OnSmash (Legend, Hof, & Young)

Organization: OnSmash
Instrumental in the rise of: Curren$y, Rick Ross, DJ Khaled, Mac Miller

[Ed. Note—From January 2011 to April 2012, Mark “Legend” Iraheta was employed by Complex as a Contributing Writer for the Music channel. Furthermore, OnSmash is part of the Complex Media Network.]

You wouldn’t have the “Rick Ross run” if it wasn’t for OnSmash. Think back to 2008, when it just came out that Rick Ross used to be a corrections officer. Everybody knew his first two albums, but everybody counted Ross out—similar to how everybody counted Wale out. Hof saw that Ross was dope. So when Ross was trying to flood the Internet, who was posting his music first? OnSmash.

Ross won because he understood the Internet before anyone else and he understood that video was king. OnSmash was always big on video and they were first on Ross. This was back when Ross was doing low quality videos. The video for like “Gunplay” with Ross wearing a Louis scarf over his face on the private jet are over the top but those are the videos that made him win. OnSmash was supporting every single one. OnSmash revived Ross when he needed it most.

The next artist they helped was DJ Khaled. Khaled was a character, everybody knew that. But people didn’t really know who Khaled was, he was just this guy yelling on the records. Because of Rick Ross, OnSmash was doing every single one of Khaled’s video blogs. They built Khaled up online. This is before "I’m On One" and before the Ross rise. This is Khaled trying to make a name for himself through the Runners and the Miami movement and OnSmashwas on that early.

If that site didn’t go down Khaled would have rocked with OnSmash. But when the site went down, they had to keep putting shit out so they went with WSHH. But they rocked with OnSmash because OnSmash showed them love first and they wanted to show love back.

Plus, you wouldn’t hear about Curren$y if it wasn’t for OnSmash. You would have thought he was just another Young Money flunkie if it wasn’t for OnSmash. They were posting him way before the XXL cover and before he signed to Warner Bros. Spitta even shouts them out in one of his songs.

And finally, Quentin Cuff—Mac Miller’s right hand man—say that OnSmash helped break Mac Miller. Although ImFlashy.com hosted Mac’s The High Life mixtape, the first people to fuck with it was OnSmash.com. These are money making artists who they were very early on.

People give them enough credit. People look at them as NahRight 2.0. Back when they were co-signing Ross, the blogs were basically the New Music Cartel. OnSmash were kind of on the outskirts of it, they were in that New Music Cartel but it was like, everybody went to NahRight, everybody went to 2DopeBoyz, and then OnSmash.

But remember, they’re the ones who got shut down. If OnSmash got shut down—and OnSmash getting shut down was certainly because whatever record label whispered in whoever’s ear—doesn’t that suggest that OnSmash had a lot of pull?

Hof used to actually be an A&R, which is kind of tough because that means he used to be an industry player. I didn’t want to include industry people; this list is just for tastemakers. But Hof is a tastemaker now.