Viral Pittsburgh Artist GetDown Talks Viral Success, His Rap Career, GVTF Raid and More

GetDown is 19 years old and already on his second name, his second run, and his second act.

The Wilkinsburg artist, formerly known as 1k, sat down with First Impressions TV for a full Interview and a Mic Tap, where he performed “Nike Ski.” In one conversation he covered how a missing search result changed his name, the five-minute session behind his first viral video, and the arrest that spread across social media right before the NFL Draft came to Pittsburgh. He did it all with a laugh, which is half the reason it’s worth hearing from him directly.

1k Became GetDown Because Nobody Could Find 1k

GetDown comes out of Wilkinsburg, specifically Foliage Street, and he doesn’t dress it up. He calls it “the ghett.” The borough sits on Pittsburgh’s eastern edge, and it has changed a lot on paper. It went from roughly 37,000 people in the 1950s to about 13,800 today, and new development money has started to move in as violent crime trends down. GetDown’s version of Wilkinsburg is the one he grew up in, not the one in the redevelopment plans.

For most of his career he rapped as 1k. He says he dropped the name because someone started turning it into a brand around the city, and people kept working it into their own names. Then an A&R told him on the phone that he’d been trying to find his music on Instagram and other platforms and couldn’t. We told him he needed something easier to find, and he agreed. In 2026, if people can’t search you, they can’t hear you.

BandLab, Snapchat, and a Song Called “Lemonade”

GetDown says he’s only been “real rapping” for two years, but his first YouTube drop, “Lemonade,” went up three years ago. He says that one was strictly for fun, from the days he used to make joke songs on Snapchat.

He has been on BandLab his whole career, and it’s where he and Riskkky17 both started out. We asked if he still uses it. He laughed, then admitted he was on BandLab right before he walked into First Impressions TV.

“Nothing Here” and the Videographers Who Changed Things

He started taking music seriously with “Nothing Here,” a song he’d made two years before he put it out. He dropped it on his birthday, right after he found Pittsburgh videographers Eback and Jate and decided to shoot it with them. He called his first real video “weird” because of how much they directed compared to videographers he’d shot with before. He says he hasn’t stopped working with them since.

The Sprayground Video, a Cat Named Ghost, and Fortnite

The “Sprayground” video was shot on a budget, with no time to plan. His friend had a camera, and GetDown didn’t own a Sprayground backpack, so he showed up with a Champion book bag. They hit Walmart, a gas station, and Target, and he grabbed a bike in the store and rode it around. The video blew up, which he still finds crazy, because he can’t stand the song. We pointed out that artists tell us this all the time: the song that takes off is rarely the one they like.

The cat in “Aim Assist” is his own, a black cat named Ghost who’s now 3 or 4 years old and is “always at the door” when people come over. And when he’s not rapping? Fortnite, which he loves.

How “Nike Ski” Got Made in 5 Minutes

“Nike Ski” is the song that put him on the map, and it exists because a friend got robbed. GetDown got the call from the friend who sat next to him during this interview, found a beat right away, and wrote and recorded the song in about five minutes. It’s the fastest he’s ever made a song, and he says he needed to get it off his chest. He didn’t play it for anyone or post a snippet beforehand, so nobody in the video knew the lyrics when they shot it. The video pulled in 2.1k views on YouTube in a day, the first time he’d done numbers like that.

Asked why it went viral, he said, “the pipes bro,” slang for guns. His read is that a group of young Black kids with guns catches the eye in the media right now, but he says talent has to come with it, and that guns alone won’t take anybody far. He thinks that’s why so many younger artists put guns in their videos: they see it get views. Notably, he’s saying that as someone whose breakout video had them in it.

“40 Shots,” Riskkky17, and Hearing It Out in Public

“40 Shots” with Riskkky17 came together fast. GetDown had just dropped “ion feel you” on Easter when Riskkky17 called, sent him a beat, and told him to hop on it. GetDown already had a verse written for it, so they decided to make the song right then. They linked with Eback and Jate for the video, even though he wasn’t planning on shooting it and says he wasn’t feeling the song, the video, or any of it. It ended up with 19k views on YouTube, and he heard someone playing it in public.

Fans, “I’m Back,” and the Arrest That Went Viral

Fans have found him at Burger King, McDonald’s, and Taco Bell. The one he told us about happened after he got home from a long stretch in jail, when a fan working at McDonald’s recognized him and offered free food. GetDown admits he was nervous and thought it might be a setup.

His album “I’m Back,” which he dropped after getting out, didn’t get the love he felt it deserved. He doesn’t think it did enough numbers.

Then there’s the arrest. It spread across social media right before the NFL Draft in Pittsburgh, at a time when state and local law enforcement were openly stepping up firearm enforcement across Allegheny County because of the expected crowds. In March, the Attorney General’s Gun Violence Task Force announced a round of warrants and seizures and pointed to the draft in its reasoning.

GetDown told us his side. He says his PO signed off on a warrant. The day before the raid, he says, she told him to be home the next morning, which he took to mean she was coming to check on him. He says he woke up to agents with rifles in his living room, and that they used some kind of drone technology that detects firearms, which is how they found his. He made a song after what he calls beating his case.

What’s Next

That song is “Free Chunk,” and he says there’s more on the way. He wants to put more of his friends in his videos too. Most of his videos are solo, and he’d like to switch to big group shots.

His message to the fans before we signed off: stay in school. He says he hated school, but it’s gonna come in handy.

Watch GetDown’s full Interview and Mic Tap on First Impressions TV for the whole story.

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• Sources for the context: TribLive: Wilkinsburg revival and the PA Attorney General’s March 26 release.