Rapper and producer Ugly God is among the five performers at Juice Jam 2017. Here’s what you need to know about him before he takes the stage.

SoundCloud famous

He has more than 230 million plays and 500,000 followers on SoundCloud, but he’s only following 10 people. His song “Water” coming in with 95.9 million views, boasts the most hits out of his 22 tracks on SoundCloud. Other popular tracks include “Big Boy!”, “Let’s Do It” and “Bernie Sanders.”

Where’s the bacon?

Surprise, surprise, you won’t find the name Ugly God on his birth certificate. He was born Royce Davison. Prior to adopting the performance name Ugly God, he went by P*ssy Bacon. “I always wanted my name to be something (that) if you hear it once, then you can just never get that out of your head,” he said in an interview with Fader. He decided to tone down the moniker for the sake of marketability.

Compute this 

Ugly God attended the University of Southern Mississippi where he majored in computer engineering before dropping out. USM is also where he started getting serious with rapping and music production. In college he moved on to downloading Fruity Loops Studio and learning to lay down beats and melodies. “I wanted to be a computer engineer (ever since) I was little. I was in college for it, but music worked out. [But] that’s what I’m still going to be, a computer engineer. It just came natural,” he said in an interview with XXLMag.

Childhood bops

He grew up listening to artists like Ying Yang Twins, Project Pat and R. Kelly. As a kid he made beats on the table and would freestyle, but he didn’t start thinking about a career in music until about 2015.

Mapping it out

While he was born in Indiana, Ugly God has moved around quite a bit. He’s lived in Cleveland, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

He’s probably worth more than you

The average net worth for Americans under the age of 35 is about $6,600, according to the United States Census Bureau. Ugly God’s net worth is estimated at about $250,000 — that’s about 37 times more than most college age students.

Gotta catch ‘em all

The cover of Ugly God’s most popular single “Water” features him on top of a Blastoise, a blue tortoise-like Pokemon. On the cover of “B*tch” he’s transformed himself into Ash, the protagonist of the cartoon show. He’s a fan of Pokemon to say the least.

Published on September 6, 2017 at 10:10 pm

Contact Stacy: sfern100@syr.edu | @StacyFernandezB