Nowadays, it is Fivio who has an entourage, and one evening this spring he paid a visit to Funkmaster Flex with a few friends in tow. But he got famous first, and took a fraternal interest in Fivio’s career: he tried, unsuccessfully, to get the label that signed him to sign Fivio, too, and when he travelled to the Hot 97 studios for an interview, in 2019, he included Fivio in his entourage. Pop Smoke was about a decade younger than Fivio Foreign, who just turned thirty-two. “Pop,” as just about every listener would have known, was Pop Smoke, an ally and friend of Fivio who was approaching mainstream stardom when he was murdered, in February, 2020 his first album, released posthumously, made its début at No. “City of Gods” had a chorus by Alicia Keys, singing, “New York City, please go easy on this heart of mine.” It had a newsworthy verse, in which Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, threatened the “Saturday Night Live” star Pete Davidson, who was dating his ex, Kim Kardashian: “This afternoon / A hundred goons / Pulling up to ‘S.N.L.’ ” Most important, it had Fivio Foreign, who staged a self-coronation in the track’s opening lines: Now he is emerging as the kind of reliable hip-hop star that New York, not too long ago, seemed to have stopped producing. A few years ago, Fivio Foreign was just one more guy from Brooklyn mean-mugging into the camera in a bunch of YouTube videos.
“Fivio, I see you,” Flex said, calling out the rapper behind the track. On this night, Flex was drowning out a new track, “City of Gods,” which seemed sure to become a local favorite.
For thirty years, Flex has been New York’s most prominent hip-hop radio d.j., tasked with figuring out what might be popular and then telling people what should be popular-turning audience research into a series of definitive statements, delivered so volubly and so frequently that he sometimes drowns out the music. “This is what New York City feel like and sound like,” Funkmaster Flex exclaimed, one recent night on Hot 97. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
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