D.R.A.M. recently gained prominence with his song "Broccoli" featuring Lil Yachty. The track debuted at No. 87 on Billboard's Hot 100 back in July and has peaked at No. 8, making it D.R.A.M. and Yachty's first top 10 hit. It also landed at No. 1 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.
Produced by J Gramm, Roget Chahayed and Karl Rubin, "Broccoli", which was released on April 6, is D.R.A.M.'s second single and a follow-up to his 2015 song "Cha Cha". It was certified 2x Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for selling over 2,000,000 digital copies in the U.S. Its accompanying music video has gained more than 37 million views since its July 22 release.
D.R.A.M., whose real name is Shelley Marshaun Massenburg-Smith, told Genius of the song's making process, "I was first introduced to Yachty through Rick Rubin. I was in Shangri La and Rick asked me if he could bring Yachty through. We linked and played each other music. A good month later, one of my main camera guys was following Yachty around during his SXSW run and I came about during the conversation."
"We exchanged numbers and I saw he was in L.A., so I called him and he answered on the first f***ing ring. He came to the studio and we had the loop of this going. We weren't sure on what was going to make it carry over," he continued, "At first, it was the piano with the drum loop, we had the flute and when that went in, everyone started vibing. Yachty started on his verse and I didn't have any bars at first so I told him to go in. When he left, I didn't even have my verse, I just had the bridge."
D.R.A.M. is the third artist in the past year to reach No. 1 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, following Desiigner with his hit track "Panda" and Alessia Cara with her hit song "Here".
D.R.A.M. told Billboard he was surprised by the "Broccoli" success. "To be honest, I thought I was going to be well-received but strictly on the SoundCloud platform," the 28-year-old rapper shared, "I had no idea that it was going to be a Billboard top 40 record. So yeah, I thought it was gonna be just lit for the culture, lit for SoundCloud, for the Internet. But it just really grew, to our surprise. So nobody's mad over here."
© AceShowbiz.com