Delivering socially conscious street tales aimed at empowerment, Inglewood, California's own D Smoke made his mainstream breakthrough in 2019 as the first winner of the reality rap competition Rhythm + Flow. However, by that time, the bilingual multi-instrumentalist (guitar, drums, piano) had already been busy on the scene for over a decade as both a songwriter and an underground figure influenced as much by West Coast predecessors Kurupt and Snoop Dogg as gospel singers Kirk Franklin and Yolanda Adams. Bridging genres as well as the Black and Latinx communities, D Smoke also ...