Pop Smokes Death Year A Tragic Loss Of A Rising Star

Pop Smoke's 2020 Death And Why It Still Matters

Pop Smoke died in February 2020, and the music world reacted the way it always does when a rising star gets cut short. You lose someone at 20 years old and suddenly everyone pretends they knew exactly what was coming. They didn't. The drill scene in Brooklyn was moving fast, and Pop Smoke was already one of the loudest voices in it.

Pop Smokes Death Year A Tragic Loss Of A Rising Star

The circumstances around his death are still not fully public. A home invasion in Los Angeles turned violent, and multiple people were shot. Pop Smoke did not survive. What happened next was predictable: the posthumous album cycle began almost immediately, his estate moved fast on releases, and streaming numbers went through the roof. I was working in music publishing around that time, and let me tell you what that looked like from the inside. Labels and managers were scrambling to figure out licensing for tracks that hadn't been properly cleared yet. Some songs were just demos at that point. You would be surprised how many files in a hard drive don't have clean splits, clear writer credits, or proper splits signed. That became a real problem once everyone wanted to monetize everything. The workarounds are straightforward if you know where to look. Check the PRO registration databases first. ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and SOCAN all have free searchable catalogs. If a track isn't registered under the artist's performing name, try the writers' names. Pop Smoke's real name was Bashar Barakah Jackson. His frequent collaborators like Sheff G and Ferg Simpson show up under their own names in those systems.

One thing people miss is that drill music has a heavy sampling culture, especially early in the genre. Many beats were produced by producers who had working relationships with artists rather than formal contracts. That means splits can be incomplete or based on verbal agreements. When a major label steps in after the artist's death, they often discover gaps in the paperwork. It is not malicious. It is just how the scene operated before the money got big enough to force professionalism. From a practical standpoint, if you are trying to track down rights information for Pop Smoke catalog, start with the record label. Virgin EMI handled his posthumous releases, and they maintain the master recordings. For publishing, it gets messier. Different tracks have different publishers. Some went through YNN Music, others through Sony Music Publishing. There is no single answer. I ran into this specifically when a sync editor asked me to clear a track for a documentary project. The song was popular but the split sheet listed five writers and only three were accounted for in the system. We had to dig through studio emails and text message threads between the producer and the artist's team to confirm the remaining splits. It took about two weeks and cost the project some money in legal review time. That is the hidden cost of posthumous catalogs: the paperwork was never done while the artist was alive.

Another issue that nobody talks about enough is the ghostwriter problem in drill. Not because ghostwriting is uncommon, but because when an artist dies, collaborators sometimes have claims that were never written down. A feature verse might have been recorded in one session, but the writer never got credit. Those disputes surface later. It is not something I suggest looking into casually, but it is part of why researching this catalog can be harder than it looks. If you want to listen to the official catalog, the releases are available on all major platforms. Faith came out in 2021 and The Woo was already circulating before he died. There are also leaked tracks and unreleased material floating around, but those are not cleared for commercial use. Do not attempt to use anything that was not officially released through the estate. Here is what I wish more people understood about this situation. The estate has done a reasonable job managing the catalog, but reasonable is not the same as complete. There will be unresolved credit disputes. There will be songs that surface with messy ownership. Anyone trying to license this music should budget extra time for clearance work, especially if the track is not one of the well-known singles.

The broader point is that Pop Smoke's death in 2020 exposed how fragile music rights infrastructure is when an artist dies before the business side catches up. The music itself survived and thrived, but the paperwork lagged behind for a long time after. That is the unglamorous reality most articles about his passing never mention.