The 2020s File Feature
The Woo
Pop Smoke, 50 Cent, and Roddy Ricch: The Story of "The Woo" Few posthumous releases in recent hip-hop history carry the weight and complexity of Pop Smoke's …
01 The Story
Pop Smoke, 50 Cent, and Roddy Ricch: The Story of "The Woo"
Few posthumous releases in recent hip-hop history carry the weight and complexity of Pop Smoke's debut studio album Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon, and within that record, "The Woo" stands as one of its most commercially potent and emotionally layered entries. The song, featuring legacy rapper 50 Cent and rising star Roddy Ricch, became a defining artifact of the summer of 2020 and a testament to the posthumous arc of a career cut devastatingly short.
Pop Smoke, born Bashar Barakah Jackson in Brooklyn, New York, in 1999, had become one of the most exciting voices in drill rap by the time of his death in February 2020. His debut mixtape Meet the Woo, released in July 2019, introduced the world to his distinctive baritone vocal style and his facility with the drill beats that had migrated from Chicago and London into the Brooklyn ecosystem he inhabited. A follow-up project and a series of viral singles cemented his reputation as a generational talent before his life was ended by a home invasion at age twenty.
"The Woo" derives its title from the Woo, the name Pop Smoke used to refer to his crew and his community in Brooklyn, a term that appears throughout his catalog as a mark of loyalty and identity. The track was produced by 808Melo, one of the architects of the Brooklyn drill sound that Pop Smoke helped popularize internationally. The production features the dark, sliding melodic lines and menacing percussion patterns that define the drill aesthetic, anchored here by a particularly heavy and atmospheric low-end foundation.
The posthumous album Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon was released on July 3, 2020, approximately five months after Pop Smoke's death. It was executive produced by 50 Cent, whose involvement brought substantial industry infrastructure and promotional muscle to the release. 50 Cent's stewardship of the project was controversial in some quarters, with critics questioning certain creative decisions, but there was broad agreement that the album succeeded in showcasing Pop Smoke's range and ambition.
"The Woo" was released as a single on July 15, 2020, just days after the album's release, and it debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 11 on the chart dated July 18, 2020, which also proved to be its peak position. The song spent 20 weeks on the Hot 100, a remarkable run that demonstrated sustained listener engagement well beyond the initial wave of posthumous attention. The track spent its first chart week inside the top fifteen before dropping to number 48 the following week, then demonstrating a resilient pattern of movement over subsequent months.
The collaboration with 50 Cent carried symbolic and commercial significance in multiple directions. 50 Cent had been one of the defining figures of early 2000s hip-hop through his work with G-Unit and his albums on Shady/Aftermath/Interscope, and his appearance on "The Woo" created a cross-generational dialogue within the track. His verse acknowledges the tragedy of Pop Smoke's death while affirming the continuation of the Brooklyn street-rap tradition that both artists, separated by nearly two decades of cultural history, represent in their respective eras.
Roddy Ricch's contribution to "The Woo" added the third generational layer to the track. The Compton rapper and singer had himself experienced a breakout year in 2019 and 2020, including the number-one hit "The Box," which dominated the Hot 100 for eleven weeks during the first quarter of 2020. His melodic sensibility complemented the harder drill foundation and 50 Cent's more traditional rap approach, giving the track a tonal breadth that extended its appeal across different hip-hop subgenres and listener demographics.
The YouTube video for "The Woo" accumulated more than 230 million views, reflecting the massive and sustained audience that Pop Smoke's catalog attracted in the months and years following his death. The video incorporated archival footage and imagery that honored his memory while presenting the track in a visually compelling format appropriate to the social media landscape in which it circulated.
Commercially, the album Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 251,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, the largest debut for a posthumous hip-hop album in several years. The success of "The Woo" contributed to this momentum, operating as both a standalone hit and a promotional vehicle for the broader album. The track received substantial radio airplay on hip-hop and rhythmic formats and was a consistent presence on streaming platforms throughout the summer and fall of 2020.
The music industry response to Pop Smoke's death and the subsequent release of his music sparked important conversations about the ethics and practice of posthumous releases, the role of estates and executors in shaping artistic legacies, and the particular grief that attaches to artists who die before their potential is fully realized. "The Woo," by presenting Pop Smoke in conversation with established and emerging artists across generations, became a focal point of these discussions even as it functioned simultaneously as a straightforward commercial release.
Chart Performance and Legacy
The chart trajectory of "The Woo" illustrated several features of the streaming era's impact on chart methodology. Its debut at number 11 reflected the concentrated streaming activity generated by the album release, while its subsequent movement demonstrated the kind of sustained listener return that characterizes music with genuine cultural resonance rather than purely reactive consumption. By the time the track completed its 20-week Hot 100 run, it had established itself as one of the most commercially successful tracks from a posthumous hip-hop release of the decade. Pop Smoke's broader catalog continued to generate enormous streaming numbers in subsequent years, cementing his place in the hip-hop canon despite a recording career that lasted barely eighteen months.
02 Song Meaning
Loyalty, Loss, and Legacy: The Meaning of "The Woo"
"The Woo" operates simultaneously as a celebration of street fraternity and an elegy for a life ended before its time. The song's thematic architecture is built around the concept of crew loyalty and neighborhood identity that Pop Smoke encoded into the very name he chose for his collective, a name that subsequently became the title of his debut mixtape and echoed through his catalog as a recurring point of belonging and pride. In this track, the Woo is not merely a crew designation; it functions as a philosophical stance, a declaration that one's fundamental allegiances belong to the community that shaped them.
Pop Smoke's vocal performance throughout the track carries the particular authority of someone who understood that authenticity in hip-hop is not performed but lived. His baritone presence on "The Woo" conveys confidence without bluster and threat without empty posturing. The lyrical content addresses the realities of street life and the bonds formed within it with the directness that characterized his entire artistic output. There is no romanticization here in the conventional sense. Instead, the track presents its subject matter with a matter-of-fact clarity that Pop Smoke's audience recognized as genuine.
The participation of 50 Cent introduces a historical and mentorship dimension to the track that elevates its thematic resonance. 50 Cent's verse functions as an act of succession, a veteran of the rap wars of the early 2000s acknowledging and amplifying the voice of a new generation that carries forward related values and aesthetic commitments. This cross-generational dialogue gives "The Woo" a weight that purely single-artist tracks rarely achieve. It positions Pop Smoke within a continuum of New York street rap that stretches back decades, affirming that what he represented was not an isolated phenomenon but a continuation of a deep tradition.
Roddy Ricch's contribution shifts the emotional register slightly toward the melodic and introspective. His vocal approach, which blends singing and rapping in the manner that became characteristic of the post-Drake generation of hip-hop artists, introduces a note of vulnerability that contrasts productively with the harder edges of the track's dominant sonic identity. This tonal variety within a single track is one of the features that gave "The Woo" such broad appeal across different listener demographics within the hip-hop audience.
Heard in the context of Pop Smoke's death, the song takes on layers of meaning that transcend what any of its creators could have intended. The themes of loyalty, danger, and the determination to maintain one's identity regardless of circumstances read differently when the primary voice is no longer present to continue developing them. The posthumous context does not reduce "The Woo" to a memorial artifact, but it does surround it with a poignancy that intensifies the emotional experience of listening.
The cultural impact of "The Woo" extended through the hip-hop community in ways that went beyond streaming numbers and chart positions. The song became a focal point for conversations about the Brooklyn drill scene that Pop Smoke had helped build and internationalize, about the promise of careers cut short, and about the obligations that communities and industries have to preserve and honor the work of artists who die young. The track's continued presence in streaming playlists and social media contexts years after its release reflects its status as a touchstone for these broader cultural conversations.
The production itself carries thematic meaning. The dark, sliding melodic lines that define the track's instrumental landscape evoke the particular atmosphere of the Brooklyn street environment that Pop Smoke documented throughout his career, and the heaviness of the low-end frequencies creates a sonic gravity that mirrors the emotional weight of the song's subject matter. The production and the lyrical content work together to create a cohesive thematic statement that requires no external explanation to be understood by listeners familiar with its cultural context.
For the audiences who consumed "The Woo" in the summer of 2020, the song arrived at a moment of unusual cultural turbulence. The United States was navigating the early months of a global pandemic alongside a renewed national reckoning with racial justice and police violence. Within this context, a song about loyalty to community, about maintaining identity under pressure, and about the bonds that form in circumstances of adversity resonated with audiences in ways that extended beyond its immediate genre context.
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