Pop Smoke was just 20 when he was killed this month, barely 18 months into a hip-hop career that was bursting with potential. He had a handful of hits, a growing set of collaborators and an increasingly itinerant lifestyle that took him far from Canarsie, in Brooklyn, where he was raised.

Pop Smoke was also the most promising artist to emerge from the Brooklyn drill scene, which has been percolating over the last three years, and has now been dealt a severe blow. He wasn’t the scene’s only star — it also features rappers including Sheff G, Fivio Foreign and Smoove’L — but he was the one poised to carry the sound out to the world.

On this week’s episode, a discussion of the too-brief career of Pop Smoke: his music, his personality, his rapid rise and the scene he helped spotlight.

On the Popcast: