Within a span of a year Lil Wop, a 22-year-old rapper from Chicago, went from being Gucci Mane's biggest fan to being the hip-hop vet's newest protégé. Since 2016, Wop has been busy, carving out a niche with his distinct Midwest drawl and hard-rock mentality. It all started with his 2016 project Wopster and it continued into 2017, after he dropped three installments of his Wopavelli series and the mixtape Wake N Bake.

Gucci Mane signed Lil Wop to his label 1017 Eskimos via Alamo Records over the summer and the pairing couldn't be better. Wop, who's Famous Dex's cousin, discovered Gucci's music while hanging out with his older cousins. "I was around older people. I was around my older cousins and I'm hearing it," Wop explains to XXL while in New York. "I grew up around it. I really grew up in this shit." (Source : xxlmag.)