While recent news suggest that SoundCloud is apparently up for sale for a whopping $ 1 billion, it’s a perfect reminder for all the actually priceless moments the streaming platform has offered music fans since its founding in 2007, thanks to providing a free stage for oodles of musicians – amongst them some of music’s biggest names at the humble start of their careers.
That little orange cloud actually birthed a whole class of future superstars that – despite varying musical approaches – unitedly became known as the ‘SoundCloud rappers’ (and singers) throughout the 2010s. And they carried that badge proudly: Just peep Chance The Rapper’s acceptance speech at the 2017 Grammy’s for his “shout out to SoundCloud for holding me down”. Here’s five more musicians that listeners first fell in love with courtesy of SoundCloud:
Lil Uzi Vert
Even though some purists might not agree, ‘XO TOUR Llif3’ by Lil Uzi Vert is one of the quintessential hip-hop tracks of the new millenium. Just ask everyone and their mother and they’ll hum it, promise. But before the track’s meteoric rise to the charts in 2017, it first dropped as part of a four-song playlist (‘Luv Is Rage 1,5’) where? You’ll guess it.
Rico Nasty
A true master of, quote Elle, “the art of not giving a f*ck”, Rico Nasty mashes punk, rap and metal to a contagious blend of high-energy music. Her early SoundCloud releases, among them “iCarly” and “Hey Arnold”, helped her to establish the cult following she has these days, with SoundCloud’s wide range of genres being the perfect stage to freely experiment with all of them.
Juice WRLD
So-called ’emo rap’ goes hand in hand with Soundcloud, and the first EP ‘999’ by the late Juice WRLD helped strengthen this liason when he uploaded it onto the website, gaining millions of fans consequently. What followed were hits on hits, among them the tribute EP ‘Too Soon…’ in honor of his colleagues Lil Peep and XXXTentacion. ‘Fuck Love’ by the latter, a song featuring Trippie Redd holds the title for most-streamed rap song on SoundCloud ever at 313 million plays itself, proving the relevance of the aforementioned Soundcloud-emo-rap rectangle.
Kehlani
Even though the rise to stardom of this post’s titular hero first started on America’s Got Talent, it was SoundCloud that established Kehlani as a solo artist after her teen pop group PopLyfe days: That’s thanks to the singer’s solo track ‘ANTISUMMERLUV’ in 2013 and her ‘Cloud 19’ mixtape one year later that collected praise from Pitchfork to Complex.
Post Malone
Before three (!) diamond-certified songs, before the world tours and before he could live every MTG player’s dream, Post Malone just posted a little song on SoundCloud in 2015. Luckily, this song was the catchy ‘White Iverson’, which became a viral sensation and had Posty “ballin’, ballin’, Iverson on us” ever since. Apparently, sky is the limit with SoundCloud (bad pun intended).
