D.R.A.M.

D.R.A.M. was born as Shelley Marshaun Massenburg-Smith on August 3, 1988 in Neustadt an der Weinstraße, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, where his mother was serving in the military. He was brought to the United States before he turned one and was raised in Hampton, Virginia. While growing up, he lived with his grandparents for quite some time, during this time he went to the church regularly with them and sang on the choir. He had attended Kentucky State University for a year during his teenage years.

D.R.A.M., who had started singing in the choir as a child, was introduced to rap in his fifth grade while watching music videos from Jay-Z’s 'Hard Knock Life'. He first began to rap on the beats of the song 'Grindin'' by rap duo 'The Clipse' when he was in the eighth grade. However, in 2005, during his senior year at school, his interest in rap music took a serious turn after he was invited by his friend Key to come to the now-defunct Coliseum Mall in Hampton, Virginia, where rapper Soul had set up a little recording booth with a mic and laptop. His friend Key started the song and he added 16 bars of verse on it. Their first recorded song had impressed Soul so much that he offered to manage the duo, but in the following years, they parted ways as he ended up ruining their tracks with his mixing.

In 2005, D.R.A.M. took a job at a call center and continued to do it till 2009. However, in 2008, he made a comeback to the music field by buying a $100 mic on which he recorded about a hundred punchline-heavy hip-hop songs under the alias 'DRAMA j'. He also began performing at open mic events during this time. He later shortened his stage name to 'D.R.A.M.' and eventually became known as 'Big Baby DRAM'. He first experienced success in 2014 after he dropped his '#1EPICSummer' EP, which contained his breakout single 'Cha Cha'. His fame spread quickly after star singer-songwriter Beyoncé posted a video of herself singing and dancing to the song. During this time, he had a job at the Best Buy retail chain, but quit it to focus on his follow-up mixtape 'Gahdamn!' and his sold-out tours with artist like Chance The Rapper. He even went on to work with the legendary Rick Rubin, whom he considers a mentor. He now has nearly a million subscribers on his YouTube channel, with over 390 million views on his videos.

D.R.A.M.'s work has been characterized by his fun, exploratory music that often goes beyond the boundaries of traditional rap. However, while he is known primarily for his sense of humor and for writing about simple topics like partying, getting trashed and rap battles, he has shown time and again that he is fully capable of producing traditional rap when he wants to. According to him, growing up in a stale neighborhood in one of America's first cities, which was still old-fashioned and lacked diversity, there was little room for the kind of experimentation that now marks his rule-breaking rap style. As a result, he spent much time in the neighboring city of Norfolk to satisfy his hunger for music. He often hung around his older cousins who listened to soul music by singers like Al Green and funk music collective Parliament-Funkadelic, headed by George Clinton. He considers it a blessing as those musicians went on to be a great influence on him later on.