Nearly two months ago multi platinum rapper Lil Pump burst into the degen world of memecoins. After his token was scammed he took over to lead the CTO or community takeover. At first people just dismissed it as just another celebrity cash grab. After all last bull market and so far this year has been plagued with celebrities either rugging their projects or just abandoning them.
But over time the market began to realize Lil Pump was actually serious about this endeavor. He started showing up to random X Spaces and held regular telegram video chats with his holders. He consistently promoted his token and has shown the type of consistent grinding for his community that would make for an ideal project lead celebrity or not. Rather than just bail he’s become more and more immersed into the Solana culture as time has gone on.
About the only thing he hasn’t done yet is release a NFT collection. But he seems to have formed a bond with one artist in particular NFT Demon or Jeremy Ryan. For those unfamiliar Ryan is one of the most well known NFT artists in the world and the largest artist on BNB Chain. He seems to be particularly popular in celebrity circles with confirmed holders including rapper Eminem and celebrity followers amongst his accounts (some which are now suspended for which he’s suing X) that includes Snoop Dogg, John Cena, Justin Bieber, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Tommy Chong, and even Lil Pump to name a few.
But Ryan’s story goes so much deeper than art as his artistic abilities were gained through a 4 year run with brain cancer. A recent article by known crypto news outlet Patrol Crypto released just days ago and shared by Ryan and Pump on X had even suggested they do a collaboration in the future. Given as Ryan is 35 and Pump is 23 both to age a year older in August according to their Wikipedia pages it would seem like an unlikely duo. Two entirely different generations working together on a vision. It would also mark the first collection Ryan has done since the last bull market as well as the first celebrity collection since as well.
But perhaps the duo wouldn’t be as unlikely as it would seem. Both are large names in their respective industries and have followers or fans around the world. Both are also known to be controversial figures and not really care much what other people think of them living life to the fullest. Both are known for being uniquely and genuinely themselves. And both have seen grave injustices due to the law enforcement system. But more importantly the two seem to be in communication. On a Spaces session on X Ryan, under his temporary handle cryptodogg420 while his lawsuit progresses was seen the entire time.
But not only that Lil Pumps manager, JB made a comment that really struck out, thanking Ryan for helping share various knowledge and helping promote the token which would suggest at least communication outside of public view with the Lil Pump team. So could these two be working on a collaboration? If so it would be an interesting dynamic. Celebrity NFT collections prior have just been cash grabs and while they pretty much all have minted out they’ve also all died when the celebrity left. They also haven’t tended to utilize big names in the art field. Pumps consistency with Ryan’s name would create two unusual but bullish indicators if they were to do a collection. And the ability to token gate perks bringing Pump closer to the fans could work on a NFT gated basis or a NFT or token gated basis adding value to both.
It would be very interesting to see how it would play out but a collaboration would certainly make sense. But we decided not to speculate. We didn’t have contact information for Lil Pump so we decided to email Ryan and ask directly about his involvement with Pump and if there was a collection on the horizon. To our surprise he responded back rather quickly and made this statement.
“As for a collection I don’t know only time will tell but I’ve made it no secret I have a lot of respect for the efforts Lil Pump is putting in. The reason I turned so many celebrities down last bull run was because they weren’t willing to commit to sticking with the project. Lil Pump has proven that wouldn’t be an issue and he’s down to grind which means his token is bound to go up.” Ryan said, “I wouldn’t turn him down if he wanted to do a collection but our talk has been mostly educational as this market takes a long time to learn. I will say I’ve been impressed by his eagerness to learn as much as he can about this market I’ve been immersed in since 2019. There’s a stereotype of young rappers that they’re all dumb. I haven’t found that to be the case with Lil Pump, he’s both eager to learn and also applies what he learns as he goes. For what small contributions I’ve been able to add to that I’ve been glad because, ultimately, celebrities doing taking the time to learn and also to grind hard for their communities helps everyone in the industry and only moves us closer to mass adoption.”
It would seem from his statement that he’s at least willing to do a collaboration and has great respect for the work Lil Pump has put in. And for an artist known for calling out scammers in particular he gave some pretty heavy compliments. I suppose only time will tell if they’ll work together on a collection but it would be interesting to see. We’ll keep you updated as we find out more.
