Felly

Connecticut rapper Felly, whose work blends beachy guitar lines, trap rhythms, jazz-inflected instrumentals, and relaxed rhymes, started composing during high school and maintained an unbroken output that expanded alongside his rising profile. After uploading tracks online beginning in 2011 and progressing through multiple mixtapes and EPs, his catalog broadened to embrace an increasing range of styles. Early, breezy efforts such as 2014’s Waking Up to Sirens gave way to denser, more intricate textures on projects like 2017’s Wild Strawberries, while his accumulating creative threads converged on the 2018 studio debut Surf Trap. Entering the new decade he delivered three full-length albums across three successive years: Mariposa in 2020, Young Fel 2 in 2021, and Bad Radio in 2022.

Born Christian Robert Felner in 1996 and raised in Trumbull, Connecticut, Felly displayed an early, intense curiosity about music. He began writing original material in high school, initially posting it on YouTube before migrating to SoundCloud and Bandcamp. His visual aesthetic and initial songs both reflected a relaxed persona steeped in beach and surf references. In addition to rapping, performing on instruments, and handling production, he issued a continuous flow of 2011 recordings that later formed the compilation Drive-By Music; he also produced beats and offered collections of them for online purchase. Live appearances followed, with demand growing until he sold out venues nationwide. Four projects surfaced in 2014 alone: the rap EPs Waking Up to Sirens and Milk & Sugar alongside the instrumental beat tapes Black Instruments and Sun God. Around this period he began folding tropical and bossa-nova elements into his hip-hop productions, reshaping them into trap frameworks on 2015’s This Shit Comes in Waves, which included contributions from 2273 Records associates such as frequent collaborator and tour partner Gyyps; selected beats from those sessions later surfaced on the beat tape South Linda.

Felly returned in 2016 with the eight-track EP Young Fel. After a national tour he resumed studio work, resulting in the summer 2017 release Wild Strawberries, which featured guest appearances by Konshens, Cousin Stizz, and Gyyps along with production from Dre Moon, Dot Da Genius, and YoG$. In 2018 he relocated temporarily to Brooklyn to shape his first cohesive studio album, Surf Trap, which sought to unify his beach-oriented production with sharper rap textures; the project was scheduled for late fall and preceded by the September single “Pretty Girl.”

For his second album, Mariposa (2020), Felly secured a Carlos Santana feature on “Heartstrings.” He followed quickly with the 2021 sequel Young Fel 2, then issued Bad Radio in 2022, whose title track became a hit. A series of singles appeared throughout 2023—“Free Love,” “Crying In Sunshine,” and “Nothing Last Forever”—leading into the EP I Had a Beautiful Time, Now I Have to Leave, which contained the streaming success “There’s No Other.”