State Champ Radio Features
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“Is Laufey jazz?”
This was a recent topic among the armchair musicologists of Reddit’s r/Jazz thread, who spend much of their time debating the genre. It’s also the title of a 33-minute deep dive by YouTuber and musician Adam Neely where he dissects the 24-year-old cellist, singer and songwriter’s harmonic and chordal choices on a granular, theoretical level in an attempt to answer the question too.
Trying to neatly categorize whether Laufey (pronounced LAY’-vay) makes music that is jazz or something else misses the point of what she is doing. Laufey is building a modern and surprisingly lucrative musical world out of old-school building blocks — ii-V-I jazz chords, classical music motifs, bebop ad-libs — plus more than a pinch of Taylor Swift-ian storytelling.
But it’s Laufey’s wider aesthetic world — “Laufey Land,” as she calls it — that a remarkable number of Gen Z fans are flocking to. While traditional jazz can feel esoteric, Laufey makes it accessible by inviting followers into Laufey Land on social media — a place where her best days involve sipping lattes, reading Joan Didion and wearing the latest styles from Sandy Liang, and where listening to Chet Baker and playing the cello are the absolute coolest, hippest things to do. “It’s all kind of illustrative of my life and my music,” she says, and she shares both online generously.
Laufey Land (which has also become the name of her official fan HQ Instagram account) has also captured the imagination of the music business: sources say she sparked a multimillion-dollar bidding war last year among record labels that have rarely seen so much commercial potential in a jazz-adjacent act, though she remains independent for now. Perhaps that’s because her music renders a wistful, romantic portrait of young adulthood that can feel fantastical yet still within reach. And even if you’re not quite familiar with her own lofty influences — Chopin, Liszt, Baker, Fitzgerald, Holiday — Laufey invites you to sit with her, listen along and get lost in a magical place where, sure, the music is jazz-y, but is also so much more than that.
Raised between Iceland and the Washington, D.C., area, Laufey Lín Jónsdóttir grew up surrounded by classical musicians. Her Chinese mother is a violinist, and her grandparents were violin and piano professors; it was her Icelandic father who introduced her to jazz. “There was just so much music in the house growing up,” she recalls today. “It was a sonic blend of those two.”
Laufey and her identical twin sister, Junia — who now acts as Laufey’s creative director and is a frequent guest star in her TikToks — started playing young. Eventually Junia landed on violin and Laufey on cello (though she also plays piano and guitar). Until college, she saw herself more as a performer and practitioner of music than as a writer of it. But at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, she found many of her new friends were penning their own songs.
This digital cover story is part of Billboard’s Genre Now package, highlighting the artists pushing their musical genres forward — and even creating their own new ones.
Though Laufey says she always listened to pop music as well — she especially loved the storybook tales of early Swift songs — she felt that “oftentimes the lyrics and the storytelling resonated, but the sound [of pop music] wasn’t completely there. I didn’t feel like it was something I could make, and I wanted to make something that sounded more like me.” A self-described “sheltered orchestra kid,” she also didn’t yet have much life experience to expound upon lyrically.
Like so many artists before her, Laufey says she was finally propelled into songwriting when she had her heart broken. Borrowing chords closely related to the Great American Songbook that she had spent so much time studying already, she created “Street by Street,” which eventually became her first single. She was 20 years old. “The way I wanted to write was to find this middle ground between the very old and the very new,” she says. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, you can do this. You can write something new in the style of George Gershwin or Irving Berlin — something older.’ ”
When COVID-19 hit and forced everyone into lockdown, school ended, and to stay in vocal shape, Laufey began posting her takes on jazz standards online, her smooth alto accompanied by either cello arrangements or acoustic guitar. “The day I got back from school and started isolating, I told myself, ‘OK, I’m just going to write and post as many videos online of me singing jazz standards as I can,’ ” she recalls. “I’ll just see where it takes me.” An early video of her singing “It Could Happen to You” “hit some sort of algorithm,” as she puts it, and quickly, her following grew, attracting interest from a number of record labels, though she opted to sign to AWAL instead.
Today — one EP, two studio albums and one live album with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra later — Laufey is quite possibly the most popular artist making jazz or jazz-adjacent music, according to metrics like Spotify monthly listeners (24 million) and Instagram and TikTok followers (2.2 million and 3.6 million, respectively). Her breakout single, the bossa nova-inspired “From the Start,” is a massive hit, with 313.1 million on-demand official global streams, according to Luminate. And she’s now a Grammy nominee: Her second album, Bewitched, released in September 2023, is up for best traditional pop vocal album, an eclectic category this year where she’s the one new talent alongside veterans Bruce Springsteen and Liz Callaway and the late Stephen Sondheim. “It feels very, very validating, especially in the category I’m in,” Laufey says.
Tony Luong
The debate about what genre signifiers define Laufey may still matter at the Grammys (and on the Billboard charts, which categorize her as “jazz”), but there is far less need to label music than there once was, benefiting artists like Laufey who bridge disparate sonic worlds. “I think people’s desire to categorize things into genres was so rooted in radio, where they were trying to fit into a certain format to succeed,” says Max Gredinger, Laufey’s manager and a partner at Foundations Artist Management. “I think that is kind of ingrained in us, but now that terrestrial radio has certainly diminished in impact, I think people are still wrapping their heads around this new world.”
Around the time Laufey started to build her audience, TikTok’s reign over music discovery had just taken hold. It’s a place where personality and catchiness count but genre is of no consequence — the perfect platform for an artist like Laufey where she could define her jazz-inflected pop as not just a sound but as an aesthetic, a feeling, a lifestyle both timeless and very much of the moment.
Gredinger calls Laufey and her sister “the 2024 version of what you think of as a marketing executive. I would bet on them to do that job best a trillion times over.” Beyond music and slice-of-life videos, Laufey invites her fans into her process in other ways. She has posted sheet music versions of her songs before releasing them, asking her musician fans (of which there are many) to try to learn the song without hearing any reference and post the results, which she’ll then repost in the lead-up to release day.
She also hosts a book club, with selections — from Donna Tartt’s The Secret History to Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted — that feel akin to her music and her personal style, somewhere between darkly academic and coquettishly feminine. On the release day for Bewitched, she hosted A Very Laufey Day, a sort-of scavenger hunt around Los Angeles, involving everything she likes to do in a day. It included special Laufey Lattes, a display of her book club selections at a local shop and a merchandise pop-up at the Melrose Trading Post; at the end, she treated participants to a secret performance in West Hollywood’s Pan Pacific Park.
“It was like a normal Saturday for me,” Laufey says with a laugh. “I would’ve done all those things either way. I drove around West Hollywood and saw girls in white shirts, jeans and ballet flats carrying lattes and I would roll down the window and say hey and surprise them.” Her fans range from ultra-online teens to nerdy music majors to nostalgic grandparents, but her core base is Gen Z, many of whom do not listen to jazz or classical otherwise.
When she was younger, Laufey says, she never anticipated the mainstream popularity she has now. “If anything, I thought I would go the conservatory route, practice cello and try to get into the best orchestra I could, like my mother did,” she says. “I was so focused on being realistic that I almost didn’t allow myself to dream so big.”
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She remembers one of her first shows after pandemic lockdowns eased up, at New York’s Rockwood Music Hall, where she heard there was a line of fans outside waiting to be let in. “I was really confused,” she says. “I grew up going to symphony concerts primarily, and nobody lines up like that, you just walk in. I was like, ‘Oh, no. Let them in! What is happening?’” It was the first time she realized that her fans weren’t just a number on her screen: They would show up for her in real life, learn all the words to her songs and were shockingly young.
Norah Jones, a hero of Laufey’s and one of the few modern artists to, like her, bridge the jazz-pop divide, says she sees “a lot of similarities” between herself and Laufey. “We both come from a background steeped in jazz and have formed our own paths from there,” Jones says. “[But] because social media and streaming have changed the music industry so much, her journey is also so different from mine.” (The two recently collaborated on a set of holiday songs, Christmas With You.)
Unlike Jones, who has a long-standing relationship with Blue Note Records/Capitol Records, Laufey has opted to stay independent — a clear sign of the times. Industry sources say she recently sparked a multimillion-dollar bidding war among major labels, but she finally decided to keep her business among herself, Gredinger and AWAL (which handles label services and distribution) instead.
“With the kind of music I make,” she says, “I make very individualistic choices. I’m very confident in my music. I know what I want, and my current team at AWAL has let me make those creative decisions. I’ve had a great time being independent, so I haven’t felt like I’ve been lacking anything. Making independent decisions is my main focus.”
In the future, Laufey Land’s borders are likely to only expand further. She envisions her sweeping love songs soundtracking musicals and films someday, like Harry Connick Jr., Jon Batiste and Sara Bareilles have done. The ultimate dream? A James Bond theme. “I’ll just keep on repeating that I want that, so it manifests itself maybe,” she says, smiling.
Batiste, who also knows what it’s like to move between jazz and pop music spaces, thinks she’s on the right track. “Laufey approaches all of these many facets [of a music career] with a great deal of prowess, deftness of craft and insight into how to connect with her community,” he says. “That will only continue to attract more curious listeners.”
“I think there are a lot of barriers to entry to listening to jazz… [It] can be very daunting,” Laufey says. “I’m lucky I was born into that world, but I’m aware of how scary it can seem. It seems like something that’s reserved for maybe older or more educated audiences. I think that’s so sad, because both jazz and classical music were genres that were the popular music of one time. It was for everyone. That’s one of the reasons I want to fuse jazz and classical into my own music: I want to make a more accessible space.”
Tony Luong
She points to artists like DOMi & JD BECK and Samara Joy, young jazz talents she admires who are actively evolving the genre today. “Jazz hasn’t gone anywhere — it’s actually, I think, gone into music more,” Laufey says, pointing to its influence on hip-hop, R&B and pop. “The amount of times I hear a pop song really hitting the charts and everyone’s like, ‘It’s so good’ — in my head, I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s because of this jazz harmony that really draws you in.’”
Her own sound borrows primarily from that of the jazz greats of the 1940s and ’50s — one reason, perhaps, why her songs connect so well. As tracks featuring sizable samples or interpolations of older hits continue to rise on the Billboard charts, experts posit that the pandemic led to an increasing interest in songs that feel nostalgic.
Though Laufey’s work sounds quite different from, say, “First Class” by Jack Harlow, the same primal desire for familiarity and comfort is at the root of its appeal. “I think a lot of the sounds that she pulls from, every person has some connection to,” Gredinger says. “You would be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t have some memory or relationship with jazz or classical. It’s a foundational experience most everyone has had, combined with modern, honest songwriting.”
And it’s the combination of those elements that create the foundation of Laufey’s own brave new world. One where true love is possible, every day is romanticized, major sevenths are essential — and all kinds of listeners are welcome.
September’s Hip-Hop Forever show at Madison Square Garden in New York — part of the yearlong celebration of the genre’s 50th anniversary — brought the stars out. Alongside legends who helped build hip-hop’s storied past was a slightly more unexpected booking: Jamaican dancehall king Sean Paul. He tore the house down with hits like “Give It Up to Me” and “Like Glue,” reminders of a time, in the early 2000s, when dancehall records topped the Billboard charts — when Paul, who has now traded his trademark cornrows for a crisp, neat Caeser, effortlessly mixed dancehall’s infectious riddims with hip-hop sensibilities and aesthetics. Blending reggae and dancehall with other popular genres wasn’t a new idea when Paul did it, but no one else besides Bob Marley and Shaggy had done so to greater effect.
At least until now. That night, Paul wasn’t the only dancehall MC to bless the stage. One of the “special guests” teased on the show’s flier was a comparatively little-known 29-year-old guy from Montego Bay, Jamaica, that most audience members couldn’t pick out of a lineup if they were promised the numbers to the next Powerball. But though silence at first overtook the crowd when he stepped onstage, Teejay looked every inch the star when he arrived.
Invited as a guest of Funkmaster Flex, the longtime Hot 97 DJ who oversaw the night’s proceedings, Teejay emerged dripped out in a Gucci jacket and matching sneakers. And when the opening chords of his current hit, “Drift,” blared out of the speakers, concertgoers slowly caught on: This was the guy who made the song that had taken over TikTok for a few months last year. As Teejay warmed up to the crowd, so did they, breaking into the signature dance that would help propel “Drift” to a No. 47 debut on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart three weeks after the Garden performance.
It was a big night for Teejay — one that affirmed that the hard work he’d been putting in over the past three years was finally paying off. So what if few can yet recognize him by face? They recognize his music. Well, sort of.
“Most people still don’t know what I’m saying,” says Teejay with a laugh, thinking back to the Garden show. We’re in Los Angeles, meeting for the second time at his Billboard photoshoot, and his fit looks as if it costs more than most people’s monthly income. “But they love the vibe. They love the music. They love the sound. So, I just work with it.”
This digital cover story is part of Billboard’s Genre Now package, highlighting the artists pushing their musical genres forward — and even creating their own new ones.
Born Timoy Janeyo Jones in Montego Bay, Teejay learned early on to just work with it. To most people from outside Jamaica, Montego Bay is an idyllic resort city, but it has a shadier side that doesn’t make travel brochures or TV commercials. One in which families of nine like Teejay’s — he grew up with his mother, uncle, five brothers and one sister — live in small board houses, in sometimes dangerous neighborhoods (like Glendevon, where Teejay’s family lived). His brothers were all musicians who as kids picked up digital production and recording software like FruityLoops and Pro Tools to produce music. Naturally, Teejay took to them as well.
“I started recording myself at the age of 9,” he says. “Every day, I would come home and see them recording with Pro Tools and I’d just sit there for hours, and when they’d gone, I’d just record myself.”
Michael Buckner
The autodidactic method worked. By the time Teejay was in seventh grade, he decided to leave school behind and focus on music full time. “My teacher asked me, ‘What do you want to be in life?’ And everybody in the class said they want to be a policeman, a lawyer, a judge, a doctor. I tell the teacher I want to be an artist. She said, ‘That’s not professional. Give me something else.’ I said, ‘Entertainer!’ ” When he was supposed to be taking notes, Teejay was instead tapping out riddims on his desk. His teacher told him that he needed to take that noise to the music class — so he did.
The way he saw it, he could help his family much more financially if he dedicated his time to growing into an artist like 2Pac or the Jamaican great Jah Cure — two of the MCs idolized in his neighborhood. “Growing up in my community, we listened to 2Pac every single day. Once you’re a Montegonian, you’re going to know about 2Pac and Jah Cure music.”
His focus paid off when Tommy Lee — fellow Montegonian and controversial mentee of incarcerated dancehall star Vybz Kartel — let Teejay rock with him and his crew, even helping the fledgling artist score his first live performance in 2010. The experience left Teejay feeling like he could actually become a star. But it would take a good while longer before the dreams in his mind materialized outside of his head.
Steve Jobs famously said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” Teejay watched the artists who were remaking dancehall in the early 2000s — artists like Movado, Aidonia, Busy Signal and Tommy Lee, who were all more different than similar — and studied what made them connect not only with Jamaican fans, but the throngs of dancehall fans around the world. He took bits and pieces from each one’s style, creating a dancehall sound that was fluid, melodic and, at times, lyrically crazy.
Over the next eight years, he produced a torrent of music, culminating in his 2018 regional hit, “Uptop Boss.” Though it didn’t make much noise in the United States, the slinky gangster dance track was a massive hit on the island; its official video has racked up over 16 million views on YouTube.
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Then, tragedy struck: Two of Teejay’s close friends, who often appeared in his videos and lyrics — Romario “Grimmy Boss” Wallen and Philip “Afro-Man” Lewis — were gunned down in St. Andrew, Jamaica, on June 4, 2020. (The two were reportedly just hanging out on the block when a shooter pulled up and opened fire.) Condolences poured out from fans and fellow dancehall artists, with many posting photos and comments on Instagram. But Teejay went quiet: He deleted everything on his Instagram page except for two posts of his departed friends.
Wallen’s and Lewis’ deaths derailed Teejay’s momentum just as he was finding his footing as an artist — but they were also a wake-up call. He took time away from music, leaving the country for a bit and settling at a friend’s house in Miami to refocus his energy and clear his head. His friends’ deaths affected both his physical and mental health: He changed his diet and started to eat healthier, in turn losing a lot of weight. But the biggest change wasn’t what he was putting into his body — it was what he put into the world.
He no longer wanted to make music that was overtly gangster. “Hardcore music has a barrier,” he says. “It can’t be played in a Christian home or in certain homes. I decided that we’re not going to go violent; I want to do something happy.” To achieve that, he decided to make some changes — starting with who handled his business. “Jamaican artists don’t even know what a proper management is,” Teejay says. “As a Jamaican artist, we have to still go out there and look for a chauffeur ourselves and an interview, everything. Some people don’t even know that some people in Jamaica who say that they’re a manager are basically a booking agent.”
Sharon Burke, the leader of Teejay’s new management team since 2021, is much more than a booking agent. Co-founder and president of the Kingston, Jamaica-based Solid Agency, Burke has worked for years to bring reggae and dancehall music to a global audience. She has had a hand in the success of many of Jamaica’s biggest superstars, including Freddie McGregor, Barrington Levy, Bounty Killer and Aidonia. And her company produces the annual Island Music Conference, bringing the wider music world to Jamaica. When it came time to set up the Verzuz battle between Bounty Killer and Beanie Man — ultimately watched by over 3 million — it was Burke who Verzuz creators Swizz Beatz and Timbaland turned to.
Burke believes in Teejay — that he has what it takes to really leave a mark on the game much as some of her previous clients have — but she has impressed upon him that good music alone won’t take him to the top “I said, ‘Listen, if you’re just going to sit by and think it’s talent alone, I can’t work with you. It’s hard work. It’s about presentation. It’s about excellence. It’s about choreography in the way you move. So, if you’re ready for that journey, I will go it with you.’ ”
Michael Buckner
One of the first things Burke did was to connect Teejay with Panda, one of their in-house producers. While Teejay was in Miami getting his mind right, he began to think beyond the boundaries of the genre he’d worked within for so long. He loves dancehall — it’s the music he was raised on and the music that changed his life — but he understands that, right now, dancehall and reggae aren’t as popular as they once were.
Back in 2003 — when Sean Paul was hopping on remixes with Busta Rhymes, when LL Cool J jumped on Wayne Wonder’s “No Letting Go” remix, when Elephant Man had everyone ponning de river — new dancehall artists were making serious waves in rap and R&B music. Fast forward to 2021, when the bestselling reggae and dancehall artists in the United States were Paul, Bob Marley and Shaggy. No new artists broke onto the Billboard Hot 100 that year.
Now, another type of Black diasporic music, Afrobeats, has assumed the position reggae and dancehall once occupied. Over the past three years, an increasing number of new African artists have broken onto the charts with big singles, like Wizkid and Tems’ 2020 hit, “Essence,” the first Nigerian song in history to appear on the Hot 100, reaching No. 9 on the chart. Now, mainstream American rappers like Drake and Future and singers like Chris Brown are tapping the genre’s ascendant stars to help them move units. Future’s first Hot 100 No. 1 as a lead artist, for instance, came courtesy of a song that heavily samples Tems’ song “Higher” from her 2020 EP, Broken Ears.
“They’re saying now that Afrobeats is bigger than dancehall,” Teejay says. “I was at a show where there was an Afrobeats artist on the stage — I won’t say any names — and he was saying ‘our music is your music’ because they took pieces of all the legendary [dancehall] artists’ music.”
He took to the makeshift studio in the garage of his friend’s Miami house, puzzling over a riddim he’d had in his head for close to three years but couldn’t quite figure out how to translate into a workable beat. He wanted to make something that was new but also paid homage to the warm dancehall feeling that radiated from songs made by legends like Supacat and Shabba Ranks. Then, one day in 2022, he received a batch of beats from Panda. “I called the beat-maker and said, ‘Bro. You got it. This is good.’ ”
What he got turned into “Drift,” the slick dancehall ditty that could easily be mistaken for an Afrobeats song if not for its decidedly dancehall drum programming and, of course, Teejay’s perfectly syncopated bars that swell into what has become an inescapable chorus.
“Me and the team, we created something called ‘Afro dancehall,’ ” he says with a laugh. “It’s more of an Afrobeats song with a dancehall artist on it. At the time, dancehall music was kind of slow and really toxic, based on everything that was going on in Jamaica. I was like, ‘We need to embrace happiness [in] the world. Something everyone can dance to.’ We created that old dancehall feeling where people just want to dance. It’s simple math. We used less words and more melody so people can remember it.”
That last, key idea came to Teejay from his mentor, Shaggy, the platinum-selling superstar who’s also one of Burke’s partners at Solid Agency. Combining reggae and dancehall with music from around the world and making it as simple as possible to sing along to has been a Shaggy trademark since he dropped the Marvin Gaye-sampling “Boombastic” back in 1995. “He has been telling me, ‘Listen: choice of words,’ ” Teejay says. “ ‘Try to say less, but make sure it’s effective and that people can understand it.’ ”
“[Teejay’s] incredibly talented. He’s a guy that is making music outside of the box and he also works extremely f–king hard,” Shaggy says. “And I think that is the formula that is needed to have a very long and successful career.”
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A little luck also helps, and it was on Teejay’s side when it came to promoting “Drift.” He gave the song to a DJ who then leaked it on TikTok, and it took on a life of its own, becoming a top-used sound on the platform. Soon, celebrities like Jamaican Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt and Cardi B were making TikToks doing the dance from the music video. “Drift” became Teejay’s first Billboard chart entry, landing at No. 47 on R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay.
While the song took Jamaican and U.S. audiences by surprise, its success isn’t that shocking to Shaggy. “In the early days, when I played stadiums in Africa, the majority of the music they were playing was dancehall,” he recalls. “The traditional music that you might hear from Fela Kuti and some of these original artists over there wasn’t the type of music you would hear in the nightclubs. Dancehall is what you heard in the nightclub. Whether it be Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, those are the songs that were played — dancehall. It has had a very strong influence on the African culture. So, to me, it’s all one.”
What does the future of dancehall look like if one of its most popular artists is co-opting the sound of another genre to make waves internationally? “If you listen to dancehall from the 2000s, it’s a totally different dancehall than what we have today. The sound of it is different,” Shaggy says. “The dancehall they make today is more a trap kind of dancehall. That’s just evolution at the end of the day. With an artist like Teejay, it gives him the opportunity to experiment and try a different vibe.”
On Dec. 15, 2023, Teejay released an official remix of “Drift” featuring none other than leading Afrobeats artist Davido (the song also has a couple of rap remixes at this point). He sounds perfectly at home on the track; if you didn’t know any better, you might assume that Teejay was the guest feature. Its success, and Teejay’s own, are proof that there’s an audience for this new sound, one that keeps dancehall’s driving groove intact while mixing in the breezy and blithe feel of Afrobeats. And if anything, it proves dancehall is at its best when pushed to new limits.
“I hope [new artists] keep experimenting and keep finding new ways,” Shaggy says. In other words, they just got to work with it.
A packed crowd writhes along to the buzzing beats thundering from the speakers. It’s a warm Wednesday night in November, and onstage at Brooklyn’s Baby’s All Right, 23-year-old Houston-based producer Odetari is performing one of his first shows. The 300 or so people assembled range from the middle-aged to young adults to actual children — several of whom are perched on their parents’ shoulders and shouting the lyrics to songs like “I LOVE U HOE,” “GOOD LOYAL THOTS” and Odetari’s latest, “GMFU,” an acronym for “got me f–ked up.”
This lattermost track is a collaboration with 6arely Human, a 22-year-old electronic artist from Fort Worth, Texas, whose own shows are similarly hectic and whose audience is similarly age-agnostic. Since its July release, “GMFU” — a dark, thumping anthem about “going dumb” from partying — has accumulated 91.9 million on-demand official U.S. streams, according to Luminate. (Their second collaboration, “Level Up,” arrived Jan. 8.) Odetari’s catalog has racked up 475.4 million on-demand official U.S. streams — a number that swells to 612.6 million when including data from user-generated content on platforms like TikTok — and he has clocked 11 entries on Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart in 2023. 6arely Human’s catalog has 67 million official on-demand streams, ballooning to 96.5 million with UGC.
On a recent Friday afternoon in Los Angeles, Odetari and 6arely Human make an eye-catching pair: the former in bulky streetwear, his new grills twinkling when he flashes a wide, easy smile; the latter sporting a pink corset, black platform boots, an enviable black velvet duster and perfectly applied black lipstick adding up to a look that evokes both the rave world and of his two biggest inspirations, Kesha and Lady Gaga.
Until this past August, 6arely Human was managing a Panera Bread, slinging bagels by day and spending his nights making music, clothing and TikToks. And until earlier this year, Odetari was a substitute teacher, a gig he says he did purely “for the paycheck.” Now, both electronic producers are TikTok stars, but they’re making significant IRL inroads as well. In 2023, both signed with Artist Partner Group, and they’ll take their high-powered — if not yet totally polished — shows on the road in 2024.
“Our role is to challenge, inspire, support and remove friction points on the path to success,” says APG founder and CEO Mike Caren, who notes that consistency is key to turning internet stardom into more tangible success. “They have the talent, uniqueness, work ethic and originality to achieve huge goals.”
This digital cover story is part of Billboard’s Genre Now package, highlighting the artists pushing their musical genres forward — and even creating their own new ones.
Despite the lyrical content of their music (“Don’t cheat me/Believe me/I am a f–king c–t,” 6arely Human announces on “GMFU”), there’s a sense of purity about both acts. They represent a nascent style of extremely online dance music, defined by woozy productions that speed up, slow down and generally capture the sound of the global online dance community from which they hail, the DIY vibe of the early rave era and the ultra-modern world of TikTok stardom. APG senior director of A&R Andre Herd, who signed 6arely Human, says that the producer “stood out from the crowd of internet artists because he had been building an in-person fan base through underground raves and parties.”
The electronic scene has always been cobbled together from many niche genres and sounds. Together, Odetari and 6arely Human are continuing that tradition while pushing it further — making music forged online that’s now transcending the internet, translating to very real popularity.
6arelyhuman photographed on December 1, 2023 in Los Angeles.
Michael Buckner
Tell me about the first time one of your songs went viral.
Odetari: I always kind of knew that going viral on TikTok, especially with music, is usually a one-time thing if you don’t do it right. The first song [of mine that] went viral [2023’s “Narcissistic Personality Disorder”] hit 256,000 streams in a day, which was crazy to me, because I had never passed 10,000 on a song. I saw how fast it went up and got really excited, but I tried to tell myself, “Don’t get too excited, because you don’t know if this could drop.” Then the next day it dropped by half. So, I was like, “What do I do next? I have to keep this momentum going.” It was like a roller coaster.
What was your strategy when you saw the numbers go down by half?
Odetari: Just rapid-fire dropping [of new music]. Whatever worked for that first thing, you’ve got to keep doing that again and again [while expanding your catalog]. The song that went viral was mostly beats, so the next songs were filled with actual structure and lyrics, so there was steady replay value. That’s what I just kept doing.
6arely Human: I relate to him. My first viral song was also doing this up and down thing. But it started to really go [up] when I would see a bunch of videos from people that were creating things and making edits with their own ideas with the song. I remember specifically that one of the things that helped a lot was a [fan-made] South Park edit [that played the song “Hands up!” over images from the show]. [Virality] is a lot about what people do with the song once it comes out.
Odetari: Also, a lot of people making music similar to ours were not showing their faces. We definitely made sure to also attach [our] image to [the music], because a lot of songs that blow up on TikTok, people will scroll and hear the song, but they don’t really care about it or the person who made it. I feel like we really nailed it on that, [by each of us] attaching [our] images and connecting with the fans.
You’re both from Texas. How much of what you make is a product of where you’re from versus from being on the internet?
6arely Human: A lot of my inspiration is definitely from the internet, but I feel like there’s something about where you’re from that you put into your music, and it just adds the salt and pepper element. There is that little Texas spice.
What specifically makes it Texas?
6arely Human: The way I say things on a song, and the words I use. I don’t know if everyone’s going to be saying “y’all” on an electronic song, but it sounds cool.
Odetari: I definitely have influence from Houston, especially with the slow, chopped-and-screwed stuff. A lot of my music slows down toward the end. When I was growing up, I looked up to Travis Scott. Me and his sister went to the same school, and we were pretty close friends. She kind of took me along the journey when he was first starting, going backstage and stuff. Seeing where he was with [debut solo 2013 mixtape] Owl Pharaoh to where he is now just really shaped a lot of the things I want in life.
Odetari photographed on December 1, 2023 in Los Angeles.
Michael Buckner
Let’s talk about the sound of your music itself — because sure, it’s electronic, but it’s something else, too. What do you both call your sounds?
6arely Human: I call mine “sassy scene.” Sassy Scene was [the name of] my first album, and a lot of the songs that were on that project had a similar sound. The word “sassy” is just the feeling you get listening to it, and then “scene,” that could mean the style, because there’s different subcultures of the way that people dress that connect to the music. “Scene” is the community as well, because there’s a lot of people that make similar stuff. Everyone’s making up different words for it — the most common one is obviously “hyperpop.” And then “scene core,” “crush club.”
Odetari: Some people call it “sigilkore.” I call my stuff “Odecore,” but I would just categorize it under electronic dance music.
What are the characteristics of the people in your scene who are consuming your music and making similar music?
6arely Human: There are really colorful outfits; a lot of people love the fur [raver] legging things. I see those a lot, and then arm warmers and a lot of accessories — fur and pink. Scene fashion is almost emo, too, that kind of mixes with ravers.
Is this scene happening everywhere? Or is it centralized in Texas? Or is it mostly on the internet?
Odetari: It’s really well respected in the U.S., but overseas they really love it. Poland and Germany, where they have those underground raves that just go crazy, I feel like they’re the ones that really like it. They really get it.
What do your shows look and feel like?
6arely Human: Very lively. There’s a lot of energy. It’s mostly younger people, but there are also people that maybe get a nostalgic feeling, too [for the early rave days]. There is a wide range of people. Everyone’s really excited, and it’s really fun, honestly.
Odetari: Sometimes you have to scream in the mic. They’ll scream over you. They know the lyrics. They’re really dedicated. It’s an awesome fan base for shows. The age range is pretty wide.
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Within your scene, is there a particular worldview or set of values or a philosophy?
6arely Human: I’m not sure about that one.
Odetari: It’s so new, so we’re learning it, too. It kind of goes back to everyone who has made similar music to ours but never shows their face. They’ve never really taken it to a performance level. We’re some of the first to be performing music like this, so we’re figuring out what the best way to do that is. It’s experimental.
Have there been hits and misses in translating your music to a live setting?
6arely Human: For sure. Some of my songs are sped up a little bit, and it’s hard to key the music, too, if you’re using live Auto-Tune. Everyone’s doing the sped-up thing, or slowed down, or even both.
Odetari: My music speeds up, then slows down and then is normal. For performances, it’s not ideal unless you do a DJ set, I guess. But again, we’re figuring it out.
6arely Human: A lot of the people that are there at the live shows, I feel like sometimes they just want to see you on the stage singing. Even if you’re not giving the best vocals in the world, they just love the song so much that they just want to see you up there having fun as well.
Since you’re both so deeply online, maybe it’s just exciting for people to see that you both actually exist. Do you feel like underground acts?
Odetari: I don’t know. The numbers are not really underground.
6arely Human: I feel like we were, but since everything happened rather quickly it hasn’t really hit me yet.
Odetari: It hasn’t hit me, either.
Do you see yourselves performing in arenas, or is the preference sweaty underground warehouses?
6arely Human: I don’t know about arenas. You never know. Maybe. But I really do like smaller, intimate shows. They’re more fun. I love jumping in the crowd, starting mosh pits.
Odetari: A 2,000-[capacity venue], those are really the best shows.
Odetari & 6arelyhuman photographed on December 1, 2023 in Los Angeles.
Michael Buckner
What do your friends and family back in Texas make of your success?
6arely Human: A lot of people don’t know. A lot of people where I live might not be as tuned in with internet stuff. I don’t know how to explain, like, “Oh, yeah, we just made this in our room and then put it on an app called TikTok and now we’re here.” It’s weird to explain to people that don’t really get the internet.
Obviously, a lot of electronic music is made for parties. How much do you connect to that partying aspect of the electronic world?
6arely Human: The type of music we make is something people can just have fun to and not really think about everything else that’s happening. Our type of music, whenever you play it, people just want to jump around and have fun and go crazy.
Odetari: You don’t even need to know the lyrics. You can just vibe to it.
Do you feel connected to other realms of the dance music world?
Odetari: I personally don’t, because I really don’t listen to music. I only listen to video-game soundtracks now, so I really don’t know what’s going on in music that much. I think it helps me not get too influenced by anything.
6arely Human: I feel the same way. Anything that’s new, it’s probably just me listening to my friends or someone I actually know. Most of the music I listen to and take inspiration from is really old. From, like, 2010 or 1998.
Source: iOne Digital / iOne
Fifty years is a long time, and that means a legion of important contributors to Hip-Hop culture. Some have been more involved than others, and out of that batch is a smaller fraternity of game-changing artists.
Covering all of them for a 50 year anniversary tribute is nearly impossible. But it’s with the mission of honoring those too often dismissed for flashier, mainstream names that Hip-Hop Wired presents Witness To History: 50 Year of Hip-Hop Greatness, a podcast series that speaks to important industry players whose unique stories deserve as much shine as possible.
So it only makes sense that the first episode be an in-depth conversation with the legendary DJ Kid Capri. The Bronx native is a savant on the turntables and is a virtual encyclopedia of Hip-Hop knowledge. With WKYS’ Aladdin Da Prince as the episode’s co-host, Kid Capri delves into topics like his mixtape innovation and his time on the iconic Def Comedy Jam.
Check out the podcast, in video form, above.
12/28/2023
From charged anthems by Stray Kids and IVE to NewJeans’ inescapable earworms, there was a delicious balance from the industry this year.
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12/19/2023
Men will have some catching up to do in 2024.
12/19/2023
All year we covered the deals, the launches, the layoffs, the lineups and everything else related to the wide world of dance. We also tracked the numbers that provide an understanding of how well the scene is doing (with the dance industry growing by a not insubstantial 34% over the last year.) Meanwhile, we looked […]
Although The Boy and The Heron, the first film from beloved Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki in a decade, was released internationally in July, the breathtaking fantasy has caused quite a stir since its wide release in the U.S. on Dec. 8. The story of a troubled boy who enters a mysterious world following the death of his mother, The Boy and The Heron grossed nearly $13 million in its opening weekend to top the North American box office – the first Miyazaki film to do so.
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As more moviegoers discover the wonder of The Boy and The Heron, they’re also interacting with “Spinning Globe,” the moving end-credits song performed by longtime Japanese star Kenshi Yonezu. Years after Miyazaki first approached the artist about contributing a song to his long-awaited new film, “Spinning Globe,” a heartfelt ballad that blooms into a giant pop sing-along while incorporating element of Scottish folk music, has developed a following in its own right. The song earned 1.1 million official on-demand U.S. streams through Dec. 7, according to Luminate, and that number will surely rise following the film’s North American debut.
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Prior to The Boy and The Heron hitting North American theaters, Kenshi Yonezu discussed the creation of “Spinning Globe,” and how the song yielded one of the most unforgettable moments of his career, in an email interview with Billboard.
What was your reaction when Hayao Miyazaki first approached you to write the theme to his next project?
I was simply flabbergasted, like, “What!?!”
Naturally, I thought, “Why me?,” you know. I heard some background stories of the approach and it turned out that Mr. Miyazaki had heard “Paprika” [a hit song Yonezu produced] on the radio. At a nursery school run by Ghibli, children were singing and dancing to the song; one day, Mr. Suzuki noticed Mr. Miyazaki singing along with them. He thought this could be some kind of destiny and brought up the idea, “How about asking the one who wrote this song to make the theme song of The Boy and the Heron?” and Mr. Miyazaki said, “That’s a good idea.”
Actually, I remember little of the first impression I had on their proposal. It could have had an impact on my memory, but I don’t even remember most of the scene either. I wonder why, and come to think of it, it was an honor, but at the same time, it was very much a scary thing. While it was the biggest honor in my life, chances were, it would put an end to my life as a music maker. That vague anxiety remained intact throughout the four years of making the song. So, to be honest, I don’t really remember how I felt at first.
How much pressure did you feel to create a song worthy of his genius?
For the past four years, this movie has always been in the corner of my head. No matter what I did – when I was writing a song that had nothing to do with it, or just living everyday life, a thin membrane that had the phrase The Boy and The Heron on it was always screening my view. It certainly put a heavy pressure on me, and there was always a sense of preparation for it.
Upon making the theme song of The Boy and The Heron, I thought once again, about what Ghibli movies were, and furthermore, what Mr. Hayao Miyazaki was to me. Then I realized that I have never had anyone to call my master. For instance, in neither music nor art, I experienced being taught something clearly by someone. I have never been into schoolwork and hardly experienced senior-junior or boss-subordinate relationships. I took a look back at my life and realized that I had very little experience of learning from older people and being greatly influenced by them as I shaped my personality. So perhaps I was looking for a master-like figure in Mr. Hayao Miyazaki, as a great master, or if I would say further, a father-like figure.
While his movies are full of celebrations, his books are full of poignant remarks. So, his words do deny me, but at the same time, tell me, “It’s okay for you to live.” I realized only recently, but somewhere in my mind, I might have been seeking that sort of fatherliness in him.
Ever since childhood, his movies have saved my life. And into adolescence, I just started considering him my mentor without asking. Personally speaking, he is probably my all-time number one master. And now I get to work with The Man. Here I am, face-to-face with him, who is seated at the other side of the table… I must take in his every single move, deed, and word. At first, I was trying so hard to look big, strained with tension.
“Spinning Globe” was inspired by the story of the film, but also your passion for Miyazaki’s work. How did you try to capture that passion in the music and lyrics?
At the first meeting I had with Mr. Miyazaki, he said that he would depict all the parts he had “hidden” in his past works, which were “the darkness and mess inside” of himself.
I thought the movie was entirely focused on them. And I had been fully aware since day one that it was simply impossible to make a song by summarizing the story itself. Then how should I do it? I came to the conclusion that the only way to make sense of this song was to focus on the relationship between the two axes: myself, who had grown up watching his movies, enjoying them, and gazing at his back creating them, and Hayao Miyazaki.
Therefore, although the (Japanese) title of the movie could be translated as “How do you live?,” my stance on making this song was more like, “I have lived my life this way,” or, “This is how I will keep going on with my life.” The only way for me to do this was to recapture Hayao Miyazaki in that sense and turn it into music. Therefore, the lyrics were written in that way as well. Having said that, this song is, of course, not on personal matters. I wrote this song for the movie; it projects the main character and what had swirled in the story. But at the same time, all sorts of things, such as Mr. Miyazaki himself and myself growing up watching Miyazaki movies, are also unraveled here while still in opacity. The lyrics go all the way back to one’s birth and into how to live life.
I wanted to start the lyrics from absolute celebration. Mr. Miyazaki has made movies to this day to tell children that “this world is worth living.” Taking that into consideration, I was pretty sure that the song should start from “You were brought into this world to be wanted,” otherwise it wouldn’t make sense.
How did “Spinning Globe” evolve over the years between Miyazaki first approaching you about the theme and its eventual release?
I received the storyboard in 2019, and spent the next four years reading it over and over again, and seeing the rushes of the movie.
At the beginning, it was the time to see if there was anything I could take in from the storyboard, or what to take in. When I received the storyboard, the movie did not have a release date yet; it was probably going to be quite far away in the future. So, I didn’t start working on the song immediately, but instead, spent a very long time figuring out what the movie was all about, and how I felt through looking at it with my own eyes. In fact, for about two years, I had the storyboard at the back of my head while working on other songs and living everyday life.
Then I found myself gradually becoming unable to see the storyboard in an objective way. Even the songs I had been working on at that time, I wondered if they were really okay. Maybe that was the time I had the deepest experience of such things. And when you take a long time working on a song, your appetite comes with eating… you might wonder if you should make it more gorgeous. So, I told myself not to forget the primal sensation of when I first thought it was okay. I created a demo first, and always went back to the feeling of the moment when I thought it was okay, and took a long time disciplining myself, “Adding will do no good… Adding will do no good…”.
Mr. Miyazaki said to me, “Be ambitious when you make a song.” I interpreted it my way, and making “Paprika 2” or something splashy with strings [is] something lazy for me. If asked if such things are ambitious, I don’t think so. As a music maker, I have always sought for something that was not there at that time. With each and every song, I have made it by taking in new elements, no matter how many. Personally speaking, that is what I call ambition.
This time, I made the song extremely simple and earthy. In a sense, it may make the song less pop, but I believe there are things and words that can only be depicted that way. Therefore, to me, this song – “Spinning Globe” – is a very ambitious piece of music.
One day, I had Mr. Miyazaki listen to the pre-recorded demo on the CD I had burned. I went to see him as if I had been on death row, thinking, “Do I have to be there?” We sat around a table, and while listening to this song coming from the speaker, Mr. Miyazaki shed tears in front of me. That is the most memorable moment in the past four years. I will carry it in my heart for the rest of my life.
The film focuses on profound loss, among other issues. Was it difficult to translate that theme into a pop format?
From day one, I already had the foundation of the song, which started with an idea of “creating a Scottish folk tune.” Why Scottish folk tune? It’s very hard to explain, but I have always felt something close to Scottish folk tunes to Mr. Miyazaki’s movies. And at the same time, I wanted to make something simple. Rather than layering different instruments to make it sound gorgeous, I wanted it to be really simple, with minimal instruments like the piano, and use my voice for the rest. I should make music that won’t age but not novel either. In other words, I should make something that is old from the start, in the format that you can listen to it for a long time. That idea has been my focus from the beginning.
I wanted to take an elaborate [creative] process for this song. As pre-production, I crafted the demo as I did the recording at the studio. However, although I did a proper recording, I was trying different instruments, and the mic setting was not really fixed yet. Then, even the creaking sound of the piano pedal made it in the demo. It was not intentional, but when I actually had it, I really liked the sound. I recorded the piano under proper recording circumstances, but the results were always not enough. I tried recording in many settings too.
I went to different studios and tried many pianos. Still, I couldn’t wipe away the feeling that nothing could beat the first piano with that creaking pedal…
I ended up recording with the piano that Yuta Bandoh, the co-arranger of the song, had at his parents’ place. It was an ordinary piano at a very general household. We set up a mic in the room he had lived since childhood, using this old piano his mother had played and passed onto him. The piano had not been maintained regularly, but the texture of its sound was the best to me.
What has the reaction to the song been like since its release, from both your fans and Miyazaki fans?
What kind of presence was the song “Spinning Globe” in The Boy and the Heron? Was it able to serve its role? I consciously try not to be a part of such discussions. I had four years of working face to face with this movie, and in the course of time, many forms were born and gone. It has been several months since the movie was out; I see four years’ worth of flashbacks come and go. But those should not be told anymore. The song “Spinning Globe” should be evaluated by the fans. Now I’m ready to face the next songwriting process.
Tega Oghenejobo could see it coming — but didn’t realize just how big it would be.
In March 2022, Nigerian record label Mavin Records and its subsidiary Jonzing World released Rave & Roses, the debut album by budding Nigerian star Rema, who had already achieved success in his home country and was steadily making inroads internationally. The album was well-received, but it was its second single, the bouncy earworm “Calm Down,” that was really making noise. “Its initial growth in Europe, particularly in France, where it dominated the radio charts for months, hinted at its potential,” says Oghenejobo, Mavin’s COO. “Then breaking records in regions like India and the Middle East, becoming the first No. 1 song on the MENA [Middle East and North Africa] charts showcased its global appeal even before it hit the U.S.”
The song began picking up traction on TikTok and across social media, followed by marketing support from Mavin and distributor Virgin Music, all while Rema toured Europe and Africa to help “Calm Down” gain steam. Then, in August 2022, Mavin and Interscope Records released a remix with Selena Gomez, and the song began to catch on stateside, both on streaming services and at radio. It would take another 10 months, but “Calm Down” would ultimately reach No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the all-genre Radio Songs chart, both history-making feats for a song by an African lead artist.
“The success of ‘Calm Down’ highlighted several crucial lessons: Solid partnerships, a competent team and an artist aligned with the vision are indispensable for global success, while the ability to adapt and capitalize on every opportunity, as well as maintaining momentum, emerged as key strategies,” Oghenejobo says. “And collaborations, exemplified by Rema and Selena Gomez, underscore the potential for unexpected pairings to achieve remarkable results.”
The coronation of “Calm Down” across the charts — it also reached No. 1 on the Global Excl. U.S., Pop Airplay and U.S. Afrobeats charts, ultimately spending 58 weeks atop the lattermost list — didn’t happen in a vacuum. For the past seven years — since Wizkid became the first Nigerian act to reach No. 1 on the Hot 100, as a featured artist on Drake’s 2016 smash “One Dance” — African artists and African music, for which “Afrobeats” serves as a sort of catchall term, have been steadily making headway on the U.S. charts, radio station playlists and arena headlining slots. Wizkid, Burna Boy and Davido have been at the forefront leading the charge, but the past two years have also heralded breakthroughs for a number of younger artists, such as Rema, Tems, Libianca, Asake and Tyla. The Grammys acknowledged that growth by introducing the best African music performance category; the award will be given out for the first time next year.
“For the past 30 to 40 years, American culture influenced the world,” says Tunde Balogun, president of LVRN, which co-manages Davido and Nigerian DJ-producer Spinall. “Now, through Africa and Latin in particular, we’re seeing the world influence American music. We’re seeing the industry’s institutions change, and we’re seeing it on the top 40 radio charts as well as the Hot 100. It’s a really exciting time.”
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Some of that is due to the success of collaborators like Rema and Gomez. For example, “Essence,” Wizkid’s breezy breakout hit with Tems, took off in 2021, then exploded after Justin Bieber hopped on the remix, while Tems herself won a Grammy for a guest feature on Future’s “Wait for U.” And this year, Becky G remixed Libianca’s “People” to reach a broader audience. But it’s also a reflection of a growing appetite for music from beyond the borders of the United States — and labels are following consumer tastes.
“Most labels right now are essentially looking at the world’s music population — they’re no longer just looking at what’s happening in Ohio or Portland or wherever, they’re looking at what is actually being consumed in the world,” says RCA COO John Fleckenstein, whose roster includes Wizkid, Davido, Tems and Libianca. “That, to me, shows that we’re starting to recognize that the whole world is full of fans and artists and those borders are coming down, the economic ones and the political ones. It’s just about fans and artists. Perhaps most excitingly, the stage is already set for a true global superstar to emerge in the genre.”
And that superstar might already be here. For all the excitement around the music itself, there is more groundwork to do for the artists and the business — work that is already well underway. “The numerous wins, valuable lessons learned and opportunities for growth have been incredibly rewarding, and the validation through successful tours, enthusiastic audiences, awards and accolades motivates us to aim higher and work harder,” Oghenejobo says. “With determination and respect for the craft, there’s limitless potential for what African music can accomplish. The future looks incredibly promising.”
This story originally appeared in the Dec. 9, 2023, issue of Billboard.
It’s a crisp November night outside Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, and inside, Rod Wave has a sold-out audience of 12,000 hanging on his every word. As the 25-year-old rapper-singer nears the end of performing “Come See Me,” one of several hits off his 2023 blockbuster, Nostalgia, he pauses and walks toward a ladder that’s part of his stage design. Screams of “Don’t do it, Rod!” commence. “You have so much to live for!” yells a teenage girl near me.
Undeterred by the cautionary cries, the burly locomotive of a man begins his ascent. As he climbs, a thunderous roar erupts and buries the shrieking voice next to me whose pleas go unanswered. Standing on the edge of the stage balcony 15 feet up, Rod surveys the crowd before plummeting onto a landing pad. The lights go out and the song comes to a screeching halt. Fans in the crowd play a quick round of “Where’s Rod?” to locate the Florida megastar — who soon reemerges, Superman-like, without a scratch on his teddy bear face.
Like everything Rod does, this wasn’t a stunt for clicks or social media fodder. It was much more profound than that: He has struggled in the past with depression and anxiety and has always been open about having had suicidal thoughts, especially in the song’s music video. “That was from a dream I had,” Rod explains of the stage fall days after the show. “When I come out, walk onstage and look at [the ladder], it’s really to show people, ‘Don’t get up and do that when you can do this. You don’t know where life can take you.’ I’m walking out to a whole arena full of people looking back up at me. Imagine [if] I would’ve [gone through with committing suicide]. I would’ve never made it to this part. There’s a whole meaning behind it — a bigger picture.”
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Since Rod entered the hip-hop scene with his debut album, Ghetto Gospel, in 2019, his penchant for soul-grabbing lyrics and entrancing hooks has made him a beloved figure. His breakthrough single, the album’s “Heart on Ice,” was as chilling as its title suggests. Rod’s gruff takes about backstabbers and broken friendships earned widespread praise, including from his heroes-turned-peers Lil Baby, 21 Savage and Lil Durk, who appeared on the song’s remix. “Heart on Ice” became Rod’s Billboard Hot 100 debut, peaking at No. 25 — the first of 70 entries on the chart he has accrued since.
While many of today’s biggest hip-hop acts like Travis Scott and Playboi Carti thrive on mosh-pit anthems, Rod has stuck to his roots as an unabashed lover, using music to express his heartbreak and inner turmoil. His ability to hopscotch among genres has become his hallmark and the secret to his success, and he hit a new artistic apex on Nostalgia, which debuted with 137,000 equivalent album units in September, according to Luminate — a career best. Whether he’s contemplating his road to fame on “Long Journey” or reimagining himself as a tragic literary hero on the love-drunk “Great Gatsby,” Rod’s versatility is always evident.
“Rod pioneered this lane of struggle rap, which, given his age, is pretty incredible,” says Todd Moscowitz, CEO of Rod’s label, Alamo Records. “He’s one of the great songwriters of his generation and channels emotion and vulnerability in a unique way that people relate to. He has half of the NFL in tears on Instagram when he drops a single.”
Since Ghetto Gospel, Rod’s subsequent three albums — 2021’s SoulFly, 2022’s Beautiful Mind and Nostalgia — have topped the Billboard 200, making him the third artist to nab at least three No. 1s on the chart since the start of 2021. The only others are Taylor Swift and Drake.
“Being compared to Taylor Swift, you can’t even wrap your head around that kind of sh-t,” Rod says. “I remember ninth grade, being on my school bus listening to ‘Blank Space.’ Being in these conversations, it don’t really hit you. I was just on the sidelines. Now I’m really in the game. I went from the nosebleeds to the franchise player of the team with three rings.”
Eric Ryan Anderson
Rod Wave’s first-ever performance was at a high school football teammate’s birthday party in 2015. At the time, the artist born Rodarius Green was a budding rapper from St. Petersburg, Fla., working at Krispy Kreme. He enjoyed listening to 2Pac, Kodak Black and Kanye West but also appreciated the soulful pop sensibilities of Adele and Ed Sheeran. That eclectic musical taste helped him find his voice — one that spoke to the harsh street realities he and his family survived.
Both his father and uncle served time in prison. Rod, too, had problems on the streets and was charged with armed robbery at 15. After spending several months in jail, his father looked to instill discipline in him. “I started playing football because I got in trouble, and my dad wanted me to do something better with my free time,” Rod explains. “So when I got out of jail, he put me in football. It was just a new thing for me. It’s a lot of discipline I learned then that I carry with me now.”
While Rod enjoyed the camaraderie that came from working in the trenches with teammates, his true passion was music. A singer without any vocal training, he would showcase his talents between classes at Lakeview High School, the hallways becoming his stage. Yet the confidence Rod exuded when he belted for his peers disappeared when it came to actually recording his music and uploading it online — until his classmate and former producer, Elijah Simmons, took matters into his own hands, recording a video of him singing in the hallway one day and posting it on Facebook.
Though Rod feared rejection, to his surprise, the video caught the attention of one of his football teammates, who later asked him at practice to perform at his birthday party. At the time, Rod didn’t have a car and wasn’t getting paid to perform — but the thought of doing so for the first time in front of his classmates, especially the girls, was motivation enough. “I walked to that motherf–ker. I was 17,” Rod remembers, chuckling. “You don’t really know if your stuff is good enough at the time. I didn’t want to think that I was one of them people who think they raw. I was [wondering] like, ‘Am I really good?’ ”
Eric Ryan Anderson
Rod soon went from booking birthday parties to hole-in-the-wall Florida clubs, and his stock began to rise — so much so that fans would recognize him when pulling up to the Krispy Kreme drive-thru. Shyness usually got the best of him; he shrugged off questions about his rapping alter ego when he was on the clock. Balancing high school, a growing rap career and a part-time job was a lot for a teenager, and after his father, Rodney “Fatz” Green, saw the focused hunger in his son, he wanted to lend his support. Green and Rod’s uncle Derek Lane forged Hit House Entertainment — Rod’s own label — to help him realize his rap dreams. With Lane designated as management, they leaned on Rod as their franchise player.
From December 2017 to December 2018, Rod released his acclaimed mixtape trilogy, Hunger Games, which featured songs like “Pain,” “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Heart 4 Sale” that portrayed the daily pain Rod endured. The music garnered millions of listens and eventually caught the attention of Alamo Records’ Moscowitz.
Founded in 2016, Alamo wasn’t initially a first-class destination for rap powerhouses. That changed when it signed Lil Durk and Rod two years later. (As part of its deal with Rod, Alamo established a partnership with Hit House.) Before signing with Alamo, Durk had spent five years at Def Jam and was looking for a change of scenery to help elevate his career. Rod and Durk soon became the twin giants of Alamo, evolving into Billboard chart-toppers and streaming goliaths who quickly came to define hip-hop in a new decade.
“The other day, I had to text Durk, ‘I’ve been listening to you since middle school.’ I was able to DM him and [watch it] land. He was just like, ‘You hard, too!’ I was just like, ‘I been listening to you. I f–k with you. I rock with you,’ ” Rod says with a child-like smile. “When you in the moment and you meet people face-to-face, it slips my mind because I have to be Rod Wave. F–k all that. I’m a fan. I’ve been listening to your sh-t.”
Durk isn’t the only star who has left Rod awestruck. Drake and Sheeran have praised his accomplishments, especially the latter. On Beautiful Mind, Rod interpolated Sheeran’s “U.N.I.” from his debut album for his song “Alone.” The track caught the attention of Sheeran, who first met Rod after WPWR (Power 105.1) New York radio host Charlamagne Tha God learned of the rapper’s adoration for the pop giant.
“Ed’s a phenomenal guy. That’s one of my favorite artists. He’s just real people,” Rod says. “When you looking at it from a fan point of view, they don’t even feel like real people. It’s like you know them, but they’re like figures in your mind. They don’t even feel reachable.”
The MGM National Harbor Hotel in Washington, D.C., holds special significance to Rod. It’s where he’s staying after performing at the city’s Capital One Arena the night before. It’s also where he first learned about the coronavirus. Rod was just seven dates into his first headlining tour when he played D.C. on March 9, 2020, and news about a national lockdown derailed his planned nationwide trek. “My dream got shut down just like that,” he remembers, still sounding dejected. “I always wanted to go on tour, travel America, see the cities and get paid to do it. When I first was able to do it, it got took away from me.”
The pandemic tested Rod’s patience. He landed a coveted performance slot on NPR’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, but that paled in comparison with the venues he had been filling. Still, the thought of hitting the road and being with his fans again fueled him. Rod’s mission was clear: Get back on tour. But before he could do that, he had to fulfill a different calling: becoming a first-time father to his newborn twin girls.
“I [won’t] lie: [Fatherhood] made me softer. Back then, I could just move and feel nothing. Now I feel like they made me a little weaker,” he says while his kids hang out in the next room. “I can’t do that. I have to get home. I’ll be gone with my homeboys for three days or on the road for a week, and I’m just like, ‘We have to get a jet and fly the kids.’ ”
Eric Ryan Anderson
Instead of fatherhood being a hurdle, it motivated Rod, especially when touring resumed. In 2021, he came back stronger than ever, notching his first Billboard 200 No. 1 album with SoulFly and two top 20 Hot 100 hits in “Tombstone” and “Street Runner.” He realized his wish of returning to the road, but this time — with the help of powerhouse hip-hop festival promoter Rolling Loud, which in 2021 launched a national touring branch of its business with Rod as its first tour — he was playing amphitheaters, a step up from the clubs and theaters of his previous tour.
“We’ve witnessed his evolution from the start, and what sets him apart is his unwavering consistency,” Rolling Loud co-founder Matt Ziegler says. “His music consistently reaches a high standard, accompanied by impassioned performances that have become his trademark. As we observed his skyrocketing music consumption and the widespread acclaim for his shows, it inspired us to acquire his SoulFly tour, leading to the launch of our Rolling Loud Presents division.”
Ziegler’s Rolling Loud partner, Tariq Cherif, calls Rod’s success “truly unique; he diligently tours during key moments, aligning with new releases, and he remains authentically himself. His vulnerability, artistic authenticity and genuine connection with people set him apart. When we organized his tour, many doubted he could fill amphitheaters, but he defied expectations by selling out most dates.”
And Rod was already thinking bigger: He wanted arenas. Notching his second and third Billboard 200 No. 1s — Beautiful Mind in August 2022 and Nostalgia in September 2023 — helped him fulfill that dream. Seeing thousands of people of different ages and races singing his songs in a bonfire-like experience at his concerts excited Rod and his team. “His shows are like going to karaoke with 15,000 people,” Moscowitz says. “Everyone sings along and there’s a real sense of community.”
“What we figured out is where his core fans are and where they are going to support [him]. Then we’d mix the routing in to get to these places that make sense,” adds Beau Williams, Rod’s touring manager. “Even going through this, we found some diamonds in the rough in a lot of these cities that a lot of artists can’t go to the way he’s doing great numbers.” And with his zealous fans behind him, Rod’s goals continue to widen: His eyes are now set on stadium touring and Grammy Awards.
“This is the new chapter. People catching on slowly but surely,” Rod says. “That’s why I say in four or five years, we’ll probably be in stadiums selling 250,000 [tickets] the first week. That’s what I’m here for — Grammys and sh-t.”
This story will appear in the Dec. 9, 2023, issue of Billboard.
