Young Dolph

Young Dolph transforms street savviness into hard-hitting rap backed by big bass and ominous effects that match his deep voice and Memphis upbringing. The MC born Adolph Thornton, Jr. (Chicago, 1985) shifted his focus to mixtapes in 2008 after a brush with death. Fiercely independent, Dolph founded his own scrappily named label to distribute his music, Paper Route Empire, and reaped the rewards when he stepped into the national spotlight in 2014. His breakthrough—from the equally menacing and motivational High Class Street Music 4—was “Preach,” a Zaytoven-blessed club anthem about not trusting anyone. Success brought trouble. In 2017, Dolph survived a shooting, but he turned that into a win with Bulletproof, a minimal-yet-booming LP anchored by the enemy-taunting “100 Shots.” Ever shrewd and resourceful, he teamed with his trap-rapping cousin and signee, Key Glock, for 2019’s Dum and Dummer, an unflinching flex of a joint set that followed a string of solo albums documenting his against-all-odds success. In 2020, Dolph zoomed out for the moodily produced Rich Slave, which took shots the intersection of American capitalism and racism while underlining his progress in spite of it all—the ruminative “I See $’s” explicitly lays out his wealth-driven path into pop culture. Never one to shy away from the real, Dolph is at his best when he’s upfront about the gritty circumstances that shaped him.