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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