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Odetari is a Houston-based producer, rapper, and songwriter specializing in frenetic, ALL CAPS-style EDM rooted in glitchy trap, aggressive club beats, and climactic video game bombast. The self-styled purveyor of "final boss music" broke into the mainstream in 2023 with a string of social media-spawned singles ("Good Loyal Thots," "Narcissistic Personality Disorder," "Look Don't Touch," "I Love You Hoe," and "GMFU"), all of which reached the upper echelons of the Billboard Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart and appeared on his debut EP, XIII Sorrows. He again returned to the dance charts with 2024's "Keep Up."

Taha Othman Ahmad was born in Houston, Texas, and began experimenting with SoundCloud rap in his early teens. At 18, he started working under the Odetari moniker, fusing his Palestinian family name with the video game giant Atari. In 2023, Ahmad worked as a substitute teacher at a Houston high school. At night, he uploaded trap beats and twisted video game edits featuring audio deepfakes of characters with his music in the background to his social media channel. Shortly after being fired, he watched his single "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" debut at number 11 on the Billboard EDM chart. "Good Loyal Thots" followed suit, reaching the number 8 slot, and by late summer, the unemployed substitute teacher had inked a multi-album record deal with Artist Partner Group. 3×3, a collaborative EP with New Zealand producer 9Lives, arrived in July, and Odetari's debut solo EP, XIII Sorrows, appeared later that September. A Trippie Redd remix of Odetari and 9Lives' "I Love You Hoe" was released later that October, as were the standalone solo singles "Green Goblin" and "Hypnotic Data."

A second solo EP, Door to Dusk, appeared that December and featured the singles "Baby I'm Home" (with Kanii and 9lives) and "Dxe Dxe Dxe" (with Homixide Gang). In July 2024, Odetari returned with the single "Keep Up," which cracked the Billboard Hot 100 and reached number five on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart. ~ James Christopher Monger

9lives' production style -- a combination of cascading synths, trap beats, and punctuating sound effects -- serves as a backbone for viral collaborations with Trippie Redd (2023’s “Popular”) and Odetari (2023’s “I Love You Hoe,” 2024’s “Millionaire”), as well as his own solo soundscapes #Exclusive (2022) and 33.1Fm (2023).

Born Max Jardine to a South African family in the rural New Zealand town of Hawkes Bay, 9lives was encouraged to take drum lessons and soon began experimenting with loops at home. Wanting to stand out from the crowd of trap-influenced beatmakers, Jardine first gravitated toward jungle and ambient production before becoming enamored with sigilkore, a unique style taking influence from cloud rap and hyperpop: hazy textures at upbeat tempos, often inspired by the sonic palettes of video games.

Jardine's first big success as 9lives began with 2022’s #Exclusive, a collection of his best, trippiest beats. Rappers Luci4 and Xanahxlic, two of the best-known names in sigilkore, each sampled the set’s lead track “Khaos Emerald,” leading to viral success on TikTok and a groundswell of streams for 9lives' work. The following year, he branched out even further, releasing the well-received single “XTAYALIVE” and producing rapper Odetari's debut 3x3 EP and Trippie Redd's “Popular,” one of the key tracks on Redd's St. Michael, Vol.2. (Redd also appeared on a popular remix of Odetari and 9lives' “I Love You Hoe.”) By the end of 2023, he’d inked a global publishing deal with Kobalt, hoping to usher his sound even further into the mainstream. ~ Mike Duquette