Cousin Stizz

Born in Boston, the rapper known as Cousin Stizz delivers confident rhymes drawn from personal experience over a direct yet relaxed delivery. Early exposure to 1990s hip-hop from A Tribe Called Quest and the Notorious B.I.G. gave way to fascination with trap’s slow, hypnotic sound after he encountered Gucci Mane. Self-released mixtapes helped him cultivate an audience, leading to his major-label bow with the 2017 project One Night Only and the follow-up full-length Trying to Find My Next Thrill in 2019. After parting ways with the label he returned to independent status and issued Just for You in 2022.

Stizz, whose birth name is Stephen Goss, first performed as part of Pilot Nation before branching out solo. His debut mixtape, Suffolk County, arrived as a free download in 2015. Despite scant marketing the project spread through word of mouth, drawing notice from Drake and from Mac Miller, who brought Stizz on tour as an opener. The 2016 follow-up Monda paid tribute to a friend who had died in his teens. In 2017 Omertà, Inc. pressed Suffolk County on vinyl, the same year Stizz signed with RCA Records. One Night Only appeared that May after the single “Headlock,” which featured Offset of Migos. Two additional standalone tracks, “Living Like Khaled” and “Lace Up,” surfaced before year’s end. The 2018 EP All Adds Up contained “Shop,” “Did It,” and “Way Up,” while Cold Times followed a month later.

Trying to Find My Next Thrill, Stizz’s second album, reached listeners in 2019; City Girls appeared on the track “Perfect,” which later received a remix featuring Doja Cat and BIA. Several more singles emerged on RCA before his departure from the imprint. In 2021 he independently dropped “Say Dat” and “Lethal Weapon,” then unveiled Just for You the next year with a guest verse from Curren$y.