Kaytranada and Aminé come full circle

In July of 2014, the marketing student and would-be rapper Aminé sent out a wishful Twitter DM attempting to get his fledgling music career off the ground. The then-20-year-old soon-to-be dropout at Portland State University hoped a few beats from a buzzing DJ and producer in Montreal would help give him some much needed juice. Said producer, Kaytranada, already had a growing cult following on SoundCloud and an iconic Boiler Room set. His signature bounce, Aminé hoped, would provide the boost he was looking for. "I was broke as f*** working on music everyday in 2014 looking for a north star," he recalled on Twitter last week. The free beats that Kaytranada, a project that ingratiated the Portland rapper with the music blogosphere and, ultimately, helped earn him a spot alongside megawatt acts like Ariana Grande and The Weeknd at Republic Records. It was a moment that established Aminé's swaggering hip-hop-outsider persona and provided proof of concept for his ebullient brand of pop-rap.