Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment is genre-bending hip-hop and R&B project led by American trumpeter and producer Nico Segal. After a stint playing with the rap collective Kids These Days, Segal founded The Social Experiment in 2014 alongside fellow Chicagoan Chance The Rapper, Nate Fox, Greg Landfair Jr., and Peter Cottontale. Preceded by the singles “Sunday Candy” and “Nothing Came to Me,” their studio debut Surf arrived in May 2015. Featuring uncredited cameos by Busta Rhymes, Erykah Badu, J. Cole, and Janelle Monáe, Surf was released exclusively via streaming and proved to be both a critical and commercial success, garnering praises from the specialized media and accumulating over 600,000 downloads on the first week after its release. In the years that followed, Nico Segal dropped the nickname Donnie Trumpet and went on to form The JuJu Exchange with Julian Reid and Nova Zaii.
