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By Eric Diep
There have been countless debates about which region runs hip-hop today: the West Coast, the Midwest, and the South have all staked their claim in recent years. Flagship cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta have grown to influence hip-hop’s birthplace of New York in one way or another as rap in the Big Apple has become a melting pot of inspirations.
This year, New York once again has a group of MCs who don’t fit their city’s traditional mold. While G.O.O.D. Music signee and Brooklyn native Desiigner is the first artist that comes to mind, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie has been buzzing in the Bronx’s Highbridge neighborhood, steadily gaining recognition ever since releasing his breakout project Artist: The Mixtape.
A Boogie’s style of rap is accessible and melodic, full of infectious hooks and unforgettable one-liners, and he’s quickly winning over his city. He’s getting radio play on Hot 97, co-signs from heavy-hitters like DJ Khaled and Meek Mill, and crowds at his shows already know every word to songs like “My Shit,” The Jungle,” “Still Think About You,” and “Friend Zone.” He’s not yet a household name, but it’s starting to seem like it’s only a matter of time.
“This is all I’ve ever wanted,” A Boogie says of his increasing recognition. “What I got going on right now, it can’t get any better than this. Only I can be the judge of that—I can make it better or I can make it worse.”
On “The Jungle,” the 20-year-old singer and rapper draws a line in the musical sand: “Why do you think my name is Artist? I’m an artist.” A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie’s real name is Artist Dubose, and he describes his two identities as Artist, the alias behind his love songs, and A Boogie, who is his street side found on cuts like “Bando” and “Bag on Me.” He inherited his name from his father, who was a creative that liked to draw. Inspired by the construction of writing music, A Boogie got into rapping, penning some of his first rhymes when he was 13 years old.
Growing up, A Boogie listened to The Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac, as well as New York mainstays like Jay Z and 50 Cent. He likes Kanye West and he’s a fan of J. Cole. He remembers carrying around a “notebook of bars” during his freshman year at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, participating in lunchroom cyphers by spitting written rhymes. Most of his material centered on things that he didn’t actually have—just an imaginary lifestyle of riches he hoped to be a part of one day. His classmates enjoyed it, too. “It was bars! Everybody liked it, everybody was rockin’ with it. And after a while I just started spitting real things that I was going through,” he says.
The way he was singing it, he wasn’t doing it right. I went in the booth and I showed him how I wanted it, and it came out like magic. I was like, ‘Oh shit, I could do that?’
When he was 16, he had to split time between New York and Florida. After his parents heard that he was getting into trouble in New York, they made him move to Florida as punishment. “I wasn’t going to school. I started being on the block a lot. I got locked up for weed a lot,” he says. From 16 to 18, A Boogie was an unknown artist, devoid of any industry connects and with no access to a studio. Still, he made moves when opportunities presented themselves, and in December of 2014 he connected with a producer named Myster Whyte who worked on his single “Temporary.” It was the first song he had ever made in a studio.
During the session, A Boogie struggled to perfect the song’s harmonized flow, which is a kind of distorted croon. At first, he was screaming his lyrics—it was so bad he quit for a few months. “I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. I was horrible,” he admits. He even tried getting a singer to help coach him, but something was off. “I was like, ‘Yo, try to sing this for me,’” he says. “The way he was singing it, he wasn’t doing it right. I went in the booth and I showed him how I wanted it, and it came out like magic. I was like, ‘Oh shit, I could do that?’”
In the summer of 2015, A Boogie returned to New York with a determination to make it in hip-hop. He moved back to Highbridge, and got up with his childhood friend Quincy “QP” Acheampong, who co-founded their independent label, also called Highbridge. In December 2015, A Boogie went to work on Artist, linking up with D Stackz, who provided beats anchored by light piano melodies and orchestral sounds on six of the project’s tracks.
During the making of Artist, recorded mostly at a home studio in the Bronx, he found his voice after going through a tough situation with his girlfriend at the time. The pain and heartbreak from that experience sparked personal songs like “D.T.B.,” “Still Thinkin About You,” and “Friend Zone.” Lyrics like, “I had a knife in my back when I wrote this shit,” connected with A Boogie’s listeners, and his music started to spread.
Who do you want me to sound like? Do you want me to sound like 50 Cent, Jadakiss, Jay-Z? Why do you want me to rap like that?
“I broke down in that situation. So [when] I started, I went to the studio and just let it out,” he says. “I’m a puppet when you look at [the artwork]. She’s controlling me on the piano, that’s just symbolizing a girl that messed up a dude’s heart in a situation. She’s controlling the music now.”
In the span of two months, his emotionally charged songs started hitting locally. He performed small shows at lounges and clubs, gauging the responses of girls (and guys) to “Still Thinkin About You” and “My Shit” before putting out Artist on Valentine’s Day. Back in April, he sold out his first show at B.B. King’s, and returned the following month with more music, this time alongside rising rapper Don Q on Highbridge the Label: The Takeover Vol. 1.
By then, Hot 97’s Funkmaster Flex was supporting his records on the airwaves and he was earning the respect of DJ Khaled and Meek Mill, who both shouted him out on social media. Just recently, A Boogie’s NYC-centric hype caught the attention of Oliver El-Khatib, who played “The Jungle” and “Not a Regular Person” during his mix on episode 25 of OVO Sound Radio on Beats 1.
The way A Boogie articulates the duality of a broken man with a hustler’s mentality is on trend: there are successful acts who have made those observations before, such as Future and Fetty Wap. Regressive NY rap purists might argue that A Boogie doesn’t sound like where he’s from, but he feels differently.
“You can’t say I don’t sound like a NY rapper—it’s because I don’t wanna sound like nobody else,” he explains. “When people say that, that’s when I say, ‘Who do you want me to sound like? Do you want me to sound like 50 Cent, Jadakiss, Jay-Z? Why do you want me to rap like that? Why can’t I create a new, melodic lane and add a good new feeling to that shit?'”
With local support ensured, A Boogie is now tasked with proving he has staying power in hip-hop through mainstream success. Until then, he’ll keep his head down and continue working on music, with a proper remix to “My Shit” coming soon, which will follow the recent Fabolous version.
He also has an EP tentatively slated for next month, and an album scheduled for later this year. His latest collaboration—“Bet On It” with Philly’s PnB Rock—has a video on the way. “Me and PnB Rock got like three joints. That’s only the beginning; we only did that to test the waters,” he says. But what’s really keeping his focus is a hunger for more wins. “I’m not comfortable yet. Sometimes I go home and I be tired as hell, like fuckin’ six in the morning. I go home and I sit on the couch real quick and be like, ‘Yo, hold up, I’m not comfortable.’ It’d be like me and everybody just sitting around, ‘Yo, I’m not comfortable.’ I can’t go to sleep yet. I gotta do something,’” he says. “It’s crazy right now.”
