State Champ Radio Cover Story
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The show was going so well. An hour into the set from Kx5 — the electronic music supergroup of genre leaders Kaskade and deadmau5 — it was, as intended, a dazzling feat of light, sound, video and the emotional punch of those elements combined. Then the power went out, and Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum — and the 46,000 fans assembled there on that drizzly night in December — were thrust into silent darkness.
From the front of the house, deadmau5’s longtime manager, Dean Wilson, sprinted backstage — where, he says, he found “everybody running around like headless chickens, screaming, ‘Generator’s on fire!’ ”
The generator was not supposed to be on fire. However, it had turned itself off due to overheating and was emanating smoke. Its programming had then instructed three backup generators to also shut down to avoid igniting the 17,000 gallons of diesel fuel inside. Frantic staffers worked to salvage what had been billed as a landmark live performance — one that cost “almost seven figures to design and over seven figures to execute,” says Kaskade’s manager, Ryan Henderson.
Success seemed unlikely. “When you have a major failure like that, normally something then doesn’t work,” Wilson says. “Something’s not rebooted properly. Some configuration can’t restart because it has crashed so badly.” But when deadmau5 hit the button that would, in theory, restart the show, restart it did. The performance, co-produced by Live Nation affiliate and powerhouse electronic music promoter Insomniac Events alongside both artists’ teams, set a record for the biggest ticketed global headliner dance event of 2022.
Read Kx5’s full Billboard cover story here. Kx5, presented by Carnival, will perform at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW, on March 18. Penske Media Corp. is the largest shareholder of SXSW; its brands are official media partners of SXSW.
Image Credit: Austin Hargrave
Givenchy sweater.
Image Credit: Austin Hargrave
On Kaskade: Dior jacket, Oscar & Frank eyewear. On deadmau5: Amiri jacket
Image Credit: Austin Hargrave
On Kaskade: Dior jacket and sneakers, Mouty pants, Oscar & Frank eyewear. On deadmau5: Amiri jacket, pants, and sneakers.
Image Credit: Austin Hargrave
Amiri jacket.
Image Credit: Austin Hargrave
On Kaskade: Louis Vuitton jacket. On deadmau5: Amiri jacket.
Grooming by Christina Guerra. On-Site Production by Kayla Landrum.
Feid, presented by Samsung Galaxy, will perform at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW on March 17.
A leaked album was the best thing that ever happened to Feid.
In September 2022, the Colombian singer-songwriter was headlining three consecutive sold-out hometown dates at Plaza de Toros La Macarena — Medellín’s famed bullfighting ring and concert venue — where he performed for more than 30,000 people over the course of the three shows. He was due for some much-needed rest the following Monday. But that never happened.
Instead, the artist born Salomón Villada Hoyos, 30, who also goes by the nickname Ferxxo, received an agitated call from his manager, Luis Villamizar, with the news that his album, Feliz Cumpleaños Ferxxo — scheduled for a December release — had, without their knowledge, arrived much earlier, in the form of a 39-minute voice note first leaked as a link on the internet.
“All my spirits dropped,” he recalls today, still sounding disappointed. “It was incomplete. It was a mess, and I felt rage — but that feeling lasted about half an hour. After that, I talked to my mom to see how we could take advantage of the situation and thankfully, we reacted quickly.”
With help from his team, producers and record label, Universal Music Latino (UML), he took matters into his own hands, working relentlessly for 24 hours to release an album that wasn’t even mixed or mastered yet. Because all 15 tracks had been leaked, Feid changed the title to Feliz Cumpleaños Ferxxo Te Pirateamos El Álbum (Happy Birthday Feid We Leaked the Album) and had his sister, who’s also his longtime graphic designer, create new cover art that acknowledged how the songs had ultimately spread: Though Universal quickly took down the initial leaked link, the audio had already been shared to DropBox and then sent wide through a chain of WhatsApp conversations. (Six of the 15 tracks had already been released as singles at the time of the leak.)
On Sept. 14, just two days after it leaked, the album — powered by syncopated perreos, reggaetón swagger and chill house beats — officially came out. Feid remains unsure of who leaked the set and why. But that’s now beside the point: Feliz Cumpleaños Ferxxo earned him his first top 10 entry on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart, surging from No. 25 to No. 8 in its second week, on the chart dated Oct. 1, 2022. It concurrently became his first entry on the Billboard 200 and peaked at No. 5 on Latin Rhythm Albums. “Normal,” the set’s fourth single, also became Feid’s first Hot Latin Songs entry as a soloist, following five alongside stars like J Balvin, Nicky Jam and Karol G. The track peaked at No. 1 on the Latin Rhythm Airplay chart on Jan. 21.
To maintain momentum, Feid and his team made another swift change of plans, deciding to rebook a previously in-the-works club tour — his first headlining U.S. run — to theaters to reflect his rapidly growing popularity, and to execute the task, from booking to opening night, in less than a month. Hans Schafer, senior vp of global touring at Live Nation, the tour’s promoter, told Billboard at the time that, like the album’s assembly, “everyone worked really quickly to turn this around.” Tickets to the 14-date stint, which began Oct. 13 in Atlanta and wrapped Nov. 25 in Los Angeles, sold out in 24 hours.
Feid photographed on January 12, 2023 at Proper Studio in Miami.
Devin Christopher
Feid has always had a clear creative vision concerning his music, which laces innovative urban beats with the essence of early-2000s reggaetón and lyrics about love. But his biggest barrier to achieving solo mainstream success for himself was trusting that intuition, rather than worrying about others’ opinions. It took years, but Feid finally realized the importance of being faithful to his core identity. And while the album leak was jarring and unplanned, the foundation he laid over more than a decade of making music allowed him to seize the opportunity and explode in popularity. With the tour, his ability to pivot quickly kept yielding successes.
“It was very special to go to the shows and see people dressed as me with green clothes, white glasses and even a gold tooth,” Feid gushes. “After the first show, I told my team, ‘Look carefully at this stage because, God willing, we will never have people as close as we do now. We will have them further and further away.” In other words, Feid expects to be playing U.S. arenas and stadiums before long.
For a teenage Feid, even playing the theaters of his fall tour would have been unimaginable.
As a seventh grader at Colegio San José de La Salle in Medellín, he discovered his passion for performing during a school talent show. Singing Daddy Yankee’s “Rompe (Remix)” with a group of friends as The Three Fathers, “I liked seeing how people were enjoying something I was doing,” he recalls. “I was shaking with nerves, but when I started to sing it all went away.”
That performance and others like it, known as colegios (school tours), are common for aspiring teen artists in Colombia, and they eventually allowed Feid to connect with Alejandro Ramírez Suárez, who would become Latin Grammy-winning producer Sky Rompiendo — and Feid’s longtime collaborator alongside Mosty, Wain, and Jowan and Rolo of production duo Icon Music.
By their early 20s, both Feid (whose moniker sounds like “faith” when spoken in Spanish) and Sky were making names for themselves in their hometown. Feid had already independently released singles such as “Bailame” and “Morena,” both of which gained traction in Latin America; Sky was the mastermind behind J Balvin’s first No. 1 chart hit, “Ay Vamos,” which peaked in March 2015.
Around then, Feid “unintentionally” fell into songwriting after Colombian artist Shako asked if he could record a song Feid had written for himself, called “Robarte Hoy.” “I was still new in the industry and didn’t even know writing for other artists was a thing,” he recalls (a year later, Shako invited him on the remix). One of the first popular tracks Feid wrote was Reykon’s “Secretos,” which ultimately led him to work with Balvin as a writer on the 2016 hit “Ginza,” nabbing Feid an ASCAP Latin award along the way.
“I started taking him to the studio when we had camps for Balvin because he has always had great chemistry,” Sky remembers. “Yes, he helped us write ‘Ginza,’ but the song where he proved himself as a songwriter was ‘Sigo Extrañándote,’ ” another track for Balvin that showcased Feid’s heartfelt, relatable lyricism. As Balvin tells Billboard, “He always brought something fresh to the table, and I always let him know of his potential.”
Suddenly, Feid’s “reggaetón music with pop lyrics” had made him the hip, on-demand songwriter that artists from Thalía to Ximena Sariñana to CNCO wanted to work with. In 2016, he signed an exclusive worldwide publishing administration deal with Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) through management and publishing company Dynasty Music Group, helmed by his then-manager, Daniel Giraldo, and Juan Pablo Piedrahita. Soon after, he signed his first record deal with In-Tu Linea, a label then under the Universal Music Latin Entertainment (UMLE) umbrella that was launched by industry veteran Jorge Pino and his longtime colleague Fidel Hernández as COO. Although “many labels showed their interest,” Feid says, Pino and Hernández were the only ones to make the “very special” gesture of meeting him in person.
Feid made his major-label debut with the Balvin-featuring “Que Raro,” which became his first Billboard chart entry, debuting and peaking at No. 26 on Latin Digital Song Sales and peaking at No. 16 on Latin Rhythm Airplay in 2016.
“Today, I highly value that moment that Balvin gave me — the spotlight in which he put me, the type of song it was,” he says. “It was super cool for my career, for my life, for everything I have been building. There are still people who tell me that they followed me or discovered me with ‘Que Raro.’ ”
Soon after, Feid collaborated with artists such as Maluma and Nacho; released his debut album, Así Como Suena, in 2017; received a Latin Grammy nomination for his next one (2019’s 19); and joined “The Avengers,” a collective of urbano artists that included Dalex, Dímelo Flow, Justin Quiles, Lenny Tavárez and Sech and released club bangers such as “Cuaderno” and “Quizas.” Around then, he also stopped writing music for others.
“I needed to find myself as an artist,” he says. Though Feid was gaining popularity writing for big acts, he hadn’t yet discovered his own strong artistic identity, and admits he was following the standards he observed in the industry by being “an average singer releasing average music.” As other Colombian artists of his generation such as Maluma, Karol G and Balvin skyrocketed to stardom, he wondered, “When will it be my turn?”
Then one day, after more than a decade of work, it clicked.
“I decided to take an arepa with cheese in my hand and say that I was paisa,” he proudly states, referring to the local word for someone from Medellín. “I began to be more faithful to who I am and my Colombian roots. At that moment, I opened the coolest door that I’ve ever opened, which was finding my identity and introducing El Ferxxo. It took me a long time to realize that this was what I had to do to really, really connect with people.”
Feid photographed on January 12, 2023 at Proper Studio in Miami.
Devin Christopher
Putting his new alter ego to the test, Ferxxo (pronounced Fercho) began incorporating local Medallo slang into his lyrics, like mor (love), que chimba (how cool) and parchar (hanging out) and replacing letters in his titles with X’s to pique curiosity.
It worked. The Latin Grammys nominated 2020’s Ferxxo (Vol. 1: M.O.R.) and its Justin Quiles-featuring single “Porfa” for best urban music album and best reggaetón performance, respectively. On the strength of an all-star remix featuring Balvin, Maluma, Nicky Jam and Sech, “Porfa” earned Feid his first No. 1 hit on both the Latin Airplay and Latin Rhythm Airplay charts.
As he established his musical identity, Feid recognized that creating a visual one was similarly important. He adopted the color green (most often, a lime shade) as his trademark, starting in early 2022 with the release of the single “Castigo”: Its cover art features a green monster truck and in the music video, Feid is clad in all green.
“It reminded me of the time when I was a huge fan of artists and wanted all the merch that had to do with them. I try to put myself in the shoes of a fan so that the people who follow me have a better chance of feeling closer to me,” he says. Now, he always finds a way to wear it — the color of growth and new beginnings.
As 2021 progressed, it seemed like everything was falling into place for Feid. He inked a worldwide publishing agreement with UMPG, fully transitioned from In-Tu Linea to UML under president Angel Kaminsky’s team and opened Karol G’s Bichota U.S. arena tour.
Still, it wasn’t all smooth sailing — and in fact, his month on the road with Karol was a tough wake-up call. “I feel that 90% of people saw my show for the first time,” he says. “Coming from being a big deal in Colombia and being at the top of the charts to doing a show in Sacramento [Calif.] and having only five people yell ‘Wooo!’ was challenging for me.”
Feid photographed on January 12, 2023 at Proper Studio in Miami.
Devin Christopher
Then, shortly after returning home, a motorcycle accident left Feid with a severely injured left knee that required a two-month recovery. But instead of wallowing in his pain (or just kicking back to watch Netflix), Feid got to work on his next album.
“There were moments of doubt and complications,” says Jesús López, chairman/CEO of Universal Music Latin America & Iberian Peninsula. “It was bad luck for his leg but good luck for his head because he was able to be calmer for a while and work more on the creativity of his album Feliz Cumpleaños Ferxxo.”
Hunkered down with his leg in a cast, Feid organically started engaging more with fans on TikTok. He would flirtatiously react to viral videos in his suave Medallo, create simple dance challenges for his music, tell jokes and, most importantly, preview tracks he was working on, like “Normal.” On TikTok, he realized, it was easier to promote himself (and go viral) than through an interview with a major news platform, and it became one of his biggest marketing tools, attracting new fans outside Colombia in places such as the United States, Mexico and Spain. (Feid now has more than 7.5 million TikTok followers.)
But it wasn’t until two trips to Mexico in 2022 that Feid truly noticed the effects of his social media presence. When he arrived in May for a festival in Monterrey, thousands of fans greeted him at the InterContinental Presidente hotel in Mexico City, prompting Feid and his team to schedule shows of his own in the country. In August, the three resulting headlining gigs — at Auditorio Nacional (Mexico City), Auditorio Citibanamex (Monterrey) and Auditorio Telmex (Guadalajara) — sold almost 20,000 tickets and grossed nearly $1 million, according to Billboard Boxscore. Previously, Feid had only performed in Mexico as a surprise guest for other artists.
“I feel that everything has been gradual in my career, but this was definitely an alert to us that something was happening,” he says with a laugh. “I still don’t want to realize what’s happening. I just want to keep making my music, be with my family, eat frijolitos (beans) and relax, but I can say that Mexico was that moment when we all wondered, ‘What’s going on?’ ”
Today, speaking with me in Miami’s hip Wynwood neighborhood, fame doesn’t seem to have changed Feid — and he’s embracing his paisa identity more than ever. He’s wearing his laid-back, go-to uniform of shorts, sneakers, baseball cap and graphic T-shirt and proudly rocking the first-ever backpack from his collaboration with Bogotá-based brand Totto. He’s polite and warm, arriving early for his Billboard photo shoot (“People’s time is valuable”) and greeting everyone in the room with a chiseled smile and a tight hug. “Que más mi reina? Todo bien?” he asks me — “All good, my queen?”
While it may have taken some extra time to get here, Feid’s down-to-earth appeal is central to why, finally, he’s prospering. Feid attributes his success to “the perfect timing of God,” but those around him know there’s a bit more to it.
“He is real and authentic,” says his manager, Villamizar. “In his music, what he writes, what he says. The DNA of all this success is him and people notice and feel it.”
“He has a lot of perseverance and a lot of persistence that few have,” says Balvin. “Many [artists] would have gotten out of the way by now, but he was always there. Now he is living his best moment, and I’m sure many more blessings will come his way.”
Feid photographed on January 12, 2023 at Proper Studio in Miami.
Devin Christopher
Late last year, Feid released his second collaboration of 2022 with Yandel, and he’s carried that momentum into 2023, earning his first Hot 100 entry with the Ozuna-assisted “Hey Mor” and embarking on his first proper Latin American trek, the sold-out Ferxxo: Nitro Jam Tour promoted by CMN. He’ll headline Chicago’s Sueños Music Festival in May and tour Europe this summer, all while working on his next album. Its “whole concept has to do with how I went from being in the shadows as a composer to everything I am achieving now [as an artist],” he explains.
Feid is covered in tattoos, but one on the right side of his neck is particularly noticeable. In cursive, it reads: Nunca olvides porque empezaste (never forget why you started) — a reminder to stay grounded. “Fe,” or faith, is at the core of what got him here, and what will keep him going forward.
“From the beginning, it was [my dream] to have a vision that only I could have and could spread to people and also surround myself with a team that understood what I wanted to do,” he says. “I have always had a lot of faith in myself and my career — and that is why Ferxxo is called ‘Feid.’ ”
Penske Media Corp. is the largest shareholder of SXSW; its brands are official media partners of SXSW.
This story will appear in the March 11, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Someone has sparked a blunt in the planetarium.
It may be a school night, but no one has come to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J., to learn. Instead, the hundreds of fans packed into the domed theater on Jan. 26 have come to hear Lil Yachty’s latest album as he intended: straight through — and with an open mind. Or, as Yachty says with a mischievous smile: “I hope y’all took some sh-t.”
For the next 57 minutes and 16 seconds, graphics of exploding spaceships, green giraffes and a quiet road through Joshua Tree National Park accompany Yachty’s sonically divergent — and at this point, unreleased — fifth album, Let’s Start Here. For a psychedelic rock project that plays like one long song, the visual aids not only help attendees embrace the bizarre, but also function as a road map for Yachty’s far-out trip, signaling that there is, in fact, a tracklist.
It’s a night the artist has arguably been waiting for his whole career — to finally release an album he feels proud of. An album that was, he says, made “from scratch” with all live instrumentation. An album that opens with a nearly seven-minute opus, “the BLACK seminole.,” that he claims he had to fight most of his collaborative team to keep as one, not two songs. An album that, unlike his others, has few features and is instead rich with co-writers like Mac DeMarco, Nick Hakim, Alex G and members of MGMT, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Chairlift. An album he believes will finally earn him the respect and recognition he has always sought.
“I did what I really wanted to do, which was create a body of work that reflected me,” says a soft-spoken Yachty the day before his listening event. “My idea was for this album to be a journey: Press play and fall into a void.”
Sitting in a Brooklyn studio in East Williamsburg not far from where he made most of Let’s Start Here in neighboring Greenpoint, it’s clear he has been waiting to talk about this project in depth for some time. Yachty is an open book, willing to answer anything — and share any opinion. (Especially on the slice of pizza he has been brought, which he declares “tastes like ass.”) Perhaps his most controversial take at the moment? “F-ck any of the albums I dropped before this one.”
Image Credit: Peter Ash Lee
Image Credit: Peter Ash Lee
Image Credit: Peter Ash Lee
Image Credit: Peter Ash Lee
Image Credit: Peter Ash Lee
Lil Yachty, presented by Doritos, will perform at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW on March 16.
Someone has sparked a blunt in the planetarium.
It may be a school night, but no one has come to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J., to learn. Instead, the hundreds of fans packed into the domed theater on Jan. 26 have come to hear Lil Yachty’s latest album as he intended: straight through — and with an open mind. Or, as Yachty says with a mischievous smile: “I hope y’all took some sh-t.”
For the next 57 minutes and 16 seconds, graphics of exploding spaceships, green giraffes and a quiet road through Joshua Tree National Park accompany Yachty’s sonically divergent — and at this point, unreleased — fifth album, Let’s Start Here. For a psychedelic rock project that plays like one long song, the visual aids not only help attendees embrace the bizarre, but also function as a road map for Yachty’s far-out trip, signaling that there is, in fact, a tracklist.
It’s a night the artist has arguably been waiting for his whole career — to finally release an album he feels proud of. An album that was, he says, made “from scratch” with all live instrumentation. An album that opens with a nearly seven-minute opus, “the BLACK seminole.,” that he claims he had to fight most of his collaborative team to keep as one, not two songs. An album that, unlike his others, has few features and is instead rich with co-writers like Mac DeMarco, Nick Hakim, Alex G and members of MGMT, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Chairlift. An album he believes will finally earn him the respect and recognition he has always sought.
“I did what I really wanted to do, which was create a body of work that reflected me,” says a soft-spoken Yachty the day before his listening event. “My idea was for this album to be a journey: Press play and fall into a void.”
Sitting in a Brooklyn studio in East Williamsburg not far from where he made most of Let’s Start Here in neighboring Greenpoint, it’s clear he has been waiting to talk about this project in depth for some time. Yachty is an open book, willing to answer anything — and share any opinion. (Especially on the slice of pizza he has been brought, which he declares “tastes like ass.”) Perhaps his most controversial take at the moment? “F-ck any of the albums I dropped before this one.”
Lil Yachty photographed on January 25, 2023 at Shio Studio in Brooklyn.
Peter Ash Lee
His desire to move on from his past is understandable. When Yachty entered the industry in his mid-teens with his 2016 major-label debut, the Lil Boat mixtape, featuring the breakout hit “One Night,” he found that along with fame came sailing the internet’s choppy waters. Skeptics often took him to task for not knowing — or caring, maybe — about rap’s roots, and he never shied away from sharing hot takes on Twitter. With his willingness and ability to straddle pop and hip-hop, Yachty produced music he once called “bubble-gum trap” (he has since denounced that phrase) that polarized audiences and critics. Meanwhile, his nonchalant delivery got him labeled as a mumble rapper — another identifier he was never fond of because it felt dismissive of his talent.
“I came into music in a time where rap was real hardcore, it was real street,” he says. “And a bunch of us kids came in with colorful hair and dressing different and basically said, ‘Move out the way, old f-cks. We on some other sh-t.’ I was young and I didn’t really give a f-ck, so I did do things that may have led people to the assumptions that I was a mumble rapper or a SoundCloud kid or I don’t appreciate the history of hip-hop. But to be honest, I’ve always been so much more than just hip-hop.
“There’s a lot of kids who haven’t heard any of my references,” he continues. “They don’t know anything about Bon Iver or Pink Floyd or Black Sabbath or James Brown. I wanted to show people a different side of me — and that I can do anything, most importantly.”
Let’s Start Here is proof. Growing up in Atlanta, the artist born Miles McCollum was heavily influenced by his father, a photographer who introduced him to all kinds of sounds. Yachty, once easily identifiable by his bright red braids, found early success by posting songs like “One Night” to SoundCloud, catching the attention of Kevin “Coach K” Lee, co-founder/COO of Quality Control Music, now home to Migos, Lil Baby and City Girls. In 2015, Coach K began managing Yachty, who in summer 2016 signed a joint-venture deal with Motown, Capitol Records and Quality Control.
“Yachty was me when I was 18 years old, when I signed him. He was actually me,” says Coach K today. (In 2021, Adam Kluger, whose clients include Bhad Bhabie, began co-managing Yachty.) “All the eclectic, different things, we shared that with each other. He had been wanting to make this album from the first day we signed him. But you know — coming as a hip-hop artist, you have to play the game.”
Yachty played it well. To date, he has charted 17 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, including two top 10 hits for his features on DRAM’s melodic 2016 smash “Broccoli” and Kyle’s 2017 pop-rap track “iSpy.” His third-highest-charting entry arrived unexpectedly last year: the 93-second “Poland,” a track Yachty recorded in about 10 minutes where his warbly vocals more closely resemble singing than rapping. (Let’s Start Here collaborator SADPONY saw “Poland” as a temperature check that proved “people are going to like this Yachty.”)
Beginning with 2016’s Lil Boat mixtape, all eight of Yachty’s major-label-released albums and mixtapes have charted on the Billboard 200. Three have entered the top 10, including Let’s Start Here, which debuted and peaked at No. 9. And while Yachty has only scored one No. 1 album before (Teenage Emotions topped Rap Album Sales), Let’s Start Here debuted atop three genre charts: Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums.
“It feels good to know that people in that world received this so well,” says Motown Records vp of A&R Gelareh Rouzbehani. “I think it’s a testament to Yachty going in and saying, ‘F-ck what everyone thinks. I’m going to create something that I’ve always wanted to make — and let us hope the world f-cking loves it.’ ”
Yachty says he was already confident about the album, but after playing it for several of his peers and heroes — including Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Post Malone, Drake, Cardi B, Kid Cudi, A$AP Rocky and Tyler, The Creator — “their reactions boosted me.”
Yet despite Let’s Start Here’s many high-profile supporters, some longtime detractors and fans alike were quick to criticize certain aspects of it, from its art — Yachty quote-tweeted one remark, succinctly replying, “shut up” — to the music itself. Once again, he found himself facing another tidal wave of discourse. But this time, he was ready to ride it. “This release,” Kluger says, “gave him a lot of confidence.”
“I was always kind of nervous to put out music, but now I’m on some other sh-t,” Yachty says. “It was a lot of self-assessing and being very real about not being happy with where I was musically, knowing I’m better than where I am. Because the sh-t I was making did not add up to the sh-t I listened to.
“I just wanted more,” he continues. “I want to be remembered. I want to be respected.”
Last spring, Lil Yachty gathered his family, collaborators and team at famed Texas studio complex Sonic Ranch.
“I remember I got there at night and drove down because this place is like 30 miles outside El Paso,” Coach K says. “I walked in the room and just saw all these instruments and sh-t, and the vibe was just so ill. And I just started smiling. All the producers were in the room, his assistant, his dad. Yachty comes in, puts the album on. We got to the second song, and I told everybody, ‘Stop the music.’ I walked over to him and just said, ‘Man, give me a hug.’ I was like, ‘Yachty, I am so proud of you.’ He came into the game bold, but [to make] this album, you have to be very bold. And to know that he finally did it, it was overwhelming.”
SADPONY (aka Jeremiah Raisen) — who executive-produced Let’s Start Here and, in doing so, spent nearly eight straight months with Yachty — says the time at Sonic Ranch was the perfect way to cap off the months of tunnel vision required while making the album in Brooklyn. “That was new alone,” says Yachty. “I’ve recorded every album in Atlanta at [Quality Control]. That was the first time I recorded away from home. First time I recorded with a new engineer,” Miles B.A. Robinson, a Saddle Creek artist.
And while they did put the finishing touches on the album in Texas, they also let loose. “We had a f-cking grand old time,” SADPONY says. “We had about 50 people all throughout these houses and were driving in these unregistered trucks, like cartel trucks, around this crazy pecan farm. Obviously, we were all having some fun making this psychedelic record.”
Lil Yachty photographed on January 25, 2023 at Shio Studio in Brooklyn.
Peter Ash Lee
Yachty couldn’t wait to put it out, and says he turned it in “a long time ago. I think it was just label sh-t and trying to figure out the right time to release it.” For Coach K, it was imperative to have the physical product ready on release date, given that Yachty had made “an experience” of an album. And lately, most pressing plants have an average turnaround time of six to eight months.
Fans, however, were impatient. On Christmas, one month before Let’s Start Here would arrive, the album leaked online. It was dubbed Sonic Ranch. “Everyone was home with their families, so no one could pull it off the internet,” recalls Yachty. “That was really depressing and frustrating.”
Then, weeks later, the album art, tracklist and release date also leaked. “My label made a mistake and sent preorders to Amazon too early, and [the site] posted it,” Yachty says. “So I wasn’t able to do the actual rollout for my album that I wanted to. Nothing was a secret anymore. It was all out. I had a whole plan that I had to cancel.” He says the biggest loss was various videos he made to introduce and contextualize the project, all of which “were really weird … [But] I wasn’t introducing it anymore. People already knew.” Only one, called “Department of Mental Tranquility,” made it out, just days before the album.
Yachty says he wasn’t necessarily seeking a mental escape before making Let’s Start Here, but confesses that acid gave him one anyway. “I guess maybe the music went along with it,” he says. The album title changed four or five times, he says, from Momentary Bliss (“It was meant to take you away from reality … where you’re truly listening”) to 180 Degrees (“Because it’s the complete opposite of anything I’ve ever done, but people were like, ‘It’s too on the nose’ ”) to, ultimately, Let’s Start Here — the best way, he decided, to succinctly summarize where he was as an artist: a seven-year veteran, but at 25 years old, still eager to begin a new chapter.
He dug into his less obvious influences: In 2017, he listened to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon for the first time. “I think that was the last time I was like, ‘Whoa.’ You know?” He believes Frank Ocean’s Blonde is “one of the best albums of all time” and cites Tame Impala’s Currents as another project that stopped him in his tracks. All were fuel to his fire.
Taking inspiration from Dark Side, Yachty relied on three women’s voices throughout the album, enlisting Fousheé, Justine Skye and Diana Gordon. Otherwise, guest vocals are spare. Daniel Caesar features on album closer “Reach the Sunshine.,” while the late Bob Ross (of The Joy of Painting fame) has a historic posthumous feature on “We Saw the Sun!”
Rouzbehani tells Billboard that Ross’ estate declined Yachty’s request at first: “I think a big concern of theirs was that Yachty is known as a rapper, and Bob Ross and his brand are very clean. They didn’t want to associate with anything explicit.” But Yachty was adamant, and Rouzbehani played the track for Ross’ team and also sent the entire album’s lyrics to set the group at ease. “With a lot of back-and-forth, we got the call,” she says. “Yachty is the first artist that has gotten a Bob Ross clearance in history.”
Lil Yachty photographed on January 25, 2023 at Shio Studio in Brooklyn.
Peter Ash Lee
From the start, Coach K believed Let’s Start Here would open lots of doors for Yachty — and ultimately, other artists, too. Questlove may have said it best, posting the album art on Instagram with a lengthy caption that read in part: “this lp might be the most surprising transition of any music career I’ve witnessed in a min, especially under the umbrella of hip hop … Sh-t like this (envelope pushing) got me hyped about music’s future.”
“People don’t know where Yachty’s going to go now, and I think that’s the coolest sh-t, artistrywise,” says SADPONY. “That’s some Iggy Pop-, David Bowie-type sh-t. Where the mysteriousness of being an artist is back.”
Recently, Lil Yachty held auditions for an all-women touring band. “It was an experience for like Simon Cowell or Randy [Jackson],” he says, offering a simple explanation for the choice: “In my life, women are superheroes.”
And according to Yachty, pulling off his show will take superhuman strength: “Because the show has to match the album. It has to be big.” As eager as he was to release Let’s Start Here, he’s even more antsy to perform it live — but planning a tour, he says, required gauging the reaction to it. “This is so new for me, and to be quite honest with you, the label [didn’t] know how [the album] would do,” he says. “Also, I haven’t dropped an album in like three years. So we don’t even know how to plan a tour right now because it has been so long and my music is so different.”
While Yachty’s last full-length studio album, Lil Boat 3, arrived in 2020, he released the Michigan Boy Boat mixtape in 2021, a project as reverential of the state’s flourishing hip-hop scenes in Detroit and Flint as Let’s Start Here is of its psych-rock touchstones. And though he claims he doesn’t do much with his days, his recent accomplishments, both musical and beyond, suggest otherwise. He launched his own cryptocurrency, YachtyCoin, at the end of 2020; signed his first artist, Draft Day, to his Concrete Boyz label at the start of 2021; invested in the Jewish dating app Lox Club; and launched his own line of frozen pizza, Yachty’s Pizzeria, last September. (He has famously declared he has never eaten a vegetable; at his Jersey City listening event, there was an abundance of candy, doughnut holes and Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts.)
But there are only two things that seem to remotely excite him, first and foremost of which is being a father. As proud as he is of Let’s Start Here, he says it comes in second to having his now 1-year-old daughter — though he says with a laugh that she “doesn’t really give a f-ck” about his music yet. “I haven’t played [this album] for her, but her mom plays her my old stuff,” he continues. “The mother of my child is Dominican and Puerto Rican, so she loves Selena — she plays her a lot. [We watch] the Selena movie with Jennifer Lopez a sh-t ton and a lot of Disney movie sh-t, like Frozen, Lion King and that type of vibe.”
Aside from being a dad, he most cares about working with other artists. Recently, he flew eight of his biggest fans — most of whom he has kept in touch with for years — to Atlanta. He had them over, played Let’s Start Here, took them to dinner and bowling, introduced them to his mom and dad, and then showed them a documentary he made for the album. (He’s not sure if he’ll release it.) One of the fans is an aspiring rapper; naturally, the two made a song together.
“I want to be Quincy Jones,” Yachty near whispers. Last year, he co-produced a handful of tracks on the Drake and 21 Savage collaborative album Her Loss. And recently, he features on two Zack Bia tracks, one of which he produced, for Bia’s upcoming album. Six months ago, he started living by himself for the first time. “I wish I did it sooner. I wake up, play video games and then I go to the studio all night until the morning,” he says. “That’s all I want to do.” Since finishing Let’s Start Here, Yachty claims he has made hundreds of songs, some experimenting with “electronic pop sh-t” that he can only describe as “tight.”
Lil Yachty photographed on January 25, 2023 at Shio Studio in Brooklyn.
Peter Ash Lee
Yachty wants to keep working with artists and producers outside of hip-hop, mentioning the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and even sharing his dream of writing a ballad for Elton John. (“I know I could write him a beautiful song.”) With South Korean music company HYBE’s recent purchase of Quality Control — a $300 million deal — Yachty’s realm of possibility is bigger than ever.
But he’s not ruling out his genre roots. Arguably, Let’s Start Here was made for the peers and heroes he played it for first — and was inspired by hip-hop’s chameleons. “I would love to do a project with Tyler [The Creator],” says Yachty. “He’s the reason I made this album. He’s the one who told me to do it, just go for it. He’s so confident and I have so much respect for him because he takes me seriously, and he always has.”
Yachty is now hoping everyone else does, too. “I just want people to understand I love this. This is not a joke to me. And I can stand with my chest out because I’m proud of something I created.”
Penske Media Corp. is the largest shareholder of SXSW; its brands are official media partners of SXSW.
This story will appear in the March 11, 2023, issue of Billboard.
In the five years that followed SZA’s culture-shifting 2017 debut album, Ctrl, the pressure to deliver another ambitious, eclectic project reached a boiling point. Yet somehow, she managed to cut through the noise, surpassing the astronomically high expectations set by Ctrl with her much anticipated follow-up.
When SOS arrived Dec. 9, 2022, on RCA Records and Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE), it didn’t just successfully steer clear of the sophomore slump — it elevated her to superstardom. Across its whopping 23 tracks, SZA embarked on a fearless sonic voyage, dipping her toes in gospel, grunge, rap and whatever else she fancied outside of R&B’s boundaries. Similarly, she took her writing up several notches with dynamic, vivid storytelling that tugged deeper at heartache and self-acceptance. And its commercial success has already made history: SOS debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and spent seven consecutive weeks there, making SZA, Taylor Swift and Adele the only three women to rule the all-genre albums chart for that long. The set then returned to No. 1 for an eighth week on Feb. 9 and just claimed a ninth (on the chart dated Feb. 25), boasting more weeks atop the Billboard 200 than any R&B album since Usher’s Confessions ruled for nine nonconsecutive weeks in 2004. SOS‘s nine weeks at No. 1 also gave it the most weeks atop the chart for an album by a woman in nearly seven years, since Adele’s 25.
And yet, despite all that success, she still feels like she has to prove herself.
“Right now, I just have extreme gratitude because I swear to God, I never thought I’d be No. 1 for even a week, let alone seven,” the 33-year-old artist born Solána Imani Rowe tells Billboard in early February as she cruises along the Pacific Coast Highway — a brief moment of reprieve before she really hits the road this spring for her first-ever arena tour.
“SZA is a force,” says Terrence “Punch” Henderson, SZA’s manager and TDE president. “To go seven consecutive weeks at No. 1 is legendary. She’s a true generational artist, a cultural reset, if you will. For her album SOS to blend so many different genres together in a cohesive frame shows her genius and versatility. Then you have the voice, the words, the pain, the growth, the relapsing, the delivery, the stories, etc. … a true masterpiece.”
While the industry and public alike overwhelmingly share Henderson’s sentiment, Billboard’s 2023 Woman of the Year remains prone to self-doubt. Thoughts like “Do I deserve this?” and “I wish I did better” frequently creep into her mind, and she’s working on quieting them. She has already released new music since SOS dropped, by way of her February appearance on the remix of Lizzo’s 2022 song “Special.”
“Manifestation is real,” Lizzo tells Billboard. “I declare 2023 the year of SZA. But SZA has been Woman of the Year for me for at least a decade. I’m always such a fan of her music, a fan of her artistry, but I really love her as a friend. Solána Imani Rowe, you will always be ‘the one.’ ”
And, once she releases the deluxe edition of SOS — which will feature 10 additional tracks and is coming soon — SZA says she’ll be done trying to convince herself that she deserves her flowers.
“I guess I need to stop trying to figure out what it means,” SZA admits, “and start realizing and living in what it is.”
How did you feel after SOS was released? Did you have any hesitations about its reception?
You know when something is really popular, the positive is loud and the negative is loud? I’ve never been quite this popular before, so the negative is also really loud, and it threw me off. I was like, “OK, cool. Noted.” And I tried to figure out what actually resonates with me as a true assessment of my work and what is not true and something I can’t allow myself to internalize. I know people wanted [Ctrl’s] “Broken Clocks,” “Love Galore” and all that other sh-t again, but I departed from that by choice. Not because I couldn’t do that again; it was just because I wanted to grow. I wanted to do something completely different.
It’s hard making music as a Black woman [because] we don’t get the luxury to try something and have it be something that’s genuinely part of us. You have to allow people to get to know different parts of you. Some people may really f–king hate that, and some people might enjoy it. And I’m grateful for those who enjoy it.
Were you surprised that “Kill Bill” — which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 to become your highest-charting song to date — was the SOS song that took off?
I knew it would be something that pissed me off. It’s always a song that I don’t give a f–k about that’s just super easy, not the sh-t that I put so much heart and energy into. “Kill Bill” was super easy — one take, one night.
The chart success of SOS has put you in the same conversation as pop superstars. Is it important for you to be recognized outside of the R&B space?
To even be in the conversation with Taylor [Swift] and Miley [Cyrus], even the fact that our fans are fighting, is ridiculous because it’s like, “How?!” I just really appreciate the opportunity to be in that conversation at all. It’s something I never dreamed of.
What are your thoughts about your upcoming first-ever arena tour and performing this album in front of your fans?
It’s interesting because my other shows were intimate, and I felt like people were really coming to see me. But I know certain people are just coming to see what the hype is about, and that makes me nervous. But I just want to put on the best show that expresses my theatrical side.
I am deeply excited to pop ass and cry and give theater. I want it to feel like a play on Broadway, but more like Suspiria and Cirque du Soleil in the weirdest way. I want it to be smart and exhilarating and exhausting and exciting like a party, but also like a therapy session.
How do you tour an emotionally intense album like SOS? Do you insulate yourself from the material, or does it inevitably dredge up emotions?
I never know. When I was performing “20 Something” before my grandma died, it didn’t hit me the same. And then after my grandma died, I could barely get through it at rehearsal. Who knows what any of these songs will bring up for me in real life? Shooting the video for “Nobody Gets Me” was really f–king sad. I cried a lot. I’m just going to wing it and see.
What does it mean for you to be Billboard’s Woman of the Year?It really scares me. But I really want to do something with my time in the sun right now. There’s so much I want to do for other people. I need to do something to deserve that in a way that has nothing to do with me, something that’s selfless and uplifts other women, people, period. It makes me feel more responsible than I was before. I feel like I owe everyone so much more than just smiling and getting onstage and waving. Part of it I know is just letting God use me and be myself and letting that be part of the work. But I know that there’s something more that I have to do.
SZA photographed on October 11, 2022 at Quixote Studios in Los Angeles.
AB + DM
You were the first woman signed to TDE in 2013. How did you manage to maneuver through the male-dominated label for nearly a decade on your own?
I didn’t mind the lack of female artists. I just felt like I was always the first to do something, and that was frustrating. It was me telling y’all I need hair and makeup because I’m super hands-on, on top of being a woman. I’m making PowerPoints trying to explain why I want to be in this type of publication versus that type of publication.
It was tough, but by the same token, I think all of us grew together at the same time. They never had to do anything like this before, and we were all being so randomly innovative together by trying to figure out what makes sense. And I also liked that they weren’t trying to clean me up and look like anybody else. They were just taking me as I was. That was really priceless, just to express myself visually how I wanted to and without the judgment of “Let’s make her pretty or sparkly and shiny and sterile.”
Who are some women in the music industry whom you look up to?
There’s nobody in the industry that f–ks with me and that I f–k with the way that Lizzo f–ks with me and the way I f–k with her. She never made me feel like because I don’t have a No. 1 song or I [previously] didn’t have a No. 1 album that I wasn’t capable. She’d been telling me that she thought I was the one for years. The way that she thinks of me so highly as a human being and as an artist means so much to me. I just have never met anybody like her in this entire industry.
There’s a lot of women I look up to in general that I don’t know personally, but watching them is incredible. Beyoncé, but who doesn’t look up to Beyoncé? I love Jozzy’s and Starrah’s energy. I love the way Nija is from New Jersey and has been able to transmute her energy from being a writer to an artist. Kehlani’s hella effervescent, and you can just feel the energy when she’s performing. I love Chloe Bailey and her commitment to perfection — I feel like she’s going to be a legend. Even Taylor letting that whole situation go with her masters and then selling all of those f–king records. That’s the biggest “f–k you” to the establishment I’ve ever seen in my life, and I deeply applaud that sh-t.
What does the future look like for SZA?
After I do the deluxe, I’m hoping to be able to accept that this chapter is done. I’m looking forward to actually feeling proud of myself and not just smiling and nodding at accolades but really feeling it internally and knowing that I’m good enough.
A version of this story will appear in the Feb. 25, 2023, issue of Billboard.
When Lele Pons posts on Instagram, she does it with a mix of glamour, self-deprecating humor and simplicity that has charmed some 50 million fans into following her. And over the past two years, many of her buzziest posts have showcased the Venezuelan influencer’s love for her fiancé, Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Guaynaa, who counts 6.2 million followers of his own. But Pons, 26, and Guaynaa, 30, are much more than just a captivating couple, and their recent engagement isn’t limited to marriage: They’ll now be also making music together.
“Beautiful, my love. Wow!” Guaynaa gushes at his newest collaborator and bride-to-be on a recent sunny morning in Miami at the restaurant-lounge El Tucán, as Pons gets made up for a photo shoot, trading her clean face, sweatshirt and sneakers for an executive skirt suit with a plunging neckline, towering stilettos and cherry red lips.
Pons kisses him with caution, trying not to stain him with her lipstick. It’s one of many gestures of affection they will show each other throughout the day — suggesting that they really are as passionate as they appear on social media posts.
The vision that she has when carrying out a project is incredible. For me, she is the best content creator in the world. — Guaynaa
From the moment they made their relationship official on Instagram on Dec. 12, 2020, to their exciting proposal before thousands of people during Steve Aoki’s set at the Tomorrowland festival in Belgium on July 31, 2022, Pons and Guaynaa kept their fans’ attention with funny photos and videos in which they didn’t shy away from showing snapshots of their lives. And they haven’t stopped since, with a combination of comedy, moments of vulnerability and messages of self-love. (Cellulite is no longer a reason for shame thanks to Pons.)
They’re not the first music artists to unite their lives and intertwine their careers, but their relationship is different from others, as she is best known for her work on social media and he as a respected singer-songwriter in the industry. Working together has its inherent risks, but it could also result in bigger careers for both. Their joint power was shown in their only song released together so far, “Se Te Nota” (2020), whose video has accumulated 422 million views. It’s Pons’ most-viewed music video and Guaynaa’s second most-viewed, after his hit “ReBoTa” (2019) with 526 million.
“This could be a project that will bring us many surprises, both on Guaynaa’s side and on Lele’s side, because she hasn’t released music in a long time and Guaynaa has been on a music hiatus for nine, 10 months, and I think there will be something cool for this generation that follows Lele and the public that anxiously awaits Guaynaa,” says Juan Diego Medina, Guaynaa’s new manager.
Now I have a really good structure to put out a lot of songs, not just one every six months. And finally, I have someone like him (Guaynaa), who is my adviser and can help me more than anyone else. — Pons
In the last months, Eleonora Pons Maronese and Jean Carlos Santiago Pérez (their real names) have been planning a wedding while spending hours in the studio creating songs and producing an album that they plan to release soon after they tie the knot on March 4, in their adoptive city of Miami, before more than 300 guests. The 10-song set, tentatively titled Capitulations and to be released under a partnership between Interscope Records and Guaynaa, will include eight duets, one solo song from Pons and another one from Guaynaa, spanning a variety of genres, from urban pop (“Abajito”) to reggaetón (“Natural”) to reggae (“A Que No”) and bachata (“Todo Sabe Más Rico”).
On Lele: Silvia Tcherassi dress, Le Silla shoes. On Guaynaa: Dickson Lim suit, Prada shoes.
Mary Beth Koeth
Nir Seroussi, executive vp at Interscope Geffen A&M (IGA), says: “This album is a celebration of Lele’s and Guaynaa’s relationship and the perfect way to share this precious moment with their fans. While the wedding will surely attract a lot of attention, the focus of our plan is to showcase the music. With this project, Lele and Guaynaa stepped out of their comfort zones and tapped into an artistic side we haven’t heard before.”
It’s their first collaborative effort since 2020’s “Se Te Nota,” that playful urban pop song about wanting someone in an obvious way that spent 18 weeks on the all-genre Billboard Global 200 (where it peaked at No. 44), 25 weeks on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart (No. 19 peak) and 11 weeks on Hot Latin Songs (No. 25). It was also the seed that led them to spend more time together and, eventually, fall in love.
They made their relationship “official” that December, but their first kiss came nearly two months earlier, on Oct. 27, when the Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series for the first time since 1988. “It was a very exciting and very special moment,” Pons says.
The content creator, with over 50 million followers on Instagram and 29 million more on TikTok, rose to fame on Vine — the short-form video platform where she became the most followed woman (11.5 million) before it shut down in 2017 — and went on to create comedy skits on YouTube, where she has 17.8 million followers. Her interest in music, however, dates to her childhood, when she took opera singing lessons, and in recent years she has released more than a dozen hit singles, including “Bubble Gum” with Yandel and “HIT IT” with the Black Eyed Peas and Saweetie (both from 2021).
On Lele: Aknvas dress, FEMME shoes. On Guaynaa: TAAKK top, Versace pants, Prada shoes.
Mary Beth Koeth
Guaynaa, the son of troubadours who began creating music as a child, has made a name for himself as an urban pop artist with his own style and the audacity to experiment with all kinds of genres. He rose to fame in 2019 with “ReBoTa,” a mix of reggaetón and dembow with which he debuted on the Billboard charts, and has since released collaborations with artists as varied as Lola Índigo (“Respira”), Los Ángeles Azules (“Cumbia a La Gente”) and Sebastián Yatra, with whom he recorded “Chica Ideal,” which reached No. 1 on the Latin Airplay chart.
Now they take on their joint music project not only with great enthusiasm, but with great responsibility. Especially after a year that wasn’t all laughter and comedy. In early 2022, Guaynaa was rushed to the hospital after a car accident in Los Angeles, where a drunk driver hit the vehicle he was traveling in, causing the artist a serious cervical injury that required microsurgery and therapy. “It was a very complex recovery process. [I had to] stop all my projects,” he recalls, thankful that Pons traveled to meet him immediately and always accompanied him. Once recovered, it was his turn to take care of his fiancée, who underwent an operation for appendicitis last October.
In the process, Guaynaa also ended his deal with Universal Music and signed a management contract with Medina of La Industria (Nicky Jam, Manuel Turizo), who says the singer is in talks with a couple of record labels. Pons, signed to Interscope, also has a new manager, Polo Molina (Gerardo Ortiz, the Black Eyed Peas), but her manager for social media continues to be John Shahidi of Shots Studios, with whom she has worked for years.
“He and I are good friends,” says Molina about Medina, whom he worked with when the Black Eyed Peas and Nicky Jam teamed up for “Vida Loca” in 2020. “So, when he started working with Guaynaa and I started working with Lele, it was perfect. We just called each other like, ‘Hey, let’s do an album. Yeah! Let’s do a tour.’ Obviously, there’s a wedding going on, there’s a honeymoon going on, but I think they have all the ingredients to be superstars.”
And everything is practically ready for the big day. Before taking off to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Paris for their honeymoon, Pons will wear three dresses throughout the evening: one by Zuhair Murad to walk down the aisle, one by Julie Vino to dance at the party, “and the very, very last one, which is for when you’re already feeling unwell, by Pnina Tornai,” she says with a laugh. There will be Puerto Rican, Venezuelan and Italian food (in honor of her ancestry), and both a band and DJ to provide music till the wee hours.
They also expect to sing and have some of their guests sing as well, including relatives and close friends like Puerto Rican pop icon Chayanne (Pons’ uncle) and a stellar bridal party including Paris Hilton, Anitta, Kim Loaiza, Hanna Stocking, Isabela Grutman, Nicole Garcia and Isadora Figueroa, as well as Sebastián Yatra and Mau and Ricky Montaner.
“They all have to sing! I’ve sung at everyone’s weddings,” says Guaynaa, while Pons reminds him that someone already said she wants to do it: Spanish singer Natalia Jiménez.
During our lengthy interview, in which they spoke mostly Spanish, Pons and Guaynaa talked about their life together, their plans and their respective roles in the industry.
The wedding is only a few weeks away and the album will be released soon after. How are you handling the stress?
LELE PONS: We try to help each other with the stress, and the people around us too. (Turns to Guaynaa.) Like your dad, he calms me down a lot. Your mom calms me down a lot.
GUAYNAA: It’s a process, but we always take a couple days a week to do nothing and be at home snuggling, watching TV, talking. That makes us more appreciative and makes us step out of the house with the idea that someone is waiting for you at home to have a nice time when the lights go out, that someone is there for you.
Aknvas dress.
Mary Beth Koeth
What do you want to say with this album? Is there a particular message?
GUAYNAA: Look, there’s partying, there’s dancing.
PONS: But there are also moments about not wanting to sleep with the person you’re with, like the bachata. All couples have problems, and that’s very important. Not everything is love and kisses. There are moments that you know are difficult, and if you love the person that you’re with, you are going to have to solve it.
Who wrote the songs, and how was the working process in the studio?
PONS: Guaynaa wrote the songs. I’m more into marketing and music videos. We both contribute. We sing together, we help each other. Many times, I change the melody when I don’t like it, like in the song “Abajito.”
GUAYNAA: I try to compose, direct, produce. And Eleonora is basically giving her opinion also in terms of production and lyrics, but in a more relaxed way. The process was quite varied. One song was written in Mexico, the rest in Miami. There were collaborations with songwriters that I’ve worked with. For example, “Estrella Fugaz” was written with Elena Rose. It’s a very special song for us because it essentially represents what our love story is.
Working together can be a double-edged sword. How has this experience been for you?
GUAYNAA: Lele and I beat to different rhythms. In music, I can tell you that it is quite cool, because she has a different thinking and approach and drive, she has other filters in her head when she analyzes music. My filters are more about the conceptual elaboration of the album, the musicality, the storytelling, the beginning and the end. There were many disagreements for that very reason, but at the end of the day, I think we managed to develop a project, and that makes us very happy.
What has been the most fun for each of you?
PONS: For me, it was when I had to sing in the studio and Guaynaa would come in to help me. (To Guaynaa.) It was fun because you did things to make me laugh and [help me relax]. And for you?
GUAYNAA: The most fun? (Laughs mischievously.) Oh, for you to say you liked a song, because you were like: “I don’t like it, I don’t like it, I don’t like it… This one I like!” Yes!
PONS: [But] when it comes to songs, I trust in him. Even if I don’t like it, I have a lot of trust in Guaynaa as an artist and I tell him, “OK, bebé, if you really want to release this song, let’s do it.”
Each of you has your own passionate fan base. How do you reach out to fans and build a consensus, especially now that you’re releasing a project together?
GUAYNAA: I think people want music.
PONS: Yes, they already have everything else on social media.
GUAYNAA: They ride the wave and surf with us. People want music, they’d like to hear music from us out there. I mean, there were many people last year who, for example — now that I told you how difficult it was — got upset at my fan base or Lele’s fan base: “Why aren’t they working? Why aren’t they making music? Oh, they’re more dedicated to their relationship than to their careers.” And it’s really that we had a disability — I couldn’t go out and sing with a hole here (points to his neck, referring to the injury from the car accident), and she couldn’t go out and sing with stitches in her belly. It was a very complicated scenario.
Guaynaa, if you could change something in the music industry right now, what would it be? [The singer parted ways with Universal Music and his previous management after releasing his debut album, La República, in 2021.]
GUAYNAA: I would require at least four years of [music business] studies, a master’s or bachelor’s degree for those who want to sing and enter the platforms. Because it seems quite unfair to me that because of ignorance errors an artist’s hard work is put at risk and therefore, their family’s sustenance — like a bad agreement, a bad contract. I have always said that this is like parenthood: First they give you the diploma and then you start studying. I would like for people to study first and then get their diploma.
TAAKK top, Versace pants, Prada shoes.
Mary Beth Koeth
Has your relationship with Lele or your greater social media presence influenced the way you make music today?
GUAYNAA: Definitely. There are many aspects in music, and I’ve always been a guy who goes out with reggaetón, then makes cumbia, salsa, alternative music… that’s the way I feel comfortable; that’s me and that’s my DNA. So, yes, I think it has given me another notion because I am aware of other things, I see other trends, and when I’m making music that’s leaning to that side, I already have some more knowledge.
How do you structure your businesses?
GUAYNAA: Our businesses are structured completely separately. We do give each other feedback and help each other, but she keeps her business structure on her side and I keep mine on my side.
PONS: Guaynaa is very good with finances, and he has a team that is very united, while I have experience in content creation and marketing. I help him with his social media, and he advises me on my finances, my business and, on many occasions, my personal decisions.
Lele, we know you more as an influencer than as a singer. How important is your music career to you right now, and what have you learned from Guaynaa as a musician?
PONS: My music career is very important. Now that I have a manager who is also in the music business and has had a lot of success, it’s like a new chapter that I want to try. And not only that, I love making music! But there has always been some sort of obstacle. For example, the hospital, or me having to do another project. Now I have a really good structure to put out a lot of songs, not just one every six months. And finally, I have someone like him (points affectionately to Guaynaa), who is my adviser and can help me more than anyone else.
Guaynaa, we have enjoyed seeing you showing your funny side with Lele on social media. What have you learned from her as a content creator?
GUAYNAA: I would say that I’ve learned about passion, attention, projection, planning. The vision that she has when carrying out a project is incredible. For me, she is the best content creator in the world.
PONS: Thanks, bebé. That’s because you love me.
GUAYNAA: It’s one of the things that I most admire about her, her ability to evolve. Because she started doing something, she grew and did other things, became bigger and did more. Reggaetón came knocking at her door looking for her creativity. Now she is in another facet, and her ability to reinvent herself is very admirable for me.
What has been the biggest challenge and the biggest advantage of working together?
GUAYNAA: The biggest challenge has basically been evolving in this ever-changing industry. And the greatest advantage, I would say that who we are as people: We have many friends, we enjoy the love and respect of many, and that makes it easier for us to work and get things done.
PONS: Being on the same page when he and I are very different in the way we work. For example, I like commercial songs, while he likes more artistic songs. This makes us the perfect team, because we come to an agreement and there is balance in every decision.
Lele, going back to the wedding, to what song are you going to walk down the aisle?
GUAYNAA: “Rompe, rompe…” (He sings the first lines of Daddy Yankee’s “Rompe,” which she loves, making her burst into laughter.)
PONS: “A Thousand Years” [by Christina Perri].
GUAYNAA: And for the first dance, “Bésame la boca… bésame la luna.” (He sings Ricardo Montaner’s romantic ballad “Bésame,” smiling proudly.) I chose it.
“That’s the only place where I can relax,” 50 Cent says, his pearly whites glistening as they’ve done all day. He’s not talking about the recording studio or the performance stage — he’s talking about his Hollywood work. “When I’m chilling,” he continues, “there will be some sort of film and TV involved.”
Once considered rap’s top villain during the days of promoting his explosive 2003 debut, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, 50, at 47, is now a consummate professional. He’s punctual, debunking the theory that hip-hop stars always arrive on “rapper time.” He’s well-mannered and respectful, saying, “Please,” and “Thank you,” after each request. He’s also a great listener, allowing the staff to complete their directives during the photo shoot without stiff-arming his way into the conversation. It’s all in keeping with Curtis Jackson III’s drive to achieve a loftier ambition no one could have predicted 20 years ago: to become the biggest mogul in the TV industry.
“50 is one of the smartest guys in the rap game,” says Tony Yayo, 50’s childhood friend and co-founder of their hip-hop group G-Unit. Yayo recalls that, as kids, the South Jamaica, Queens, artist was more interested in selling pills for profit than playing with G.I. Joes. “When you look at guys like Jay-Z, Diddy and 50, those guys are geniuses,” explains Yayo. “They come from the same place we come from and made something out of nothing.”
It’s that same hustler ethos that landed 50 his deal with Interscope Records in 2002, after surviving being shot nine times outside of his grandmother’s house in Queens just two years prior. By signing under two Interscope imprints — Eminem’s Shady Records and Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment — 50 became the final piece in what would become one of hip-hop’s strongest triumvirates.
From his first day in the spotlight, 50 was a brawny, gun-toting MC that imposed fear upon rivaling East Coast rappers. He decimated the mixtape scene by remixing popular hit records and peppering them with his street flair. No instrumental was safe, and once 50 got his hands on Dr. Dre’s bombastic production, his rise was imminent. He rocketed into mainstream acclaim with “Wanksta,” followed by the multiplatinum No. 1 smash “In Da Club.” His thunderous reign continued with 2003’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’ and 2005’s The Massacre, two gargantuan Billboard 200 chart-toppers that sold a combined 14 million records in the United States, according to Luminate. And his various feuds with hip-hop figures, from Murda Inc. to Kanye West, kept him in the news as he kept collecting hits.
Although 50 enjoyed the competition, his attention began to wander from music. He launched his own video game with 2005’s Bulletproof, got a sneaker deal with Reebok in 2004 and invested in vitaminwater, receiving a 10% stake in the company that same year. Within three years, vitaminwater sales grew to $700 million, and parent company Glaceau was sold to Coca-Cola, which earned 50 Cent a whopping $100 million in profits.
His wins on the business front crossed over to Hollywood. After revamping his production company G-Unit Films (now G-Unit Films and Television) in 2010, 50 began developing various network projects; his first success was Power, a crime drama intertwining the glamorous club scene with the murderous drug world. He and TV writer Courtney Kemp Agbor teamed up for the series’ pilot script, which was pitched to then-Starz CEO Chris Albrecht. Thanks to the pair’s authentic storytelling and creative chemistry, Power became a hit and later earned them a $150 million deal in 2018 that included a three-series commitment and allowed G-Unit Film & Television access to all the Starz and Lionsgate platforms.
“He was in this for real,” Albrecht says of 50. “This wasn’t something he was doing for amusement. This was something he was taking as seriously as he ever took his music.”
Tom Ford jacket and sweater, Saint Laurent jeans, Too Boot shoes, Fratelli Orsini gloves.
Jai Lennard
As Power’s executive producer, 50 watched the show garner praise for six seasons and spawn multiple hit spinoffs such as Power Book II: Ghost, Power Book III: Raising Kanan and Power Book IV: Force. His show BMF, which followed the rise of infamous Detroit drug dealers the Black Mafia Family, launched on Starz in 2021 and is now in its second season. He has tapped several of his peers for cameos: Kendrick Lamar on Power, Eminem and Snoop Dogg on BMF, Joey Bada$$ for Raising Kanan, Mary J. Blige for Ghost. “I’ve seen him act, produce, direct and write,” says Blige. “I’m so impressed by his transition from rapper to amazing producer.”
50 has also negotiated deals with other networks: In November, he partnered with WeTV to launch the investigative series Hip-Hop Homicides. Hosted by Van Lathan, it examines the shocking deaths of rising stars in the genre like XXXTentacion and King Von. Last fall, 50 also inked a three-project partnership with Lusid Media for an unscripted crime series slated to debut later this year on Peacock. Plus, he and mentor Eminem are working on a TV adaptation of the latter’s 2002 semi-autobiographical film, 8 Mile. “He’s got scripted and unscripted shows,” Albrecht says. “He’s a force.”
And just as he has remade himself as a TV mogul, 50’s love for music is resurfacing. Eight years after selling his radio income stream to Kobalt Music Group in 2015 (worth $6 million), he is now working on a studio album with Dr. Dre, Eminem has sent him new songs to collaborate on, and Nas has tapped him for a feature on his forthcoming King’s Disease 4. And after a string of one-off shows and a subsequent international run last year, 50 is also planning to tour domestically for the first time in 13 years. He is already set to perform at Las Vegas’ Lovers & Friends Festival in May. One recent performance, as a surprise guest during 2021’s Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show, even earned him an Emmy.
“The guy’s a machine; he always been like that from the block to now,” says Yayo of 50’s work ethic. “That’s the meaning of Get Rich or Die Tryin’. We got rich — and we still tryin’ to get more money.”
In his first solo cover story for Billboard, 50 talks expansively about his legacy in hip-hop, his long-term relationships with Dr. Dre and Eminem, and his seemingly bulletproof climb up the TV industry ladder.
With hip-hop turning 50 this year, how do you view your legacy within it?
My run was so uncomfortable that everyone would like to forget that it happened. That’s just the way it is with the artist community. I didn’t come in being friendly because I had to find a way into it — not find a way to be good enough to work in the community. The biggest compliment in the early stages was that artists felt like they’d made it when they got the deal. You had to earn the right to have the deal.
Get Rich or Die Tryin’ came out 20 years ago. Now that you’re working with Dr. Dre again, is the creative process different?
I’ll go in and start to record the best music that I can come up with from everybody else. Then I’ll find some pieces, and when I accumulate stuff that I feel like is good enough, I’ll bring it to impress Dre and [his team] to get cooler stuff from [him]. At that point, they’ll go, “I see where you headed.” They already know musically what I’m thinking is the right direction at that point. When I start projects with Dre, I would write to the first song that came on. I don’t care what it was, even if the beat wasn’t finished. I would write the record to break the ice, and we’d have something playing like [Dre] just got here even if he’s been here two or three hours and we got a record playing. He will change the drums and everything that you got there until you got something that’s a hit record.
The difference now is, with a lot of the stuff I would send, I’m looking at the angles of it happening from different perspectives instead of putting myself in the middle of actually doing something to someone. I wrote a lot of the material like that [before], but there are a million other approaches to use. So I’ll do those other things so I can still capture what goes on in the environment now. But it’s through the lens of not being in the game — it’s the perception of the game, from my perspective.
Alanui shirt, Tom Ford t-shirt, The Tie Bar pants, Mr. P shoes.
Jai Lennard
Eminem has been another longtime mentor. What has it been like working with him throughout your career?
Em’s not going to say the s–t the way I say it because it just is what it is. There’s his humble nature — he’d call me and ask to do him a favor and rap with him on a song. Like, “You know I’m on your label, right? Yeah, whatever you need me to do.” He would always ask me, “Could you do me a favor? I always thought it would be dope if we did this together.” I’m like, “All right.”
He’s never been part of any of the confusion, because there’s going to be confusion in your career. You’ve got to do maintenance on people. The imperfections of the music business are the people in it. You’ll see artists miss [with a project] and still stay in good graces because they’re still being prioritized and the system is working to keep them in place. Then you’ll see amazing artists [who are not prioritized]. You’ll listen and think, “What happened to them?” It’s because the business was done with them.
You’ve been a mentor yourself to artists like Pop Smoke and DaBaby. What are your thoughts on this generation’s rising hip-hop artists?
I only like the ones that I see myself in. A lot of the other s–t, I be like, “Yeah, what the f–k is this, man?” I’ve got to believe them and the s–t they’re saying to be into the artist.
They [also] have to want to be mentored. I’ll talk to them and touch base with them because I see that in them. You go, “Yo, you have to focus on what you came for and what’s important to you, and get those things together versus just riding it out.” The way I had competitive energy: Hip-hop culture makes you battle. I love Nicki Minaj, but the funny s–t is, I like watching her when she’s upset. I like that because she has something that comes from the experience of living in South Jamaica. I’m looking at it like, “Yo, I know they think she’s nuts, but they only think that because they don’t understand.” I get it. She thinks you’re trying to play her.
When Cardi B came, I thought she was dope. She’s from the bottom. She was in Club Lust in Brooklyn. [Going] from that and actually making a hit record and turning into who she did? I don’t know why anybody wouldn’t like to see that. It felt like she got everything — married, the baby — it came really fast. That’s the American dream right there.
When her and Nicki clash, I go, “Oh, s–t, it’s going to be interesting to watch how it plays out.” Lyrically, I won’t say anything competitively about the two of them, but I love Nicki. I don’t have anything against Cardi. I think anyone who comes now, she is going to check their temperature. Nicki is going to check if this b-tch is friendly or looking to take over the s–t.
In addition to your musical beefs, you were part of a notable TV feud, when Power was pitted against Fox’s series Empire. Do you have any regrets?
Nah. In regard to Empire, that was about Fox having more marketing dollars than Starz. Starz didn’t have the money. So when we hit the bull’s-eye with Power — it’s very rare to get an entire audience excited — I’m looking at Fox hitting the bull’s-eye behind us with Empire. On Fox, they were offering the PG-13 version of the story because it’s network television. Because I can be R-rated and portray a more graphic experience, I knew that Power would eventually prevail.
[Fox] stole my idea because they said in the [show’s promo tagline], “Empires are built on power.” That’s good marketing. Because I’m at a disadvantage in not being able to market at the same level, we’re going to have a problem. That’s where the beef comes from. [But] I love [Empire star] Taraji P. Henson. I think she’s amazing. Terrence Howard was my co-star in the first film I worked on. Of course I wanted to see their show be successful.
French Montana has called you a genius marketer. Some of your beefs were personal, but how many of them were strategic?
They were [all] strategic — [the industry set them up] in response to what I was doing. I kept saying, “They dead, get rid of them,” and [the industry] would come in and resuscitate them to bring them back. Now I just have to f–k you up a little bit so you don’t go near [that artist] again when I get him back into that position again. I tap the artist for doing that, like, “Move! Why you keep trying to do that?” They’re using their energy and fan base to resuscitate the artist I just put to bed. That was why I was doing that.
It’s the same mentality of the street. When you get into business, you can’t bring that with you. They’ll split the culture in half.
Hugo Boss shirt, The Tie Bar pants, suspenders and tie, J.J. Hat Center hat.
Jai Lennard
Did you miss writing and recording music?
I get the attention that I want from music when I want it. I just went out and toured 45 countries, and everywhere was sold out. That made me want to offer new music that I could integrate into everything now. I’ve done what I wanted to do in the [sales] capacity. I’ve sold over 35 million records. Not singles — albums. With Em, it’s different because he’s never going to stop [recording]. It bugs him out that I can do TV production.
Before Get Rich made you huge, Master P was booking you for shows. What was your rate then versus how much you command internationally today?
I think he gave me like $80,000, and now I’m getting like $900,000, $1 million. The coolest thing we create in America is celebrities. If you see LeBron [James’] fan base internationally, you’ll argue, “Why is he staying here?” He’s that big internationally. For the most part, I can’t speak for everybody, but the international side of the game is different.
Do you feel like prime 50 Cent could break through and do the same commercial damage in today’s climate?
It would be a lot different. I look at the new artists that embody the streets like they’re the new 50 Cent. What’s going to be difficult and important for them to do is figure out how to navigate themselves. If you ask them if they’re afraid of anything, it’s going to be tough because they’ve been facing those obstacles the entire time, so they’re not scared. But they can f–k it up for themselves, like with whom they bring around them and the energy they carry. It can destroy a force.
That’s the obstacle they’ve got to get around themselves. I think if they get that information fast enough and can look at it the right way, they’ll be able to do [music] longer. If not, they’re going to crash right in front of you.
Up a winding mountain road on the edge of Salt Lake City, past snow-dusted pines and freshly shoveled driveways, through a wrought iron gate that opens at the command of an armed guard yawning in a pickup truck, sits a handful of mansions designed like rustic ski resorts — and one that looks like a modernist mall. Another security guard idles at the end of the outlier’s heated driveway, which slopes past a garage where Maybachs and McLarens sit alongside muddy, toddler-sized four-wheelers and a terrarium housing a sleeping bearded dragon. At the front door, an inflatable Santa stands sentry, holding a sign that warns, “Nine Days Until Christmas!”
On a clear day like today, you can look out the living room’s floor-to-ceiling windows, over the icy swimming pool and presently invisible dirt bike track below, and the entirety of the Salt Lake Valley spreads out before you like an overturned snow globe. Inside, the space is all white and sparsely furnished, decorated with a pair of spindly Christmas trees, a half-dozen painted portraits — in one, a smiling young man feeds his daughter a cheeseburger — and an enormous plaque that glints in the sunlight and reads, “100 RIAA Gold/Platinum Certifications,” and, in larger letters, “YoungBoy Never Broke Again.” Its recipient, who introduces himself as Kentrell, sits quietly beneath it as a motherly woman named Quintina, who is not his mother but his financial adviser, paints his fingernails black.
The neighbors have yet to figure out who exactly it is that moved in just over a year ago: a rail-thin 23-year-old with faded face tattoos and a stable of luxury vehicles that never leave the garage. Should they learn that he is signed to Motown Records and makes music as YoungBoy Never Broke Again, it’s likely they would still draw a blank. (A middle-aged blonde from the mansion next door cranes her neck from the window of her SUV to gawk at the camera crew unloading outside for today’s cover shoot.) And it’s true that the artist born Kentrell DeSean Gaulden, whom fans call YoungBoy or simply YB, has practically zero mainstream presence: He’s not on the radio, scarcely performs live, regularly deactivates his social media accounts and shies away from the press.
Yet in an extreme and emblematic case of streaming-era stardom, YoungBoy is one of the most popular and prolific rappers on the planet. Since breaking out from his hometown of Baton Rouge, La., at age 15 — already sounding like a world-weary veteran who had absorbed a lifetime of pain — he has landed 96 entries on the Billboard Hot 100 and 26 projects on the Billboard 200. (Of the latter, 12 charted in the top 10, and four went to No. 1.) Of the whopping eight full-length projects he released in 2022 alone, five reached the top 10; his latest, January’s I Rest My Case, debuted at No. 9. YoungBoy was the third most-streamed artist in the United States last year (according to Luminate), behind Drake and Taylor Swift, and currently sits at No. 1 on YouTube’s Top Artists page, where he has charted for the last 309 weeks. After deducting a presumed 10% management fee, Billboard estimates YoungBoy’s take-home pay from artist and publishing streaming royalties averaged between $8.7 million and $13.4 million annually over the last three years, depending on the structure of his publishing contract and level of artist royalty his recording contract pays out. The NBA’s coolest young team, the Memphis Grizzlies, warms up to his music almost exclusively.
YoungBoy Never Broke Again photographed on December 16, 2022 in Utah.
Diwang Valdez
He’s known for churning out releases with machine-like efficiency and for the legal battles that have haunted his career from day one, to the extent that both feel like essential components of the art itself. As a public figure, he’s inscrutable, but in song, he comes alive — equal parts outlaw and confidant, commiserating with listeners’ struggles and declaring vendettas in the same breath. And though his path may strike some as counterintuitive, YoungBoy’s perpetual underdog status only galvanizes his die-hard supporters, for whom aggrievement has become a calling card, regularly spamming comment sections in frantic defense of their favorite.
Since moving to Utah, YoungBoy has left his house exactly zero times; an ankle monitor will trigger if he so much as crosses the end of his driveway. After fleeing police, who had stopped him in Los Angeles with a federal warrant stemming from a 2020 arrest — where he was one of 16 people picked up on felony drug and weapons charges at a video shoot — he spent most of 2021 in a Louisiana jail. In October 2021, a judge granted him permission to serve house arrest in Salt Lake City at the request of his lawyers. (Hence the security team, whose presence is to enforce the terms of his incarceration as much as for his protection. Those terms include a limit of three preapproved visitors at a time, turning today’s shoot into an elaborate exercise in consolidation.) The 2020 arrest was the latest in a string of allegations that began when YoungBoy was 15. Last year, he was found not guilty in one of his two federal gun trials; the other is ongoing.
YoungBoy lives here with Jazlyn Mychelle, whom he quietly married in the first week of 2023, and their two children: a 17-month-old named Alice (after his grandmother) and a newborn boy, Klemenza (named for a character in The Godfather whose loyalty the rapper admires). They are the youngest of the 23-year-old YoungBoy’s 10 children. The other eight live with their seven respective mothers. Most people in his position would be counting down the days until freedom, but besides the fact that his “purposeless” car collection is steadily depreciating in value, YoungBoy is in no rush to return to the world. “This is the best thing that ever happened to me,” he says with an expensive-looking smile, having traded his diamond grill for pearly veneers, as his nail polish dries in the sunlight.
Even inside, YoungBoy rarely hangs out upstairs. He usually stays up until dawn in the basement, playing Xbox or recording songs all night, never touching pen to paper — instead, he freestyles line by line according to what’s weighing on his mind. By his estimate, over 1,000 unreleased tracks currently sit in the vaults. His nocturnal tendencies are a “protection thing,” he explains. “It has been like that since I was 15: I’ve got to be somewhere where I actually know no one is inside the room,” he says in a voice I have to lean in to hear, a near whisper that feels worlds away from the fearless squawk that booms out in his songs, hurling threats at a seemingly endless number of enemies. “I like to just stay in one small space where I don’t have to worry about anything that’s not safe.”
For a while, he had a habit of sleeping in the garage — in the Tesla, where he could turn on the heat without fear of death by carbon monoxide poisoning, and where he and his engineer, XO, would sometimes record. Lately, he stays up smoking cigars in the basement — his last remaining vice, he says. “Nighttime, when everybody’s asleep — it’s the most peaceful time ever inside of life to me,” he whispers. “Nighttime, when it’s dark and nothing’s moving but the wildlife and the crooks.” He has seen his share of deer and rabbits scurrying around the property, and though he has yet to spy a bobcat, the security guards have. He watches for intruders, too, a matter of routine. What he likes best is that it’s peaceful here, and that “it’s very far from home.”
Kentrell Gaulden wrote his first song in fourth grade, and he still remembers how it started. He giggles as he launches in: “It goes, ‘P—y n—s always in my face/Bang, bang, bang, there go the murder case.’ And I keep saying it.” Growing up in north Baton Rouge, his mother, an amateur rapper herself under the name Ms. Sherhonda, would bring Kentrell and his older sister to watch her record in a neighbor’s home studio. His father was sentenced to 55 years for armed robbery when he was 8. Years later, when a teenage Gaulden was locked up himself for a 2014 robbery charge, he received a letter from another jail — from his father, telling his son about his own musical dabblings. “I never had a Plan B. This is what I was set on becoming,” YoungBoy says, his narrow frame engulfed in a skull-patterned puffer jacket, a tangle of diamonds flashing underneath. His early songs inspired a school friend to write his own, and YoungBoy smiles remembering the two giddily trading rhymes before class. “But he died,” he adds, barely breaking his gaze. “If I’m not mistaken, they was robbing someone, and as he took off, he met his consequence.”
The Baton Rouge in YoungBoy’s raps is rife with mortal danger, a place where death is an old acquaintance and betrayal lurks around every corner. On 2016’s “38 Baby,” around the time the rapper’s local buzz was going national, YoungBoy half-sang, half-rapped that he “got the law up on my ass, demons up in my dreams,” claiming to not even step in the recording booth unarmed. It was startling to see who was behind such a nihilistic worldview: a gangly teen whose baby face was marked three times across the forehead with scars from a halo brace he wore after breaking his neck as a toddler. Artist Partner Group CEO Mike Caren (who worked for years with YoungBoy’s former label, Atlantic, and the artist’s own Never Broke Again imprint, and remains his publisher), remembers his first time seeing the “38 Baby” video.
“The intensity was so powerful,” Caren recalls. “He was youthful and seasoned at the same time. He had presence, a natural sense of melody, and he painted an entire picture of his world.” A bitter brand of authenticity emerged from the contrast of YoungBoy’s boyishness and the obvious trauma that hovered over him like a black cloud. To hear one of his songs was to listen in on the shockingly intimate confessions of someone forced into adulthood against his will, and to witness his expression catch up to his experience in real time.
You could cherry-pick the history of Louisiana hip-hop and cobble together something like a precedent for YoungBoy: the swampy street tales and prolific output of the labels No Limit and Cash Money; the embrace of balladry, bounce and traumatized blues; the pure indifference to industry protocols. YoungBoy’s early releases gestured to 20-odd years of Baton Rouge rap, from Trill Entertainment’s dark-sided club jams to Kevin Gates’ warbled bloodletting — music that was sometimes about women or money but mostly, and most profoundly, about pain. In recent years, YoungBoy’s rapping has matured into a style that stands apart from his predecessors, veering off into complicated rhythms and electrifying spoken-word diatribes, as on last year’s eight-minute missive “This Not a Song (This for My Supporters),” where he warns listeners not to be fooled by the glamour of gangster rap. Still, the old pain sears through nearly every freestyled verse.
It was his “pain music” in particular that first drew the attention of Kyle “Montana” Claiborne, a wisecracking 36-year-old Baton Rouge native. YoungBoy’s songs were only available on YouTube in 2016 when the two met, and though Montana was twice YoungBoy’s age, the music hit him hard. “I wasn’t a rapper, but I wanted to live like a rapper,” he says, and with no real industry experience, he became the 16-year-old’s right-hand man, driving him hours to play shows for $500 a pop. YoungBoy’s buzz was steadily building on YouTube and Instagram “back when followers was real and organic,” Montana stresses. Meanwhile, he was recording enough music to drop an album per week, propelled by a private urgency.
The Never Broke Again label was created in Montana’s name since YoungBoy was a minor; today, they share ownership of the company, which partnered with Motown in 2021, a year ahead of YoungBoy’s solo deal with the label. In late 2016, the pair traveled to New Orleans to meet in a parking lot with Fee Banks, who had helped Lil Wayne launch his Young Money label and managed Gates into stardom. Banks saw in YoungBoy a similar greatness and immediately took over as his manager.
“YoungBoy was moving fast, but he had a lot of drama attached to him,” Banks recalls. “Soon as I got in touch with him, he went to jail. Anything he got into, we got him out, and every time he got out of jail, he’d gotten bigger. Throughout all the trials and tribulations, we kept it moving, kept recording, kept shooting videos and stayed down.”
YoungBoy’s buzz had caught the ear of another Louisiana native: Bryan “Birdman” Williams, who co-founded Cash Money Records and mentored a young Lil Wayne, among many others. In his signature twang, Williams recalls flying a teenage YoungBoy to Miami, where they recorded daily for two weeks, working on what eventually became their 2021 collaborative album, From the Bayou. “Watching how fast he do music and the value of the music, I saw a lot of similarities between him and Wayne,” he says. “I seen stardom in him, but I knew it was a process.”
Williams made it a mission to impress upon the teenager that he had a choice: the life he was raised in or the music. “I once was somebody like him and had to gamble my life. I wanted to show him that he could really survive off his talent,” he continues. “You could go to jail, or you could die, or you could try to be somebody.” As he does with Wayne, he refers to YoungBoy as a son.
Diwang Valdez
By the time labels had entered a bidding war, YoungBoy was a cult hero with eight mixtapes under his belt. He was also a teenage father of three being tried as an adult for attempted murder, facing a life sentence without parole. He had been apprehended before a show in Austin, accused of a nonfatal Baton Rouge shooting that occurred hours after a friend’s murder; after six months awaiting trial in a Louisiana prison, he ultimately took a plea deal. At his 2017 sentencing — by which point he had committed to a $2 million deal with Atlantic Records — the judge cited his music as a means of “normalizing violence,” one of many recent instances of rap lyrics being used as evidence in criminal proceedings. With your talent, she lectured, comes responsibility. He received a suspended 10-year prison term with three years of probation. More disturbing allegations emerged in the years to follow, including kidnapping, assault and weapons charges tied to a 2018 incident recorded in a hotel hallway showing the rapper attacking his girlfriend.
One night in prison while YoungBoy was on lockdown (“For no disciplinary reason — it was because of who I was”), he prayed to see his late grandmother one last time. He had lived in her home for much of his childhood, crying on the occasions when he had to return to his mom’s house. Her name, Alice Gaulden, frequently appears in his lyrics, and her massive painted portrait hangs by the fireplace; after our interview, I catch him smiling beneath it in silence, one hand resting on the image of her face. “And I remember, I ain’t crazy — she hugged me. I felt her,” he recalls softly, and despite his serene expression, his legs begin to tremble, at first subtly, then unignorably. “After that, I didn’t want to go back to sleep. I didn’t even care about the situation I was in. I felt like I was secure.”
His grandmother died in 2010, and YoungBoy was sent to a group home. “I used to get beat up inside the group home for no reason,” he continues as the shaking intensifies, though his quiet voice never falters. “The other boys would put their hands on me, and I would look up like, ‘Why are you hitting me, bro? What’d I do?’ It made me discover another side of me that I never glorified or liked. I found out how to be the person that you don’t want to do that with. [Before then], I never understood all the evilness or wrong because I was showered by so much love from this one person.”
By now, YoungBoy is shaking from head to toe with alarming intensity, his jewelry audibly rattling. “It’s not going to stop,” he calmly replies when I suggest we take a break. Quintina, who began as his accountant and now appears to also function as a surrogate mother, kneels beside his chair to hold his hand. “I’m OK,” YoungBoy assures her. Composing himself, though the trembling continues, he focuses his gaze.
“I’m very scared right now,” he confesses. “It’s just natural. I’m not big on people.” For most of his life, expressing or explaining himself has taken place behind a microphone, alone. “I never knew why once I walked on the stage, I could get it done and leave — but I am terrified of people. People are cruel. This is a cruel place.” He swivels in his seat toward the blue and white panorama behind him. “You’ve got to be thankful for it. It’s very beautiful, you know? There’s so much you can experience inside of it. But it is a very cruel place. And it’s not my home.” The smile he cracks has a strange effect — sweetness embedded in a wince.
“I don’t want to know what it means to die — but do we actually die, or do we go on to the real life? What if we’re all just asleep right now?” he wonders aloud as the shaking dies down. “It’s all a big test, I think.”
Diwang Valdez
Perhaps you’re wondering how a Baton Rouge rapper on house arrest finds himself deep in the heart of Mormon country. Those listening closely may have noticed YoungBoy name-dropping Utah’s capital from the beginning: “Take a trip to Salt Lake City, cross the mountain, ’cause that’s called living,” he chirped on “Kickin Sh-t” seven years ago. He first came here as a boy, he explains, as part of a youth outreach group initiative, and became very close with one of its leaders, a Utah native he declines to name, though he mentions she was married at the time to a professional baseball player. Today, he refers to the woman as his mom. “She’s a wonderful person. She’s just there when I need her,” he says softly. “She christened me, if I’m not mistaken, and then she brought me back here to meet her family. When I got here, it was always my goal: I’m going to move here. I’m going to have a home here. This is where my family is going to be.” Courtroom testimony from his 2021 hearing shows his attorneys reasoning that a permanent move to Utah would keep their client away from trouble; after some initial skepticism, the judge agreed.
The past few months of YoungBoy songs are full of curious Utah-isms, like the Book of Mormon passage that opens his video for “Hi Haters” — “Now, as my mind caught hold upon this thought, I cried within my heart: O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death” — or a recent line mentioning missionaries visiting his home. “I’m surprised they didn’t come in the process of this [interview],” he says when I ask about the latter reference. The first time the Mormon missionaries appeared on his doorstep, weeks ago, YoungBoy instinctively sent them away. Then he had second thoughts: “I wanted help very badly. I needed a friend. And it hit me.”
When they returned, he invited them in, explaining the things about himself he was desperate to change. “It was just cool to see someone with a different mindset that had nothing to do with business or money — just these wonderful souls,” he recounts. He has come to look forward to their daily visits, during which they discuss the Book of Mormon and “make sure my heart is in the right space” for his official baptism into the Church of Jesus Christ the Latter-day Saints, a rite that forgives past sins through repentance, according to Mormon theology. He’s saving the ceremony for after his ankle monitor is removed. “Even when my negative thoughts come back, when I do want to tell them, ‘Not today,’ I just don’t let nothing stop it,” he says. (Later I learn that during our talk, two carloads of chipper, clean-cut missionaries in their early 20s did, in fact, appear at the property’s gate and were turned away only due to the visitor limit.)
Diwang Valdez
As for whether the missionaries know who he is, YoungBoy doesn’t ask; frankly, it could go either way. He epitomizes “invisible music stardom,” the streaming-era phenomenon in which artists have massive fan bases but relatively minor pop culture footprints, illustrating a disjunction between what’s promoted and what is truly resonating. His particular success is often attributed to his relentless productivity, in some ways more like that of a “content creator” than a traditional musician. “I have never heard of a fan saying that their favorite artist is putting out too much music unless the quality goes down,” says Caren, noting YoungBoy’s impressive consistency.
As for his lack of a ubiquitous hit — for all of his chart-topping full-lengths and 96 Hot 100 entries, the highest YoungBoy has charted as a sole lead artist has been No. 28, for 2020’s “Lil Top” and 2021’s “Bad Morning” — Caren argues he has had them, just not in the places you’d expect. “He moved too fast for the radio. He was always on to the next thing. You can’t stick around and promote the same song for five months when you’re making multiple albums in that time period.” And though his numbers are mighty across all streaming platforms (on Spotify, he has over 17 million monthly listeners), his popularity is most closely associated with YouTube, where his fans first found him, and where he can upload new music directly to his 12.1 million subscribers, bypassing the mainstream industry apparatus entirely.
It was YoungBoy’s peerless work ethic that first grabbed the attention of Motown vp of A&R Kenoe Jordan. The Grammy-nominated producer and fellow Baton Rouge native had monitored the rapper’s career from the jump, impressed by what the teenager and his Never Broke Again label had accomplished with limited resources. “In Louisiana, we have the most talented musicians in the world, but the window of opportunity is very small,” Jordan says from the work-in-progress Never Broke Again headquarters in Houston: half office building, half giant garage full of lethal-looking ATVs and bench press racks. After signing a global joint venture with the Never Broke Again label, Jordan was determined to sign YoungBoy himself, who had voiced frustration with Atlantic in some since-deleted online comments that had some fans petitioning Atlantic to release him from his deal. Jordan announced YoungBoy’s signing with Motown in October 2022, following the completion of his contract with Atlantic.
Jordan calls YoungBoy and company some of the hardest-working people in the industry, known to spring an impromptu album on the label without warning. “His formula is already there,” Jordan adds. “He knows what he wants. You just have to make sure you’re able to deliver on the things that he asks you to do.” YoungBoy’s partners have simply learned to trust him whether or not they see the vision. Montana laughs remembering nights spent driving to undisclosed locations: “He do some of the oddest things, and nobody knows why he’s doing it but him.”
Diwang Valdez
As strategies go, YoungBoy’s makes sense — flood the market, circumvent the system, keep the fans and the algorithms satiated — but it doesn’t entirely explain why he puts out as much music as he does. What analysts would credit to a master plan, YoungBoy describes as a compulsion. “It’s a disease,” he says starkly. “Literally, I cannot help myself. I tell myself sometimes, ‘I’m not going to drop until months from now,’ but it’s addictive. I wish I knew when I was younger how unhealthy this was for me. Whatever type of energy I had inside me, I would’ve pushed it toward something else.” From someone whose music seems like his truest form of release, it’s an astonishing claim. “The music is therapy, but I can’t stop it when I want,” he goes on, sounding almost ashamed. “And the lifestyle is just a big distraction from your real purpose.”
As if some private dam has broken, YoungBoy’s words now spill out urgently. “I’m at a point now in my life where I just know hurting people is not the way, and I feel very manipulated, even at this moment,” he says, his brown eyes flashing. “I was set on being the greatest at what I did and what I spoke about. Man, I was flooded with millions of dollars from the time I was 16 all the way to this point, and I woke up one morning like, ‘Damn. They got me. They made me do their dirty work.’ Man, look at the sh-t I put in these people’s ears.” By “they,” he’s alluding to the rappers he once looked up to as examples of how to live and those who bankroll them. His voice wavers, then steadies. “I think about how many lives I actually am responsible for when it comes to my music. How many girls I got feeling like if you don’t go about a situation that your boyfriend’s bringing on you in his way, you’re wrong? How many people have put this sh-t in their ears and actually went and hurt someone? Or how many kids felt like they needed to tote a gun and walked out the house and toted it the wrong way? Now he’s fixing to sit there and do years of his life that he can’t get back.”
A shiver streaks through him again, rattling his knees. “I was brought up around a lot of f–ked-up sh-t — that’s what I knew, and that’s what I gave back to the world,” YoungBoy continues, spitting out his words like they’re sour. “I was like, ‘F–k the world before they f–k you.’ I was a child, you know? And now I know better, so it ain’t no excuse at all for how I carry on today.” His gaze doesn’t flinch. “It took lots of time to make my music strong enough to get it to where I could captivate you. I promise to clean whatever I can clean, but it’s going to take time, just like it took time for me to get it to that point.” He takes a sharp breath, then whispers: “I was wrong. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
YoungBoy’s music is commonly understood as brooding, ruthless and retaliatory. A running meme shows his fans moving through life with comic aggression: belligerently whipping clean laundry into the basket, holding up a rubber duck at gunpoint in the bath. That’s an oversimplification of the range of his subject matter — family, betrayal, loyalty, loss — but it isn’t entirely off the mark, either; on YouTube, listeners have compiled extensive playlists with titles like “1 Hour of Violent NBA YoungBoy Music (Part 4).” It’s a specter that looms over the bulk of his catalog, from early videos where his teenage friends wave Glocks at the camera to songs like last year’s “I Hate YoungBoy,” where he fires warning shots at half the industry and drops ominous bars like “I’m gon’ be rich inside my casket once my time gone.” It’s tough to imagine what a pacifist YoungBoy song might sound like, much less an entire album of it, and recent attempts at anti-violence messaging haven’t landed the way he intended: “As I start to promote the peace and say, ‘Stop the violence,’ I think I’m inciting a riot,” he rapped on “This Not a Song (This for My Supporters)” last year.
“Pacifist YoungBoy” isn’t fully realized on his latest record, I Rest My Case — his first for Motown, which he dropped with almost no promotion on Jan. 6. (It was the day before his private wedding to Mychelle, a 20-year-old beauty YouTuber who quietly tends to the babies in between posing for a few photos, at his insistence, during the cover shoot.) But it is a step in that direction, an album that mostly traffics in extravagant stunting over buzz-saw synths associated with the EDM/trap hybrid known as rage music. To celebrate its release, YoungBoy invited around 50 giddy fans over for a snowball fight and video shoot, jumping atop his Bentley truck to blast album opener “Black” from the court-approved safety of the driveway. The noisy crowd dispersed only when a couple emerged from next door to request they keep it down. “It’s a lot of old people here, really,” a poncho-clad blonde — the same one who had driven curiously past the house weeks before — cheerfully tells a TikTok reporter. “If he comes and asks, would you spare him a cup of flour?” the TikToker asks. “Of course we would!” she replies.
YoungBoy Never Broke Again photographed on December 16, 2022 in Utah.
Diwang Valdez
I Rest My Case is an obvious departure, lyrically and aesthetically, from what YoungBoy’s fans are used to, and across the internet, early reactions were mixed: Some praised their favorite rapper’s innovation, others longed for the old days. YoungBoy’s previous album, The Last Slimeto, debuted last August at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 with 108,000 equivalent album units, according to Luminate; just five months later, I Rest My Case debuted at No. 9 with 29,000 equivalent album units. “Be completely honest: Do you want YB back on drugs toting guns if it means we gon get that old YB back?” read one Reddit post.
YoungBoy expected this. “I’m very curious to see how the world goes about me now,” he contemplated weeks before in his living room, adding that he tried to avoid the usual mentions of guns, though there are still a few. He has thought a lot about what attracted people to his music until now: “They listened because of who I supposedly was or showed I was and what I rapped about. Now it’s nail polish and face paint, and the music is not the same.” (Lately, alongside the black nails, he and Mychelle like to paint their faces like goth Jokers and skulk around the property at night.) “What if they don’t like me now?” he wonders, fiddling with a diamond pinky ring. “You can’t be on top forever, you know? Because I’m not changing. I will not be provoked, I will not be broken, and I’m not going back to who I used to be. Accept it or not — I ain’t going back.” YoungBoy breaks into a smile. “I’m only going to get more groovy from here.” He’s already preparing his next album, which he’s calling Don’t Try This at Home.
Only once does YoungBoy remember it snowing in Baton Rouge; here in the mountains this time of year, it sits at least two feet deep daily. After checking briefly on the babies, he lights a cigar and beckons me through the garage and down toward the wooded dirt bike track, yelping for XO to join us. Out here, it’s a postcard: white trees, white mountains, ice blue sky. Everyone’s up to their knees in snow, and no one’s more excited about it than YoungBoy, whose ripped white jeans and jacket have now become camouflage. He points animatedly to where the bike path goes, a clearing where you can do doughnuts. “Five K for a snow angel!” he dares XO, who came hardly prepared in a hoodie and slides. “Just fall back! But at least put your hood on.” XO topples backward into a puff of powder and sweeps out an angel silhouette to YoungBoy’s delight, and the two laugh as they tramp back uphill.
As for what will happen when his ankle monitor is removed, YoungBoy would rather not think about it. No date is currently scheduled for his remaining federal trial, according to an email from his lawyer, because “the government is appealing the court’s ruling on our motion to suppress evidence, and that matter is pending before the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.” They declined to comment on his bail conditions. “The day I walk out this door and am free to do what I want, it’s going to be a lot of doing, or it will be done to me,” YoungBoy says. “So I’m not rushing back to that. I have a family.” He doesn’t plan to leave Utah anytime soon, though eventually, he would like to buy a place with even more land “where no one knows what’s going on on it.” He has spoken previously about his disinterest in touring but might reconsider if the shows were overseas where he could see some new places — he has always wanted to visit the Eiffel Tower, especially since watching Ratatouille. Asked what he looks forward to most, YoungBoy hesitates for a moment. “Change,” he replies softly. “I am very curious of the person who I shall become.”
This story will appear in the Feb. 4, 2023, issue of Billboard.
It was a break, not a breakup. But the way the screaming, flailing fans — ranging from teens to those teetering on the brink of middle age — at New York’s sold-out Beacon Theatre are reacting to frontwoman Hayley Williams, guitarist Taylor York and drummer Zac Farro ripping through their spiky new single, “This Is Why,” you’d think Paramore had just risen from the dead.
“It’s funny — everyone always thinks we’ve broken up,” Williams says. It’s a week before the Nov. 13, 2022, Beacon show, and the members of the trailblazing pop-punk band are seated on shabby vintage chairs in an old house in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park on a sunny afternoon. “It’s always like, ‘Will they or won’t they come back?’ ”
“Love to keep ’em guessing,” Farro quips.
“It surprises us every time,” adds York.
“At this point, I don’t understand how we’re still doing it,” Williams continues. “Because it just feels like against all odds every single time — which, honestly, I feel like we’re the most annoying band in the world because it’s always like, ‘Oh, we overcame this, and now we’re making this album.’ ”
Williams, 34; Farro, 32; and York, 33, met as kids with musical ambitions and Christian roots in Franklin, Tenn. Over the next two decades, as Paramore, they released five albums and survived internal band drama, from lineup changes to lawsuits, any of which could have sounded the death knell. But the group’s sixth album, This Is Why — a tight, post-punk juggernaut that zeroes in on pandemic-fueled anxieties, scheduled for release Feb. 10 — marks the first time the lineup has been consistent between two albums, as well as the end of its contract with Atlantic Records, the only label the band has ever known.
“It feels surreal,” York says.
“We’ve been really lucky,” says Williams. “We always will have gripes — it’s an industry — but we know that we’ve been really lucky. It’s more just the fact that it’s time to f–king finish something. And it’s time to know that we’re not doing the same sh-t that we’ve been on since we were teenagers. It’s just going to feel so nice to start a new book. You know, like no more chapters of this one. Whole new book. And I’m excited.”
Paramore’s relationship with Atlantic started in 2004, when Williams met with executive Julie Greenwald, then a recent arrival from Island Def Jam, and signed to the label. Although originally pitched as a solo artist, Williams had a different idea for her future.
“I walked away from the conversation understanding how important a band was for her,” says Greenwald, now chairman/CEO of Atlantic Music Group. “It wasn’t initially presented that way by the A&R people, but once I sat down with her, oh yeah, it definitely became super clear what the path was.”
The first iteration of Paramore — Williams, brothers Zac and Josh Farro, and bassist Jeremy Davis — officially formed the same year, and Greenwald thought that seminal alternative label Fueled by Ramen (an Atlantic imprint then led by John Janick and home to groups like Fall Out Boy and The Academy Is…) would make a good fit for the budding rocker and her band. “This chick should not be marketed as a pop chick. This chick was definitely a rock chick,” Greenwald recalls thinking. “And the demos were extraordinary: She had an unbelievable voice, but she definitely had a point of view at a very young age, and it was super exciting.”
“It was never going to just be Hayley. It was always about the band,” confirms Mark Mercado, who has managed the group since 2004. Fueled by Ramen released Paramore’s pop-punk-driven debut, All We Know Is Falling, in 2005, and even at that nascent stage, the band was already seeing members come and go. (York was involved from day one, but he only became a full-time member in 2009.)
York (left) wears a Nanushka shirt, Todd Snyder jacket, Nudie Jeans, and Dr. Martens shoes. Williams (center) wears a Maryam Nassir Zahed shirt, Tanner Fletcher skirt, Yuhan Wang tights, Hereu shoes, and Agmes and UNOde50 rings. Farro (right) wears a Paul Smith jacket, COS pants, and Duke + Dexter shoes.
Meredith Jenks
Paramore’s fame exploded with its sophomore effort, the hook- and hit-laden Riot!, now a triple-platinum album with a permanent home in the pop-rock canon of the 2000s. The 2007 release moved the young band up the male-dominated lineup of the traveling Vans Warped Tour, securing it a main-stage slot just two years after debuting on the festival’s female-fronted Shiragirl Stage. By 2008, the group was big enough that when the soundtrack for the anticipated film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight needed an original lead single, Paramore got the call and contributed “Decode,” which earned Williams, Josh and York a Grammy nomination in 2009.
Despite that success, the group couldn’t avoid near-constant lineup changes as its members grew up in the public eye, working out — or not working out — their differences while navigating stardom and young adulthood. “We didn’t have the perspective of [choosing to be here],” Farro says. “We were like, ‘Why are we playing Boston again?’ You’re 14. I literally would be onstage and be like, ‘I can’t wait to eat Taco Bell after this.’ ”
“Or you have to do schoolwork when you get offstage,” Williams says.
Farro and his older brother made a high-profile, acrimonious exit in 2010 (which Josh detailed in a now notorious blog post, citing the band’s label deal and a lack of shared values), but in 2016, Williams and York, the last members standing, asked Zac Farro to come back and play drums on Paramore’s fifth album, After Laughter. In the studio, the lineup clicked.
“It felt very new because I had been only used to being in this band with my brother when we were young,” Farro says. “There was this freedom that we felt to finally be just the three of us, and there was so much acceptance to just be real people.”
That sentiment carried over to After Laughter. As the band embraced a sleeker synth-pop style, Williams’ lyrics revealed her struggles with depression and anxiety amid the dissolution of her marriage to her longtime partner, Chad Gilbert of New Found Glory. About a year following After Laughter’s mid-2017 release, and as they finished a grueling world tour, the group chose honesty once again — and admitted to itself that it needed to take a break.
“They sat me down and said, ‘We’re going to take a break, but this time, we’re going to take a break because we want to,’ ” Mercado says. “It was a good moment for them.”
“I think at different points [in the After Laughter era] — for me, after my divorce, [and] Taylor had some things happen with family — there were moments of, ‘We really need to take a moment, a breather,’ ” Williams says. “But the craziest part about taking the break was, it’s like we really had agency over that choice. We really knew that we were doing it to preserve something.” Rather than being a warning sign of internal strife, “It was more like, ‘We just need to experience being adult people back at home [in Nashville] and have routines and a different type of normalcy that is not normal for us.’ ”
Paramore ended its After Laughter touring in Nashville in September 2018, then took time off — well, kind of. Farro put out a new album under his solo project, HalfNoise, while Williams released her first solo album, Petals for Armor, produced by York with Farro guesting on drums for two tracks, in May 2020. “Simmer,” the album’s first single, arrived in January 2020, and on March 5, Williams announced her first-ever solo tour. “She wasn’t excited about touring it, but we sold out shows, the whole thing,” Mercado says. “So when the pandemic hit, we were like, ‘Well, it looks like you won’t be touring it.’ ”
Instead, Paramore’s members spent spring 2020 like many people did: They hung out in small bubbles of family and friends, took long walks, Zoomed into therapy sessions, marched for racial justice and had heavy conversations about the state of the world.
“It was cool to know that everyone in the world was doing the exact same thing, which was nothing,” Farro says. “I have a huge fear of missing out, so I didn’t really have that because I was doing exactly what everybody else was doing. It felt kind of connected.”
“I have the opposite,” Williams says. “I just want to go home all the time.” Home was a “little, sweet, post-divorce house” that Farro calls The Batcave due to an unfortunate infestation of bats when Williams first moved in. Somewhere between having her mom over for tea and hanging out with her goldendoodle, Alf, Williams started thinking about new Paramore music.
Talks about ending Paramore’s break started in 2021. “I was talking about it on my back porch,” Farro remembers.
“You remember that conversation. I don’t even remember it,” York admits.
“Taylor and I got the inflatable pool,” Farro continues. “We always have tough conversations in a pool in my backyard.”
As Farro recalls, York broached the subject by mentioning that Williams was thinking about writing Paramore songs again. (In September, York and Williams confirmed they were dating, though they have not commented on the relationship since.) “You kind of were mediating between getting a pulse from everybody. And I was like, ‘I don’t even like you guys anymore,’ ” he jokes, making his bandmates laugh. “No, it was like, ‘Yeah, what does that look like?’ ”
Williams, Farro and York rented an East Nashville studio in June 2021, and though playing together again at first felt intimidating, making an album was “always the intention,” York says.
Starting the process was especially challenging for Farro, who had co-written a handful of Paramore tracks but had never been a primary songwriter. “I was like, ‘I don’t know. You guys have a whole system now; you did a whole record.’ And then Taylor, especially with the writing, was like, ‘Dude, come and help. I’d love some help.’ ”
The band wrote the album’s closing track, “Thick Skull,” a marked sonic departure from After Laughter, on day one. “It had these shades of a few different eras of us being music fans, loving heavy, drone-y, almost shoegaze-y moments,” says Williams, also citing York’s clashing guitar patterns, Farro’s thunderous bursts of drumming and even her own rare piano playing on the song. “I was like, ‘Man, this sounds like a band I would love.’ ”
Williams wears a Heureuh jacket, Orseund Iris shirt, Techin shorts, Jeffrey Campbell shoes, Fang earrings, and Ikaia and PDPAOLA rings.
Meredith Jenks
The album’s first song — the frenetic, title-track lead single, released in September — came last, but it provided the band with the project’s thesis. “The ‘this’ of it all is, I think, alluding to everything that gets talked about on the album,” says Williams of This Is Why’s topics, which range from men who are not held accountable for their actions (“Big Man Little Dignity”) to the endless parade of bad news during the pandemic (“The News”). The outside noise, as well as the privacy the band’s members rediscovered during the break, made it hard to fathom a return to the spotlight. As Williams shouts on the title track, “This is why I don’t leave the house!”
“It’s at odds with what we love to do,” she says. “And I think all those thoughts swirling in my head is what the ‘this’ is about.”
Williams also turned the lens inward on the post-punk “C’est Comme Ça,” where she speaks in a disaffected voice, “In a single year, I’ve aged 100/My social life, a chiropractic appointment,” then confesses, “Getting better is boring.”
“It’s so difficult once you’re on the path — like, you’re doing therapy, or maybe you’ve started taking medication, or maybe you’ve lost some toxic relationships and you’re trying to have better boundaries,” she says. “But if you’re — I have PTSD — addicted to survival, at a certain point, when things are healthy, it’s really devastatingly boring. And it makes you feel like, ‘I’m never going to have healthy relationships because some part of me is seeking out a shadow or always looking for the thing that’s going to go wrong.’ There’s not ever peace.”
Paramore has delved into relationships, social dynamics and mental health in its lyrics before, but the new album adds a decidedly political bent. “Everything is political, and it’s either politicized to a degree that maybe isn’t fair or it just inherently is political,” Williams observes. “Even if I tried to not say one word about anything political [on the album], I think it was just in the DNA. It was in every conversation.”
Farro wears a Sandro hat, Tanner Fletcher vest, COS pants, and Gentle Monster glasses.
Meredith Jenks
Despite the promising recording sessions, anxiety still crept in. “I was like, ‘What do people want from us? What are they going to expect?’ ” says Williams. In the years since the trio’s break began, pop-punk had made a startling mainstream comeback, with artists old and new participating in the resurgence. My Chemical Romance announced a reunion show in 2019 and a full tour in 2020, which was delayed until 2022 due to the pandemic. By then, even the genre forefathers in Blink-182 had announced a return to the road in its best-known lineup, and Paramore’s streaming numbers continued to climb, as they had since 2020.
The plays continued to rise in 2021, especially around the time when TikTok users started creating mashups of Olivia Rodrigo’s Billboard Hot 100-topping “good 4 u” – a conspicuous throwback to Paramore’s mid-aughts brand of pop-punk – and the group’s own brash 2007 hit “Misery Business,” released when Rodrigo was 4 years old. (The songs’ undeniable similarities earned Paramore a late writing credit on Rodrigo’s hit.)
Paramore has been a perennial staple on the rock and alternative charts, but the band has never achieved the pop standard of domination, only cracking the top 10 of the Hot 100 once, with the Grammy-winning “Ain’t It Fun” peaking at No. 10 in 2014. “Misery Business” topped out at No. 26 in 2008, making it the group’s fourth-highest showing on the chart out of 11 total appearances to date.
Williams wrote “Misery Business” when she was a teenager, and before playing the vengeful track at Paramore’s last show in 2018, she announced that it would be “the last time for a really long time” that the band would perform it. (Its lyrical content, pitting woman against woman over a man’s affection, has not aged well.) But with renewed interest in the song (and its influential blend of emo and pop-punk) from younger listeners, Williams reinstated it in 2022, performing an acoustic version alongside Billie Eilish at Coachella. “Misery Business” also made it onto the band’s fall setlists, though Williams introduced it at the Beacon with a disclaimer: “This song is about misogyny.”
The song’s resurrection, as well as pop-punk’s, came as a surprise to the group. “There’s all this sh-t happening on TikTok with our songs and young artists that are kind of reclaiming [emo and pop-punk culture], and there’s this resurgence of emo or whatever — which is also like, that’s another weird conversation because we never really felt like we fit anywhere,” Williams says. “But then this thing was happening, and we were part of the swell.”
“All of a sudden, they wanted to call us [part of] the scene now,” Farro says.
“Yeah,” says Williams, “all of a sudden, they wanted to claim us.”
York wears a Corridor jacket, Nudie jeans, and T.U.K. shoes.
Meredith Jenks
For the band’s first shows in four years, its agent, UTA’s Ken Fermaglich, booked a combination of intimate venues and festivals, allowing the band to “get the cobwebs off and kind of get them back to being on the road,” Fermaglich says. Knowing that the album would not be out until February and that the group would later announce an arena tour, the team “had to be mindful of the fact that we didn’t want to do too much and play too big of places too early.”
One of Paramore’s biggest fall gigs was headlining When We Were Young, the Las Vegas festival held over two weekends in October that treated emo and pop-punk fans to a lineup of Warped Tour royalty including My Chemical Romance, Jimmy Eat World and The Used. The event’s immediate sellout prompted promoters to add two more identical days and served as another sign of pop-punk’s new, growing audience — and the continued passion of its existing one. But Paramore’s members had mixed feelings about returning to that scene.
“Everyone’s just trying to remember better days, and I’m sitting there like, ‘They weren’t that much better,’ ” Williams says. She articulated those thoughts during Paramore’s When We Were Young set, telling the crowd that the scene had not always been a safe place “if you were different, if you were a young woman, if you were a person of color, if you were queer, and that’s really f–ked up if you think about it because this was supposed to be the safe place, wasn’t it?”
“We don’t want to be a nostalgia band,” Williams says today, reflecting on that speech. “But I think what I felt was a mixture of vindication and also a lot of anger. I was really surprised that I had so much anger well up in me because I was like, ‘Wait a minute. They’re treating us like a prize now,’ but like, Fat Mike [of NOFX] used to tell people that I gave good rim jobs onstage when I was 19 years old. I do not think that that’s punk. I don’t think that’s the essence of punk. And I feel strongly that without young women, people of color and also the queer community, I just think we would still be where we were then.
“It felt like justification to be able to have the mic and to be one of the last bands that played,” she continues. “We hung out with My Chem a few minutes before we went on [on] the last weekend, and I think they feel very similarly about how they were received. And what it comes down to is that the fans are the ones with the power because otherwise, us and My Chem wouldn’t have been headlining that thing. And I think that’s beautiful.”
“It’s kind of like people see us like [The] Princess Diaries,” Farro explains. “They didn’t see the beauty, but we threw off the glasses.”
In the middle of the Beacon Theatre show, Williams realizes that she has danced her way so far downstage that she now feels distant from the rest of Paramore. Suddenly sheepish, she drags her mic stand backward, telling the audience that she must return to the “safe space” closer to her bandmates.
Though Williams is clearly still its frontwoman, Paramore very much remains a group project. The high comfort level among its current lineup is evident whether one has spent an hour or years with the band — Farro’s humor, York’s quiet focus and Williams’ leadership skills maintain a balance that puts all three at ease, whether they’re discussing the tumultuous past or the wide-open future.
That’s true onstage and in the studio as well. The mid-2000s pop-punk heyday may not be a time Paramore relishes revisiting, but the band takes pride in its back catalog, playing songs from all five of its previously released albums on its fall tour, much to fans’ delight. Still, Williams, York and Farro are ready to keep moving ahead, as they have consistently done on their records for nearly two decades, surrounded by people they trust.
“When you listen to Riot!, and even getting into Brand New Eyes, you get a flavor,” Williams says. “And it’s really what we became known for, right? But when we write things that simply feel like that, we’re so bored. And it’s not challenging enough. And we don’t feel like we’ve grown.” This Is Why is the latest reflection of that quest for growth, both sonically and emotionally, as the band that has always seemed in flux finally appears settled.
“What I see is that the three of them together are really the best that they’ve ever been,” Mercado says. “They truly make joint decisions. They truly hear each other out.”
Williams (left) wears a Heureuh jacket, Orseund Iris shirt, Fang earrings, and Ikaia and PDPAOLA rings. Farro (center) wears a Nanushka shirt, A Personal Note 73 pants, Gentle Monster glasses, and Vitaly necklace. York (right) wears a Corridor jacket.
Meredith Jenks
Brendan Yates, frontman of Baltimore hardcore band Turnstile, witnessed the band’s chemistry firsthand when he directed the “This Is Why” music video. “It’s very cool to see a band that you love and respect so much really be extremely down to earth, and also very in touch with themselves and in touch with what they’re making and care about that,” he says.
A fan of the band since he was a teenager — 2009’s Brand New Eyes and 2013’s “Ain’t It Fun” (“That’s one of the best songs of all time”) are his favorite Paramore album and song, respectively — Yates commends the group’s ability to evolve. “They truly progress and mature and develop throughout every album,” he says. “They just do a great job of making the music reflect their growth as people. A great band is when you can very confidently make the music reflect the time that they’re in. I’m excited to see this new album do that for them in this era of Paramore.”
Fans new and old will get to experience Paramore’s fresh vision this year at the band’s dates in Europe and North and South America. On top of headlining arenas in 29 U.S. cities, it will top festival bills (Atlantic City’s inaugural Adjacent Festival, Alabama’s Hangout Fest) and open Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour at its March kickoff show in Arizona.
“When we were 19, [Swift] told me — she was a country singer at that point — that she wanted to be like Carole King,” Williams recalls. “And I was like, ‘Whoa, that’s a crazy thing to say,’ you know? Because we were kids. And I’ll be damned, this woman, she’s crossing genres and bleeding over into other aspects of pop culture, and she’s helping to shape it at the very least.” Opening for her now “is really huge. It’s a big deal that we even got thought of, you know? So I’m stoked. We can’t wait.”
“Having Paramore join me on tour is such an honor,” Swift says. “We came up alongside each other as Nashville teenagers writing our own music, so it feels insanely special to kick off the tour together nearly two decades later. I just remember being constantly floored and inspired by their writing, originality and artistic integrity. Hayley is such a riveting performer because she’s so multifaceted — bold and playful and ferocious and completely in command. It’s a dream come true to join forces like this.”
York (left) wears a Corridor shirt, Nudie jeans, and Dr. Martins boots. Williams (center) wears a Tanner Fletcher jacket, Everlane vest, Sandy Liang pants, Vagabond shoes, Agmes earrings, Ikaia, and Pdpaola and Vitaly rings. Farro (right) wears a Sandro hat, Tanner Fletcher vest, COS pants, and Gentle Monster glasses.
Meredith Jenks
As excited as they are to get back on the road starting in February and release new music, “it feels scary,” Williams says. “You know that you’re doing the thing that you feel is right because you’re just kind of following your passion or your instinct, but you also never know what’s going to hit and land the right way. We’re lucky that we’ve never relied on being a specific type of success, whether that be chart success or radio success. Because at the end of the day, there’s a connection and a relationship with the people that have grown up supporting and loving the band with us. So we trust that.”
“They’re the biggest they’ve ever been, and now they’re a free agent, for what it’s worth, after this record,” Mercado says. “I told them the other day, ‘I think you guys are just a force. I can’t stop it. People can’t stop it. Bandmates can’t stop it. You’re just a force, and you’ve got a message and a fan base that just believes in what you’re doing. And that’s all you need.’ And it’s cool to see that 18 years later.”
And anyone wondering what this newfound free agency means can rest assured: Though the band isn’t fielding other label offers right now, Paramore plans to keep making music.
“Free agents,” Farro says. “That’s our next record name.”
“Zac has been saying since we were in the studio,” Williams adds, “ ‘This is the season of us not resisting.’ ”
When asked to describe how he felt hosting the 63rd annual Grammy Awards in March 2021, Trevor Noah has trouble choosing just one word — but he lands on “intrigued.”
It was his first time hosting, and a year of other big firsts, too: Ben Winston’s first year executive-producing the broadcast and the first time in the Grammys’ six-decade history that a pandemic had upended the show. At the Los Angeles Convention Center, guests of honor were masked and seated at socially distanced tables of two. Shrubbery and patio lights added warmth to the usually sterile space, as the limited in-person audience — almost exclusively nominees — offered much-quieter-than-usual applause for the global superstars who took home awards, like Megan Thee Stallion, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish.
Yet the night’s limitations also yielded other exciting firsts, like watching Harry Styles cheer and whistle for Eilish during her performance of “Everything I Wanted” and seeing Bad Bunny gyrate along to Dua Lipa’s “Levitating.” “Nobody knew what was happening, and yet everybody was trying to create a semblance of normalcy,” Noah recalls. “It felt cavernous. There’s no crowd. You would think it would be awkward — but it became less awkward. It became intimate.”
This year will be Noah’s third consecutive time hosting, and he says that experience, too, has made the monumental awards show feel closer to normal — so much so that he has updated his one-word descriptor of the gig from “intrigued” to “celebratory.”
Read the full cover story for Billboard’s Grammy Voter Guide here.
