The sound, dances and overall energy of the Philly club rap scene have reached epic proportions in recent years. Hip-hop group Philly Goats has had a lasting impact on the subgenre’s worldwide success beyond the City of Brotherly Love.

D Sturdy and his brother Sou, both 19, first met fellow Philly Goats member PGS Spence, 21, during a pick-up basketball game as kids coming up in North Philadelphia. In 2021, the fledgling rap trio tried their hands at rapping during a $150 studio session. While clowning their friend, who was also part of the session but couldn’t contribute to the admittedly low cost, Sturdy, Spence and Sou named their first-ever recording “Broke S**t.” The track caught on with young TikTok users from across their home city and laid solid groundwork for what was to come.

Around the same time, D Sturdy and PGS Spence created their soon-to-be world-famous “Shake Dhat” dance purely by coincidence. When the two won a neighborhood dice game, they celebrated with a specific sequence of hip gyrations. Despite being ridiculed by others on the block at the time, the dance evolved into the craze now often referred to as blocking, according to Philly Goats. In 2024, artists like Lil Uzi Vert and Beyoncé have transformed the dance moves into a global trend.

As Philly Goats continued to find themselves as the subject of millions of TikTok creations with 2022 tracks “The Shakeover” and “X Em,” they inked a record deal with Def Jam Recordings in March of 2023. Through the imprint Stack or Serve Records, their songs like the Kool & The Gang-sampled “Get Off the Wall” and the cinematic story-driven “Buckle Up” have amassed nearly 7 million and 5 million streams on Spotify, respectively. Both successful tracks appear on Philly Goats’ self-titled debut mixtape, which dropped in October last year.

Here, all three members of Philly Goats pull up to XXL‘s The Break: Live for a conversation about their influence on the Philadelphia hip-hop scene and what their lives have been like amid their increasingly rising rap careers. The entertaining interview also covers what’s next for the trio and even finds D Sturdy telling a hilarious story about the time PGS Spence leaked Sturdy’s “Shake Dhat” without permission, only to find it blowing up on TikTok within 24 hours.

Check out the full interview below.

Follow Philly Goats on Spotify and Instagram

Standouts:

“Get Off the Wall”

“Buckle Up”

“Against the World” featuring Fivio Foreign

“Buss It”

Philly Goats

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