XXXTentacion-
XXXTentacion is Jahseh Dwayne Onfroy’s stage name. He was born in Plantation, Florida and he grew up in Lauderhill, Florida. He started writing music in 2014 after being released from a youth detention center because of gun possession charges. While in juvie he met Stokeley Clevon Goulbourne, another rapper that blew up in 2017, but he will not be mentioned on this list. XXXTentacion became famous from a song that he re-released called “Look at Me”.  The song landed 34 on the billboards and had controversy with Drake because of the beat sounding like one of Drake's songs “KMT”, that was later released.  Then in August, he released his album “17”, with the hit song Jocelyn Flores being the most popular song from the album.

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Lil Pump-
Gazzy Garcia, also known as Lil pump was born in Miami, Florida.  Lil pump started rapping with Omar Pineiro, aka Smokepurpp who is another rapper on this list. Lil Pump released his rap songs from Soundcloud.  He released 5 songs on SoundCloud with each one having over 3 million streams. He then performed at Rolling Loud, a popular rap music festival. He released 2 songs to start 2017, with both of them combined earning over 70 million streams on Soundcloud.  One of his most popular songs was “Gucci Gang”.  The day it was released was the day his album was supposed to be released, but he just released the one song.

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Smokepurpp-
Omar Pineiro, who went by Smokepurpp, was born in Chicago, Illinois. He started to rap after he failed to be a producer because no one bought his beats. Like most rappers that blew up in 2017 he started releasing his songs off of SoundCloud. He didn’t like the first song that he released so he deleted it and then uploaded another song featuring XXXTentacion. He dropped out of school later on and signed with Interscope records and Alamo records. His biggest song was “Audi”, which he released in May 2017. The song has over 25 million streams on SoundCloud and over 33 million streams on Spotify. He released 2 songs in September and one of the songs “dead star” made it to number 42 on the billboards. 

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Russ-
Russell Vital goes by Russ for his stage name. He was born in Secaucus, New Jersey. He moved around a lot as a kid but then his family found a permanent spot in Atlanta, Georgia. He started writing music young, at the age of 7. He then recorded his first song when he was 18. In 2016 he partnered with Columbia records and released “What They Want” and “Losing Control”. Both songs landed on the billboards, “What They Want” at 83 and “Losing Control” at 62. On May 5 he released his album “There’s Really a wolf”. He has many songs and albums out. Every single one of his songs he produced, mixed, mastered, wrote, engineered, and performed by himself.

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Cardi B-
Belcalis Almanzar, who goes by Cardi B, was born and raised in the Bronx, New York. She started rapping in November of 2015. In March of 2017, she released her first full mixtape called “Gangsta B***h Music,Vol. 1”.  In January 2017 she released her second mixtape called “Gangsta B***h Music,Vol. 2”.  She was nominated for best new artist and best female hip-hop artist at the BET awards, (which is like the Grammys), but she didn't win either award.  In June of 2017, she released “Bodak Yellow”. In August, the song reached number 2 on the billboards.