The music industry has seen its fair share of powerhouse duo’s, but Rae Sremmurd is one of the hottest additions to that category. If you’ve been to the club, the bar, or even turned on your local Top 40 or hip-hop radio stations in the past year, you’ve heard these guys.
Slim Jimmy and Swae Lee are brothers from Tupelo, Mississippi — the home of other artists like Big Krit, Diplo, and the late, great Elvis. Faced with hardship early in life, they found solace and passion to provide for themselves by making music. They were constantly moving city to city, working jobs at places like McDonalds or mattress factories. They eventually decided to start throwing parties in abandoned houses where they would perform and rage with their friends, cultivating the early stages of their wave “Sremmlife.” They originally started off as Dem Outta S8 Boyz, and landed a spot on BET’s 106 & Park’s segment “Wild Out Wednesdays,” which was followed by meetings with major labels, but they did not land any deals. They kept making music while performing in local clubs. In 2013, they received a phone call from P-Nasty asking them to fly out to Atlanta to work and become part of Mike Will Made It’s infamous collective, The Ear Drummers. They took on the name Rae Sremmurd, an anagram of the collective.
In 2014, they made their first appearance on Mike Will Made It’s compilation #MikeWillBeenTrill, and with their distinctive sound and voices got people talking. Their first single “No Flex Zone” now has over 100 million views on Youtube, and they have over 300 million with their hit “No Type.” This was only the beginning. They soon sold over 120,000 copies of their debut album Sremmlife with features from Nicki Minaj, Young Thug, Jace of 2-9, and Big Sean with the album holding a number one spot on the hip-hop Billboard chart for over eight weeks. Since then, they’ve had even more chart-topping bangers such as “This Could Be Us,” “Up Like Trump,” and “Throw Sum Mo.” The duo is currently wrapping their project Sremmlife 2, that will hopefully be released before the end of 2016.
If for some crazy reason you haven’t heard these guys check out their music below and grab your tickets to see them at JMBLYA 2016.
