GoldLink
D.C.
When GoldLink was growing up in D.C., there was not much of a rap scene. "It was go-go," he says. "Go-go was what we did. It wasn't like there were people rapping." When that funk-flavored subgenre died out, go-go artists turned to rap. GoldLink, now 23, began rapping in earnest at age 19, releasing his debut mixtape, The God Complex, in 2014 and full-length, After That, We Didn't Talk, a year later. He toured in the spring, dropped a remix album this summer, and we caught up with him before he headed back on the road for the fall.