It’s not often that a rising artist in the hip-hop space has both the skills to rhyme and produce, but that’s exactly the type of time Cash Cobain is currently on.
Born and raised in the birthplace of hip-hop, music has always been a big part of Cash Cobain’s life. The Bronx native, 25, began making beats in his early teens by experimenting with old-school samples in digital audio workstations such as FL Studio. By 2013, he decided to expand upon his craft by trying his hand at rapping over his own production and gained early momentum by uploading his music directly to SoundCloud.
Fast-forward to 2024, and Cash Cobain is making waves throughout the music industry with projects like Pretty Girls Love Slizzy, which dropped this past fall, and current singles such as “Dunk Contest” and “Fisherrr” featuring Bay Swag. Aside from amassing millions of views and streams on platforms like Spotify and YouTube with his own music, Cash is also widely credited for originating the popular production style known as sample drill.
Cash Cobain first found breakthrough mainstream success in 2021, by flipping Mary J. Blige’s classic 1997 smash “Everything” to produce B-Lovee’s “My Everything.” To date, the gold-certified drill banger has raked in over 35 million collective streams on DSPs like Apple Music and Spotify. In 2023, Lil Yachty put Drake onto Cash Cobain’s unique sound and the result was a standout production credit on Drizzy’s For All the Dogs cut “Calling for You” featuring 21 Savage.
Earlier this year, Cash Cobain was anointed by the Recording Academy as one of the 2024 #GRAMMYsNextGen Producer Ambassadors for his innovative style as both a producer and an artist. He’s also gearing up to take his rhymes to the 2024 Rolling Loud California festival stage later this month.
Here, Cash Cobain pulls up to XXL‘s The Break: Live for an all-encompassing interview about his past, present and future. He tells the story of how he had his own mother hop on the first song he ever rapped and expresses the importance of having support from his loving family. Cash also dives into what it means to have produced tracks for stars like Drake and Central Cee while at the same time finding ways to balance his solo career as an artist and much more.
Watch the full interview below.
Follow Cash Cobain on Spotify and Instagram.
Standouts:
“Dunk Contest”
“JHoliday/Vacant” with Chow Lee
“Rump” featuring Chow Lee
“Slizzy Like”
Pretty Girls Love Slizzy
The 45 Most Important Hip-Hop Producers Since 2000
Here’s XXL’s picks of the most important hip-hop producers since the year 2000.
