St. Louis, MO · hip hop · r&b

Smino

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St. Louis rapper with an elastic, sing-song flow and jazz-schooled production underneath — Zero Fatigue's playful center of gravity.

Smino, born Christopher Smith Jr. in St. Louis on October 2, 1991, comes from a musical household: his father played keys, his mother sang, and his grandfather played bass for Muddy Waters. He got his first drum kit at seven and played in his church band before later moving to Chicago, where he came up in that city's creative music scene.

In Chicago he met engineer Chris "Classick" Inumerable at Columbia College, and worked early on under the name C. Smi in a duo with Bari called Young Dumb and Outta Control before releasing the mixtape Smeezy Dot Com in 2012 and two EPs, S!Ck S!Ck S!Ck and blkjuptr, in 2015.

He founded the Zero Fatigue collective with Bari, Monte Booker, Jay2 and Ravyn Lenae, and works closely with Booker as his main producer. He is also a third of the group Ghetto Sage alongside Saba and Noname, having first appeared with them on Noname's 2016 mixtape Telefone.

His albums blkswn (2017), NØIR (2018), Luv 4 Rent (2022) and Maybe in Nirvana (2024) blur rapping and singing with a loose, syncopated delivery, heavy melody and ad-libs, and frequent St. Louis slang, set against warm, jazz- and soul-derived chords and unusual drum programming.

Smino has toured and recorded widely outside his own catalogue, including dates opening for Mick Jenkins, T-Pain and SZA, and collaborations with Noname, Saba and Anderson .Paak.

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