Click the AdBlock icon in the browser extension area in the upper right-hand corner.It says a lot that Lil B and Clams Casino began a prolific string of collaborations in 2009 but didn’t actually make music together in person until Based God featured on 2016’s 32 Levels album.Adblock Adblock Plus Adblocker Ultimate Ghostery uBlock Origin Others The emergence of cloud rap coincided with the growth of file transfer platforms like Dropbox (launched in 2008) and WeTransfer (2009) as well as music-based social platform SoundCloud (2007). The diverse geographical backgrounds of its key protagonists hint at the fact that cloud rap was one of the first true internet-era genres, far less concerned with local scenes than hip-hop which came before. In the case of Swedish teen prodigy Yung Lean, an openness about teenage angst opened up a uniquely emotional new take on rap.Ĭloud rap was one of the first true internet-era genres Lyrically, the themes of cloud rap tend to skew significantly less gangsta than trap and drill, with any drug references more likely to be about getting high than selling. He went on to produce for cloud and cloud-adjacent artists including A$AP Rocky, Mac Miller ( Youforia, 2013), Schoolboy Q ( Gravy, 2014) and Lil Peep ( 4 Gold Chains, 2017).

The first production superstar of the scene was New Jersey’s Clams Casino, who linked up with Lil B over Myspace in 2009. His heavily tattooed look, surreal lyrics, quirky fashion sense and slang (‘swag’, ‘based’) helped define the slightly tongue-in-cheek style of cloud rap.

Chambliss reportedly had misremembered another blog post in which it was reported that Squadda’s fellow Bay Area rapper Lil B had shown Cocaine Blunts blogger Noz a CGI image of a castle floating in clouds, proclaiming: “That’s the kind of music I want to make.” Nevertheless, Chambliss inadvertently coined the phrase.Ĭloud rap could be seen as the weirdo cousin of the more hardcore trap sound from Atlantaīest known for 2006’s minor crossover hit Vans as part of skate rap group The Pack (“Got my Vans on, but they look like sneakers…”), Lil B was a walking meme almost from the word go. The story goes that in a 2010 interview with Oakland rap duo Main Attrakionz, blogger Walker Chambliss referred to rapper Squadda B as “the king of cloud rap”. There is an element of that (more on which later), but the answer is somehow much more in keeping with the often weird and wonderful sound of cloud rap. You’d be forgiven for assuming that the name cloud rap had something to do with cloud storage or SoundCloud.

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