Meet This Month's Featured Artist for August 2021

Payden has returned!!! And he's better than ever!

Up and coming, Flex Entertainment artist Payden McKnight is the first Artist of the Month since April 2020. Payden McKnight joined Flex Entertainment on August 8th, 2020 under his ego Ya Boy Payden. He dropped a badly received mixtape called 16-Bit Fantasy on October 23rd that year which eventually led him to be labeled as one of the worst Flex Entertainment artists. On top of his terribly received project, he got grounded for an entire month. During that time, 2 massive Flex memes known as "Smoking the Payden Pack" and "Payden's a Snitch" took the label by storm. For a while, Payden was known better for his "sus" personality the memes surrounding him rather than his music. For this reason, Ya Boy Payden left Flex Entertainment.

While he was out of the label, he dropped an EP called "The Wonder Years" which had mixed reception but showed that Payden showed a lot of potential to be a good artist. So because of this, he decided to rejoin Flex Entertainment renamed Payden McKnight.

Now, about a year after his initial joining, as an executive on the label, he dropped his well-received mixtape Payden Saves the World on July 30th, 2021. This being his 3rd project, it features unique production from mostly himself and the well-known A.J. on the track Warzone. The mixtape features vocals from Lil Mosquito Disease, sk00tt, Depp Gibbs, Hood Guy, J Coyn Drive, and xofilo; all well-known and loved artists in the Flex community.

One thing that made Payden's new mixtape really special, was the rollout. Most Flex projects just release a couple of singles and an album. Meanwhile, Payden took it to the next level with his innovation of rolling out his project. Instead of just releasing singles, he'd release snippets and skits leading up to the release of the tape on his YouTube channel. These snippets would be 30 seconds to a minute and they'd play portions of a few of the songs ending each video with him saying "Previously on Payden Saves the World" with text on the screen saying "July 30". With these snippets, he released the singles "Warzone", "Aye (solo)", and a remix of J Coyn Drive's "Hotline" called "MIAMI (HOTLINE 2)" which had a music video attached to it.

We are excited to see what Payden McKnight does next, as his future is brighter than ever!