24kGoldn American Rapper With 3.2M YouTube Subscribers

Early life

24kGoldn was born Golden Landis Von Jones on 13 November 2000 in San Francisco, California. His parents both worked as fashion models before he was born, and he has a younger sister. The family celebrated both Christmas and Hanukkah, and he attended Hebrew school. As a child he acted in commercials, and he sang in choirs in middle school and high school. Before music became a possible career he had planned to work as a hedge fund manager.

He went to Lowell High School, a selective public school in San Francisco, and graduated in 2018. He then enrolled at the University of Southern California, studying at the Marshall School of Business and later being listed with the USC Thornton School of Music. He took a leave of absence to focus on his music career. He has said he did not expect events to move so quickly after he arrived at USC.

Career

His first music video, for the song "Trappers Anthem", came out in 2017. In January 2019 he released the single "Valentino", which became his breakthrough and passed 350 million plays on Spotify. It was followed by a run of 2019 releases, among them "Games on Your Phone", "Time for That" and "A Lot to Lose". He signed with Columbia Records, and in November 2019 put out his debut EP, Dropped Outta College.

In 2020 he released "City of Angels", which went to alternative radio in the United States on 31 March, and a remix with the English singer Yungblud followed in May. In August of that year he took the tenth spot in XXL's Freshman Class, the position determined by fan votes. His July 2020 single "Mood", with Iann Dior, reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100. In October 2020 he starred in Halloween in Hell, a fictional musical horror podcast with Iann Dior, Machine Gun Kelly and others. Other singles from the period include "Coco", "Tick Tock", "Unbelievable" and "Water Run Dry".

His debut studio album, El Dorado, was released on 26 March 2021. It has thirteen songs, with guest appearances from Future, Iann Dior, Swae Lee and DaBaby, and deluxe tracks featuring Lil Tecca and Travis Barker. The singles "Love or Lust", "Company" and "3, 2, 1" date from 2021. He toured on the El Dorado Tour that year and supported Logic and Wiz Khalifa on their 2022 Vinyl Verse Summer Tour. On 15 March 2024 he released the EP Growing Pains, followed by the Growing Pains Tour. He describes his music as spanning many genres and says he does not want to be limited to one.

Recognition

In 2020 he was named to the Billboard 21 Under 21 list. In 2021 he received seven nominations. These include two American Music Award nominations, for Collaboration of the Year for "Mood" and for New Artist of the Year, and three MTV Video Music Award nominations: Best Collaboration and Song of the Year for "Mood", and Push Performance of the Year for "Coco". He was also nominated for Best Push Act at the MTV Europe Music Awards and for Best International New Artist at the Premios 40 Principales.