Powfu

Emerging from Canada, rapper, songwriter, and producer Powfu attracted global notice through his melancholic lo-fi approach, which blended equal measures of sorrow, reminiscence, and warmth. The track “Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head)” incorporated a sample from British singer Beabadoobee’s lo-fi acoustic recording “Coffee,” achieving unforeseen commercial scale with hundreds of millions of streams and a peak position of number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100. Its parent EP, Poems of the Past, featuring a contribution from blink-182, ascended to the top of the same publication’s Heatseekers chart. Powfu sustained momentum by issuing further EPs and full-length projects, among them 2022’s Surrounded by Hounds and Serpents.

Born Isaiah Faber in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1999, he began uploading material as early as 2018. His early work typically paired lo-fi hip-hop rhythms and plaintive piano instrumentals with vocals and rhymes that explored relationships, separations, inner turmoil, and bittersweet recollections. These pieces appeared first as standalone singles before Powfu gathered selections into the ongoing EP series Some Boring, Love Stories. The January 2020 release of “Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head)” accelerated his ascent, its video accumulating millions of views within months. An official commercial single and refreshed video followed, prompting a deal with Columbia Records. The song opened Poems of the Past, Powfu’s debut Columbia EP, which also contained a blink-182 remix. He closed that breakthrough year with additional singles such as “When the Hospital Was My Home” featuring Rxseboy, later included on Some Boring Love Stories, Pt. 5.

Drinking Under the Streetlights and Tell Me Your Feelings and I Won't Tell You Mine both surfaced in 2021, preceding the arrival of Surrounded by Hounds and Serpents the following year.