Swae Lee Artistfacts

June 7, 1993
Swae Lee was born Khalif Malik Ibn Shaman Brown in Inglewood, California, but grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi, where he and his older brother, Aaquil aka Slim Jxmmi, formed the hip-hop duo Rae Sremmurd as teens. While notching chart-topping hits like "Black Beatles" (2016), Swae started teasing a solo career as a songwriter and guest performer on several hit singles, including "Unforgettable" with French Montana in 2017, "Sunflower" with Post Malone in 2018, and "Sicko Mode" with Travis Scott and Drake in 2019. Despite his success outside of Rae Sremmurd, it took him several years to drop his 2026 solo album, Same Difference.
Swae Lee is a bonafide rap star but he's also famous for his melodic hooks and his smooth falsetto, which is why he identifies as a singer rather than a rapper.
For his stage name, he adopted the term "swae" to describe his suave style. As for Lee, it was derived from a politically incorrect nickname he was given by his buddies in high school because of his "low eyes" like martial artists Bruce Lee and Jet Li.
He earned his first Grammy Award nomination in 2017 for writing the central hook to Beyoncé's single "Formation."
Swae credits his soulful vibe to being brought up in Tupelo, which is also Elvis Presley's hometown. "Growing up in Mississippi, I got a lot of soul," Swae told the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal in 2020. "It gave me a lot of soul, gave me a lot of ways to connect with the people. I know what I want to hear and I know what topics move people."
"Sunflower," his Post Malone collaboration, first appeared on the soundtrack to the 2018 animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and was included on Post's Hollywood's Bleeding album the following year. The song made history as the first single to ever earn a Double Diamond certification, reaching the equivalent of 20 million sales in the US.
Swae has ADHD and wrote the 2023 Rae Sremmurd track "ADHD Anthem (Too Many Emotions)" about his experience with the neurodivergent disorder.
In January 2020, Swae's stepfather, Floyd Sullivan, was fatally shot by Swae's half-brother, 19-year-old Michael Sullivan. Michael's mother explained that he suffers from schizoaffective disorder and wasn't taking his prescribed medications around the time of the killing. He was initially charged with first-degree murder but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of second-degree murder in 2023.
Swae has a fascination with exotic animals and once owned a pet spider monkey, but it got seized by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife during a raid of his Los Angeles home in 2019. While several states allow monkeys as pets, California isn't one of them. A year before the incident, the rapper told Rolling Stone he actually had two pet monkeys, Lil G and Naya, along with two mini pigs and two dogs. "I like wildlife," he said. "I wanna go in the jungle and see elephants and s--t. I'm gonna go to the Amazon."
Swae was not a supporter of Kamala Harris and encouraged his fanbase to not vote for the Democratic candidate in the 2024 US presidential election. But that doesn't mean he'll be donning a MAGA hat any time soon. "I don't hate Kamala Harris, but like I ain't never announced my solidarity with no politician. Like some people think I'm a Trump supporter," the rapper clarified in a 2026 interview with The Breakfast Club. "You ain't never seen me with no MAGA hat, nothing." Swae claimed that after his public denouncement of Harris, the Trump administration offered him $90,000 to perform at The White House, but he refused.

Two years before Trump took office, however, Swae expressed his admiration for the future president as a famous entrepreneur on the 2015 Rae Sremmurd cut "Up Like Trump."
Before they became famous, Swae Lee and his brother lived in poverty and squatted in an abandoned house to have a roof over their heads - and a place to throw crazy house parties. Swae says a successful house party involves copious amounts of good vodka and good marijuana, along with a 10 to one ratio of girls to guys.

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