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Bro, everything I thought I knew was gone. I thought I had a grasp on s–t. The songs that’s been out three weeks went up more than the classic records.”
It’s an early Tuesday afternoon in mid-November and Tyler, The Creator is still in disbelief. Just a few weeks earlier, he’d released his new album, Chromakopia, and the response was unlike any in his entire career. “It’s been a f–king crack in my reality, for this album where I’m just crying about being 33 like a b–ch.”
Three days before our conversation, he’d performed a set largely dedicated to the album at Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival, a two-day music festival in Los Angeles that he started in 2012 and continues to curate. This year was the 10th edition, a triumphant moment for an event that began with seven acts and now feels like a smaller, more walkable Coachella for locals — complete with music and food and rides and merch and fashionable selections from Tyler’s line GOLF — in the Dodger Stadium parking lot.
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At Flog Gnaw, Tyler took the stage atop a shipping container, wearing a green suit fit for a bellhop in a slightly bizarro Emerald City, a bust-like mask with cutout holes for his eyes and an Afro with two peaks and a valley between them — an ensemble with hints of Janet Jackson circa Rhythm Nation (at least from the neck down), and which Tyler described to me as both “Captain Crunch” and “a gay dictator.” It’s the uniform of the character he takes on for his new album, both haunting and militant, the latest alter ego the Hawthorne, Calif., native has assumed. After performing the first four tracks, he paused to thank those in the audience for their love — and let them know that Chromakopia was No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for a third straight week. Only Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter did three straight weeks in 2024. “To do that, at my 10th carnival, in my f–king city, what are we talking about?” The crowd cheered for him and themselves: Together, they did it.
Tyler released his album on a Monday instead of the standard Friday; he wanted people to start their week with Chromakopia instead of in the middle of the night as their weekend began. The decision reflected three distinct sides of his personality — putting the music over everything, rejecting industry norms and a confidence that, regardless of the day of the week, his fans will show up. “The hope was that people listened actively, not alongside thousands of other things that come out every Friday,” says Jen Mallory, president of Columbia Records, which has been releasing Tyler’s music since 2017’s Flower Boy. “Of course, shortening the release week is not an instinctive idea in today’s market, but when you deliver the creative T did alongside the album — visual trailers, touring announcements, live events and more — it was undeniable. And the absolutely massive response indicates that his hypothesis was more than correct.”
“I kept telling n—as for a year-and-a-half, ‘Whatever I put out next, I’m putting that b–ch out on a Monday,’ ” Tyler says. “I’m not doing that stupid Friday s–t. We’re putting that s–t out on Monday and everyone’s going to know about it.” The plan worked, with Tyler hitting the top spot that week, even while handicapping himself with a shortened sales week. Only Beyoncé, Swift, Carpenter, Travis Scott, Billie Eilish and Kendrick Lamar had bigger first weeks in 2024. “I knew people would be interested,” he says with a confusion that he’s embracing. “But I didn’t expect this.”
Luis Perez
Following his short Flog Gnaw speech, he transitioned into songs from his catalog. But even as fans enjoyed his earlier material — belting every word of “Dogtooth,” moshing to “Lumberjack” — there was a palpable eagerness for Tyler to get back to the new album. The opposite is typically true at festivals; an artist’s faithful primarily in attendance to see their favorite bring the hits to life. But that Saturday night, Tyler was performing for people who hadn’t turned off Chromakopia since its release 20 days prior. And as he marched through his eighth studio album, the crowd was right with him, screaming along to every lyric, ad-lib, chant — even Tyler’s recordings of his mother that appear throughout the album and rang out as if she was the voice of the nighttime California sky.
Tyler and Sexyy Red traded verses and threw ass at the crowd during “Sticky,” a big fun song built around horns and whistles and beating on the cafeteria table. “I wanted something for the drill team at the f–king pep rallies,” Tyler told me, “something for the band to play at halftime.” His wish came true before his performance; Jackson State University’s Sonic Boom of the South broke it out earlier in the day in its matchup against Alabama State. He brought out ScHoolboy Q — whom Tyler describes as one of his few real friends in the music industry — for “Thought I Was Dead,” and, 10 minutes later, he performed “Balloon” with Doechii and Daniel Caesar, fueling a “Doechii, Doechii” chant and thanking Caesar for his help in finishing Chromakopia. The love and appreciation was at an all-time high, both in the crowd and onstage.
“I have friends that’s been to about every show,” Tyler says after Flog Gnaw is over, “and they were like, ‘That’s the loudest crowd I’ve ever heard.’ ”
I was prepared for the adoration Tyler gets in his city because I saw him in June at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, up the street from where he grew up. It wasn’t even his show — this was The Pop Out: Ken & Friends, Lamar’s first concert since his beef began in the spring with Drake. “I wasn’t even supposed to go — I was in Atlanta working on this album,” Tyler explains. “But I landed that morning and couldn’t miss this s–t. And I don’t even get FOMO at all, n—a — I’ll go to sleep. But I’m cool with Kenny and Dave [Free] and Tim [Hinshaw] from Free Lunch. So I went home, showered and ran straight there.”
He performed two songs, including “Earfquake” from his 2019 album, IGOR. Seemingly everyone at the Forum knew every word. “I genuinely think I’m better at my R&B singing s–t as a whole than my rap s–t,” he tells me. “And those are usually my biggest records.” And when Tyler screamed “Say what!,” the capacity crowd turned into the Southern California Community Choir, belting, “Don’t leeeeeeeeeeeeeeave, it’s my fault.”
Tyler, The Creator photographed November 20, 2024 at Quixote Studios in Los Angeles.
Luis Perez
For years, Tyler has continued to complicate what a pop star can embody. He’s taken on different personas, different looks, rapped about different things and keeps getting bigger and bigger. But as he’s become one of popular music’s most reliable and admired mavericks, he’s existed outside of the L.A. hip-hop zeitgeist. The city wasn’t a leading identifier for him, at least compared with a Lamar, a YG, a Vince Staples. But he’s central to the current historic run of Los Angeles music, as well as the community that makes L.A. one of the special hubs for hip-hop.
“I’m really from the city,” he says. As he continues to talk about home, his accent gets thicker and thicker. That love for Los Angeles is why he started Flog Gnaw in the first place: “Outside of sports stuff, it felt like L.A. didn’t have something that was its own thing.” With this year’s fantasy lineup — including Staples, Kaytranada, Playboi Carti, André 3000, Erykah Badu, Denzel Curry, Faye Webster, Blood Orange and Syd — Tyler’s wish to at least somewhat correct this came true. “I’m happy that Flog Gnaw has folks from the city feeling like this is theirs,” he says a bit coyly. “At least that’s what it feels like every year.”
“I’m not who they were introduced to at 20. I’m not even who I was a year ago,” Tyler says, sounding a bit annoyed at the notion that he possibly could be. “When they’re like, ‘I want the old version,’ I know it’s because they’re still there. But I’m not. And I’m OK with it because my identity doesn’t rest in a version of myself.”
I first saw Tyler, The Creator perform in 2012 at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Midtown Manhattan. His rap collective, Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (OFWGKTA), had become an online sensation over the last few years — not just for its transgressive music, but also for antics that felt like the Black evolution of Jackass — and there was a level of buzz around the show, both from the rap-fan concertgoers and the young music bloggers eager to see if the phenomenon would translate offline.
While some in the audience anticipated possible appearances by erstwhile members Earl Sweatshirt and Frank Ocean, it was Tyler, the gang’s de facto leader and chief provocateur, who defined the show. He’d mostly been known for his 2009 debut album, Bastard, and the Odd Future mixtape Radical that came the following year, both notable for their distinctive production and shocking lyrics. But Tyler’s true star turn came in 2011 on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, Odd Future’s first nationally televised appearance. Beforehand, Tyler tweeted, “I want to scare the f–k out of old white people that live in middle f–king America.”
He kept his word, as he and fellow Odd Future rapper Hodgy Beats performed “Sandwitches” from Tyler’s second album, 2011’s Goblin, backed by The Roots. They wore ski masks and raced around the stage like it was a hardcore show as the camera occasionally panned to scattered garden gnomes and this one creepy white girl floating around the band, her long dark hair covering her face like she was in The Ring. Tyler eventually left the stage, ran to Fallon’s desk and finished the episode on the host’s back. It was a cultural reset — an undeniable TV moment.
Like many at that 2012 Hammerstein show, I wanted to feel that Fallon energy in real life. And while Tyler did replicate it there, my own takeaway was very different: Yes, he was the leader, a true frontman, but even more so, he was head cheerleader for every Odd Future member. When Frank sat at the piano and sang “White,” Tyler went to the side, pulled out a Polaroid camera and started taking photos. As Earl, in his first performance in two years, pushed through his verse on “Oldie,” Tyler brought their entire crew onstage to back him — a wall of support, a visualization of a musical and cultural movement that deserved attention.
Luis Perez
Tyler, The Creator loves to love things. He’s a fan of the highest order, a quality that often gets lost during a climb to the top and a trait of his that hasn’t wavered to this day. When I arrived for our first of two conversations for this story, a couple of days before his Flog Gnaw performance, Tyler was standing with his longtime managers, Christian and Kelly Clancy, obsessing over something on his phone. Someone had sent Tyler a Pharrell Williams performance clip, one he’d been hunting for for the last decade, and his mood was a mix of Christmas morning, winning the lottery and discovering buried treasure. His enthusiasm was entrancing: a star whose inspirations still made him feel like a little kid.
“The ones who were the North Star for me, if you generalize it, they were always left of center,” Tyler says. So it’s no shock that he decided to musically and aesthetically follow suit. “If I’m 12 and folks at school are like, ‘That’s weird, that’s wack,’ I’m like, ‘But the n—as on my walls will think it’s cool. And y’all can’t compare to them. So f–k y’all.’ ”
That mentality is part of what makes him a singular artist. He isn’t shackled by the fear of failure, the driving force that stifles creativity. The other driving force comes from his mother, Bonita Smith. “I got hugs at home,” Tyler proudly says. “I’m very lucky and grateful to have grown up in a house full of love, with a cheerleader that was like, ‘Be yourself,’ ‘Do what you want,’ ‘F–k what they think,’ ‘I’m your friend.’ ” On Chromakopia’s first track, “St. Chroma,” she says, “Don’t you ever, in your motherf–king life, dim your light for nobody.” The combination of her influence, teenage rebellion and the blueprints left by his favorite artists gave him a confidence that became foundational. “I have no choice but to be opinionated and don’t care if I look dumb as f–k. Even if I change my mind the next day.”
Chromakopia, like most of Tyler’s discography, tells the story of his life in the present. “Everything is self-indulgent to me,” he says about making songs, because he’s not doing it to be relatable or appease an audience or some former version of his fandom. Few artists have as honest and combative of a relationship with listeners as Tyler. He’s constantly vacillating between inspiration and frustration. He loves watching people respond to his tweets about favorite lyrics and songs, what grew on them, what they hated at first. Because it’s not about whether you like his music or not — it’s that he craves true engagement. “Expound on that f–king thought, b–ch,” Tyler says of the opinions, the comments, the takes, the lack of articulation about why you like or dislike something. “If I was president, the first thing I would do is take podcast mics away from n—as.”
It can be risky for artists to abandon the sound or subject matter that gave them initial fame, a decision that some fans treat as a betrayal. But this album, much like 2017’s Flower Boy, 2019’s IGOR and 2021’s Call Me If You Get Lost, is a time capsule, a front-row seat to the life and mind and current creative headspace of Tyler Okonma. On Chromakopia, he explores themes ranging from monogamy (“Darling, I”) to unplanned pregnancies and fatherhood (“Hey Jane”) to the trappings of fame that run throughout the album. “It’s people saying that they can’t relate to the song,” Tyler says of “Noid,” the first single. “Of course you can’t. That’s why I made the song, because you don’t know what it’s like not to go outside and not own yourself, people stealing from you, voice-recording you, following n—as home, people trying to trap you — nobody trying to trap y’all n—as. I’m a catch.”
The album is deeply personal. “I’m a super extrovert, but I’m a very private person with my life,” Tyler says, “so putting some of this stuff on wax was a lot for me.” The day after Chromakopia’s release at a show in Atlanta, he went further: “It’s so honest that I think I had to wear a mask on my own face to get that s–t out.” He faces those fears on the album’s aptly titled emotional high point, “Take Your Mask Off,” and when he performed it at Flog Gnaw, by the song’s conclusion, his mask was gone.
Tyler does have a level of maturity that can come from growing up in public, which, as he points out, he did: “I’ve been famous and financially stable since I was 19, on my own since 16.” And now, at 33, he’s a veteran, making music about getting older and what it feels like. “I told my homie, ‘This is the 30s album,’ ” Tyler says. “This album is probably s–t that folks go through at 24, but I’ve lived a different life. N—as around me are having kids and families and really being adults and I’m over here like, ‘I think I’m going to paint my car pink.’ That feels crazy, but it’s all I know.”
Tyler, The Creator photographed November 20, 2024 at Quixote Studios in Los Angeles.
Luis Perez
And the reception to Chromakopia makes it clear that plenty of Tyler’s listeners do share his worries, anxieties, dilemmas. “People are connecting with the words in a way that feels bigger than me,” he says. “I’ve never hit people at this level.”
When I ask him about the album’s closer, “I Hope You Find Your Way Home,” he lights up. “I think the way you end an album is so important!” he exclaims. From Kevin Kendricks’ neck-tingling synthesizer to Tyler’s own background vocals alongside Daniel Caesar and Solange Knowles to his grand finale of a rap verse, it’s a reflection and a resolution, one filled with hope for our respective journeys ahead. “I knew that’s how I wanted to end it, with the synth, just letting n—as sit there and think about whatever the f–k just happened,” he says, clearly thrilled with the way he landed the plane.
But for Tyler, uncertainty about the future is also a source of joy. He’s currently dipping his toe back into acting, with his first feature film, the Josh Safdie-directed, Timothée Chalamet-starring Marty Supreme, on the horizon. “This is where I am at 33; who knows what I’ll be making at 36,” he says. “My 30s have been so much iller than my 20s. I’m excited for us to be 43 years old and see where we’ve taken it. I don’t know what the f–k I’m doing at that point, maybe bald — with one braid and a dangling earring, making gospel, telling everyone about the zucchinis.”
Whatever it is, he’s excited, as always, by the unknown. “I’ve never not stuck to my guns. Any version y’all see me in is the most honest version at that time,” Tyler says. He’s brash and bold and uncompromising about his art, but it’s also clear how grateful he feels. “I’m so blessed and fortunate. Thirteen years in and my latest s–t is my biggest. Sometimes it’s like, ‘What the f–k, this can’t be real.’ But then it’s also like, ‘I told y’all.’ It’s beautiful.”
This story appears in the Dec. 14, 2024, issue of Billboard.
“Bro, everything I thought I knew was gone. I thought I had a grasp on s–t. The songs that’s been out three weeks went up more than the classic records.” It’s an early Tuesday afternoon in mid-¬November and Tyler, The Creator is still in disbelief. Just a few weeks earlier, he’d released his new album, […]
On Sept. 13, 1988, the media assembled at the United Nations for a press conference. Representatives for the nonprofits Greenpeace, Cultural Survival and Rainforest Action Network sat before them, alongside the U.N. Environment Programme’s director and three, less expected emissaries: the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, Bobby Weir and Mickey Hart.
The band was about to begin a multinight fall run at Madison Square Garden and had decided to make the ninth and final concert of the stint a rainforest benefit. Garcia, Weir and Hart weren’t at the U.N. as rock stars; they were there as activists.
“Somebody has to do something,” Garcia told the assembled crowd, before adding wryly, “In fact, it seems pathetic that it has to be us.” As the audience applauded and Hart and Weir voiced their agreement, Garcia cut through the din: “This is not our regular work!” Eleven days later, in a more familiar setting, the band invited Bruce Hornsby, Hall & Oates and Suzanne Vega, among other artists, onstage at the sold-out benefit show, which grossed $871,875, according to an October 1988 issue of Billboard.
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At the press conference, Garcia had said, “We hope that we can empower our own audience with a sense of being able to do something directly and actually having an effect that’s visible in some way.” But he’d also expressed the Dead’s trepidation concerning activism.
“We don’t want to be the leaders, and we don’t want to serve unconscious fascism,” he said. “Power is a scary thing. When you feel that you’re close to it, you feel like you want to make sure that it isn’t used for misleading. So all this time, we’ve avoided making any statements about politics, about alignments of any sort.” While Garcia’s comment wasn’t entirely accurate — the ’88 benefit was far from the first time the Dead had aligned itself with a cause — its sentiment was honest: He understood the influence his beloved band wielded.
“As a young fan, I really learned about the issue in the rainforest from the Grateful Dead when they did that press conference,” recalls Mark Pinkus, who started seeing the band in 1984 and was a college student in 1988. “If a band like the Grateful Dead took the time to care about a cause, it definitely got our attention as young fans.”
From left: Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart outside San Francisco’s New Potrero Theatre in 1968.
Malcolm Lubliner/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
For a then-17-year-old David Lemieux, who had started seeing the Dead the year before and whose father worked at the U.N. from 1953 to 1973, “it added this huge level of legitimacy to this band I was following around” for his parents. “It certainly had me go out and learn more about [the issue],” he reflects. “To this day, the way I view the world is very much what I learned from my days on tour — and seeing the Dead take a stance that was so big … meant a lot to me.”
At the time, Pinkus and Lemieux were impressionable young Deadheads. Today, they’re central to the Dead’s present and future business. Pinkus is president of Rhino Entertainment, the Warner Music Group branch that publishes the Dead’s archival releases, and Lemieux, the band’s legacy manager and archivist, is intimately involved in the curation of those releases.
It’s telling not just that the Dead’s business is shepherded by members of the very community it fostered, but that the band’s philanthropic work in particular resonated with Pinkus and Lemieux from the jump. The Dead’s members haven’t merely been philanthropically active since the band’s 1965 formation in the Bay Area — they have been forward-thinking, reimagining the potential of the good works musicians can do and inspiring other artists to follow in their footsteps. All the while, their activism has fed on — and been fed by — their passionate fans.
“We’re part of a community, and so the better the community is doing, the better we’re doing,” Weir says today. “Jerry always used to say, ‘You get some, you give some back.’ It just makes sense.” And since the beginning, “that’s been our mode of operation,” the Grateful Dead’s Bill Kreutzmann says. “We help people and give them stuff. It’s just a good way to live life. I wish that more people in the world lived life that way, instead of wars and bombings.”
From left: Randy Hayes of Rainforest Action Network (seated), Dr. Jason Clay of Cultural Survival, Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, Peter Bahouth of Greenpeace and Bob Weir at a New York press conference in 1988.
Marty Lederhandler/AP
Since Garcia’s death in 1995, the Dead’s surviving members have continued to tour — and continued to advocate for the causes that matter to them. That’s why MusiCares, the charitable organization that the Recording Academy founded in 1989 to support the music community’s health and welfare, is recognizing the Grateful Dead as its 2025 MusiCares Persons of the Year.
“It all follows in that tradition of teaching the industry what it should know about,” Hart says. “That’s that Grateful Dead kind of style, where we just did it because we knew it was the right thing to do. If we wanted to do this the rest of our lives was the idea, we have to do these things, because people support us — and we reciprocate.”
“Everybody had everybody’s back in the Haight-Ashbury, and we were a big functioning organism,” Weir recalls. “And we had roles within the community.”
It’s a crisp, mid-November evening in Chicago, where Weir, 77, has just spent the afternoon doing what he does best: playing Grateful Dead music. He’s in town for two shows at the Auditorium Theatre with the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra, which will accompany him and Wolf Bros, his current solo project, and after rehearsing “Weather Report Suite” and “Terrapin Station” — two of the Dead’s densest, most ambitious compositions — he’s back on his tour bus, reminiscing about the band’s early days.
Even then, philanthropy was core to the group. It began performing as The Warlocks in mid-1965, and while accounts differ about when, exactly, it changed its name later that year, many believe it debuted its famed moniker on Dec. 10 — at Mime Troupe Appeal II, the second in a series of benefits for a satirical San Francisco theater troupe that often clashed with local law enforcement over free speech.
From left: Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart onstage at the Oakland (Calif.) Auditorium in 1979.
Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty Images
The first decade or so of the Dead’s philanthropy “is an incredibly eclectic mix,” Lemieux says. In San Francisco, the band gigged for radical activists, arts spaces, spiritual centers (a Hare Krishna temple, a Zen monastery) and music education. As the band grew, it played for hippie communes and music venues, for striking radio workers and bail funds, for the Black Panthers and the Hells Angels. It performed with the Buffalo (N.Y.) Philharmonic Orchestra in 1970 to support the ensemble; in a concert that became one of its most revered live recordings, the Dead played in Veneta, Ore., on Aug. 27, 1972, to save the local Springfield Creamery.
“We saw something in need, and we would just write a check,” Hart, 81, remembers today. “The Grateful Dead, we never thought of business. We just wanted to play, play, play.”
“That was really delicious for us, to make everybody happy,” says Kreutzmann, 78. “Because that’s the goal: Make everyone happy, not just the band.”
But as the band’s following grew throughout the ’70s, that charitable approach — guided by the band’s generous attitude, which meant lots of “yeses” and not many “nos” — became untenable. It needed to streamline its operation. “We had always been given to community service, but we just wanted to get organized about it,” Weir says, alluding to the tax burden of the band’s initial model.
So the Dead did something that was then novel for a musical act: It started a foundation. In 1983, the band’s early co-manager Danny Rifkin (who held a number of roles in the group’s orbit over the years) helped it launch The Rex Foundation, named for Rex Jackson, a roadie and tour manager for the band who had died in 1976. The foundation eliminated the need for the Dead to do the types of one-off, cause-based benefits it had done previously, instead directing earnings from its charitable initiatives into the foundation, which then disbursed that money — after approval by its board, which included the band’s members and others in its inner circle — to various grant recipients. By refusing to accept unsolicited grant proposals (applications were, and still are, submitted by the Rex board and those in the Dead’s extended community) and focusing its grants on organizations with small, sometimes minuscule, budgets, the Dead retained the homespun feel of its earlier charitable efforts.
The Rex Foundation quickly became the primary beneficiary of the Dead’s philanthropy. The band played its first Rex benefits in San Rafael, Calif., in spring 1984 and made a point of staging multishow Rex benefit runs — generally in the Bay Area or nearby Sacramento — annually for the rest of its career. “They were just regular gigs, there was no other fanfare, but the money would go to The Rex Foundation,” Lemieux says. “We all thought that was pretty darn cool. It wasn’t like the Dead played any less hard because it was a benefit gig. The Rex Foundation mattered to them.”
From left: Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir at Berkeley’s Greek Theatre in 1985.
Richard McCaffrey/ Michael Ochs Archive/ Getty Images
Over the next decade, the Dead played upwards of 40 Rex benefits. Without the requirement that a given show benefit a specific charity — and with the larger grosses Dead shows now earned — “it allowed the money to be spread a lot more,” Lemieux explains. A beneficiary “wouldn’t be like a multi-multimillion-dollar organization that needed $5,000. It was a $10,000 organization that needed $5,000. That makes a huge difference.” (Weir, Hart and Garcia’s widow, Carolyn, and daughter, Trixie, are among the present-day board members of Rex, which still holds benefits and disburses grants; in July, Dark Star Orchestra, which re-creates classic Dead shows, played a benefit at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, Calif., to celebrate the foundation’s 40th anniversary.)
During this period, the Dead also continued to play non-Rex benefits for specific causes, including AIDS research and eye-care organization Seva. The 1988 rainforest benefit was a hybrid — the rare Rex benefit with pre-announced beneficiaries in Greenpeace, Cultural Survival and Rainforest Action Network. “Those were all people that we had already funded to in their infancy,” says Cameron Sears, who managed the band in the late ’80s and ’90s and is today Rex’s executive director. (As it happens, Sears’ entrée into the Dead’s world as a recent college grad in the early ’80s was through philanthropy: He’d pitched the band on getting involved in California water politics.) As Garcia put it at the U.N., “We’ve chosen these groups because we like that direct thing … We don’t like a lot of stuff between us and the work.”
The model continues to reverberate through a music industry where it’s now common for major artists to have charitable foundations. “The fact that all these bands now have looked to that model and replicated it, [the Dead] don’t need to take credit for it, even though it may rightly belong to them,” Sears says. “They’re just happy that people are doing it. Their vision has had a multiplier effect now around the world. What Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam are into might be different than what Phish is into and is maybe different than what Metallica is into. But together, the amount of philanthropy that’s being generated through all these different people makes an incredible difference.”
Pull up just about any bootleg of a Phil Lesh show from 1999 through his death in October, and you’ll see a track between the end of the second set and the start of the encore, usually called “Donor Rap.” Lesh received a life-saving liver transplant in 1998; henceforth, he used his platform to encourage Deadheads to turn to their loved ones and say that, if anything happened to them, they wanted to be an organ donor.
After Garcia’s death, the Dead’s surviving members remained active musically — and philanthropically. When The Other Ones — the first significant post-Garcia iteration of the Dead comprising Weir, Lesh, Hart and a cast of supporting musicians — debuted in 1998, it did so with a benefit, raising more than $200,000 for the Rainforest Action Network. They all championed causes important to them: Weir with the environment and combating poverty, Hart with music therapy and brain health, Kreutzmann with ocean conservation, Lesh with his Unbroken Chain Foundation, which benefited a litany of things including music education. The Rex Foundation has also remained active, supporting a range of organizations across the arts, education, social justice, Indigenous peoples’ groups and the environment.
And, over the years, the band members began to work more closely with MusiCares. Early in the pandemic, Dead & Company — the touring group formed in 2015 by Weir, Hart and Kreutzmann and rounded out by John Mayer, Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Chimenti — and the Grateful Dead launched weekly archival livestreams that raised $276,000 for the organization’s COVID-19 Relief Fund. Dead & Company expanded the affiliation to epic proportions on May 8, 2023, when the band kicked off its final tour at Cornell University’s Barton Hall in Ithaca, N.Y., where it played one of its most revered gigs 46 years earlier to the day; the 2023 show raised $3.1 million, with half going to MusiCares and half to the Cornell 2030 Project, a campus organization dedicated to sustainability.
“If you want to talk about making a statement in modern times,” Pinkus says, “here they return to the venue of arguably the most famous Grateful Dead show ever, play the tiniest show that they play on a farewell tour, which is all stadiums, and then they turn around and do it as a fundraiser. It really spoke to everything about the Grateful Dead and Dead & Company’s commitment to giving back.”
“The industry is a very dangerous place at times,” Hart says. “When you get engulfed with the harder side of the business and fall through the cracks or stumble and you need some help getting your mojo back, that’s really what MusiCares does.”
From left: Bruce Hornsby, Jeff Chimenti, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Phish’s Trey Anastasio, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann at one of the band’s Fare Thee Well shows at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.,
on June 28, 2015.
Jay Blakesberg/Invision for the Grateful Dead/AP
Over the last decade, Activist Artists Management has helped guide the band members’ philanthropic efforts. The company is both the manager of record for the Grateful Dead — a status conferred by Grateful Dead Productions, an entity comprising the band’s living members and representatives of Garcia’s and Lesh’s estates — and co-manages Dead & Company alongside Irving Azoff and Steve Moir of Full Stop Management. (Kreutzmann toured with Dead & Company from 2015 to 2022 but did not appear with the group on its final tour in 2023 or during its 2024 Las Vegas Sphere residency. On Dec. 4, Dead & Company announced it will play 18 shows at Sphere in spring 2025; a representative for the band confirmed the lineup will not include Kreutzmann.)
“There was this mosaic of incredible good works that this band was doing, and there was a feeling that we could help amplify those good works and those dollars by putting a little more structure and support around it and a little bit more intentionality around it, which is what Activist came in and did,” Activist founding partner Bernie Cahill says.
When discussing the Dead’s activism with the band and its affiliates, words like “apolitical” and “nonpartisan” come up often. As Kreutzmann puts it, “It’s much more fun to see all the people smiling, not half the people bickering at the other half.”
“These are objective things that I think everyone will agree with,” Lemieux says of causes ranging from rainforest preservation to AIDS research. “And that’s what the Dead were kind of getting on board with and raising awareness.”
Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Bob Weir, Tom Constanten (with a cut-out standee of Jerry Garcia) and Vince Welnick of the Grateful Dead at the 1994 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction.
Steve Eichner/WireImage
But while it’s true that, both before and after Garcia’s death, the Dead’s members have avoided the strident political rhetoric some other artists favor, the band has still advanced progressive causes. In the ’60s, it rubbed shoulders with radical groups in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. In the ’80s, when AIDS was a stigmatized topic, it headlined a relief show for Northern California AIDS agencies.
That has continued in recent years. Dead & Company’s Participation Row — an area it allots at its shows for nonprofit and charitable partners — has featured entities like the voter registration organization HeadCount and the sustainable-touring group Reverb, among other social justice, environmental and public health organizations, helping the band to raise more than $15 million since its 2015 debut. But Dead & Company have not shied from using their touring to platform more contentious causes. The summer following the Parkland, Fla., high school shooting, Dead & Company included the gun control group March for Our Lives on Participation Row. And after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the band displayed pro-choice messages at its shows and even sold a “Save Our Rights” shirt benefiting women’s health organizations.
“We support artists being authentic,” Cahill says. “If an artist feels called to speak out … our job is to make sure they have all the information so that they can speak intelligently on the matter. I think we’ve done a really good job with that over the years. We have both protected our clients and amplified their positions.”
And the Dead’s members have, judiciously, supported political candidates. Weir, Lesh and Hart played a February 2008 benefit dubbed “Deadheads for Obama,” and that fall, Kreutzmann joined them for another pro-Barack Obama gig. This fall, both Weir and Hart publicly endorsed Kamala Harris. While “you don’t want to tell people what to do,” Hart explains, “there are some issues you must speak out [about] if you feel right about it and if you’re really behind it.”
Bob Weir, Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart backstage at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco at a rally for Barack Obama in 2008.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images
As the Dead nears its 60th anniversary in 2025 and adds its MusiCares honor to a lengthy list of accomplishments — induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, recipients of Kennedy Center Honors, a recording included in the Library of Congress, among numerous others — its surviving members are emphatic that this is far from a denouement.
“Obviously, they’re quite humbled and honored by it all,” Cahill says. But “they always see these things as something that you get at the end of your career, when you’re done. And of course, these guys don’t feel like that’s where they are in their career. They feel like they have a lot more ahead of them, and I believe they do.”
Rhino continues to mine the Dead’s vault for new releases — its ongoing quarterly archival Dave’s Picks series helped the band break a record earlier this year previously held by Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley for most top 40 albums on the Billboard 200 — and orchestrate merchandising partnerships from Igloo coolers to Nike shoes that ensure the ongoing omnipresence of the band’s iconography. (“We’re always open for business — if it feels right,” Pinkus says.)
Most importantly to Deadheads, Weir, Hart and Kreutzmann are all resolute that they’ll remain on the road as long as they can; in 2024, Weir toured with Wolf Bros and, along with Hart, staged Dead & Company’s 30-show Sphere residency, while Kreutzmann kept his livewire Billy & The Kids act alive with Mahalo Dead, a three-day November event near his home in Kauai, Hawaii. Last year, Weir toured supporting Willie Nelson, whom he’s shared bills with for decades — and who at 91 is 14 years his senior. “His hands don’t work as well as they used to,” Weir says. “Nor do mine. But as the years go by, you learn to help the music happen through force of will. And Willie is as good as he’s ever been.”
Willpower is something the Dead’s surviving members have in spades. “These guys have always been the outsider,” Cahill says. “They’ve flourished by being the outsider and by being a maverick and doing things their own way. Because they’ve written their own rules, they’re not beholden to anybody. They’re not looking for anyone’s approval, and they continue to write their own rules and to do things that inspire them.”
That core ethos is what has driven, and continues to drive, the Dead’s approach to both its business and its philanthropy — two things that, as the band is still proving to the industry at large, need not be mutually exclusive.
“I would like to be able to have people who disagree with me still be fans of the music or the art that I make,” Weir says. “But at the same time, I’ve got to be true to myself, and I expect that they have to be true to themselves as well.”
This story appears in the Dec. 7, 2024, issue of Billboard.
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Lisa looks stumped. She raises her eyebrows slightly and purses her lips, staring out from underneath her immaculate, walnut-brown bangs. She is trying to answer a question that for most people qualifies as Small Talk 101, but for her is a Sphinx-level riddle: “Where do you live?”
“I can’t really tell where I’m based,” she says, breaking into a giddy giggle. As one-quarter of the record-setting, superlative-defying K-pop girl group Blackpink, she called Seoul home. But now? She’s all over the place: Los Angeles, where we’re meeting and where she’s been spending a lot of time recording new music; her native Thailand, where she also filmed the highly anticipated third season of HBO’s The White Lotus; and Paris, where you can find her front row at fashion shows as a new house ambassador for Louis Vuitton. “I don’t even know which time zone I’m living now,” says Lisa, clad in a Kith track jacket and baggy Celine jeans, as she sips orange juice in a tucked-away booth of the star-friendly Polo Lounge at The Beverly Hills Hotel.
In her rare downtime, 27-year-old Lisa (also known as Lalisa Manobal) likes to hit up Pop Mart, the international toy-store chain whose adorable characters she can’t get enough of. (She once visited three different Paris locations in a single day in search of a rare figurine, and she jokes that she has more collectibles than furniture: “I have no space to walk anymore!”) Or she’ll seek out the best Thai food wherever she may be. Everyone in L.A. tells her to go to Anajak or Jitlada, two local culinary institutions, “but it’s not the OG taste for me,” she says. “It doesn’t taste like home. It tastes different.” She prefers Ruen Pair.
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“I just randomly walk in. I don’t really do any makeup, so I just go in like this” — she pulls her hair over her face — “and they barely notice me.” When people do recognize her in public, they usually play it cool, at least in America. “They come to you like, ‘I just want to say I love your music, I just want to say hi!,’ and leave,” she says in a chirpy faux-American accent. And if they don’t? “Well, of course, I always have him,” Lisa says, nodding toward the burly tattooed man at the next booth over who, I now realize, is her bodyguard.
Welcome to the totally fabulous, totally exhausting, jet-setting life of one of pop’s most exciting stars. On her fast and furious recent single “Rockstar,” she recites airport codes like they’re her ABCs (“Been MIA, BKK so pretty!”), flexes her multilingual skills (“ ‘Lisa, can you teach me Japanese?’ I said, ‘Hai, hai!’ ”) and name-drops her designer partnerships (“Tight dress, LV sent it!”) with the casual ease of someone describing their sock drawer. She’s the rare pop star for whom bone-rattling bangers about life in the fast lane and personal, autobiographical material are one in the same. As Lisa embarks on a solo career outside the girl group that made her famous, this world-building has been one of her biggest joys. “At first, I was scared and nervous because I never really come out here to do my own stuff,” she says, before lowering her voice as if she’s not supposed to say what comes next. “And now I’m having fun,” she whispers. “When [my singles] came out, the reaction from the fans, it’s healing me. It’s like, ‘Oh, my God. Yeah — I did a great job!’ ”
Diesel dress
Joelle Grace Taylor
Success in a pop group is no guarantee of success as a solo artist, but then again, Blackpink is no ordinary group. With its multinational members, onomatopoeic hooks and blockbuster music videos, the quartet was practically engineered for world domination. Since 2016, Blackpink has racked up 40 billion official on-demand global streams, according to Luminate; scored nine Billboard Hot 100 hits; and played some of the world’s biggest stages. The act was the first Korean girl group to play Coachella in 2019 and the first Korean act of any kind to headline the festival in 2023. By the end of Blackpink’s 2022-23 Born Pink world tour, named for its first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200, the group was selling out stadiums in the United States — one of only a handful of K-pop acts to have done so.
Alongside peers like BTS, Blackpink helped dismantle the lingering walls between “K-pop” and the American mainstream, making regular appearances on morning and late-night shows, recording music in English and teaming with U.S. hit-makers, eased by a partnership between YG Entertainment, the group’s Korean home, and Interscope Records.
Though all of Blackpink’s members have star power in spades — Jennie’s unbothered cool, Rosé’s singer-songwriter smarts and Jisoo’s sly humor and older-sister elegance — Lisa is an unmissable force in the group. She raps with the big, bouncy energy of the Pixar lamp, and her swaggering flows have made her a compelling face of hip-hop’s globalization. Her 2021 solo track “Money,” released through YG and built around a brassy beat worthy of Hot 97, reached No. 36 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart — making her the first K-pop artist to enter its top 40 — and she fit right in next to Megan Thee Stallion and Ozuna on that year’s DJ Snake team-up, “SG.” As Lisa has been recording solo music, she has realized genre-fluency is her ace: “I kind of… kill it in every single thing?” she says sheepishly, twirling her hair. “So I’m like, ‘Oh, why not!’ ”
In the past, K-pop’s brightest breakout stars have typically pursued solo careers either independently (like rapper-singer CL of YG girl group 2NE1) or through the company behind their groups (such as the members of BTS, whose home base, HYBE, has a global partnership with Universal Music Group). Lisa, however, is pursuing a different model with the creation of her own management company and label, Lloud, and a partnership with RCA Records in which she will own her masters.
“It was very clear that she wanted to go for global domination as one of the biggest pop stars on the planet, and we’re right there with her,” RCA COO John Fleckenstein says. K-pop companies — typically one-stop shops that combine management, label, agent and other functions under one roof — “work in a certain way in terms of how they market, promote and A&R everything, and over the years, they’ve established this architecture that the fan base is really used to,” he says. “It’s pretty rare for someone to go from one architecture to another.”
Area jacket, Coperni boots.
Joelle Grace Taylor
And Lisa’s not the only one learning how — so are her bandmates, as they all simultaneously launch their next phases. Jennie released the sun-kissed bop “Mantra” in October through Columbia Records and her own Odd Atelier company. Rosé will release her debut album in December through Atlantic Records; her first single, the punky Bruno Mars duet “APT.,” debuted at No. 8 on the Hot 100 — a record high for a female K-pop soloist. Jisoo, meanwhile, has focused on acting in Korean TV shows and movies, but she unveiled her own company, Blissoo, in February, and Lisa thinks she’ll eventually do music, too. Coming from the world of K-pop idols — where stars are not exactly known for their agency and the quasi-diplomatic pressures on their shoulders can be immense — it’s a whole new competitive landscape.
As Lisa finishes her debut solo album against the ticking clock of Blackpink’s planned 2025 reunion, can she transform herself from a K-pop queen into a global girl boss? She’s up for the challenge. Technically, she’s the CEO of Lloud, though she squirms at the title. “I don’t want to say that,” she says, grinning. “Call me boss — call me Boss Lisa.”
When Blackpink wrapped its yearlong, globe-traversing, 66-date Born Pink world tour in September 2023, sleep was low on Lisa’s list of priorities. “I was super tired,” she says, “but I don’t know, I feel guilty when I’m not working. It’s like, I need to do something. It was weird. My body is sending me a sign: ‘Beep! Beep! Beep! Don’t rest too much!’ ”
She had already been thinking a lot about her future. Blackpink celebrated its seventh anniversary that summer — a critical milestone for K-pop groups, as seven years is a common contract length in the industry. (K-pop fans even speak of the “seven-year curse” to describe groups’ tendency to break up at this juncture.) For years, Blackpink’s trajectory had had a clear outline. But now, as its members pondered a contract renewal, they had to make decisions about an uncertain future — including what exactly they wanted from it, both together and individually. “Of course we want to do more, because Blackpink, it’s part of our lives. We still want to accomplish more,” Lisa says. “But on the other side, we also wanted to do something for our solo careers.”
They decided on an unusual arrangement: The members re-signed with YG for group activities but became free agents for their individual projects (though Rosé ultimately signed with The Black Label, which YG has had a stake in, for solo management). It was time for Lisa to chart her own course, and to do that, she needed her own team.
The first person she reached out to was Alice Kang, who had spent five years on the management team at YG’s L.A. branch, where she touched a bit of everything — marketing, merchandise, label relations — and got to know Lisa well. Joojong “JJ” Joe, who headed North American operations for YG for several years, had assigned Kang to be Lisa’s point person on staff. “Both of them have easygoing and fun personalities, so I think that’s why they have worked perfectly [together] so far,” he says. After spending a lot of time away from home on tour with Blackpink, Kang had left her job in late 2023 and was looking forward to some quiet time off as she figured out what was next. “I’m like, ‘Holidays are coming up, it’s the end of the year — family time!’ ” Kang says, laughing. “And then Lisa was like, ‘Hey!’ ”
Vaillant coat, Coperni dress.
Joelle Grace Taylor
Lisa pitched her on starting what would become Lloud. “She’s had this drive to really make her presence known in this U.S. music market,” recalls Kang, Lloud’s head of global business and management. Though Lloud brings to mind other artist-founded, multipronged companies like Beyoncé’s Parkwood Entertainment, Lisa says she hasn’t thought about eventually signing other artists, and she doesn’t cop to having any Rihanna-level empire-building aspirations. “I feel like Lloud is like my safe zone that always focuses on Lisa, supports Lisa,” she says. “I was just thinking about what I want to achieve this year, [taking it] year by year. So this year, what I wanted to do is work on new music and focus on that.”
As Lisa and Kang mapped out the steps they would need to take, they also brought in Joe, who had left YG as well, as an adviser. (He has a brand consultancy, ABrands, and an artist management and consulting company, The Colors Artists Group.) Much of Joe’s job at YG had been networking and relationship-building in the United States, and he helped Lisa construct her core team and set up meetings with major labels.
Lisa clicked with RCA right away. “As soon as I got in the car [after meeting with them], I was telling Alice, ‘I kind of love them!’ ” she says. It was mostly a gut feeling, but Lisa appreciated that they had done their homework: Lisa has five cats, and RCA made her a gift basket with cat-themed paraphernalia like stickers and plushies. “They made the meeting very, very personalized to Lisa specifically,” Kang says, “and they had already thought out plans on what they were going to do to help support Lisa and make her a bigger star than she already is.”
The gist of their pitch: amplify Lloud’s work and complement Lisa’s strengths. “K-pop is kind of a defined universe in terms of what the fan base expects and what people are going to do, and for Lisa, it was a very conscious choice to work with someone like us, because of the resources and connections that we have,” says Fleckenstein, who notes, for instance, that terrestrial radio play is one area where acts from the K-pop world “struggle a bit.” “She’s very clear on where this is going and what it should feel like, but we help her fill in the gaps about how to get there.”
RCA also made some key introductions — like connecting her to choreographer Sean Bankhead, who’s worked with Normani and Tate McRae and collaborated with Lisa on videos and live performances, including her fiery MTV Video Music Awards medley in September. Bankhead calls Lisa a “robot” when it comes to picking up choreography and says she mastered much of the “Rockstar” routine on location in Bangkok the day before filming started. “Which is really unheard of,” he says. “She’s a trouper.”
Mugler dress, Paris Texas shoes.
Joelle Grace Taylor
For Lisa, directing this phase of her career has been eye-opening. Does being the boss of her own company mean she now enjoys such corporate thrills as, say, budgets and expense reports? “Oh, of course,” Lisa says. “Nothing is boring yet because everything is so new. It’s like, ‘Oh, my God. I have to do this too?’ OK!
“Now I know how much it all costs,” she continues. “I’ve been under YG, and everyone was taking care of that, so I never really knew what’s going on or how much we spent for our music videos or photo shoots or hotels. But now I do kind of know about it, so I was like, ‘Oh, OK — no first class anymore,’ ” she says with a laugh as she mimes poring over a spreadsheet. (“The worst boss would be the one who doesn’t make decisions,” Joe says. “She makes decisions, so that’s great.”)
Compared with a giant company like YG, Lloud feels “like a family business,” Lisa says. It has fewer than 10 employees right now, and in true startup fashion, department responsibilities are porous. “We’ve been just so busy, so we haven’t had time to hire people,” Joe says of the biggest challenges facing Lloud. They’re building the car as they’re driving to the destination. “We’re shooting a music video and discussing the next music video at the spot,” he says. “We’re always doing the next one when we’re doing something [else].”
Which, at least for now, is how Lisa likes it. “These days, when I go to a restaurant to have a meal with Alice and my team, we just can’t stop talking about work. Even though it’s like, ‘OK, for this dinner, we’re just going to celebrate’ — we can’t do that. There’s no line,” Lisa says. “There’s so much stuff going on, so when I think about something and it’s popping into my head, I just have to say it right away. Otherwise, I’ll forget.” She pauses. “Yeah, I need to fix that.”
Success for Lisa is in her name. Born Pranpriya Manobal, she auditioned for YG when she was 13 years old. When she didn’t hear back, her mother took her to a fortune teller who recommended she change her name for good luck — a common practice in Thai culture. “We really wanted to get it,” Lisa told me in 2021, when we were speaking about her YG solo tracks. According to Lisa, the week after she rechristened herself “Lalisa,” which roughly means “one who is praised,” YG invited her to train in Seoul.
K-pop’s trainee system is like an artist-development program on steroids. Aspiring stars — chosen through global auditions as tweens and teens — spend years studying music and dance as they vie for a spot in a group. It is a grueling, pressure-cooker environment, with long hours, few days off, frequent evaluations and the constant threat of being cut. For Lisa, who spoke some English but didn’t know any Korean when she started, it could be isolating. “They wanted me to focus on speaking Korean more, so they told all the girls who trained with me: ‘No English with Lalisa,’ ” she recalls. But for Lisa, there was no other path. “I feel like I’m born to be onstage,” she says. (Her future bandmates agreed: “Lisa would always get As for everything,” Jennie told Billboard in 2019.)
Joelle Grace Taylor
Now, in her solo career, Lisa has made her own artist development a guiding priority. One of the first things Joe did last fall was help set up recording sessions. “She’s been working with one producer,” Joe says, referring to Teddy Park, who is credited as a writer or producer on the majority of Blackpink’s songs. “So I’m like, ‘Maybe you should just work with a different producer to see who can work together well.’ ”
Unlike many pop-group alums, Lisa has not felt particularly stifled in Blackpink. She and her bandmates have always credited Park with encouraging their input, and though Lisa has started co-writing some of her new material, she won’t be racking up credits just to prove a point. “I’m not like, ‘OK, I’m going to sit down and write the whole thing,’ ” she says. Still, she had her defined role in the group and has played it dutifully. “In Blackpink, I’m a rapper, so I always rap,” she says. “But now it’s a chance for me to show the world that I’m capable of [so much more].”
With its pummeling beats and Tame Impala-esque breakdown, “Rockstar” bridged her Blackpink sound and her next chapter. “We knew on launch we really wanted to come correct with her existing core fan base,” Fleckenstein says. Subsequent singles gave Lisa more room to experiment and play with new textures in her voice. “New Woman” is a bilingual team-up with Rosalía that features a dizzying beat switch and credits from Swedish hit-makers Max Martin and Tove Lo. The syrupy “Moonlit Floor (Kiss Me)” interpolates Sixpence None the Richer’s “Kiss Me” and is of a piece with recent disco-lite hits like Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” and Doja Cat’s “Say So.” “I feel like I have more creative freedom with everything,” Lisa says.
Diesel dress, Paris Texas boots.
Joelle Grace Taylor
That includes the freedom to be a little edgier. When pop stars go solo after starting in a group, they usually break from their youthful pasts with strong statements of adult independence. But the rules are often different for K-pop stars, who have historically been expected to maintain squeaky-clean images by abstaining from dating and partying (at least publicly). Although those norms are evolving, they still shape the industry: Seunghan, a member of the SM Entertainment boy band RIIZE, was suspended from and, this year, ultimately left his group after photos and videos of him kissing a woman and smoking leaked online.
Lisa has been growing up gradually. When Blackpink headlined Coachella, she took the stage for a pole-dance routine before launching into a new, explicit version of “Money” packed with F-bombs — and fans noted online how gleefully she seemed to deliver them. (“I was waiting for that moment to sing that version,” Lisa tells me, though she notes that the occasion was Jennie’s idea: “She was like, ‘Lisa, just do it. It’s Coachella. Everybody’s doing it at Coachella.’ ”) Today, there’s a palpable maturity to Lisa’s new era, from her October performance at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show alongside lingerie-clad models to some bolder lyrics. It’s hard to imagine a double entendre as blatant as “I’m a rock star … Baby, make you rock hard” fitting neatly into Blackpink’s brand of playful sensuality.
“It’s a little looser [now],” Lisa says of her image, but she feels she has earned it. “We’re not rookies anymore. I’m 27 and headed toward 30. Of course I’m still young, yes, but I feel like it’s more flexible for us. And it’s nothing crazy,” she adds. “I feel like I’m just doing whatever I want, and it doesn’t hurt anyone. As long as it doesn’t hurt anyone’s feelings.” (As for her dating life, when I gently tease her about the “green-eyed French boy” she sings about in “Moonlit Floor,” Lisa — who is rumored to be dating LVMH heir Frédéric Arnault — looks over her shoulder, delivers an expert hair-flip and says coyly, “Well, I didn’t write that [song].”)
Bankhead says she’s navigating her evolution in real time. “I’ve always had those performances or music videos that have shock value, whether it’s Lil Nas X dancing naked in the shower or Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion doing a scissor move at the Grammys,” he says of his previous work. With Lisa, “There are a couple of times that I will push the envelope, and she’s like, ‘I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that yet.’ And then other times, like when I had this idea to do a more sexy breakdown for the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, she was like, ‘I think I want to do more.’ ” For now, any growing pains are primarily physical. Says Bankhead: “She had a little bit of a groin injury because we kept doing that split move in those heels.”
The best part of a Blackpink show isn’t the explosive pyrotechnics or glittering costume changes, but the encores: The four singers, dressed in their own merch, skip their usual windmill-limb choreography and just goof around with one another. They seemed like the rare girl group who, at the height of their powers, were not sick of one another. And their close bonds go way back. Lisa recalls that during trainee breaks, when most students would go home to visit their families, Jisoo — who grew up just outside of Seoul — would stay behind to keep her company.
Today, and as the members unveil their solo projects, they are among one another’s biggest supporters on social media.
“We know each other so well and know how much energy we have to put into every single project,” Lisa says. “So we want to support and say, ‘You did really well!’ Like, Jennie and Rosie just released their own songs, and we’re on texts, we’re on FaceTime. They’re like family. I’m just so happy that they’re releasing something. This is what we all wanted to do, so I just wanted to say that I really do love their songs.”
She confirms the group will reunite in 2025 — “I can’t wait,” she says — though exactly what form the reunion will take appears to be up in the air. YG announced earlier this year that the group would have an official comeback as well as a world tour next year. But when I mention the tour to Lisa, she squints. “That’s what they say?” she responds, in a voice that conveys some skepticism. (“I don’t know,” Kang tells me later. “We’ll have to wait and see what YG confirms.”)
How Lisa will juggle her own career with her group obligations going forward is something “we’re going to figure out as we go,” Fleckenstein says. “My gut feeling is, it will be a benefit to everybody. There really aren’t rules, and I don’t see why there should be any kind of rules around this either.”
Joelle Grace Taylor
Lisa currently doesn’t have plans to tour on her own, and she doesn’t think she can until she has a finished body of work. So for now, she’s full speed ahead on the album. “It’s so embarrassing to say this,” she says when I ask what music she has been enjoying lately, “but I listen to my album. I’m trying to figure it out, the track list and everything, what I can change in there.” Some unfinished songs her team plays for me evoke British iconoclast M.I.A. and Loose-era Nelly Furtado. Will there be ballads? “Everything’s there,” she says. “I think they’re going to be shocked at how capable I am [at] doing so many things.”
When I first met Lisa in 2019, on the band’s first proper stateside trip here in L.A., she seemed excited to take on the world — she bounded toward the window when she spotted the Hollywood sign — but also nervous about all the expectations on the group’s shoulders. The looser, wise-cracking Lisa of today seems like she is genuinely enjoying the ride. What advice would she give the Lisa of nearly six years ago?
“I’m not going to tell her anything,” she says, wide-eyed. “That’s not fun! It’s like when the fortune teller tells you something, and you have that stuck in your head. If someone says, ‘You’re going to win this thing,’ and you’re like, ‘Oh, well, I’m going to win that thing anyway, so I’m not going to do anything now,’ then you’re not going to achieve that. So I guess I will not say anything to my old self.” She leans back in the booth. “ ‘Whatever you’re doing right now? Just keep going.’ ”
This story appears in the Nov. 16, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Lisa looks stumped. She raises her eyebrows slightly and purses her lips, staring out from underneath her immaculate, walnut-brown bangs. She is trying to answer a question that for most people qualifies as Small Talk 101, but for her is a Sphinx-level riddle: “Where do you live?” “I can’t really tell where I’m based,” she […]
In 2024, the average merchandise campaign consists of 50 pieces of artwork that can easily be adapted for use on varied tour and direct-to-consumer items, says Matt Young, president of Bravado, Universal Music Group’s merch and brand management company. But for Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS campaign, he says, “I think we’ve done at least 375 unique pieces of art.”Rodrigo’s singular vision for her first arena tour extended to the products sold at its kiosks. As the album rollout and tour details came together last year, the pop star coordinated with management, Bravado and label partners to ensure that each piece of merch “felt cohesive to the greater GUTS world,” says Michelle An, Interscope Geffen A&M president/head of creative strategy.
The number of items kept ballooning as Rodrigo leaned into the creative process, with a literally hands-on approach to identifying opportunities — from concocting mood boards to helping create color palettes to touching fabrics to ensure T-shirt quality. “This was Olivia saying, ‘I think this could be more. How do we do it?’ ” Young recalls.
Some highlights of Rodrigo’s GUTS merch line include unique jewelry (silver crescent moon rings and star necklaces, a nod to the tour’s set design), a butterfly design on tote bags and pool floats, an elastic bandage tin to store “vampire”-ready Band-Aids and, ahead of Netflix’s Oct. 29 release of her tour film, a set of five GUTS popcorn boxes, perfect for a premiere-night group hang. Along with the souvenirs that are now widely available at Rodrigo’s online shop, Young also points out that her various retail partners, ranging from global fashion chains to suburban Targets, also featured their own exclusive items: “The Zara in Europe has to have something different than the Hot Topic in the U.S.”
And just as Rodrigo ended each show sporting a tank top with a cheeky message customized for each city, every GUTS tour stop with multiple shows offered customized merch, including city-specific T-shirts and unique concert artwork designed in conjunction with local female artists. Rodrigo and Bravado approached the posters (shown below) as the ultimate collectible item — and once word got out about them early in the live run, fans started arriving to shows hours early to hit the merch booth.
“Is it logistically challenging? Sometimes, yes,” Young admits. “But it’s offset by the passion. You’re helping build a relationship with a fan in a way that they can’t really get anywhere else.”
This story appears in the Oct. 26, 2024, issue of Billboard.
At most huge pop tours, there’s a moment when shrieking fans reach a true fever pitch — when the lights dim right before the show begins, or when the intro to the artist’s biggest hit kicks in, or during the break before the encore. All of those happened at Olivia Rodrigo’s first arena tour — but her favorite part of the show was when those eardrum-rattling cries were, in fact, mad as hell.
“When we play ‘all-american bitch,’ ” Rodrigo tells Billboard, “there’s a part at the end of the song where I ask the audience to think about something that pisses them off and then tell them to scream about it when the lights go off.” On the opener to her 2023 album, GUTS, Rodrigo juxtaposes folksy, facetious calm in the verses with enraged pop-punk in the refrain as she lays out society’s double standards for young women before unleashing a piercing wail. For nearly a hundred nights this year, the singer-songwriter has closed her main set by adding her own scream to an arena already full of them. “It’s definitely cathartic for me,” she says, “and I hope it is for the audience as well.”
The same could be said of the entire GUTS tour, where Rodrigo’s fans worldwide found the space to release their pent-up energy, as well as their excitement about one of the decade’s biggest new superstars. After bursting into the spotlight in 2021 with her debut album, Sour, and its No. 1 smashes “drivers license” and “good 4 u,” the former Disney+ TV star won the Grammy Award for best new artist in 2022 and quickly ascended to pop’s A-list. Yet the 2022 tour supporting Sour primarily played theaters, had to navigate lingering COVID-19 concerns and catered to a limited number of international markets, as Rodrigo, then 19, found her sea legs as a live performer.
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Two years later, the rock-fueled GUTS became another commercial triumph: Lead single “vampire” also topped the Billboard Hot 100, and the album scored one of 2023’s 10 biggest debut weeks. And this time, Rodrigo was prepared for arena audiences. The GUTS tour featured more than double the number of dates as her Sour trek while traveling to four continents (South America will become the fifth in March 2025) and grossed $186.6 million, according to Billboard Boxscore — even with its 1.4 million tickets sold at an average price of $128.81, in line with price-conscious acts like Coldplay and P!nk, and less than that of several major pop arena shows.
As for the show itself, “I actually made GUTS with the concert in mind,” Rodrigo says. “It’s so much fun to play songs that are more driving and heavy. I had a great time performing that aspect of the show every night.” Here’s how it all went down.
In her dressing room backstage.
Sami Drasin
‘She Knew Exactly What It Was That She Wanted’
As GUTS came together, so did plans for an accompanying tour that amplified every aspect of Rodrigo’s previous live run — bigger venues, more countries — all guided by a more defined point of view from the superstar at its center.
Aleen Keshishian (co-manager, Lighthouse Management + Media founder/CEO): Olivia had creative tour ideas when she was still writing GUTS, even before we had signed a deal with Live Nation or hired anyone for the tour. She already had visual references, voice notes, images.
Zack Morgenroth (co-manager, Lighthouse Management + Media partner): That gave us a lot of time to plan, and put together the right team, and get the show right.
Jason Danter (tour production manager): I connected with Zack and Aleen in March 2023; at that point, I was deep into getting the Beyoncé [Renaissance] tour up and running. I met Olivia when she came to the Beyoncé show at SoFi Stadium [in Inglewood, Calif.].
Tarik Mikou (creative director, Moment Factory): We’ve been working with Olivia for a while — we did her first live TV performance [on Saturday Night Live] and did the Sour tour, so I was really happy to get a call back for the GUTS tour.
Melissa Garcia (choreographer): They called me in for the Sour tour, and Olivia and I really meshed. A trusting environment [and] being able to have back-and-forth conversations is so important, especially when it comes to movement and putting artists in vulnerable situations.
Jared Braverman (senior vp of touring, Live Nation): It was very clear from initial conversations that the goal of this tour was to be global — to get to markets that Olivia had never been to and continue to grow by not just focusing on major cities. [Olivia] is massive everywhere. That’s a challenging thing to navigate — making time and space for all of these markets.
Morgenroth: The Sour tour was her first time out on the road and was a huge underplay, given the success of the album.
Dave Tamaroff (partner, WME): Her last tour could have been in arenas, based on everything she had going on.
Michelle An (president/head of creative strategy, Interscope Geffen A&M): There were a lot of conversations about [arenas] on the last tour, and ultimately, Olivia was the final decision-maker — she felt like she needed to do the theater run to get to know the fans in a more intimate way.
Sami Drasin
Morgenroth: There was so much demand from fans this time around that Live Nation said to us that arenas now felt like an underplay — we probably could have done stadiums everywhere. That being said, there was so much preparation for an arena tour: choosing each venue, making sure we had a good cadence for her. We tended to do only four shows in a week and never three shows in a row.
Tamaroff: We were surgical in our approach to the routing.
Morgenroth: Olivia cares so deeply about the fan experience, and that was also so key in the pricing of the tickets, which could have been priced for so much more. Everything, from having the Silver Star program — where fans could get a limited number of tickets everywhere around the arena for something like $20 — to looking at the landscape of touring artists and trying to price our tickets somewhere in the middle of them, was very intentional.
Keshishian: [Silver Star] was something that Coldplay had first done with Live Nation. Jared Braverman suggested it and Olivia loved it.
Braverman: [Pricing] takes a level of restraint, where you look at what you can do versus what you should do. You’ve got a young audience that’s very connected to Olivia, and we wanted to make this tour accessible for them.
Keshishian: We spent a lot of money on this tour, [but] we were incredibly judicious, going over every single line item in the budget to make sure we were spending money on the things that mattered to Olivia.
Garcia: Olivia is the captain of the ship — right from the very beginning, she knew exactly what it was that she wanted.
Mikou: We had like, 15 meetings, in Zoom and in person. She had reference boards on Pinterest. She would show us an image and be like, “I would love something like that in the show,” and give us these leads.
An: We definitely wanted fans to get to know the album. It wasn’t straight from the album release [in September 2023] into the tour [which began in February 2024].
Heather Picchiottino (costume designer): Olivia’s songwriting progression from Sour to GUTS felt very raw and up-front, so we wove punk rock through [the tour’s production].
Olivia Rodrigo: I tried to make the concert feel like my own spin on a rock show. My dream was for people to jump and scream and be all sweaty by the end.
Mikou: When you get to the dress rehearsals and start seeing the ideas pushed forward — we knew we had something special with this show.
The band.
Sami Drasin
Sami Drasin
‘It’s So Much Bigger in Every Way’
When the GUTS tour kicked off at Acrisure Arena in Palm Springs, Calif., on Feb. 23, Rodrigo unveiled a multi-act, visually striking stage show with dancing, wailing guitars and even a giant, suspended crescent moon for her to sit on while circling the audience.
Daisy Spencer (touring guitarist): We rehearsed so much leading up to the kickoff. We were so ready and eager to finally perform the show in front of people who were hearing it for the first time.
Garcia: Instead of reaching a few thousand people, she was in a much larger environment — which puts a lot more pressure on her.
Keshishian: There’s no comparison between theaters and arenas, in terms of prep.
Spencer: It’s so much bigger in every way. The energy on the Sour tour was palpable, like we were beginning something very exciting and everyone in the room could feel it. But I couldn’t have ever imagined what the GUTS tour would be like.
Rodrigo: An arena feels wildly different than a theater to me.
Garcia: One of the big notes that I would say [to Olivia] was “Invite the audience in”: Open your chest up, allow them in. And she absolutely did that. Between the Sour tour and this tour, she is absolutely way more comfortable in her skin.
Picchiottino: Olivia had so many iconic looks on the Sour tour, and some of the detailing in them were bows or little ruffles or tulle fabric. We really contrasted that with GUTS, with references to punk rock through clean, ’90s, minimal silhouettes, made out of fabrics that were metal mesh jewelry as opposed to a tissue fabric.
Mikou: We worked on creating four acts in the show. We start really strong with an energetic vibe, but we also go into her vocal range early on with “vampire” and “drivers license.” And then in the second act, we embark on a visual journey with dancers.
The dancers.
Sami Drasin
Keshishian: In terms of choreography, she didn’t want it to feel like a traditional pop show where the dancers can sometimes overpower the music. I think the dancers are only in six numbers.
Danter: It’s primarily a younger audience that wants to see her and hear her, so it doesn’t have to be overly complicated visually.
Garcia: We wanted to create a visceral reaction from her fans, and for Olivia, a rock approach was extremely important, so she wasn’t quite sure if she wanted to use dancers. We came up with utilizing the dancers in a very unique way to match her creative intention.
Mikou: And then in the third act, she’s flying on the moon.
Keshishian: From the very first conversation we had with her, she said, “I’d love to fly on a moon over my audience.”
Mikou: We had about 60 stars all around to create this immersive vibe in the arena, and the moon was on a 260-foot linear flying track and was a light box as well.
Garcia: Riding around the venue on the moon — that was another way for her to feel like she really gave every single person her time.
Mikou: That act has these big visual moments, but it’s also really simple and elegant at times, like “making the bed,” where’s she rising alone on a lift, surrounded by fans and their iPhone lights.
Keshishian: And then you have these beautiful acoustic moments where she’s just with Daisy [who’s playing] guitar at the edge of the thrust, and it’s just about the lyrics and her voice.
Spencer: That was all Olivia’s idea, and I feel so honored to sit next to her while we all have a giant group therapy session together on “happier” and “favorite crime.” I’m almost on the verge of tears when we finish that section because it’s such a beautiful feeling to hear everyone singing along with us.
Mikou: We ended with the punk-rock vibe in the fourth act, exploding everything at the end with the full band and fire on the screens.
Picchiottino: I think my favorite moment is the start of act four, when the chaos comes into the show. Olivia enters in this red romper in this foil fabric, and with the color of the lighting, it just signals this incredible energy.
Mikou: My personal favorite moment is probably “obsessed.” She gets on the plexiglass and starts to look at her audience, but with the camera below [the stage, feeding into the arena screens], it’s just such a strong image. That’s Olivia 2.0: so rock’n’roll, so much guitar, so much attitude.
Danter: Olivia turned 21 a couple of days before opening night, and as somebody with such short touring experience, she’s very, very professional.
Sami Drasin
Sami Drasin
Keshishian: She gets to the venue every single day six hours early. She practices the piano, she does vocal warmups, she does cardio. She does her sound check before literally every show, even on multiple nights in the same venue, which very few artists do.
Danter: Most artists don’t get that discipline until they’ve got a number of tours under their belt. But by [the opener in] Palm Springs, we were all like, “We’ve got nothing to worry about here.”
Rodrigo: The first dozen shows or so, it was a big adjustment for me, energywise. I had to really learn how to look up and take in the space. You definitely perform differently when you’re performing to that many people.
Danter: And now she’s an arena headliner, and it’s as if she’s been doing it for a long, long time.
‘These Gatherings Have Become Like a Ritual’
As Rodrigo traveled North America in early spring, Europe before summer, North America (again) in July and August, and Asia in early fall, fans around the world learned about the tour’s unofficial dress code, viral moments, philanthropic goals — and the superstar-in-waiting who opened its first leg.
Keshishian: Tour support is something that we talked about very early on. The Sour tour had Gracie Abrams opening, and then Chappell Roan opened in San Francisco on the last Sour date in North America.
Remi Wolf (opener, GUTS European leg): I was told that Olivia very carefully curated the openers for the show, so it was a major deal when we got the original call.
Keshishian: Olivia has this incredible knowledge of and reverence for female artists, in particular people who paved the way for her, like Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crow and Bikini Kill. Her mom introduced her to a lot of these artists, including The Breeders. I went with her to see them play at the Wiltern [in October 2023] and was so excited to meet Kim and Kelley [Deal] backstage, and they agreed to open for her in New York and L.A.
Kim Deal (singer-guitarist, The Breeders): [Olivia] has talked about how, you know, “The Breeders broke my mind — there was pre-‘Cannonball’ and there was post-‘Cannonball.’ ” And I think she likes loud guitars — in this day and age! She finds loud guitars exciting and wants to be around them.
Sami Drasin
Tamaroff: She did four shows [with The Breeders] in New York and six in Los Angeles, and she really could have done a dozen more, based on demand.
Morgenroth: [The openers] are, in part, a tribute to Olivia’s ear. She’s known Chappell for a while. She’s always thought she was an incredible artist.
Rodrigo: Having her on the first leg of the GUTS tour was so much fun. I’m inspired by her so much as an artist, but she’s also been such a good friend to me over the years and she really helped me through some of the more stressful parts of the tour.
Braverman: We all knew what a talented artist and great performer [Chappell] is and hoped that fans would be as excited as we all were for her to be joining on these shows. The initial response was positive, but it wasn’t until the tour got underway that we started to see a shift that literally grew more each and every show.
Keshishian: Chappell was a surprise guest in L.A. [in August, after opening for the tour in February and March]. People asked us if we were going to have guest performers at all six shows in L.A., and we didn’t feel that we needed surprises just for the sake of it. But having Chappell come back and seeing her perform in front of Olivia’s audience after all this time, after so much had happened [in her own career]? It was really fun.
Rodrigo: It’s been incredible to watch her get the recognition she so rightfully deserves. She’s just further proof that being unapologetically yourself always pays off.
Morgenroth: From the moment people arrived at the show, we wanted them to have a great experience, and that’s everything from the merch, where things were customized for each city, to activations outside on the [concourse] and outside of the venue, like the interactive tour bus that we put together with Interscope and partners like American Express.
An: As we continued putting out singles and videos from the album [before the tour], fans got a better idea of what to wear and how to style themselves, and then they all connected by the time the tour came.
Keshishian: It became a really fun night for fans to get dressed up in creative outfits that Olivia inspired.
Garcia: Olivia has created a very unique vocabulary, and I think that’s why songs like “love is embarrassing” became so large on social media, with people trying to learn the dance from the show.
Keshishian: Her “love is embarrassing” dance went viral, and all these kids were doing the dance with the little “L” on the forehead.
Morgenroth: There was this viral TikTok trend, “Am I Too Old To Be Here?,” that would be used at the shows because there were so many people of different ages attending. And then we have this “Dad Idea, Right?” moment, where the kids get a kick out of how many dads are enjoying the show.
Keshishian: In every city, she wore a different tank top [during the encore] that had these cheeky jokes about the city, like “Phuket, It’s Fine” in Bangkok or “Bad Idea, Innit?” in London.
Picchiottino: That was Olivia’s idea: “How fun would it be to have a new slogan for each city and make each show feel special?”
An: I think for the Livies, these gatherings have become like a ritual. They can scream at the top of their lungs about what’s bothering them and be a little more alternative or punk, but at the same time be feminine and girlie. You just see everything that Olivia stands for being celebrated.
Fans turn out in their GUTS best.
Sami Drasin
Sami Drasin
Keshishian: Before the tour began, it was important to Olivia to add a charitable component and do something that would have a lasting impact after the tour was over. That became the Fund 4 Good, and it was focused on what is important to her, which is helping women and girls. We vetted each organization in every country that Olivia toured in, and we wanted to have a very localized impact because obviously women in different countries have different needs.
Rodrigo: Being on tour [so soon] after Roe v. Wade got overturned made activism very important — especially considering I performed in many states that currently have abortion bans in place, I wanted to do everything I could to support organizations in each territory that are doing essential work in providing access to health care and other human rights.
Morgenroth: We’ve tied it beyond the tour already — she did an Erewhon smoothie, and all of the proceeds from her side were given to the fund. This is something that is going to be part of everything from here on out.
Keshishian: Olivia performed in the Philippines for the first time in October — which was a dream of hers, as a Filipino American — and she wanted to do it as a gift, so all net proceeds will go to a local charity [women’s health care organization Jhpiego] through the Fund 4 Good.
Rodrigo: Through the fund, I’ve met lots of incredible people who are making such positive changes in the world, and I’ve learned so much. I look forward to learning more and continuing to champion causes I care about.
‘She’s Revealing Another Side of Herself’
As Rodrigo wrapped the GUTS 2024 run and prepares for the Oct. 29 release of its Netflix tour film, she has snapped into focus as a new-school arena rock performer with a fastidious streak.
Danter: When you get to rehearsals and everything starts to fall into place, a lot of artists and managers go, “OK, this is the show.” As we got closer to opening night, we were still getting notes from Olivia, Zack and Aleen. It’s that search for perfection, which is refreshing.
Garcia: There was that younger vibe about her on the Sour tour, a little sillier, and on the GUTS tour, she definitely is thinking more and every detail matters more, no matter how microscopic.
Picchiottino: I’ve really enjoyed the process of refining and refining, being so specific about the tour visuals. I think I have over 60 sketches on my iPad, for five looks.
An: You could really feel that she was more confident this go-round because she understood how things worked and knew what conversations to have. She was the boss of this.
Mikou: The evolution from the last tour, it’s almost like she’s revealing another side of herself.
Sami Drasin
Braverman: In a lot of ways, it’s like a throwback rock show. I don’t think a lot of these fans had experienced anything like that.
Keshishian: Most of the band was on the Sour tour, and every member is female or nonbinary. So for all these people watching, to see them rocking out in an arena, I think it’s really powerful.
Deal: She’s very respectful of the younger members of her audience — she knows they’re there, she’s very sweet with them, and she does not talk down to them at all. There are some cusswords and there are some loud guitars, and she expects them to be where she is. And I thought that was very cool.
Keshishian: Regarding the film, there are tens of millions of people that did not get tickets to this show, and we wanted to make sure that all of Olivia’s fans had the ability to see it. So we set up 22 cameras for the last two L.A. shows, and we chose Netflix to be our partner because they have the largest global reach.
Tamaroff: Watching her prove who she is as a global superstar… she’s one of the most talented singer-songwriters on the planet already, but being able to showcase her talent as a performer, hearing people say that this was one of the best nights of their lives, that’s why we all do what we do.
Garcia: With age comes a little bit more pressure, and I think it’s coming from herself: to be better, to figure out the next challenge for herself, to see where she can break through next. She just keeps growing.
Rodrigo: I wanted to make sure that I could still connect with the audience, even in a venue as big as an arena.
Rodrigo will be honored as 2024 Touring Artist of the Year at the Billboard Live Music Summit & Awards in Los Angeles on Nov. 14.
This story appears in the Oct. 26, 2024, issue of Billboard.
This fall, two months after Venezuela’s disputed presidential election plunged the country into crisis — with Nicolás Maduro claiming victory despite overwhelming evidence he’d lost — six of the country’s most influential figures convened in Miami for what some of them considered a historic conversation.
Despite the travel challenges posed by Hurricane Helene, Danny Ocean managed to arrive from Mexico, Elena Rose made it from Italy, and the rest — Nacho, Mau y Ricky and Lele Pons — met them at a studio in Coconut Grove.
All of these artists are part of a growing wave of Venezuelan musicians who are succeeding at levels perhaps not seen since the 1980s, when stars like Oscar D’Leon, “El Puma” José Luis Rodríguez or Ricardo Montaner had successful careers outside of their home country.
Trending on Billboard
This year, there are more than 20 Latin Grammy Award nominees from Venezuela — including Elena Rose, Danny Ocean and Mau y Ricky, with multiple nods each — and a greater presence of Venezuelans on the Billboard charts. But the artists who are here today have not only stood out globally with their music — or in Lele Pons’ case, as a social media content creator — but also use their voices to speak out about the political strife in their home country, a cause close to their hearts.
Until the July election, the concert business had been a rare bright spot for Venezuela’s economy: Luis Miguel and Karol G filled stadiums in Caracas with their spectacular tours in February and March, respectively, and there were others scheduled. But an artist like Nacho, who until recently lived part time in Venezuela, has not been able to sing in public in his country since 2016, presumably for criticizing the government.
In Miami, Mau y Ricky chat animatedly with Nacho, reminiscing about better times in Venezuela. Elena Rose and Lele Pons give each other a sisterly hug. A rugged Danny Ocean arrives straight from the airport and greets everyone with a wide smile.
At 41, Nacho is the oldest of the group by a decade. He paved the way for them as a Venezuelan musician — first as part of his popular duo with Chino Miranda and later with a successful solo career — and the respect they have for him is evident. “You made us understand that it is possible to make it when things are difficult,” Danny Ocean tells him about Chino y Nacho, who achieved international fame in 2010, when there were practically no singers coming out of Venezuela.
Unlike superstars from Mexico, Colombia or Puerto Rico, who started in their countries with the support of a local industry and then went international, all, with the exception of Nacho, have built their careers outside of Venezuela, having left as children or teenagers, as in the case of Mau y Ricky, Elena Rose and Lele Pons, or right before his first release, like Danny Ocean with “Me Rehúso,” the song that put him on the map in 2016, in which he already sang about pain of emigrating leaving behind a loved one.
Today, multinational record companies practically don’t have a presence in the country, and most local artists are independently produced. “There is no industry as such, really, with a solid base in Venezuela,” Elena Rose will later explain. Gone was the boom of the ’80s, when great talents like Yordano, Frank Quintero, Karina, Kiara and more flourished nationally with the support of labels like SonoRodven and Sonográfica, as well as a law that forced radio stations to play a song by a Venezuelan artist for every song by a non-native act.
At the time of this interview, two months have passed since the consequential presidential elections of July 28, when the Venezuelan electoral authority declared Maduro the winner with 51.2% of the votes (although it has not shown proper documentation that support the results) and the opposition denounced irregularities in the count and stated that its candidate, Edmundo González, had obtained almost 70% of the votes. The demonstrations that followed turned violent due to the repression of the Armed Forces and police, with dozens of deaths and more than 2,000 detained. An arrest warrant against González has led him to seek asylum in Spain, and opposition leader María Corina Machado has been forced to take shelter.
Today, this group has gathered to speak openly about the roles they play as musicians in the context of Venezuela’s politics and society. Just before starting, Elena Rose says, “We have not prayed today.” We all hold hands and Mau does the honors, finishing with gratitude: “Thank you for allowing us and giving us this platform to talk a little more about who we are and where we come from.”
From left: Mau Montaner, Ricky Montaner, Lele Pons, Danny Ocean, Elena Rose, Nacho and Sigal Ratner-Arias photographed on Sept. 26, 2024 at Grove Studio in Miami.
Ingrid Fajardo
Nacho, since you’ve been doing this the longest, what do you feel when you see this kind of renaissance of Venezuelan musicians?
Nacho: Pride. I feel very proud when I hear from everyone wherever I am in the world, because we Venezuelans have gone through many difficulties. But something that these difficulties have left is the fact that we all feel part of the same family. Like when we met this morning, right? We felt like we were cousins or family in some way. We use the same lexicon; we almost always have stories in common with Venezuela and we feel close.
What do you think has unleashed this new wave of talent?
Nacho: The desire, the drive, the disposition, the responsibility that characterizes us as Venezuelans. And of course, I suppose that social media has played an important role and has been sort of an escape door for us in the face of the difficulties that Venezuelan talents face to be able to export their music. Because there is a need for a lot of music industry culture in Venezuela, and I believe that talent cannot be covered with a finger. When I talk about Venezuelan talents, you realize that everyone plays an instrument, everyone writes, everyone has a lot to say through their songs.
That is something that has also caught my attention, how the lyrics of Venezuelan artists tend to be very deep. They say that art is often a response to sublimation and repression.
Elena Rose: I dare say that, in this particular group of people here, what stands out is sensitivity and humanity. I feel that if we were born again, we would choose things to happen in the same way that we have experienced them. But at the same time, I think it goes much further. I think that when we make music, we do it in such an intentional way, really, so from our soul, so wanting to leave something behind, that all the sacrifices we’ve made are worth it.
Elena Rose
Mary Beth Koeth
Danny Ocean: Yes, I think that we all write based on our angle and our perspectives of the things that we have all experienced. I think art is about that, about each person writing through their eyes and sensations. I make music because I love music, I need to write.
Everyone here has publicly expressed their frustration and feelings about what a long list of organizations and governments have pointed out as electoral fraud in Venezuela, and the repression that followed the elections. Most of the comments on your social media are positive, but some have written that artists should dedicate themselves to being artists and not get involved in politics. Do you feel that artists have a duty to speak out?
Lele Pons: If it’s not us pushing people, who is going to do it? Because many times people are afraid, and because we do it or people you admire do it — if you admire Elena or Danny or Nacho and they do it and they speak for you, it also pushes you to speak. That is our power, communication, so that everyone knows what is happening, not just us [Venezuelans].
Mau: Beyond me thinking that it can generate a change or not, for me the important thing is that people … feel that Ricky and I have their backs and that we are with them. Many times, when you are going through something, what you need, beyond a voice, [is] people to hold on to so you can say, “I’m not in this alone.”
Mau Montaner
Mary Beth Koeth
Lele, you also used your enormous social media platform for an Instagram Live with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado for which Maduro later mentioned you in a speech. What did you think when all this happened?
Lele Pons: Well, I think it’s the most important thing I’ve done in my career. Because being an influencer is helping. It’s a way to be a leader. And if I can help another leader to talk to people who don’t know what is happening, because I have an audience that [is not all Venezuelans] … When I made a video [about the situation in Venezuela], I did it in Italian, I did it in English and I did it in Spanish so that everyone knows what’s happening, so that they can share, repost and use my platform, so that [María Corina Machado] would have a voice. I listen and I see what people are saying, what they tell me: “Please help me. This is going on.” And I go, “Jeez! I’m here, what can I do?” I use everything I have to help, so that people know and the world knows too.
Danny, Nacho, after the July 28 elections, you two called on the Armed Forces and police to avoid the use of violence against demonstrators. Nacho, you even said, “I promised my family, for everyone’s safety, that I would not do this again, but I can’t see what is going on in the country and stay silent.” Have you feared for your life while in Venezuela?
Nacho: The truth is, no, but not because something bad can’t happen, but because for some reason — I don’t know if it’s because I’ve had a closer encounter with God — death is something that doesn’t mortify me as much … But definitely there are people around you who may tell you, “The actions you have taken have had an impact on my stability, on my tranquility, on my integrity.” Then you start to feel guilty, because these are people that you love, that you have around. Or “Look, they took my job away because they found out I’m your cousin.” Or “They don’t want to do anything with me anymore because they know I’m your friend.” Or “They shut down my business because they saw me in a photo with you or hanging out with you.” So, more than fearing for myself, those were actually the repercussions that worried me when it came to expressing myself. But there are bigger purposes than that.
Danny Ocean
Mary Beth Koeth
Danny, you released an EP dedicated to Venezuela days before the elections, venequia., and you called on your fans who had relatives in the Armed Forces or the police to talk to them to make them see reason to avoid the use of violence. What is your message to them today?
Danny Ocean: For me, the issue of Venezuela stopped being political a long time ago. For me, it is already a humanitarian issue. We are surely in the top three countries with the most displaced people in the world … We have [almost 8] million people who have had to leave our country, leave everything, leave a life to look for a better future, and that is not right. So, why did I do venequia.? Because … eight years after having to leave Venezuela, I am still seeing the numbers [of emigrants] increasing and saying, “But nothing is happening.” And the video I made calling the families of the military, because it’s true. I mean, we need a change.
Elena Rose: And something that happens to us a lot, for example, when we arrive in another country, when a Venezuelan sees us, it is as if they see fresh water and they’re hot. It’s happened to me that someone hugs me and tells me, “I haven’t seen my dad in years, I have been separated from my children for years.” Those are the kind of things [they say that go] beyond the limit of what we can accept … What do you say to that person? Something I always do; I like to pray with them at that moment, and my message has always been to nourish faith. I really don’t want any Venezuelan to surrender without seeing their country free.
Lele Pons: Knowing that you are on the right side of history, that you go to sleep and say, “I did something good today, I am proud of my friends, of my family, of what is happening,” gives you peace. Even if you can often lose friends or followers or whatever, you don’t have to care … It’s not political. It’s for the people.
Lele Pons
Mary Beth Koeth
Elena Rose: (To Danny Ocean.) The night before [venequia.] came out, I remember that you called me, and we talked for about an hour about how you felt at the moment. And these are the things that people don’t see and don’t know…
How did you feel, Danny?
Danny Ocean: Distraught.
Elena Rose: We both did! We were like, “OK, this is going to happen, and after we cross this line, it’s going to be OK.” But at the same time, I remember telling you, “This has been in your heart for a long time and you have to say that now.” … It is a love letter to Venezuela, as is your album [Hotel Caracas] too, [Mau y Ricky], as is [our song] “Caracas en el 2000,” which at the end of the day was also what we always talked about: I want this to be a hug for Venezuelans and for Venezuela.
Mau and Ricky, speaking of Hotel Caracas, you traveled to Venezuela for the first time in many years to shoot all the videos for the album, as well as a documentary which is nominated for a Latin Grammy. You were able to reunite with Venezuela and really get to know the country.
Ricky: It was like a personal need of knowing who the f–k I am … I was 10 when I left Venezuela, and my reality of Venezuela and Caracas was different. My father [singer Ricardo Montaner] was kidnapped when I was 6, so my relationship [with Venezuela] was almost toxic. There were 20 years of fears of thinking that I was going to get there and get killed or something… So, when we started making Hotel Caracas, which is an album where we are returning to our creative beginnings as well, we realized that we needed go back to where we are from … Being able to stand up in a stadium in Argentina and say, “¡Viva Venezuela!,” and not feel that the people there would say, “Oh, how cute, they say they are from Venezuela, but they haven’t gone.” I felt imposter syndrome; I didn’t want to feel that anymore. And I got there and felt their pride in saying, “I’m so proud of what you’ve accomplished out there and how you’re representing us.” That, for us, became our motivation. So, making Hotel Caracas was literally, “How can we carry this communication on another side as well?” And our way was going back to Venezuela, making a movie, employing 200 people there, investing an absurd amount of money in the country for hope and for telling people, “Hey, what we are fighting for is worth it. Look at the people of this country. Look at the talent and that we can make an entire movie in Venezuela.”
Ricky Montaner
Mary Beth Koeth
A year ago, international artists were returning to Venezuela to play massive shows, something that had not been done in many years. You have not had the chance to do that. Do you hope that will happen for you one day?
Ricky: My biggest dream is imagining us returning to Venezuela with our people singing. Obviously now it can become very uncomfortable for us … because we have clear opinions of where we stand, so stepping on a stage and not communicating a truth is very complicated. There are real threats, there are things happening that are serious.
Danny Ocean: Look, I’m going to be very frank and excuse me, I’m going to try to choose the best words. I’m not thinking about concerts … All I want is for this to end and for us to be calm and be able to walk in peace … I’m not saying that Venezuela is not suitable for concerts; I believe that people deserve joy, I believe that people deserve to be able to enjoy [concerts]. But personally, I can’t think right now about a show in Venezuela knowing the critical situation we are in. With electricity problems, with water problems, with basic needs.
Elena Rose: There are many things that are missing in Venezuela [also] regarding the music industry. The concert is like the last thing that in theory should happen. There is no industry as such, really, with a solid base in Venezuela. There are many things that are happening with artists who are there, who have other needs than ours, who have fewer opportunities to say no, to put it that way. Unfortunately, there has not been a good education for the artists to explain to them the value of their art, that it is not OK to give away what is truly priceless, that no one should be able to say to you, “Give me [your song] and take this.” I have seen cases that hurt me a lot.
Can you give an example?
Elena Rose: Yes. There are wonderful, super talented songwriters there, and they tell them, “Look, I’ll give you 500 dollars for your song and you no longer have any power over it.” And the person who is really struggling says yes.
In Colombia, music has caused a tangible change in how the country is perceived. Do you think the same thing could happen with Venezuela?
Nacho: I think it can happen, but we need to count on the resources that Colombia has. For example, consumer platforms that generate dividends for artists through streams, through views. You see a Venezuelan artist succeeding abroad, and perhaps Venezuela does not appear as the country that consumes their music the most. If you check which are the countries that consume me the most, Mexico is No. 1 and Venezuela is 17, and it’s not that there are not more Venezuelans who follow my career than Mexicans, but that there is no industry. That’s the problem. And for there to be an industry we need to change the reality of the country, start to see what is best for us in terms of the economy so that things begin to move the way they are moving in Colombia … In our country, we are survivors, really.
Nacho
Mary Beth Koeth
Ricky: To give you an idea, on Spotify Mexico, a No.1 can be 2 million streams in a day, while in Venezuela it can be 8,000. I mean…
Everything is relative…
Danny Ocean: The numbers aren’t condensed into one place. Our numbers are scattered. So, since there is no industry to be able to concentrate the numbers in one place, in the end we are not attractive … There is great work to do.
Nacho: The thing is that our main market is not our main market … Because you say, [if] a Venezuelan is achieving this level of consumption, it is because he is conquering the world around Venezuela. So, it is not a fair fight for us. And obviously — without detracting from the wonderful talents and numbers that artists from Colombia are achieving, or our colleagues who we love and adore and follow and admire — for us it is definitely a little more difficult.
Mau: And I’ll tell you something that I find very interesting. Listening to you speak, Nacho, heals many things in me … It is beautiful to know that there are other people living the same thing as you. You know? It’s very nice to know that, damn, I’m not alone and that maybe I, a little bit foolishly, should have taken refuge with my Venezuelan colleagues before. Why do I think that is happening what’s happening with Venezuelan artists in the world right now? Precisely because we are more united than ever. I think that is the difference and that is why it is happening, because I think we are realizing something what Colombia realized a while ago. And Puerto Rico, of course. They understood that to be able to carry and take out and make people on the outside talk too — “Wow, you’re from Colombia! From where J Balvin is!” You know, that wasn’t just J Balvin, that was them grabbing each other and saying, “Hey, let’s go into this together.”
Nacho: But that’s this generation. We come from generation that was quite separated, where egos won all the time and the competition was between who is going to achieve the most things without understanding. And that is why I bring up technology, because now you can see with numbers what you can achieve through unity … Now the new generations are being trained with knowledge and education about the music industry. And it is not only motivated by unity, by knowing that together we are more, but also knowing that we are enhancing what we are doing.
Music and the arts in general have the power to help us deal with hardship. How do you feel it has helped you as artists and as people?
Ricky: Music is my great love. Music is everything to me. I don’t remember a time in my life where there was a plan B.
Elena Rose: I always say that music dedicated so many songs to me, that I can only dedicate my life to music. Through music I feel like I got to know God more, because I can’t put God into words, and I can’t put into words what I feel when I listen to music.
Lele Pons: You all are so talented, and you write music. But for me, since I was little, I used music as therapy, as a way to communicate because I didn’t talk much. I don’t talk that much in my videos either, so I put on music so that it speaks for me in my videos.
Music can change lives. Music can change hearts. Do you feel that it can help change the course of history?
Elena Rose: Wherever there is music, and someone who wants to listen to it, there is love.
Danny Ocean: Sigmund Freud said that music is to the soul what gymnastics is to the body. I very much agree with that.
Hidden up a wooded hill in the sprawling backyard of his suburban Los Angeles estate, Dijon “Mustard” McFarlane is on the tennis court, perfecting his forehand.
“I’m an extremist,” the 34-year-old producer explains as he warms up his top spin. “I play every day, sometimes two times a day.” The L.A.-born musician, who shot to prominence at 21 when he produced Tyga’s 2011 hit “Rack City,” beckons his coach to serve again. After some rallying, Mustard slices a ball that nearly hits the Billboard cameraman kneeling beneath him, trying to get a close-up shot. “Oh, sorry! Man, you’re brave for sitting there,” Mustard says.
“I play, too; it’s cool,” the photographer replies, unfazed.
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“Aight, you’re one of us,” Mustard says with a grin, pointing at the man with his racket. For a second, it feels like the sportier version of a knighting ceremony.
He may still be polishing his tennis game, but after more than a decade of making hip-hop hits, Mustard scored an indisputable ace this year, reaching his highest career peak to date as the beat-maker behind Kendrick Lamar’s Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Not Like Us” — the biggest hit in Lamar’s spring beef with Drake. On the track, which cemented Lamar’s victory in the court of public opinion, the Pulitzer Prize winner is at his most venomous, using Mustard’s pop earworm of an instrumental as a Trojan horse for accusing Drake of being an Atlanta “colonizer” who steals sounds from local rappers and to resurface the serious allegations of Drake’s supposed predilection for underage girls.
But for such a hate-fueled anthem, “Not Like Us” also proved to be a uniting force for the world of West Coast hip-hop — unity by way of a common enemy. “When I was growing up, I watched 2Pac, ‘California Love,’ Dr. Dre, Snoop, the Death Row days,” says Mustard, who was born and raised in L.A.’s Crenshaw neighborhood. “It’s like being a part of that again, but in this day and age.”
The release of “Not Like Us” did plenty to galvanize the West Coast scene on its own, but Lamar further cemented its place in hip-hop history when he hosted The Pop Out — Ken & Friends, a Juneteenth concert at the L.A.-area Kia Forum. It was a show that was so sacred to L.A. natives that rival gangsters danced and sang to “Not Like Us” practically hand in hand onstage. To warm everyone up, Lamar enlisted Mustard to DJ a bevy of hits. But before literally popping out from under the stage, Mustard, a lifelong DJ typically confident in front of crowds, found himself on the verge of a panic attack. “I was nervous as s–t,” he confesses. “It just didn’t feel real.”
Aaron Sinclair
It was a full-circle moment for the producer, whose wide-ranging résumé — encompassing rap, R&B, EDM and pop — also includes hits like 2 Chainz’ “I’m Different,” Jeremih and YG’s “Don’t Tell ’Em,” Tinashe’s “2 On,” Ella Mai’s “Boo’d Up,” Lil Dicky and Chris Brown’s “Freaky Friday” and Rihanna’s “Needed Me.” “When I was a teenager, I’d write with YG in Inglewood [Calif.]. He used to live right across the street [from The Forum]. I made ‘Rack City’ across the street from there,” says Mustard, shaking his head in disbelief.
To start his set, Mustard walked up to his turntables, appearing calm and collected, even though he secretly wasn’t. After he fiddled with the knobs, the audio of a viral TikTok began: “The real takeaway from the Drake and Kendrick beef,” the voice of TikToker @lolaokola said, “is that it’s time for a DJ Mustard renaissance.” The crowd began to roar as the audio continued: “When every song on the radio was on a Mustard beat, we were a proper country. It was happier times. The closest we have ever been to true unity.”
After “Rack City” became a smash in 2012, the artist-producer then known as DJ Mustard seemed unstoppable. There was something about his simple formula of “a bassline, clap and it’s over… maybe an 808,” as he puts it, plus that catchy producer tag “Mustard on the beat, hoe!” that attracted pop purists and hip-hop heads alike, making his work go off both at the club and on the radio.
“Being a DJ, being in front of people and parties, I know what makes people move,” Mustard tells me between volleys with his coach. Every element of a Mustard track is done with clear intention to propel the song, not to clutter it. “I always used to tell Ty [Dolla $ign], ‘Man, you’re so musical, bro, but that s–t does not matter if they can’t hear what’s going on,’ ” Mustard recalls. “Simplicity is key for me and bridging the gap between that and the real musical s–t — but it still needs to be ratchet enough to be fun, too.”
Aaron Sinclair
He learned to use turntables from one of the best: his uncle and father figure, Tyrei “DJ Tee” Lacy, an L.A. DJ who frequently soundtracked parties for Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and other local legends. Later in the day, I follow Mustard to Lacy’s restaurant, the District by GS on Crenshaw Boulevard. “This is where they got into it in Boyz n the Hood!” exclaims Mustard, gesturing to the street in front of the restaurant.
As he walks through the staff entrance and the kitchen, he daps up each person, his diamond-encrusted chain with a Jesus Christ pendant swinging as he moves. He sits down in a corner booth, and Lacy comes to join him. Mustard orders the usual: fried catfish. “Mustard as a child is the same as Mustard as an adult,” Lacy says. “He always cared about his craft — always.”
When Mustard was growing up, Lacy would often bring him along to his DJ gigs. One time, when he brought his nephew to a party in the Pacific Palisades, he had an ulterior motive. “I actually had [intentionally] double-booked myself,” Lacy says. “ ‘Don’t leave me,’ Mustard said. But I was like, ‘Oh, you’ll be all right. Just play that and play this, and you got it.’ ” Three hours later, he got a call from Mustard: “Come get me! The party was so cracking, they busted all the windows!”
From then on, music always paid the bills for Mustard, and he became the hottest DJ at Dorsey High School in Crenshaw. Within a few years, he would be one of the hottest producers in the world.
Amid the height of his early success, Mustard remembers a conversation he had with another radio-defining producer: Timbaland. “We were talking about the music industry,” he recalls. “He’s just like, ‘I want you to know, man, you’re not going to always be hot.’ ” Even though Mustard says he never let his ego get out of hand during those first years of success — his mother made sure of that — the caveat felt unfathomable at the time.
By the end of 2014, just two years after the peak of “Rack City,” Mustard seemingly had it all: 23 Hot 100 producer credits already, a new mansion on a hill outside the city, beautiful jewelry, even his own line of DJ Mustard mustard bottles. (Actually, he regrets that last one: “That was not an ‘I made it’ moment; that was a dumbass moment.”) Still, Timbaland warned him, “There’s going to be a time when nobody picks up your [calls] — soak this all in, and when that time comes, save your money… don’t panic,’ ” Mustard recalls. “And then it became a thing. And I was just like, ‘Ah, this is what [Tim] was talking about,’ and thank God I was ready for it.”
Mustard photographed September 16, 2024 at Johnnie’s Pastrami in Culver City, Calif.
Aaron Sinclair
As the decade wore on, his number of Hot 100-charting songs each year declined, from notching 14 in 2014 alone to between one and five each subsequent year. Still, a colder period for Mustard was better than what most musicians can ever dream of. And as time wore on, Mustard made the conscious choice to evolve. He focused on developing himself as not just a producer, but an artist in his own right. He started his own record label, 10 Summers, which launched the career of Grammy-winning R&B singer Ella Mai.
“I think with any producer, the ultimate goal is to break an artist. I believe that’s the hardest thing for a producer to do… I’m always for the challenge,” he says. It’s certainly something he has proved an aptitude for time and again, producing career-breakthrough tracks for artists like Mai, Tinashe, YG, Tyga and Roddy Ricch.
“You can’t be hot forever,” Mustard explains. “Even the best in the game… You have to reinvent yourself. And that’s what I did.”
Every hip-hop fan remembers where they were when “Not Like Us” dropped. Released the day after two other Lamar dis tracks, “6:16 in LA” and “Meet the Grahams,” no one saw it coming — not even the beat’s producers.
Mustard, for his part, was “on [my] way to a baby shower. Somebody sent me a message, and I was just like, ‘Oh, s–t,’ and then I hung up in their face, and I was just playing it over and over.” When he arrived at the baby shower, he could already hear the neighbors blasting it from over the fence.
Fellow “Not Like Us” beat-maker Sean Momberger was getting his car towed by AAA after a flat tire. “My friend texted me that Kendrick had dropped again,” he says. “I clicked on the link and heard our beat, and I was just shocked. I FaceTimed Mustard, and we were yelling and laughing.”
Mustard and Momberger were never in the studio with Lamar (or Sounwave, the song’s third credited producer and a longtime collaborator of the rapper) to make “Not Like Us.” The song started with Momberger sending Mustard some sample ideas and Mustard doing what he does best — “infectious” and “catchy” production with “a simplistic beauty driven by bouncy drums and West Coast undertone,” as Momberger describes it. But while the track stays true to the Mustard sound everyone knows, it also embodies how he has iterated it over the years to be fuller and more sample-driven.
Mustard texted it, along with about six other beats, to Lamar — who said nothing but reacted with a “heart.” Though he wasn’t in the room with Lamar this time, he had been in the studio with him before, years ago. Once, he says, Terrace Martin, a core musician on Lamar’s 2015 album, To Pimp a Butterfly, took him to one of that project’s sessions. “I remember seeing that s–t and being like, ‘Whoa, that’s a lot going on.’ With me and YG [Mustard’s most frequent collaborator], we didn’t have that many musicians around. That was my first time seeing s–t like that. Thundercat was there, Sounwave was there. Terrace was there… I knew [that album] was going to be some crazy s–t, but I didn’t know it would be like that.”
Though he couldn’t have predicted the impact To Pimp a Butterfly would have on culture, Mustard says he has a good intuition for hit records. “I don’t want to say I’m always right, but I’m pretty much on the money,” he notes. Mai agrees: “Mustard’s greatest strength is his ear.”
Aaron Sinclair
For all his success producing radio-ready singles, however, one-off collaborations don’t move Mustard like they used to. “I can do stuff like ‘Not Like Us’ every day,” he says. “I can do that with my eyes closed… In my next phase, I’m not doing singles,” he insists, though he does admit he would do “Not Like Us” again “100,000 times” without hesitation. “I’ll do [a single for an artist] if I can have the whole album or the majority of the album, but other than that, I don’t get anything out of that.”
It’s why he dropped his own album, Faith of a Mustard Seed, this summer, which features Ricch, Travis Scott (whose “Parking Lot” with Mustard went to No. 17 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart), Ty Dolla $ign, Future, Young Thug and more hip-hop heavyweights. Mustard reckons the album (named after a suggestion by his late friend Nipsey Hussle) took him five years to perfect — the equivalent of a lifetime in popular music, especially hip-hop. During that time, rap went from being constantly atop the Hot 100 to weeks, months and even a whole year passing without a rap No. 1. Top players like Thug and Gunna went to jail; Nipsey, Young Dolph and Takeoff died; Ye went rogue. New faces like Yeat and 4batz popularized new styles; Afrobeats and reggaetón seeped into the American rap mainstream.
Still, Mustard believes Faith of a Mustard Seed warranted the wait. “There’s nothing on that album that I feel like in 10 years I’ll say, ‘Damn, I wish I did that better,’ ” he says. “I hope it teaches kids that you can take your time and do the right thing. You don’t have to rush it out. I think [the industry] today is just so fast-paced.”
Mustard hopes the perfectionism that drove both Faith of a Mustard Seed and “Not Like Us,” including Lamar’s own multifaceted bars, will encourage artists to “really rap now… I think now it’s opened the door for … the real rappers that love rap music and lyrics and the double, triple, quadruple entendres and all that s–t cool again.”
Aaron Sinclair
And he’s hoping — or rather, manifesting, sometime between waking up and hitting the tennis court — that this dedication to his craft will yield a Grammy next year. “I definitely speak it into existence every morning,” he says with a laugh. “The highest reward we can get as musicians is a Grammy. I know that people talk like it’s not a thing, but it actually is. It’s like Jayson Tatum right now saying, ‘I don’t want to win the NBA Finals.’ Like, if that’s the case, then go play at Venice Beach.”
Regardless of whether he takes home a trophy on Feb. 2, he knows he has something monumental to look forward to precisely a week later, when Lamar headlines the Super Bowl halftime show — where “Not Like Us” will no doubt get its biggest showcase yet. “Of course I’m going,” he says. “I’m going to go and be in a box and watch… I just can’t wait… I might shed a tear!”
Yet despite surreal moments like that, Mustard says his life is “still the same” as it always was. “I don’t take no for an answer. I’m persistent. Every day, I’m doing something that has to do with the journey of trying to get to where I’m trying to go. At this point, I don’t know how far I can go. I don’t think there’s a limit. I’ve always been like that. That’s how I got ‘Rack City’ — just waking up every day, making beats… and hoping.”
This story also appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
