The Grand Rapids Wonderkid Kills The Game

Name: Sango

Where He’s From: Grand Rapids, Michigan via Seattle, Washington

When He Started: 2009

Genre: Future Bass

Most Similar: Flying Lotus, TNGHT, Diplo

Sounds Like: Floating gently over Rio favelas at dawn

With fancied-up trap music bumping in every cool-kid college party from Manhattan to Malibu, it was inevitable that somebody would mix trap with baile funk. But who would have guessed that it would a 21-year old American kid making beats out of his dorm room?

Regardless of who he is or where he’s from, Sango is a serious talent to watch. Named after an anime princess from the manga series InuYasha, the Seattle-born beatsmith began producing at age 17. Since then, he’s churned out an immense amount of material, including eight digital releases (most of them full-length albums). The music spans from Flying Lotus-esque instrumental hip-hop full of glimmering harps to muted tracks recalling the ‘90s “illbient” of DJ Spooky, to experimental, sizurp-certified trap. He’s remixed Aaliyah into an aural cloud of kush smoke, transformed Little Dragon’s “Ritual Union” into even more of a bed-shaker than it already was, and even put out an entire album of unauthorized The Weeknd remixes, which have been earning particularly impressive play-counts on his Soundcloud.

Most recently, Sango has been dipping his foot into global bass waters, and the results are pretty staggering. On his EP “Da Rocinha,” he took ultra-hype baile funk vocals and worked them into ambling, underwater explorations (see “Sempre,” embedded below.) And just last week, Sango unleashed the Otra Vez EP, a concept album pairing trap with six Latin American sounds: cumbia, 3ball, baile funk, bachata, Cuban rumba, and reggaeton.

On top of it all,  you know he’s a nice kid, because he put out a pair of albums dedicated to his parents. Awww. We’re keeping an eye on this one.