Rapper and dancer
Unghetto Mathieu arrived in the late 2010s as a member of Team NueEra, and as a solo artist has been part of a wave of artists dubbed "happy trap." Applying a light-hearted and singsongy spin on trap music -- a style characterized by grim underpinnings about drugs and violence --
Mathieu released his first commercial solo tracks in 2017, and the following year made strides with collaborative singles featuring contemporaries
Lil Yachty ("23") and
Ugly God ("Been Thru"). He had a breakthrough in 2020 with the "Barbie Girl"-sampling track "Plastic."
Born Mathieu Mayumba, the Covington, Georgia native known as
Unghetto Mathieu entered the industry as a dancer. He performed with Team NueEra (aka NueEra Boyz), a dance crew that eventually diversified by making music, and he appeared in videos by
Young Thug and
Gucci Mane.
Mathieu's first commercially issued tracks, including "Gang Up," "Yeah" (featuring Fly Ty), and "Colors" (featuring brother King Imprint and SpiteLee), appeared in 2017. By the end of that year, he had signed with Priority Records, and in 2018 continued to gather steam with "23," on which he was joined by
Lil Yachty, and "Been Thru," a joint effort with
Ugly God. The next year, he scored a modest hit with the
Aqua-sampling "Plastic," which he followed in 2021 with another '90s novelty sample, the
Eiffel 65-interpolating "Hi." ~ Andy Kellman