Payroll Giovanni & Cardo

Payroll Giovanni and Cardo were independently established prior to issuing the first in a series of collaborative mixtapes detailing street hustling with slick, trunk-rattling beats. The rapper, born Dior Giovanni Petty, came up in Doughboyz Cashout, major players in the late-2000s/early-2010s Detroit underground, and built up a solo discography with self-released mixtapes such as Get Money Stay Humble and Stack Season. Dallas, Texas (via St. Paul, Minnesota) beatmaker Ronald LaTour, aka Cardo Got Wings and simply Cardo, was concurrently credited on tracks by the likes of Mac Miller, Wiz Khalifa, Meek Mill, Jeezy, and the Game. LaTour scored his first certified-platinum production -- for Travis Scott's "Goosebumps" -- in 2016, the same year he and Petty linked up for Big Bossin, Vol. 1, a mixtape that, with casual listening, could have been mistaken for a product out of Oakland, Los Angeles, or Houston instead of the Midwest. LaTour contributed to Petty's Sosa Dreamz tape, released later that year. The duo signed to major-label Def Jam, who issued Big Bossin, Vol. 1.5 (a modified edition of Big Bossin, Vol. 1) toward the end of 2017, a year in which LaTour also landed credits on Migos' Grammy-nominated C U L T U R E and Kendrick Lamar's Grammy-winning DAMN. All of this, along with LaTour's co-production of Drake's number one pop hit "God's Plan," set the stage for Big Bossin, Vol. 2, released in early 2018. ~ Andy Kellman, Rovi