Grande Marshall (a.k.a. Xavier Marshall-Booker) burst into the Philly and national spotlight in 2012 with his impressive debut mixtape 800, which is meant to tell his story about what is going on in Philly. Heavily influenced by his music-loving family, the North Philly emcee began laying down his own verses after hearing Nas’ “One Mic.” His laidback, stoner flow has received comparisons to current artists like A$AP Rocky. However, the brash young talent chooses to denounce such correlations because he feels that people tend to name more popular artists as touchstones to try and box in what he is doing – proudly claiming it as all his own. Grande recently signed to Fool’s Gold Records (founded by DJs A-Trak and Nick Catchdubs) where his music will no doubt reach more of the masses, which will surely further help to establish him as a new beacon for future artists in the Philly hip-hop community. (BTW: Check out the full list of emerging artists from our Best of 2012 Poll HERE!) – Q.D. Tran
