Poundz has become an internet sensation thanks to his latest release via Disturbing London, ‘Opp Thot’. The video for the track, released on GRM Daily, has amassed almost five million YouTube views in a month, securing the single a top 40 hit. We may not have seen it coming, but Poundz had a hunch it would go viral “just because of the song alone, and the energy. Whenever I played it to someone, they’d give me the same reaction that I initially got myself listening to it”.
“I made the song about 8 months ago but we just didn’t know when to drop it. And everything happens for a reason innit. So it dropped at this time for a reason.” Poundz says he had a clear vision for the video; “I already had my idea of how I wanted to shoot the video, so it was a bit straightforward. I knew from the get go what I wanted it to be and I think it was executed very well.”
It features Poundz in a suburban mansion surrounded by twerking bikini-clad models, and opens with the now internet-famous ‘Opp Thot’ dance, which Poundz describes as having come about organically. “When I got the hook for ‘Opp Thot’, I started singing it in my house at about 2am and I was just dancing around. I found I kept coming back to that same move so I was like ‘Rah, this has got to be the dance move for the song.’ It’s a vibe.”
Talking about the track that announced his arrival, ‘Skengman Poundz’, his initial success online was unexpected. “Not in the slightest way did I think it was gonna get that many views”. Since then, Poundz has come to epitomise what it means to be a modern day artist, leveraging a powerful social media presence to facilitate such an explosive start to his career. Explaining how he started out just three years ago, he says: “I got into it by pretending I actually could rap when I didn’t have a clue that I really could. It was something I followed up and then I did a BL@CKBOX [freestyle on GRM DAILY], got about 15K views in three weeks and when I came back into my area I was just getting a lot of love in the community, so then took it on board to shoot a music video. Then, my target was to reach 30,000 views, but it did a quarter of a million!”
And he’s certainly enjoying its post viral success; “I mean it feels great, I can’t complain. I’m definitely enjoying the limelight. When you don’t have it, this is what you want to work towards. Now I’m in this position I’m just going to try and stay level-headed and just try to maintain it and still come up with great content.” So what’s next for Poundz? “I’m possibly looking at an ‘Opp Thot’ remix and then gonna try and drop a single early next year and just before Summer we are looking to get an EP up.”
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