Quavo Talks Grief, Unfinished Songs With TakeOff and Forthcoming Album ‘Rocket Power’
Written by djfrosty on July 28, 2023
When Quavo discusses TakeOff and making those delicate steps forward in life without his nephew and Migos bandmate, the grief is palpable.
“I think about him all the time,” he explains in a new interview — a “conversation for the fans,” in which he bears his soul in black and white. “Sometimes I cry myself to sleep.”
TakeOff (real name: Kirshnik Khari Ball) was shot and killed during a private party he attended at 810 Billiards & Bowling in downtown Houston with his uncle and bandmate, Quavo, on Nov. 1, 2022, an action that still weighs heavy on the rapper.
Grief, when you’re not prepared, and who is, can put you in a “messed up place, in a bad place,” he explains. Everything, from the day-to-day, which now includes therapeutic stints of chilling out, meditating, swimming in the ocean, and gym, to the creative process, is turned upside down.
As a record takes shape, Quavo has a particular style of working. He’d cut the hook and the verse, show it to his bandmates. “Now he’s gone and I don’t have nobody to play the music for,” he recounts. Instead, “I just try to connect with the earth and just try to hear them like that.” Quavo doesn’t “really like nobody else’s opinion.”
Quavo’s forthcoming solo album Rocket Power is slated for release Aug. 4, and it’s fueled by his late nephew and former partner-in-rhyme.
With Rocket Power, his first LP since 2018’s Quavo Huncho, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart, he lets it all out in one blaze of energy.
He’s been “bottling all these emotions,” he notes, “all the pain, all the hard times, all the times I cried and all the times I just made music” to cope with loss. “And to pull up and try to play songs and he’s not there, and I’m just trying to get this fuel from above and this feeling from the sky and just call it Rocket Power.”
Quavo also opened up on his favorite song on the album, “11.11,” a date that captures the moment he hit record and got to work (“It felt like it was a sign”), and talked the residual energy of his fallen bandmember.
There’s not just energy floating out there in the ether, there’s a stash of unfinished music. A lot of it, apparently.
“In this phone alone, it’s 150 songs. Every phone probably has 350 songs.” Quavo admits he’s got five phones. TakeOff had three phones. “He’s got songs I never heard, ‘I’m like, bro why you never played me this’.”
One of the standouts, he explains, is called “Put That S— On.” “The Silent Assassin, he saved it for a reason. I got you though. We’re gonna finish strong,” he enthuses, adding, “that’s just in the phone. We’ve probably got like a thousand….we’ve got a lot of songs.“
With the announcement of the new LP back in May, Quavo remarked, “This album is for the Rocket, our true fans, and also this is my therapy. This album is a true reflection of how I feel right now.”
Watch the interview below. Part 2 is said to be coming soon.