Manslaughter

"Manslaughter" — Pop Smoke Featuring Rick Ross & The-Dream

Posthumous Stardom and the Weight of What Remained

Pop Smoke was gone before the world fully understood what it had. Bashar Barakah Jackson died in February 2020 at the age of 20, just as the Brooklyn drill scene he had helped elevate to national consciousness was reaching its cultural peak. His combination of a distinctive baritone voice, hard-edged Brooklyn production sensibility, and an undeniable charismatic presence had marked him as one of the most promising young artists in hip-hop. The recordings he left behind were extensive enough to sustain multiple posthumous releases, and the management of that vault became one of the defining projects of hip-hop's early 2020s.

"Manslaughter" appeared on Faith, Pop Smoke's second posthumous album, released in July 2021. The album featured an extraordinary array of featured artists and collaborators, reflecting both the ambitions his team had for the project and the respect Pop Smoke commanded within the industry. The pairing with Rick Ross and The-Dream on "Manslaughter" placed his voice alongside two artists from different generations of rap and R&B, creating a specific tonal combination that speaks to the breadth of interest in his catalog.

The Collaborators and What They Brought

Rick Ross, the Miami rapper and label executive who built his brand on maximalist luxury rap imagery, brought his signature baritone confidence to the track. The textural overlap between Ross's voice and Pop Smoke's own deep register creates an interesting dynamic, two vocalists with similarly commanding presences sharing space. The-Dream, the Atlanta singer and prolific songwriter behind major hits for Beyonce, Rihanna, and many others, contributed a melodic element that softened the track's harder edges without neutralizing its energy.

The collaboration reflects the crossover ambitions of Faith, an album that sought to demonstrate Pop Smoke's potential across multiple sonic environments rather than restricting him to the Brooklyn drill template that had made him famous. "Manslaughter" reached number 82 on the Billboard Hot 100 on July 31, 2021, as one of several album tracks that charted simultaneously during the album's release week.

Production and Sound

The track's production occupies the space where drill's cold precision meets the warmer textures of trap-influenced R&B. The instrumental is built on the kind of heavy bass presence that characterized Pop Smoke's aesthetic while incorporating melodic elements that nod toward The-Dream's influence on the track. The arrangement gives each collaborator distinct space while maintaining a cohesive sonic identity, a production challenge that well-executed compilation albums manage and poorly executed ones do not.

Pop Smoke's vocal presence dominates the recording, as it did on virtually all of his work. Even in posthumous contexts, with the technical challenges of working with archived recordings, his voice carries an authority that makes the collaborative framing feel like his record featuring others rather than a tribute that happens to use his vocals.

The Faith Album Context

The album Faith debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, demonstrating that Pop Smoke's commercial standing had grown considerably in the fourteen months since his death. The project was ambitious and at times polarizing, with some critics noting the density of features and the sense that the album was shaping an artist who could no longer advocate for his own creative vision. Fans, however, largely embraced the project as further evidence of his range and output.

"Manslaughter" as a title is notable in the context of a young man who died violently. Whether intentional or coincidental, the title carries resonance that the song's content alone might not generate. Pop Smoke's posthumous catalog inevitably carries this kind of additional interpretive weight, every track filtered through the knowledge of how his story ended before it should have.

Brooklyn Drill's Moment and Pop Smoke's Place in It

The broader context of "Manslaughter" is the moment when Brooklyn drill, the New York adaptation of the UK drill sound that had itself evolved from Chicago's drill scene, was consolidating into a recognized and documented genre movement. Pop Smoke was its most visible standard-bearer, and his posthumous releases ensured that his voice remained central to conversations about the genre even as new artists entered the space. Press play and you hear an artist whose influence outlasted his presence.

"Manslaughter" — Pop Smoke's singular moment on the 2020s charts.