Love him or hate him, you’ve probably at least heard of young mumblerapper “Lil Pump”, but what you may not know is that the ‘Gucci Gang’ rapper was actually a Harvard student…or so he claims.
Born August 17, 2000 Gazzy Garcia (aka Lil Pump) is one of the youngest people in the rap game, but he’s also becoming one of the biggest. Garcia began his rap career in 2014 when he was just 13, through an introduction to Soundcloud rapper, Smokepurpp. Smokepurpp asked Lil Pump to freestyle over one of his tracks, which was then released in 2016 and titled “Lil Pump.” The song blew up in its own right and was followed up shortly after by singles like “Elementary”, “Ignorant”, and “Drum$tick”, which also became hits. Lil Pump’s success on Soundcloud, lead to him to a co-headline the No Jumper tour in 2016.
Following his breakout success in 2016, Lil Pump entered 2017 strong releasing “D Rose” and “Boss”, which became major hits for him (as of now “Boss” has nearly 90 million Spotify streams). “D Rose” was arguably his first mainstream hit, and lead to a music video in January of 2017 that had earned over 100 million views by the end of the year. Looking to add the young rapper to their lineup, Gazzy Garcia signed a record deal with Warner Bros. Records. The problem here? Lil Pump was underage at the time and therefore the contract was void, making him a free agent. Suddenly offers started coming his way from all over, with people like Gucci Mane and DJ Khaled looking to jump on the mumble rap sensation.
But before the voided contract, Lil Pump saw even greater success with the release of Garcia’s biggest hit to date, “Gucci Gang.” Gucci Gang was his first hit to make it to the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #3. A couple months later Garcia released his debut studio album, the self-titled Lil Pump, which saw features with the likes of Gucci Mane, Lil Yachty, Chief Keef, Rick Ross, 2 Chainz, and long-time collaborator Smokepurpp. With names like that and the momentum he’s had it’s no wonder how the album has reached 650,000 equivalent album sales.
It wasn’t until January of 2018, when Lil Pump released I Shyne with Carnage, that it was revealed that Gazzy Garcia’s contract with Warner Bros. Records had been voided. Garcia, at times, mentioned that he wouldn’t sign for less than $12 million, but in March of 2018, Garcia resigned a contract with Warner Bros. for only $8 million. The kicker? According to Garcia, the $8 million was for only only one project. However, TMZ does report that the $8 million was granted in advance, but that the contract was a seven-year deal. Which really isn’t bad at all when you consider that he’s reportedly earning 14% off US sales and up to 66% in royalties.
In case you forgot, Lil Pump is only 17 years old. 17 years old and he’s signed 2 major, multi-million dollar record deals, 5 platinum singles, and over 2 billion combined streams. He knows how to work the system, being one of the biggest successes of the Soundcloud rappers which include the likes of Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Peep, Ugly God, and Ski Mask the Slump God. Where did he learn how to do this? Was it Harvard? Well, according to Garcia in August, 2017 he dropped out of Harvard to “save the rap game.” However, that has not been confirmed and there is no record of him attending the school. And it would be hard to believe that Garcia could get in, especially when you look at his record which includes being expelled as a sophomore for inciting a riot. But Garcia has already embraced the rumors, with the title of his next mixtape being quoted as “Harvard Dropout.”
It’s hard to say where the career of Lil Pump will go, but his trajectory has been astounding and there seems to be no stopping it. We wish him the best of luck.
Not a fan of Lil Pump or maybe mumble rap as a whole? Give our discussion episode on that very topic a listen here.
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Thank you again, see you next time.
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