Troy Ave

Growing up on a street in Crown Heights, the Brooklyn section of New York City, gave rapper Roland Collins the nickname that would define his recording identity. Toward the close of the 2000s he launched an extensive series of mixtapes, and in 2009 he issued his first project under the Troy Ave name, I'm in Traffick. By the time XXL magazine placed him in its 2014 Freshman Class, his BSB imprint already listed well over a dozen of his releases in its catalog. The most prominent of these was New York City: The Album, his initial full-length studio effort and, for many listeners, the first sustained exposure to his unsentimental accounts of street-level ambition. Guest appearances by Raekwon, Prodigy, and Pusha T helped the set reach Billboard's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Another project treated as a studio album, Major Without a Deal, followed in 2015 and climbed to number 14 on the same chart. In May of the next year Collins was taken into custody on charges of illegal weapon possession and attempted murder stemming from a fatal shooting at a T.I. concert in Manhattan. Shot himself during the episode, he maintained that he had acted in self-defense; while held without bail he released the mixtape Free Troy Ave. Once freed on bond he promptly delivered another 2016 mixtape, Roland Collins, and remained active the following year with the projects Dope Boy Troy and Album of the Summer.