DRAM is a vocalist, rapper, and producer whose decade-long career has redefined the contemporary music industry. With a background of singing in church and digging through crates of R&B, soul, hip-hop, and funk records, DRAM rose to mainstream prominence with Beyoncé co-signed hit “Cha Cha” off debut project #1EpicEP (2015). His penchant for writing hit songs flourished on his first major label album Big Baby DRAM, which featured RIAA gold certified “Cash Machine” and "Broccoli" featuring Lil Yachty, which reached number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, achieved 8x Platinum certification, and earned a GRAMMY nomination for Best Rap/Sung Performance. The project’s success earned DRAM collaborations with artists like Chance the Rapper, Erykah Badu, Young Thug, and Gorillaz and an appearance with his mother on The Tonight Show in 2017. In 2021, DRAM reintroduced himself as Shelley FKA DRAM, releasing a self-titled album featuring Summer Walker and H.E.R.. He followed up with the introspective, personal project What Had Happened Was… (2022), and in 2024, DRAM reverted back to his original moniker and independently dropped DRAM&B, a romantic and sunny project “made with the intention to uplift your mood and make you dance.”
Born Shelley Marshaun Massenburg-Smith in Germany and raised in Hampton, Virginia, DRAM’s artistry dates back to singing in churches at a young age. He recalls experimenting with recording in a studio with his mother, a member of a group called New Horizons, at as young as 13. The now 36-year-old found himself gravitating towards music from the ‘60s-’80s—“oldies but goodies”—and studying the discographies of greats like Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Teddy Pendergrass and beyond, logging them into what he calls his ‘‘mental Serato.’ In high school, DRAM began recording in a booth located in the now-defunct Coliseum Mall in Hampton, Virginia. After laying down 16 bars on a friend’s song, a fire was lit beneath him to make music a career: “Music was always in me, not on me—I’ve always known I was meant to take it somewhere.”
DRAM’s forthcoming project Leorpio (2025) commemorates a decade’s worth of mastery across genres—hip-hop, R&B, and beyond—recorded alongside his closest collaborators. Named in tribute to Atlanta duo Outkast’s Aquemini project, Leorpio loops back to DRAM’s roots and the process behind his one-of-one sound. Featuring the likes of Guapdad 4000, A$AP Ferg, and Chance the Rapper, and spotlighting newer talent like Ellis Quinn, DRAM describes the project as “a band of brothers” coming together: “I’m opening back up to collaborating with people, rapping more, locking in with different producers.” Leorpio is a natural culmination for DRAM as he’s spent the past six years dedicated to “shift[ing] the narrative and to leading with an R&B centric sound,” and is now ready to rechannel the mature, refined side of his songwriting: “I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel here, but it’s a return to how I’ve always mixed different sounds and vibes together.”
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