“I got broads in Atlanta / twistin’ the lean and the Fanta”… Desiigner’s first hit song Panda 🐼 was impossible to avoid in 2016. First brought by Kanye West’s album The Life of Pablo, it became the #1 song in the USA, making the newest G.O.O.D music signee the youngest artist to reign the charts since Lorde in 2013, the first male rapper to reach number one with his first single since Wiz Khalifa in 2011, and also the first to chart a rap song this high without singing or the help a feature to sing the hook since… Kanye West’s Stronger, 9 years ago 😲
There’s two fairy tales in this story : how 18 years old Brooklyn rapper Desiigner ended up being picked by Kanye West, and how the song came together from a Type Beat he purchased on YouTube for $200 in 2014. Let’s focus on the latter. Panda was produced by Menace, 22 years old Manchester-native. The beat was uploaded to his YouTube channel and sold through his website, and this PayPal transaction was enough to make the song chart #1 without having to get the artists to even meet each other IRL.
