Bronx-born MC A Boogie wit da Hoodie’s parents had a vision for their son from the very start—which is why they named him Artist [Dubose]. But not even they could have imagined the impact their baby boy would go on to have: A young Artist emerging as New York City's most melodically-inclined MC, after Drake carried a cross for singing MCs. The Boy himself was an early professed fan, bringing out A Boogie wit da Hoodie as a special guest during a show at Madison Square Garden in 2016 and, to borrow a phrase from common NYC parlance, it was “up” from there. He was already a star in the five boroughs when his 2016 debut mixtape Artist dropped, with songs like “My Sh*t,” “Jungle,” and “Friend Zone” blasting from cell-phone speakers city-wide, but it was follow-up releases The Bigger Artist and International Artist that, indeed, made him a bigger, international artist. A Boogie would spread his wings across those projects, beyond the conspicuously piano-laden production that defines much of his earliest work, into continually buzzing sounds like trap (“No Promises”) and afrobeats (“Way Too Fly). He’d continue to push himself across 2018’s Hoodie SZN and 2020’s Artist 2.0, collaborating with plenty of the game’s most consistently heralded talents (Roddy Ricch, Gunna, Young Thug), before realizing, around the time of 2022’s Me vs. Myself, that he always has been and always will be in a league of his own.