Brooklyn rapper Kota the Friend bucked trends, favoring musically rich instrumentals and vivid, sometimes surreal wordplay over the interchangeable trap styles of many of his peers. His personal, often-introspective lyrics and jazz-inflected beats met with well-groomed production on his 2020 album Everything.

Kota the Friend was born in Brooklyn in 1992. He started exploring music by playing trumpet at age eight, growing more and more interested in music production in his high school years. He performed in various bands and worked as a cinematographer for independent musicians' video projects before establishing himself as a solo artist with a trio of singles in 2017. Kota's style blended jazzy undercurrents with R&B touches over beats that took cues from multiple phases of hip-hop's evolution