Internet Money

In a few short years, Internet Money’s Taz Taylor redefined what a rap mogul could be. Born Danny Snodgrass, Jr. in Jacksonville, Florida in 1992, he began making beats and selling them to rappers when he was just 17, as a way to help pay for his mother’s cancer treatments. As his sales grew, so did his chops: in 2016, he started posting “type-beat” tutorials on social media, but before long, his beats were the ones that mattered. By 2018, having enjoyed a taste of success with tracks for Desiigner and XXXTENTACION, he scored hits with Apple Music Up Next artist Juice WRLD’s “Lucid Dreams” and Lil Tecca’s “Ransom”, both co-productions with teenager Nick Mira. Along the way, Taylor signed a major-label publishing deal and set up his own Internet Money Records. The outsider had become a kingpin. In 2019, he inaugurated Internet Money as an artist project featuring a rotating cast of guest rappers—Lil Tecca, A Boogie wit da Hoodie, Gunna, Apple Music Up Next artist Don Toliver and others—over beats by Taylor and Mira. Taylor’s signature lies in the interplay between devastatingly crisp trap rhythms and rich melodic layers. Internet Money’s 2020 debut album, B4 The Storm, for example, is suffused in colourful keys, emo chord changes and even acoustic guitars. “I wasn’t born into this. I didn’t have some uncle who’s in the music industry,” Taylor told Apple Music. “I’m just learning as I go.” Part of that learning curve is bringing live instrumentation back into hip-hop—maybe even working with a rock band like Good Charlotte. “I just like doing fun stuff. I don’t care about the money—it’s just about making music.”