Joey Trap

Born in New York yet based in San Diego, rapper Joey Trap—short for “Take Risks and Prosper”—delivers a brash, East Coast-inspired approach. Across his mixtapes and projects such as the 2020 release Wild West, his rapid-fire wordplay and humor echo the approaches of Tyler, The Creator, Travis Scott, and Young Thug.

Trap started posting his own productions online near 2016. Having relocated from Spanish Harlem to San Diego at age 15, he began sharing tracks at 17 and soon drew listeners to his inventive, high-speed lyricism, highlighted by a run of Sesame Street-themed freestyles. Throughout 2017 he issued several mixtapes, among them Misadventures of Trap Jack, Free Trap, Trap Jack 2, and additional titles. His sexually explicit track “I Got Top in Bikini Bottom” became a viral success, accumulating millions of streams within months. Trap established the music collective Kloud Gang and has occasionally recorded under the alias Kloudgod. In 2018 he followed up with the mixtapes Trapped in TV and Akachi Trap. Following Asylum releases that included “Lesley,” he launched the Young Rich Squad imprint in 2019 and put out singles such as “Starz” and “Saying Grace.” He resurfaced in January 2020 with Wild West, a Western-themed album that included contributions from Mikey100k.