when i knew my brother was like yo you inspire me bro like because i didn't have courage like that you know saying my my sense of security at the time came from sports you know saying i was like okay i work out and do all these things and you just went up there and you just showed a different side of yourself in front of the whole congregation but as pop got into his teens lower the neighborhood got stronger it really sucks to see it kind of happen because that was when he started you know being able to pick different friends and going to school that's a money Brianna Alexander she was a bit older than pop and went to the same church she noticed young pop was hanging around a new crowd in khanasi and that crowd was in the different things street life even gangs he had like got i don't want to say really aggressive because like i guess i've never really seen him as a really aggressive person i saw him as a person that made decisions that sometimes wasn't like the smartest i want to take him in a head to explain what khanasi is really about what you need to understand is that we're different from other hoods in brooklyn back in the day a lot of people called khanasi ph ph stands for private houses most of khanasi is single family homes or duplexes we don't have the famous high towers like morsi projects that produce rappers like jz or the queens bridge houses that made rappers like nars and because of that some people saw us as soft but in 2007 things changed thanks to fabulous khanasi flows that meant showing off that's how people in khanasi set themselves apart We grew up in houses instead of projects, but that didn't make us soft. - This flossy. - We call it flossy because like, we kids are coming from connoisseurs that like suggest fly, we like fly things, we like nice cars. - This is Pops neighborhood friend and connoisseur rapper, spas floss. - You know, we like to smell good, take our family floss, that's flossy. - Get it now? But like all nice things, there's a cost. - In the neighborhood, it's a family, but outside of the neighborhood, there's a lot of people that don't like us. - This is how a lot of young guys in the floss feel. - They don't like what we do, they don't like how we live. It's a lot of hate, it's a lot of jealousy from different neighborhoods when it comes to connoisseurs. - That jealousy can sometimes lead to problems. Pop got in the Gengshir early. By the time he was 13, he had joined the 823 Crips or more notably known, the 8-Doustre. It's one of the original Crips sets in New York City. They're big in connoisseur. If you're 8-Doustre in the town, you're good. You always have backup, but moving by yourself, even just a few neighborhoods away, can mean problems. And young pop was gonna find that out the hard way. One day in the fall of 2012, when pop was just 13 years old, something happened that would change the course of his whole life. We know what happened that day because there's a video. It's one that a lot of people ended up seeing. He's at Flatbush Junction. It's this business heavy stripping Brooklyn. There's a giant target around the area, cars, dolphins, buses, everything drives by at all hours. Pop was standing right in front of a Jamaican food spot. He looks like a kid. He's 13, small, lanky, and really rubbing how young he is. He's wearing a backpack. He also has on a blue sweatshirt and a blue hat. And the people who know about this stuff is obvious. That young pop is a crit. A couple of the kids dressed in red surround pop. The main guy in this video is wearing a red-edited sweatshirt. They're bloods. They start shouting. They start moving and closer and closer. They messin' with him. Though you're set up, they're sayin' we dare you to rep your gang. Pop understands what's going on, but he doesn't back down. He tells the guy his set, 823 crit. He says he's 13. Not a kid start getting more aggressive. One of the kids tells Pop, "Cripp up!" So he pulls out his blue-beaded necklace. It's a sign of his affiliation to the gang. One of the kids ganks the necklace right off the pot. The other kid throws it to the ground and then stomps on him. It's a huge show of disrespect to pop and the crypts overall. But things don't stop there. It gets worse. Supa! One of the kids slaps Pop across the face. Hard. Then another one. Supa! The bloods walk away, bragging the whole time. This would have been embarrassing no matter what. But things were about to get worse. The footage started going around the internet. In Ohio, in 2012, they got put on World Star hip-hop. World Star is a site that's known for two things. Rat videos and fight videos. Pretty soon everyone saw it. Even Pop's friends from the floss. Here's Spads Floss again. I was in school around the time and somebody came up to me and showed me the video. I got me upset. It's a kid. I just let my boy walk off and go by his day. He had to make a joke out of him. I remember seeing the World Star video move around Kanoche. I felt bad. This little crypt kid got this respect at heart to his face, over and over. A lot of people who watched it were laughing at Pop. What you get from a video like that is the second that you start playing in the streets, there's no off-button. No matter where you are or who you are around, you always got to be on Go Mode. When I first saw it, I was just like, why, like, why and how did this happen? A Monty Brianna, Alexander from Pop's Church, also saw the video. So did other people from their community. He says that it changed the way some people from church looked at Little Bashar. Some of the criticism was he's not going to go anywhere. He's probably just going to jail. I think he was just getting into frances with people that they deemed to be the wrong type of people. Miss Franson hit the whole thing, turned him into a different person. One who was more aggressive, one who was fearless. That video is the reason why he deserved to be so successful and where he got all the people who clowned at him, made fun of him, douted at him. Pop took one lesson from that video. He could never be caught slipping again. He couldn't be Bashar anymore, ever. He needed to be Pop Smoke. When we come back, Pop has a chance at a different kind of life. But can he leave as always behind? He filled up these little creeps stuff. You know, he definitely carried it like he still was in the street. Welcome back. Just a few years after the World Star video, Pop had an opportunity to get away from the flaws, from all the gangs and the trouble that came with it. He was great at basketball. He was a guard, a nice jump shot, who wasn't afraid to get aggressive and talk trash. At the time Sam Rines was starting a new prep school outside of Philly, Rock Top Academy. It was meant to help prepare kids to play in the NCAA. Coach Rines noticed Pop and recruited him. Pop wasn't Division I College material, but the coaches at Rock Top thought if he worked hard, he could maybe get recruited to play at a Division II school. This was a huge opportunity. Pop Smoke was my first player at Rock Top Academy. And I remember him coming to visit him in his mom, that, and they sat in my living room and I said, "Listen, you're my first player and I need you to start it all." And he looked at him and he said, "I like you." You know what I mean? He's a very confident person. He was very, I'm not going to say cocky, but sure himself. And it's hard to really explain because if you know him, he was actually one of the nicest kids I ever had in my program. Pop made a big impression on the coach, mostly because of that confidence. Somebody told me he was going to be a rapper, I wouldn't believe. But if somebody told me he was going to be rich and famous, that I would have believed because you couldn't tell him any different. Like, it's just how he was hair, how he dressed, his jeans had to be on a certain way. But life at Rock Top wasn't all hoops. Pop liked to spend time in the weight room. He needed to bulk up to let people know he wasn't that same Lanky kid from the World Star video. But there was other benefits to working out. For a kid that was in 10th to 11th grade, he was pretty cut up. He had grown women, like literally looking at him and you know, he would say hi to him, and he'd be hitting on him and everywhere he went, he demanded the attention. You know, we would go everywhere together. You know, we could be Donald's and hit him on the girl, or the McDonald's and sit on the girl that worked at the library. He sat on the girl that worked at Jim. And he was actually getting grown up as everywhere he went. As fun as that sounds, Pop still had Brooklyn on his mind. Kenarski. That's all he talked about. He loved his mom. He loved the neighborhood. Yeah, he said Kenarski. Hey, nobody's perfect. Over time, he could tell me stories. Like he told me about the time that when he was young, you know, some guy came up and smacked him and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Even though he was all the way in the outskirts of Philly, Pop was still talking about that World Star video. That was pop. You know, people don't understand like pop. He never forgot or regained the situation. Chris Cantino also coached that rock top. He was younger than Coach Rhymes. He got close to that first class of kids, especially Pop. You know, he was kind of like street light. He still was on New York. I'm such a such a crypt this day and third and we don't talk like that in Philly. Coach Cantino noticed that Pop was all about rep in Kenarski. And even as a teenager, all about rep in his gang. So I like bus jokes were made and he threw up these little crypt stuff. I don't know how to throw them little game sounds up. But you know, he definitely carried it like he still was like in the streets. And I'm like, man, you 15, like you like 15, 16, like you, what are you doing? It's more than like the cricks and buds. After about six months, Pop left rock top. He told Coach Rhymes that he had a heart murmur. Pop's brother Abasi says that that's only part of the story. Left Philly because of the heart murmur, but also because he missed home. And even though he was still in high school, even though he wouldn't record. his first track for another year or two. This is when he starts to change from a random crimp in the town and a pop smoke, a superstar. (upbeat music) Whether he was aware of it or not, pop used this time and can now see to build a reputation that would serve well as a rapper. He gets a gun and starts making fake credit cards. See on the streets, nobody's really a drug deal anymore. That's some nerdy white kid shit. Because weed became so easy to get that the man for other drugs went down. Instead, kids are running credit card scams. It's way easier money. (upbeat music) On July 28th, 2017, pop is 18 years old and an NYPD officer brings a warrant to enter his mom's house. The officer found weed and some scales. He also found a gun and an embossed machine. A dead giveaway that pop was forging cards. (upbeat music) Pop's a restaurant that him and the version program. If you get through it okay, charges against you are dropped and you avoid jail time. But it doesn't come without its conditions. One of them was that pop had to wear an ankle monitor and soon enough, he'd be flashing and then all of his enemies. I think this is lucky I'm on a bracelet right now. You understand I'm on a bracelet now. I was like, oh. At this point, pop is building up his status in the floss. But to the rest of the world, he's still the 13 year old kid who got slapped on World Star. He needed to fix that and in the biggest way possible. In the fall of 2018, pop finally planned his revenge. It took him six years and lots of trips to the weight room. But now he's ready. The mission was caught on video. Of course, it had to be. Remember, the reason the original incident hurt so bad it wasn't that he got slapped. It was that the violation was filmed and went viral. So pop finds one of the guys who slapped him and follows him into a 7-11. The guy's at the counter, paying for his stuff. Pop is standing right behind him and lying, almost hovering over him. And then pop swings his arm around to the front of the guy's face, slapped him so hard he falls on the floor. Pop drags the guy outside the store. He asked him, "You remember me? You remember me?" "Yes, remember me?" "You remember me?" And then pop turns to the camera. "It's how you fuck this and power nigga." "It goes fucking crazy, you know what?" "Pop smoke, nigga." "It's stuck." "Pop!" The thing that gets me is that pop smoke wasn't even a rapper yet. And he's already called it himself pop smoke. In a way that was like his first performance. Pop was really proud of his video and wanted it to go viral. A short inversion of it was the very first thing on his official YouTube page. And it stayed there for the rest of his life. What did he call it? Pop smokes Max "Op Chupal." Around the same time, another video of pop starts circulating. This time, he's out running like five cops. Pop was already on his way to becoming a local celebrity. What's it like, the first time you see him, is he like. Pop was violent in the gym, you know, big nigga. He the same age as us and shit, but he a big nigga in the gym, you know? Yeah. Body and everybody, so. That's the rapper, Jay Guapo. He and Pop met at a YMCA in East New York. You know, I was playing ball with Pop and that's how I got closer to Pop. So, I mean, from there, we started chilling outside of the gym. Yeah. And then from there, I became my dorks. They got so close that Pop convinced Jay to go to his high school, the Brooklyn Democracy Academy. So, let's take you back. When you went to high school, you're moving through the halls and everything like, what's it like with Pop? I didn't even graduate from high school 'cause I was in the whole ways which I mean. I mean. We wasn't doing no fireworks. I said, I wasn't sure. Jay was into making his own music and encouraged Pop to do the same. Yeah, I always used to tell Pop the rap. I used to tell Pop he's a character. 'Cause Pop always looked like 50, said to me, so I used to call Pop 50. So, everybody that know him from the east, I know him by 50. Jay never heard his friend spit a bar, but he saw some potential. One day in 2018, Jay's wish came true. It happened at a studio in East New York. Pop often talked about that day. Here he is again in that DJ Sem Tech interview. That's my mother's day. I went into the store with my little bro. He was rapping. He was getting his buzz up in New York, I'm saying buzz it. I kept telling him, "Yo, your character, you're gonna make some music, bro. You gonna make this your work." So Jay dragged Pop along to the studio? You know what I mean? I'm always late getting drunk, stuff like that. Jay got totally faded. And he got so high one day and he just passed out. And I'm like, you know what? You know, about the way the studio saw him. So I just started looking up beats. Pop was finally gonna give rapper try for the first time ever. And it happened to me in my first soul. Jay didn't know until I was almost done. Like I woke up like days and surprise, and I'm just having music. I'm like, "Yo, that's crazy. I got Pop and he rapping." And Jay says it wasn't all that bad. Yeah, it was good. Pop was always nice from the beginning. It didn't take him too much catching on to do. But to really go big, Pop needs an industry connection. So yo, well, this kid, you need to just forget about everything you're working on. You need to just focus on this kid. That's the next time on Complex Subject, Pop Smoke. Complex Subject, Pop Smoke, is a Spotify original podcast and partnership with Complex. This episode was written and reported by Sean Statero. Our senior producers, Shiva Bayeh. Our associate producer and sound designer is Mira El Rahim. Our editor is Audrey Quinn. Our engineer is William Smith. Original music by Johnny Baker. Additional research done by Sophia Steiner-Evoi. Executive producers from Spotify include Gina Delvack and Gifa Yadour. Executive producers from Complex include Donny Quack, Nick Wang, and Justin Killian. Special thanks to Alec Friedman, Jessica Dow, Eric Skeleton, Sean Selkorea, Tlaiba Newman, and Jennifer Stewart. I'm your host, Punch.