By Don Ward and Bullicose Bullfeather
Buddy Magazine went to ACL Live in Austin on October 14-15, and had a chance to sit down with emerging Austin artist and rapper Quin NFN immediately following his ACL show. While Quin NFN is billed as “emerging,” it is worth noting that though he has never toured, he has over 100,000,000 streams on Spotify, over the span of a small group of songs. But Quin has a bigger number in mind for what it takes to be considered “mainstream” in rap and hip hop.
We first took in Quin’s show on the Shiner Stage at ACL, where roughly 1500 people were in attendance. Quin’s success on Spotify and other platforms brought in a faithful crowd that was on-fire for the whole show. A pit-like communion broke out towards the front of the crowd, and became something of a show-within-a-show itself. Quin’s crowd showed up, and knew all the songs, all the way through. All on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
We sat down and chatted after his performance, where Quin came up with his family, friends, and other show support. While his show is energetic and outfront, Quin’s demeanor is somewhat laid back and softspoken, especially considering the fiery scene he just left on the Shiner stage.
Quin says that being an Austin-based rapper has helped him diffentiate from the Houston and Dallas scenes, but in a good way. Like many other rappers in his age range (he is in his early 20’s), he first gained a following on the Soundcloud platform around 2016-2017 at 16 years old, along with another group of then-emerging rappers who went on to worldwide fame, including Post Malone, Tekashi 69, and Little Xan. And just as he was getting ready to do more live shows, the pandemic hit, and that upward momentum was at least temporarily put on hold.
His streaming numbers on Spotify tell a different story from his live performance experience. With over 100,000,000 streams, he outpaces some of the most celebrated and famous Texas music artists in sheer volume of listeners (Quin NFN also has over 1.4 million regular monthly listeners).
While many Texas artists have made full careers monetizing in various ways with much smaller audiences, Quin is still getting ready for the road. He is working with the Empire management group, and with his popularity on the ground, it seems eminent that he is going to find faithul crowds on his tour in cities all across the country – just like his core ACL group that showed up on Sunday.
Even with 100MM streams, Quin says he feels he is still and up-and-coming artist. And the number of streams where he feels he has made it as a successful artist? “100,000,000 streams for one song. Once you get to that level, other songs start getting lots of streams as well,” he says.
At this writing, Quin NFN has one track, “Poles,” with 43,827,880 streams alone. Not quite 100MM, but still an enormous footprint. He’s getting closer to that 100MM number. We anxiously await that milestone.
Quin has also been working on new material, and is moving away from from some of the more hardcore elements of his raps. “I’m working on showing a more positive side,” he said.
