Celebrating the Life of Pop Smoke aka Bashar Barakah Jackson in a Unique Art Piece
The life story art piece of Pop Smoke
When I first started Sagen.Life, I was listening to a lot of music that would get me hyped up during my creative pursuits… one artist that really stood out to me at the time was the late Pop Smoke. The drill sound he somewhat pioneered/helped re-emerge reminded me of garage music I grew up listening to in the UK around the late 90s/early 2000s; a time when this type of music had a deep impact in my life and inspired me to dive more into artistic pursuits. I was honored to create this piece for the foundation he started with his mom, Shoot For The Stars. (Side note: prints for this piece are not for sale but if you would like to purchase the original, 20% of the proceeds will go to his foundation.) Here is his story:
Born Bashar Barakah Jackson in Canarsie, Brooklyn on July 20th 1999 to a Panamanian mother, Audrey Jackson, and Jamaican father, Greg Jackson, Pop first started getting into music at church, playing African drums and singing in the choir. Although life wasn’t all pure and innocent… in middle school he started already dabbling in gang life and that’s where he says the legendary “WOO” was born.
Despite this, he was super driven as a teenager and at 15 got a basketball scholarship which unfortunately ended up not panning out due to a heart murmur… but Jackson continued to trap and hustle on the streets which led him to getting into some trouble with cops, leading him to be on house arrest for 2 years.
Soon after, he wanted to make a shift into music and started hanging with the man Jay Gwuapo. Legend says that one day Jay got so high in the studio that he passed out… leading to Pop taking the opportunity to jump into the booth and lay down some vocals of his own which gave the room a surprisingly positive reaction to what they heard—
Around the same time, Drill started making its way around the world and a subgenre was formed in the UK with producer 808Melo being at the forefront. Pop started using his beats online and after a bit, recorded his first track “MPR PANIC PT 3 REMIX” which stands for “money power respect” with a second track “Flexin” coming out soon after and hitting 100k views in one day…
“Meet the Woo” drops soon after debuting at 100k views in ONE HOUR! According to Pop, the attention from that song completely changed his life and he knew he wanted to pursue music forever. Enter Rico Beats and his label “Victor Victor” signing Pop and fixing to take him to the moon.
Pop and 808Melo form a strong collaborative partnership and release “Meet the Woo” with the Brooklyn anthem “Welcome to the Party”, crowning him king of New York. Nicki Minaj and Skepta then hopped on the remix which gave him a major co-sign outside to a much larger audience.
His next track “Dior” also BLEW UP being his first song on the Billboard 100, achieving platinum status not too long after.
Pop then started making big moves with his acting debut in Boogie directed by Eddie Huang and meeting 50 Cent and Quavo, who became big brothers and mentors to him.
Skepta then brought Pop out to one of his shows and strengthened that UK connection, bridging the gap between Chicago x Brooklyn x UK drill (shoutout to artist @ellis_l.d who’s also from the UK 🇬🇧 and a fan). World-wide fame is the next stop with his music spreading all over the globe and a special trip to Paris Fashion Week with Virgil for LVHM.
I want to emphasize at this stage how important 50 Cent’s role played in getting Pop’s mind focused on music and playing a crucial mentorship role, especially after Pop’s death to push out his debut album “Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon”, which was at one point close to not even being released… but it immediately hit the top 10 on the Billboard Charts and ended up being the biggest posthumous album debut since Michael Jackson in 2009.
On June 18, 2020, a few months after his death, Pop Smoke’s family announced his foundation @shootforthestars which was established by Pop before his passing in collaboration with his mother, dedicated towards helping inner city urban youth “shoot for the stars” and “turn their pain into champagne by making their dreams a reality”—
In the year 2021, Pop had already won 5 Billboard music awards and his second and final album “FAITH” was just released a few days ago on July 16 with massive notable artists including Kanye, Dua Lipa, Kid Cudi, Rick Ross, 21 Savage and many more honoring his legacy.
There are a lot of elements and small bits in this piece that true fans can pick up on that I didn’t mention above… if you know, you know 👀 some stories are meant to be less-spoken on and kept close to the heart.