Who the Hell is The BoyBoy West Coast?
by Liam Thomas
“You was at the club. Bottoms up when I first met you.”
After only a few seconds of The BoyBoy West Coast’s snippet for his yet-to-be-released song Bottoms Up, I was immediately, inexplicably hooked. The thirty-second clip of The BoyBoy had reared its bald, mustachioed head a number of times on my Twitter feed throughout the last few weeks. Even with the song and its corresponding video being considered a bit of a meme, there was something deeply unique at the heart of it. I couldn’t tell exactly what drew me to this strange, entirely overproduced teaser; was it the booming bass drums underscoring The BoyBoy’s strikingly (and somewhat disturbingly) deep voice? His impeccably maintained eyelashes and eyebrows? Or the fact that the cup he sips from incrementally throughout the teaser is very obviously empty? Whatever it was that drew me to the snippet, there’s no denying that it positively oozes charisma. The BoyBoy West Coast seemed to be next up in line in a long procession of rappers who found their initial ascent to recognition in becoming a meme for a brief period of time.
After first being exposed to The BoyBoy West Coast’s Bottoms Up snippet, I knew I needed to find more information on the guy. The BoyBoy West Coast is a rapper from Santa Barbara, California, fresh off the release of his debut mixtape Playboy Gangsta. The project features everyone from underground artists like the Lompoc, CA-based crooner JGOTB to pop-rap mainstays such as Tory Lanez. The project features upbeat, poppy production that nevertheless stays fundamentally true to its west-coast hip hop roots. The BoyBoy maintains the punctuated flow and hefty baritone voice that made the Bottoms Up snippet so immediately magnetic. The BoyBoy West Coast’s lazy, sliding flow is accented excellently by his deeply sonorous voice, making the majority of his contributions to the project seem entirely effortless. All that being said, there’s something beyond the music he releases that makes me believe The BoyBoy West Coast is here to stay; internet charisma and viral appeal.
One visit to The BoyBoy’s Twitter should make his viral allure blisteringly obvious. In less than two weeks on Twitter, and with only 753 followers (at the time of writing this), The BoyBoy is already on the cusp of becoming an internet sensation. @BoyBoyWestCoast’s page yields two new snippets that have already been gaining steady momentum on Twitter. One of them even features another notably empty double cup The BoyBoy waves around between quick rips of a dab pen. No matter how you feel about his music, it is pretty undeniable The BoyBoy West Coast absolutely radiates a brand of confidence and charisma that has the potential to launch him into the public consciousness. His new album ‘Diary of an Ese’ is apparently completed and soon to be released, so now it's just a matter of time before Aubrey Grahm catches wind of the Bottoms Up snippet and slides into The BoyBoy’s Instagram DM’s for a collab.