22Gz

Did You Know?

• His father died before he was born.
• He is of Guyanese descent.
• He started his entertainment career on the New York City Subway performing showtime dance routines.

Career

22Gz was 17 when he started putting songs on SoundCloud in early 2015. His 2016 tracks "Blixky" and "Suburban" built him a YouTube following. "Suburban," made by London drill producer AXL Beats, is seen as one of the first big Brooklyn drill hits. This buzz led to a deal with Atlantic in 2018, where his label's A&R connected him with Kodak Black. Their joint track "Spin the Block" was an early label release. His first Atlantic mixtape, The Blixky Tape, came out in July 2019. The next one, Growth & Development, dropped on April 10, 2020, with production from London drill producer Ghosty.

Legal issues

22Gz faced a conspiracy to commit murder charge in 2014, but it was dropped. In 2017, he was jailed for five months on second-degree murder charges tied to a Miami shooting, though those were also dropped. He once filmed a Facebook Live video from an NYPD holding cell in 2018. In 2019, he was pulled from the Rolling Loud lineup alongside Casanova, Pop Smoke, Sheff G, and Don Q, with police citing a higher risk of violence. On June 12, 2022, he was arrested in New York City on attempted murder charges for a March shooting that injured three people, and he was released four days later on $500,000 bail.