Riff Raff Biography

The rap artist known as Riff Raff was born Horst Christian Simco in 1982 in Houston, Texas. Riff Raff grew up in a working-class family with his four brothers and sisters, enjoying basketball and playing for his high school team. After a move to Minnesota due to his father’s failing health, Riff Raff enrolled in a local community college where he studied liberal arts for a period, but he eventually dropped out and moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of a career as a rapper.

By 2005, Riff Raff was recording his own material, distributing CDs in public malls to try to garner some support. He also began auditioning for a variety of performing and acting jobs, but his first breakthrough came when he was selected to appear on the MTV reality show, From G’s to Gents. Although he was eliminated early on in the season, he was popular with viewers and eventually garnered the attention of management company OG Ron C.

Between 2010 and 2012, Riff Raff posted a number of music videos to online forums and continued to record his own mixtapes, often in collaboration with other artists such as DollaBillGates, Ghetty, Action Bronson, and Three Loco. In 2012, Riff Raff released his own independent album, The Golden Alien, and distributed the work via digital download and CD. But after signing with Mad Decent, it was the studio album Neon Icon, released in 2014, which finally became Riff Raff’s big breakthrough. The album rose into the top five on the US Rap charts, into the top ten on the R&B charts, and nearly into the top twenty on the US mainstream charts.

Riff Raff is a rap artist on the rise and definitely one to watch in the coming years. He recently released his follow-up album, Peach Panther, which rose to the number three spot on the Rap charts and the number five spot on the R&B charts.