Bio

Within a span of a year Lil Wop, a 22-year-old rapper from Chicago, went from being Gucci Mane’s biggest fan to being the hip-hop vet’s newest protégé. Since 2016, Wop has been busy, carving out a niche with his distinct Midwest drawl and hard-rock mentality. It all started with his 2016 project Wopster and it continued into 2017, after he dropped three installments of his Wopavelli series and the mixtape Wake N Bake.

Gucci Mane signed Lil Wop to his label 1017 Eskimos via Alamo Records over the summer and the pairing couldn’t be better. Wop, who’s Famous Dex’s cousin, discovered Gucci’s music while hanging out with his older cousins. “I was around older people. I was around my older cousins and I’m hearing it,” Wop explains to XXL while in New York. “I grew up around it. I really grew up in this shit.”

He gravitated to not only Gucci’s music, but looked up to him as a role model. So much so that Lil Wop tattooed his face with the same famous ice cream tattoo Gucci has inked on his own face. It was kind of destiny for Lil Wop and Big Guwop to link up. Another fun fact, Lil Wop’s birthday is on Oct. 17—the number is synonymous with Gucci Mane.

With his latest project, Wopavelli 3, out, Lil Wop is out to prove that Gucci’s interest in him as a newcomer is warranted. “It’s going to put me in that genre of big name rappers,” he says. “This mixtape will show that Lil Wop is not like anyone in music. It’s like hard rock, it’s just something different to hear.”