Paterson, NJ · trap · hip-hop · pop-rap

Fetty Wap

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That yelped, half-sung hook ran the radio for a solid year — New Jersey trap-pop so instantly recognisable it needed no second verse.

Fetty Wap is the stage name of Willie Maxwell II, a rapper and singer from Paterson, New Jersey, born in 1991 and raised there; he attended Eastside High School before dropping out. His name combines "Fetty", slang for money, with "Wap", added as a tribute to Gucci Mane's alias Guwop.

He broke through in 2014 with "Trap Queen", recorded that February and released independently on the mixtape Up Next in July before it caught on in November and climbed to number two on the Billboard Hot 100, prompting a deal with 300 Entertainment. He followed it with "679" and "My Way", both top-ten hits, ahead of his self-titled debut album, which topped the Billboard 200 in 2015.

His style leans almost entirely on melody: rather than rapping in the conventional sense, he sings and yelps his verses and hooks in a hoarse, elastic voice, usually over bright, major-key trap production. The ad-lib "Zoo Wap" and the Remy Boyz crew he came up with in Paterson became part of the identity. Fetty Wap is blind in his left eye, the result of childhood glaucoma.

In 2016 he won Best New Artist at the iHeartRadio Music Awards and Top New Artist at the Billboard Music Awards, and has since picked up two Grammy nominations. Further singles that year, "Jimmy Choo" and "Wake Up", kept him on the radio, alongside a guest verse on Fifth Harmony's "All In My Head (Flex)".

"Keke", with 6ix9ine and A Boogie wit da Hoodie, brought a brief resurgence in 2018, and "Again" returned to the Hot 100 in 2025 after circulating widely on social media. In 2022 he was sentenced to six years in prison for trafficking illegal substances, and was released in 2026.

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