A thread on my favorite artist of all time, Alley Rocket

Alqayyum Welch, popularly known as Alley Rocket, was born on January 10 1998. He attended Paulo Friere High School in Newark, New Jersey and then went to Bloomfield College.

The Career of Alley Rocket

Rocket released his first song in the 10th grade titled “How You Mad”(it has been taken down) and also created the hip hop collective known as Rap Villain with Nick Straight, Heem Da Dream and Bobcat. Other artists like Tac0o and Cuda later joined the group.

Rocket went on to release his first mixtape in 2017 called “Supa Fly”. On this tape, a 17 year old Rocket shows off his insane rapping ability and his hunger is evident from the beginning.

In 2018, Rocket released his first track onto streaming platforms titled “Internal”. On this track, Rocket shows off his ability to trap hard,spit bars and change flows with ease. He went on to release 3 more tracks in 2018.

In 2019, Rocket dropped 8 tracks and was also featured on Nick Straight’s single titled “Eat Eat”. One of the tracks Rocket dropped was called Otto. As of the time of the song’s release, Rocket had started releasing more trap songs but Otto was where he showed off his pen game. https://twitter.com/damilolagrey/status/1326554176877330435

Rocket also dropped Girly in 2019, a club banger where Rocket tells a girl about how fire she is and how she’s the baddest. It has gotten over 40 thousand streams on Spotify.

In 2020, Rocket announced that he was releasing his mixtape “Apollo Boy” that year but that he was still working on it. While finishing up Apollo Boy, he released his first track of 2020 on the 11th of March called “Pressure”.

Unfortunately, Rocket would lose his older sister to diabetes in May. She was a tattoo artist and an aspiring fashion designer. Her and Rocket had a very close relationship especially cause of their love for art

Sadly, things got worse as Rocket lost his older brother to gun violence in the Newark region. Him and Rocket were also very close as he always pushed Rocket to work harder

Rocket went on to release a r&b type track called “Borah’s Peak” on June 15th. He released 2 other tracks in two weeks

He later released the socially conscious track titled “Don’t Let Me Slip” on July 25th. On this track, Rocket talks about police brutality and the racial discrimination towards people of color.

A few months later, Rocket released his most successful track till date titled “Withdrawal”. The track features production from Dren RV, Rap Villain’s official producer. The visuals were directed by Rap Villain’s official photographer, Chuck

Rocket later announced the release date for Apollo Boy in November. The tape was released on the 27th of that month and shows off Rocket’s versatility: from r&b to trap to lyrical rap and more