User:Bspence237/sandbox/SME DRO$E (rapper)

Darius Rose (born May 14, 2002), better known by his stage name SME DRO$E, is an American rapper, singer and songwriter from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The 19 year old rapper, turned his music hobby into a career since a young age. He is the lead member and founder of the record label, SME Da Label AKA Self-Made Entertainment (SME). He is known for songs such as "Stucc In Da Trap", "Real Shit" and "No Pitty" off his debut EP Love Me or Hate Me.

Early life
Darius Rose was born on the 500 block of Beaver Street in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on May 14, 2002 to a American mother and a Puerto Rican father. Growing up Rose attended multiple elementary schools before moving to a town called Souderton. He began at first taking music as a joke, free-styling with friends at the age of 16 and then started taking his music career much more seriously at age 17. Rose turned to music at a young age to filter the frustrations of growing up below the poverty line.

Career
SME DRO$E's first major collaboration was in 2020 with Calboy who was hosting a mixtape letting underrated artists on it for more exposure. The hit single "No Pitty" by SME DRO$E off Calboy's mixtape of 40 songs went viral and totaled up a number of 342,000 views and over 500,000 plays in the first week. In 2019 Rose began uploading songs on his SoundCloud account where he dropped his first single "Kobe". He started off by just thinking of melodic type bars in his head and then would just repeat them to himself over and over again. By the time he was ready to record he had remembered the bar he just repeated to himself word for word. He would then use an app on his phone called "GarageBand" to record the bars he just created, Later on after years of hard work and dedication to his music career Rose had saved up enough money to buy his own professional studio microphone so that he wouldn't have to record his songs off of his phone anymore. After he purchased his microphone Rose would be rapping rhymes to himself all day long from his bedroom. His early music included a track that was featuring a few of his friends the track was named about the NBA player Kobe Bryant which was entitled "Kobe". SME DRO$E released two songs in 2019 entitled "Kobe" and "Racks", both produced by Versa. SME DRO$E was always interested in music since a young age learning how to play the guitar at the age of 5 years old. On May 11, 2020, SME DRO$E released five singles, "No Pitty", "No Sleep", "Hottest Youngin'", "I Don't Care" and "Over Seas" off his debut EP, Love Me or Hate Me. "No Pitty" gained attention the fastest with it receiving over 100,000 plays on SoundCloud alone. On July 30, 2020, SME DRO$E released his hit single "Stucc In Da Trap" which racked up a total of 1,000,000 streams on all major platforms combined in just a matter of 5 months. On January 31, 2021, SME DRO$E released his single entitled "Real Shit". On June 18, 2021, SME DRO$E received his first of many plaques at only 19 years old. A music company by the name of Music Streaming Awards had been gaining attention watching Rose grow as an artist over the time and had a lot of interest in SME DRO$E for a while. On June 17, 2021, Music Streaming Awards noticed that DRO$E's single release "Stucc In Da Trap" had just hit a little over 1,000,000 streams in under 6 months, Streaming Awards then contacted DRO$E through Instagram to congratulate him on his success by sending him a plaque which made him not the youngest but also the only artist in his entire county to do this as of right now in 2021.

Influences
Rose has cited his influences as Tupac Shakur, Michael Jackson, 50 Cent, Chris Brown, Meek Mill, Chief Keef, and Lil Wayne. Rose's rap moniker comes from combining his nickname which is the same as NBA player Derrick Rose and by adding SME to the front of it.