Dro Kenji Tickets

Dro Kenji's rise is a testament to the power of the internet. Just a couple years ago, the 20-year-old artist was a senior in high school in South Carolina, releasing a string of captivating singles and mixtapes on his SoundCloud. Now that he's released his debut album on Mira Touch/ Internet Money Records/ 10K Projects, collaborating closely with the label's team of platinum-certified producers, he's hoping to earn some plaques of his own. A true child of the digital age, raised on video games and the lo-fi sounds of rap's online underground, he has a remarkable ability to capture both the apathy and aspiration of his generation in his songs and a spellbinding voice with which to tell these stories.

Raised in Summerville, South Carolina, a town outside of Charleston, Dro Kenji mostly kept to himself. "There's not really a lot going on," he says of his hometown. "Up until I started making music at the end of 10th grade, I really didn't do anything but play video games and listen to music." His parents put him on to classic '90s-era hip-hop and R&B, but some of his earliest music fandom came from an unlikely combination of his two main hobbies: the video game Rock Band. While playing, he heard songs by Weezer, Radiohead, and Soundgarden, bands whose lead singers would go on to influence his own soaring melodies.