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It’s the first night of July’s Broccoli City Festival in Washington, D.C., and actor-writer-producer Issa Rae has some exciting news to share with the 30,000 fans in attendance: She’s releasing her first rap album. Although moments later she clarifies that it was a joke, the Hollywood polymath reveals what might deter her if she was really angling to become music’s top female rapper. “Megan Thee Stallion has bars and body,” Rae says as she introduces Megan’s headlining set. “She’s actually intimidating. I can’t look into her eyes for too long.”
It’s easy to see why Megan Thee Stallion would give anyone pause. Standing at 5 foot 10 inches, she’s bold, bright and bodacious — an awe-inspiring trifecta. When I meet Megan at D.C.’s Four Seasons Hotel the next morning, her larger-than-life persona is in full force: Clutching a Louis Vuitton Murakami bag, she walks into the plush hotel suite with model-like precision as if it were her personal runway. But her imposing aura quickly melts away to reveal her signature wit. When we last spoke two years ago, Megan gave me a hard time when she learned I’d never had Flamin’ Hot Cheetos — and neither of us has forgotten it. “So, you really never tried Hot Cheetos?” she asks before giving me a quizzical look. “What kind of childhood did you have?”
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In 2020, Megan’s two Billboard Hot 100 No. 1s — her “Savage (Remix),” featuring Beyoncé, and her Cardi B collaboration, “WAP” — helped her become one of pop culture’s biggest names, and her three Grammy Award wins in early 2021 cemented her critical bona fides. Since then, she’s been omnipresent, becoming one of just 40 artists to pull double duty as both host and musical guest on Saturday Night Live (and on Sept. 11 she will host the MTV Video Music Awards), guest-starring in the Disney+ Marvel series She-Hulk and later appearing in 2022’s campy Dicks: The Musical as well as 2024’s big-budget musical remake of Mean Girls. She expanded beyond entertainment through savvy brand partnerships with Nike (her sneaker collection The Hot Girl Systems) and Popeyes (her signature Hottie sauce), and she even has her own tequila coming, Chicas Divertidas, which was inspired by a conversation with Beyoncé. “ ‘You better have your own s–t,’ ” Megan quips, imitating her fellow Houstonian. “You better know the next time she saw me, I said, ‘Hey, Beyoncé. Look what I got.’
“I’m proud of all my business deals because everything I do is personal to me,” she continues. “I put 100% into my partnerships, and I’m always so grateful when people want to step into my world. When I see a brand I f–k with and they want to come into the Hot Girl World, I’m like, ‘Thank you, this makes sense. I love that you’re recognizing me as much as I was already recognizing you.’ ” She’s stepping into worlds outside her immediate orbit, too: In July, Megan performed at Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign rally in Atlanta, using her Hot 100 top 20 hit “Body” as a vehicle to speak up for reproductive rights.
But while the 29-year-old enjoys wearing multiple hats — college graduate, philanthropist, actress, mogul — she’s always happiest when she’s rapping, and her extra-musical pursuits have made her a wiser businesswoman as she pursues her passion. Following a yearslong legal dispute, Megan and her label, 1501 Certified Entertainment, amicably parted ways in 2023, making her an independent artist. In February, she partnered with Warner Music Group for distribution, gaining complete ownership of her masters and publishing — an unprecedented move for a female rapper. Her third album, Megan, is her first under this new arrangement.
Released in June, Megan debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with 64,000 equivalent album units in the United States, according to Luminate, making it the biggest debut for any rap album released by a woman in 2024. Megan also topped Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart for the second time in her career — the sixth female rapper to do so.
On Megan, the Houston MC’s world of bruising Southern rap and rump-shaking anthems is alive and well, as is her deep and abiding love for Japanese culture. “Otaku Hot Girl” samples the popular anime series Jujutsu Kaisen, while she performs alongside Japanese rapper Yuki Chiba on “Mamushi.” After the latter track broke out on TikTok — bolstered by Megan creating and demonstrating the song’s dance in a Sailor Moon-inspired outfit — she shot its video in her second home: Japan.
“When I’m out there, I always feel happy,” she says with a smile. “The air is clear, the people are polite, the food is good. The culture is so interesting to me. I learn something every time I go out there. I learn a little bit of Japanese every time I go. The shopping is good. It just feels super positive every time I’m there. I really like being there because I’m big on energy. As soon as I touch down, I always feel like I can take a breath. Everybody good.”
House of JMC dress, Anabela Chan earrings.
Ramona Rosales
On Megan, the Houston Hottie lives up to her nickname, returning to her hometown roots — including her pairing with hip-hop duo UGK on album standout “Paper Together.” Megan grew up a fan of UGK’s Chad “Pimp C” Butler and received a gift from his widow, Chinara Butler, during the recording process: unreleased vocals by the late legend that she sent Megan to use. “From the first time I met Meg, I knew she was meant to work with Chad,” Butler tells Billboard. “She’s an extremely talented MC, and I’ve always appreciated her genuine love for my husband’s music. She’s helped introduce Chad to a new generation of hip-hop fans.”
Though Megan can be an aggressive rhymer, she knows how to calm things down and keep it sexy, too — like on the Magic City-ready anthem “Spin,” featuring Victoria Monét. “She’s a very confident and strong woman,” Monét says. “Megan knows exactly who she is. She doesn’t let people push her off her dot. There’s a lot of respect there. Also, she makes great music that brings people together and makes them dance. You want to watch her shake something and learn to shake something because of her. She’s inspiring.”
But at her core, Megan is still an MC — and like a coiled snake, this fierce iteration of her strikes on album opener “Hiss,” released in January. Aimed at collaborator-turned-detractor Nicki Minaj, “Hiss” ignited the year of competitive rap — in which Kendrick Lamar and Drake have also feuded, as well as Latto and Ice Spice — as Megan delivered a searing diatribe at Minaj, following the Pink Friday star’s slights against her on 2023’s “FTCU,” when Minaj rapped: “Stay in your Tory Lanez, bitch, I’m not Iggy,” referencing the rapper found guilty of shooting Megan in 2020 who was sentenced to 10 years in 2023. A year later, Megan lashed back: “These hoes don’t be mad at Megan, these hoes mad at Megan’s Law,” she raps on “Hiss,” referring to the federal law mandating that law enforcement make information about registered sex offenders public. (Minaj’s husband, Kenneth Petty, is a registered sex offender who was convicted of rape in 1995 for assaulting a 16-year-old.) The song debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100 — Megan’s third chart-topper on the list.
“I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing,” Megan says. “If people feel like I’m somebody to aim at, then I must be pretty high up if you’re reaching up at me. I must be some kind of competition. That makes me feel good. That makes me feel like I could rap because if I wasn’t the s–t, y’all wouldn’t be worried about me.”
Though Megan relishes competitive battles, she prefers championing her peers. Following the success of her first-ever headlining tour, this year’s Hot Girl Summer, she reconnected with the run’s opener and her new bestie, GloRilla, on “Accent.” Earlier this year, she’d scored a top 15 Hot 100 song with Glo’s “Wanna Be,” and the sold-out arena tour created a rock-solid bond between the female MCs that sharpened their studio chemistry; now, they want to release a joint project together.
“Megan is a real rapper, and I’m also a real rapper,” GloRilla says. “We actually be talking and coming with bars on some down South gangsta s–t. [It would be] some down South, real turnt, real rap [s–t].” (“I think that would be very fire,” Megan says. “I ain’t gon’ say too much, but it feels like it’s going to get done.”)
While being the face of female rap may sound enticing, it doesn’t move Megan, who, during her three-month tour, happily shared the spotlight with not only GloRilla but also Cardi B and Latto, who made guest appearances at the tour’s New York and Atlanta stops, respectively.
“I got a lot of people trying to critique me and tell me what I am and what I’m not. I feel like I’ve proved myself over and over again,” she says. “If there’s a question if Megan Thee Stallion can’t rap, you need to go ahead and quit asking that question. We know I could rap.”
Ramona Rosales
You began your career playing the Texas circuit and now you’re an arena-caliber superstar. How did your beginnings prepare you for this?
It definitely taught me how to be the performer that I am. It made me understand, “OK, all you got to do is get out here and have fun.” So every time I get onstage, I’m not thinking too hard. I’m thinking like, “I’m partying with my people.” Going around my home state definitely set me up to be prepared to be comfortable with people everywhere else.
Because of the pandemic, Hot Girl Summer was the first time you hit the road since 2019. Was the extended layoff a blessing in disguise?
It wasn’t a blessing in disguise — it was a blessing outright. I was so happy to see that so many people came out and sold out a bunch of these dates. People were genuinely excited to see me, genuinely excited to see [GloRilla]. You had people like, “Oh, we don’t know if she can [sell out arenas].” Bitch, it ain’t no question about it now.
Take me back to your concert at Madison Square Garden, where you, Cardi B and GloRilla shared that stage. It was a powerful moment.
It was a little East Coast-Southern sandwich we had going on. I was very happy. I genuinely love Cardi. I genuinely love Glo. In the industry, you really don’t meet a lot of girls who want to see you be successful. You meet people, and I’m not just going to say girls, but you don’t meet a lot of artists that want you to have success because they’re scared sometimes it’s going to take away from their success. Music is competition, rap is a competition, but those two ladies, I feel like we all like to see each other do good things. We like to see each other win. Sharing the stage with people that want to see you do good and you want to see them do good, it felt very uplifting. I felt like we were feeding off each other. I felt like we helped each other. Being onstage with them made me feel good because I knew we were proud of each other.
In 2022, I spoke to Q-Tip about you, and he said, “People still haven’t even seen her full artistry yet.” Is Megan the peak of that artistry?
I still feel like I have more to give. With this album, I wanted to show people my personal interests and thoughts. I wanted to touch on my love for all things anime, all things Southern, how much I like to have fun, and I wanted to be myself. I feel like I did that. A lot of people were expecting me to come on this album talking one way and I wanted to introduce myself — this version of myself that I am right now. Sometimes, people listen to me with ears of “I don’t like her, so I don’t want to like it.” The more people sit with the album, the more and more they’re like, “OK, you know what? This s–t is banging.”
Ramona Rosales
On “BOA,” there’s a bar where you say: “Y’all do this s–t for TikTok/Bitch I’m really hip-hop.”
Nothing wrong with TikTok. TikTok is fun. It’s for people to get on there and have fun. Show me what you’re eating, show me how you’re dancing, show me what you’re doing. I feel like TikTok is happy.
I say that because you’re one of the biggest stars in the world. How do you still maintain that hip-hop essence?
Because I really like to rap. Where I come from, people are really freestyling. What I come from is hardcore rap, Southern rap. The one thing in my life that I knew I was really good at was rapping. I don’t ever want to get away from that. I don’t ever want to play with it. I don’t ever want people to think I don’t take it seriously. I’ll be the rapper that is good for a bunch of verses and freestyles because that’s what I like to do.
Your mother, Holly-Wood, was a rapper. What did you learn from her, skillwise?
Just that attitude. My mama was so feisty. She had a lot of aggression in her rap voice, and because in her nature she was naturally an aggressive woman, she sold it. I feel like the main thing for me is always selling it. Making sure who I am comes through in my voice when I’m rapping. You’re not going to believe what I’m saying if I don’t deliver it strong. My delivery lets people know that I’m strong.
What was it like when you received Pimp C’s verse, which you used on “Paper Together,” while in the studio with your producer, LilJuMadeDaBeat?
We both cried. Like, “Oh, my God. I can’t believe we got this verse.” I love Pimp and Ju love Pimp, and we share that same love of Southern rap. Pimp C made me feel so gangster, he made me feel so cool. To have my voice on a song with my favorite rapper ever, an unreleased verse? Motherf–kers ain’t walking around with Pimp C verses. And I got blessed with one.
I heard you’re sitting on more unreleased Pimp C verses.
I mean, we might [have] some more stuff. It’s more stuff in the chamber, but I want to keep Pimp C alive. Not saying it’s not alive; [his wife] Chinara keeping it alive, his children keeping it alive, people in Texas keeping it alive. I really want people to know who the f–k Pimp C is. As much as I get to put his voice on wax, I will.
House of JMC corset, Jimmy Choo shoes, Anabela Chan earrings.
Ramona Rosales
You’ve said that your relationship with Warner Music Group is based on trust. How has the label proved its trustworthiness?
They ain’t told me “no” yet. They did exactly what they said they was gon’ do. Everybody that I work with there, we’re on calls together all the time talking about how we feel like we could make the partnership better. Everybody’s been so cool, and they’re so easy to work with. Everybody’s been super nice, and I like nice people. They’re just nice at Warner.
Very few artists can say they got their masters before they turned 30. Why was that a priority for you?
I’ve been fighting for my freedom my whole rap career. I just couldn’t take no for an answer. I don’t ever want to be in a situation where somebody got their foot on my neck ever again. You got to do things to make yourself be your own boss.
How has it been navigating that road as an independent artist?
Being independent is hard. When you got a label that does everything for you, all you got to do is wake up and be the celebrity. That’s a very easy life. I have to do s–t other people aren’t doing. I do work as my own label. I do fund a lot of my own things. There’s a lot of things I’m still learning as I go. The s–t is not just handed to me in my lap — I really got to go figure out, “OK, now I’m doing it by myself.” Not that I’m doing it only by myself, but I’m in a position to be my own boss, so I got to figure out how to be the boss and how to be the employee. It’s tough, but I like figuring it out. I like doing things on my own. I like working. I’m not going to stop. The more I know, the better I’ll get.
You’ve been so open about your love for Japanese culture, especially anime. As a Black creative, how influential has it been on you?
I really like the storytelling in anime. The thing that resonates with me while watching a lot of the anime I like is watching the character development — seeing the character go from nothing to everything. When I feel like I’m getting beat up in life, I remember some of my favorite characters. I see that they had to go from literally zero and getting their ass whooped in their training. Even when they start popping and getting their muscles — because you know they be skinny as hell, then they start getting a little ripped — even when you start seeing the character getting a little swole, you like, “All right, he’s going to defeat all you motherf–kers. It’s over with.” Then he still getting his ass whooped and it’s like, “Man, I feel bad for my boy.”
Even after getting his ass whooped, because you got to fall down a few times, the character doesn’t ever get discouraged. They always like, “All right, I may have got my ass whooped but Imma get back up, and watch how I come back 20 times stronger.” I resonate with that. No matter how many times I get knocked down, I never feel like, “F–k it, Imma quit.” I just need to get better. I need to get back, try again, train harder and go harder so I can keep evolving into my best self.
When you did “Pressurelicious” with Future in 2022, you paid him $250,000 for a verse and said you treat your features like a business. Why, and how?
When you cool with somebody, you should support their business. You shouldn’t ask them to do nothing for free because you cool with them. I feel like that’s a lot of people’s problem with their homies. Just because your homie got a clothing line, that don’t mean he got to give you clothes for free — like, support your friend. Don’t expect anyone to give you something just because we cool. That’s how I treat my artist friends. I’m not asking you to do nothing for free. I wouldn’t come in your house and take all your food out your house and I invite you to my house and it’s like, “Oh, what?” Just as much as I give, I can receive. I just feel like it’s a back-and-forth thing. I just want them to know I really respect what they do. I go all out for myself. I splurge on myself, I love myself, I love what I do, and I want everything to look right. I want everything to be right. I feel like you’re going to take me seriously once I let you know: This is not a favor; I’m asking for this.
Natalia Fedner dress, Alexis Bittar earrings, XIV Karats rings.
Ramona Rosales
I think you started this competitive rap energy we’ve seen in 2024 when you released “Hiss.” Do you feel you’re the reason MCs are rapping competitively again?
I would like to think that I start things. I don’t know; I just knew what I had to do and what I had to say. If it opened up the door for everyone else to get s–t off their chest, well, I’m glad.
You took shots at Nicki Minaj. Is there a chance for a reconciliation or even another collaboration one day?
I still to this day don’t know what the problem is. I don’t even know what could be reconciled because I, to this day, don’t know what the problem is.
Does being the face of female rap for the next 10 years drive you? Is that something that you want?
I just want to rap. I want to be Megan Thee Stallion. I want to rap for as long as I can.
After he made some inappropriate comments about you last November, Shannon Sharpe apologized. Do you feel you’ve been getting more support from Black men over the last few years, or is that something you’re still looking for more of?
At this point in life, I really don’t care. Maybe if you would’ve asked me this last year or two years ago, I would’ve wished I had more Black people in general in my corner. It would’ve felt nice to be protected by some Black men in this instance, but the more I wasn’t getting it, the more and more I realized I wasn’t going to get it. Who should feel safe and important at the end of the day is me, and I was going to have to make myself feel that way. I wasn’t going to find it in people I don’t know at all. Now I don’t care. As long as I make myself feel happy, then that’s what matters to me.
I’ve seen a lot of Black men rapping your lyrics at your shows. That must be a dope feeling.
Because we actually are going the hardest right now. The women are killing it right now. We are the hardest MCs right now. We going harder than the boys, for sure.
Ramona Rosales
How do you maintain personal peace while living a good chunk of your life as Megan Thee Stallion?
I feel like Megan and Megan Thee Stallion are the same person. When I’m Megan Thee Stallion, I’m having to wear armor. I definitely got to go onstage and get in that mode, but I’m still the same person. Just when I’m not in public, I can really decompress and slouch, and I could watch anime all I want. I can play with my puppies, I can talk on the phone with my cousin, I could be with my best friends in peace. I don’t have to worry about being too strong. I could just be me.
You’ve been extremely vulnerable on songs like “Cobra” and “Moody Girl.” How therapeutic were those to make?
It felt really good to make them because it used to be hard for me to be vulnerable on songs. I could be upset and make a song like “Freak Nasty.” [I’ll be] pissed and I’ll go make that. I’ll be sad and make something like “Body.” I’ve always wanted to open up and not make it too preachy or too sad. I still want to ride the beat. Now I’m getting in a space where I can figure out how to express myself over beats that still allow me to be hard. It’s tough, but I use it like a diary now. I really do it because I know there are other Hotties that like to listen to those songs, and they resonate with the lyrics. I feel like it makes them understand, “OK, this my girl and she might appear to be Superwoman, but she going through it just like me.” I don’t want everyone to think I’m a goddamn robot, because I’m not a robot. I want them to know it’s OK to be human, to feel anxiety, depression and to feel low. You’re not going to feel like that all the time.
How inspiring is it for you to see Kamala Harris running for president, especially as a young Black woman?
To be alive in a lifetime where a Black woman or a woman at all could be the president, I feel so blessed. This is what the future is about. We really about to get a strong, Black female in there. I feel like America needed a woman to come in here and put a woman’s touch on it. It’s been going a little crazy lately, and we need somebody to put their foot down. I feel like Kamala, she gon’ do that.
I never thought we’d be in a situation where we could have two Black presidents…
Yeah, in the same lifetime. We are really doing the damn thing. I’m proud of us. Now we just got to get out there and go vote. I don’t like it when I see people saying, “I’m not voting. F–k it.” What the f–k are you talking about? You’re going to complain about what you don’t like but you’re not going to help the cause? I think that’s very irresponsible because if you don’t like what Trump has going on, why even aid in him being the president again?
You’ve said this is your “selfish era.” Do you feel like you’ve been able to reclaim some of your power?
Yeah. I used to really care how I made a lot of people feel before how I made myself feel, before how they made me feel. Somebody could make me feel like complete s–t, but I still never wanted to do anything to make anybody else feel like s–t. I still don’t want to make people feel like s–t. At least now I know, “Let me put up my boundary.” As soon as you make me feel a way that I don’t like, I just don’t want to deal with you anymore. You don’t got to fight evil with evil, but I don’t have to deal with this at all. I don’t have to do things to make other people smile. What am I going to do to make me smile? What you going to do to make me smile? Everything was about making other people smile and other people happy. Now I’m in a space where I want to be happy. I’m not going to take away [from] being happy so I can put other people’s life and happiness as a priority over mine.
This story appears in the Aug. 31, 2024, issue of Billboard.
“The way this song was born is probably contrary to what everyone thinks,” Muni Long says with a laugh of her R&B hit “Made for Me.” That’s because the compassionate ballad — which arrived in 2023 before catching fire on TikTok, followed by a Mariah Carey remix this year — was inspired by a different kind of love story.
As Muni Long recalls, it was November 2022 and she had given birth to her son two months prior (all of which she kept private until this August, when she performed with him on her hip during her opening set touring with Chris Brown). She says she was “getting the itch to write,” so she had a studio put in her house. One day, the Grammy Award winner began listening again to a piano chord progression she had sent a while back to her friend, producer Jordan XL. “I just started literally doing what the song says,” Muni Long adds, “looking around this room, seeing baby toys. And I write this song about my baby because he’s right next door.”
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Still not satisfied with the track after performing it live a couple of times, Muni Long questioned what was missing — “Does it need drums?” she wondered. At her A&R executive’s suggestion, she booked a session with producers Jermaine Dupri and Bryan-Michael Cox. While working on other songs with the pair, she played the track she had become obsessed with. “They were polite, but nobody had a crazy reaction,” she recalls. Two weeks later, they sent her a new version — complete with drums.
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Yet Muni Long was still unsure: “ ‘Maybe it is just a piano vocal,’ ” she thought. “I toyed with it for a couple of months, asking others, ‘Is this good? Am I tripping?’ Then Tunji [Balogun, Def Jam Recordings chairman/CEO] said, ‘This is the song we’re going with.’ I’m like, ‘If you’re willing to stand behind this, then do it.’ ”
In January, the catchy track with its emotional chorus gained traction on TikTok thanks to a challenge tied to a lyric: “Twin, where have you been?” The boost helped “Made for Me” hit a No. 8 peak on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and No. 20 on the Hot 100 in March. In May, Muni Long sustained momentum with her Carey remix. And now, her hot streak continues with “Make Me Forget,” her first No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay. Both hits appear on her newly released second album, Revenge.
This story appears in the Aug. 31, 2024, issue of Billboard.
With 90 minutes to go before he takes the stage at Lyrical Lemonade’s Summer Smash festival, Playboi Carti is already involved in a performance — just outside of his trailer.
Sprayed on the trailer’s side in red graffiti art is the word “OPIUM,” the name of Carti’s creative agency and partnership with Interscope Records, along with an eye that looks like something an eighth grader might say is an Illuminati symbol; the trailer’s window, in a massive font, bears the number “666.” Carti’s trailer is stuck between several others, plus the big SUV that transported the 28-year-old rapper from his hotel to the Chicago-area festival. An entourage of about a dozen people — including rising artists and Opium signees Ken Carson and Destroy Lonely — swarms around him. Marijuana smoke hangs over the area, a smell so perfectly foul that it reminds you why one of the drug’s nicknames is “loud.” At one point, members of the entourage light something on fire with what looks to be a butane torch, cackling like hyenas.
Jagger Harvey custom leather sling and Pelle Pelle pants, in collaboration with Rose Marie Johansen; Arena Embroidery custom hat, in collaboration with Rose Marie Johansen and Dawid Dinh; VAIN tank top and leather gloves.
Matthew Salacuse
If you’re going to get to know Carti, you might as well start here, as he prepares to do the thing he currently does better than any rapper on earth: perform. Though his albums are rapturously jolting — and wildly popular — Carti is most in his element onstage, and right now, the vibe is something like a pregame warmup meets secret society gathering. His entourage embodies the punk attitude that Carti celebrates in his aesthetics, music and concerts. It’s a diverse crew, from heavily pierced Nyree Morrison, a skater and artist known for reworking shoes and clothing with spikes, jewels and all manner of scribblings; to Carti’s barber, wearing a chain with a barbershop pole on it that Carti gifted him; to a white kid with hair fashioned into giant black-and-white spikes who looks like a Degrassi extra (and is actually skater-model Burberry Erry); to Carti’s manager and Opium COO, Erin Larsen, a white woman whom the rapper affectionately calls “Mom.” Soon, Lyrical Lemonade founder Cole Bennett shows up with the rapper BabyTron. The gang’s all here to watch hip-hop’s most innovative artist of the 2020s headline Summer Smash for the third straight year. “Every year, he is the one person that people really look forward to,” Bennett says. “It’s tradition at this point.”
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In the seven years since Carti burst into the public eye with his self-titled 2017 mixtape — now platinum-certified — his music has developed from the trembling trap that he took from Atlanta forebears like Future into the peerless rage he debuted on his most recent album, 2020’s Whole Lotta Red. Behind the leaks, the album delays and the general secrecy surrounding his existence is an undeniable talent — someone whose voice could make a retirement community resident perk up in an instant. Performing live is a key part of his artistic package and how he delights fans — he and Larsen, a former CAA agent, first paired up after she saw him pop out at a Brooklyn show around 2015 and sought to meet him backstage — not to mention how he winks at his biggest skeptics as they realize they can’t deny his volcanic presence.
His talent has also propelled him on the charts, where Carti has been a force for nearly a decade. Since his first Billboard Hot 100 top 40 hit, 2017’s breakout single “Magnolia,” he has scored four top 10s on the chart (all as a featured artist), including this year on Ye and Ty Dolla $ign’s “Carnival” and Future and Metro Boomin’s “Type S–t,” which peaked at Nos. 1 and 2, respectively. Whole Lotta Red, released on Christmas Day in 2020, debuted and peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in January 2021 and has spent 147 total weeks on the chart. Carti isn’t just culturally significant — he’s one of the most commercially successful hip-hop artists of the last decade.
VAIN full outfit, custom embroidered durag.
Matthew Salacuse
In person today, without the prosthetics or startling makeup he often wears on his face, he’s surprisingly good-looking — classically handsome and tall, with a jawline that would make a TikTok girlie swoon. Wearing the ensemble he has chosen for his Summer Smash set, he could pass for a runway-bound Rick Owens model. Several chains wrap around his neck, some seemingly crosses — startling for a man who, at times, calls himself a vampire. He’s draped in a Pelle Pelle leather jacket with a strap attached that hangs so far down his body it’s almost like a kilt. This is fashion as war paint — one way Carti makes himself seem larger than life.
If success was merely about an artist’s ability to perform, Carti would be as famous as Axl Rose or Jimmy Page. Lights — and sometimes, actual fire — blaze around him onstage. His sets disseminate an entire worldview through sound and atmosphere: Carti knows that fans see him as a hero, as someone who can help them exorcise their demons simply by moving around the stage with gusto, screaming lyrics that could function as cryptic Instagram DMs with his serrated vocals. “We want to continue championing him as a festival headliner,” says Ryan Thomson, his booking agent at CAA. “If we can achieve that success, and also do arena tour shows, we are in a good position in perpetuity.”
Outside of his guest performance with Travis Scott on the 2024 Grammy Awards stage in February, Summer Smash marks the first time Carti has performed all year, but if he’s nervous, he’s not showing it. For Carti, who started truly focusing on hip-hop when his high school basketball coach kicked him off the team, this never gets old. “I want to make the people feel like they don’t know what is about to happen,” Carti tells me after the show once he has come down from his intense set. “I get ready for a show like a boxer gets ready for a match.”
Matthew Salacuse
Like many rap superstars of the recent past, Playboi Carti — born Jordan Terrell Carter, his last name inspired his stage name — hails from Atlanta. Though he moved to New York shortly before making his first commercial mixtape, 2017’s Playboi Carti (following a few he had made under the name Sir Cartier), it’s still home to him, and he wears his pride for the city of fearless creativity — the place with a hip-hop lineage including OutKast, Gucci Mane, Young Thug and, now, Carti himself — like a badge of honor.
Just nine years ago, the king of rage rap was working at H&M. But when Carti moved to New York in 2015, it catapulted his career. After meeting A$AP Bari, Carti began rolling with the Harlem rap collective A$AP Mob — and especially its leader, A$AP Rocky. In Carti, A$AP Mob saw an ambitious, talented kid, and it helped him navigate the city and make connections; through Rocky, Carti met rapper Maxo Kream, producer Harry Fraud and more. For fashion guys who could rap at the time, Rocky was the biggest blueprint, and he mentored Carti, signing him by 2016 to his AWGE creative collective.
Even then, Carti’s music was distinctive. He took a more minimal approach than peers like Lil Uzi Vert and Young Thug, relaxing listeners with cloudy, euphoric production. Take “Location,” which opens his 2017 mixtape: Produced by Fraud, the song revolves around a beat that sounds like a lost Lil B file, with Carti’s spacey vocals drifting above it. “He had told me that he was a big fan of Curren$y,” Fraud says. “We were messing around and we started to knock them [songs] out.”
VAIN full outfit, custom embroidered durag.
Matthew Salacuse
Having recorded on his own for a few years, Carti was remarkably confident in the studio from the jump. He knew how to create soundscapes for songs, and as he spent more time with the A$AP crew, his intuitiveness and discipline in the studio made his records highly cohesive. But Carti’s also a perfectionist, and his frequent collaborator Cardo — who produced the December 2023 loosie “H00DBYAIR” — says he gets threats from impatient fans because the rapper’s releases can take a while. “It’s cool, but they got to stop threatening me,” Cardo jokes. “He’s putting it together! He isn’t rushing it.” That ability to take his time creatively and keep new music under wraps — even Fritz Owens, Carti’s mixing engineer, purposefully stays mysterious, Cardo says — is another way Carti cultivates his mythos and ensures it grows as big as the crowds he performs for.
Fraud says that when he started working with Carti, he knew that the young artist was on the cusp of greatness. “I could feel it,” Fraud recalls. “This kid is going to turn the corner; he has the personality. He is not the loudest guy in the room but he has a certain energy about him.” Carti knows what he wants to do when recording, and his catalog is proof. Released in 2018, his debut album, Die Lit, largely produced by Pi’erre Bourne, turned up the volume from his self-titled mixtape a few notches and became a smash, debuting and peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. According to Carti, they spent time in Miami while recording it, performing throughout the city, and the energy of those shows bled into the album. “I’m always thinking about performing, even when I am making the music,” he says.
It all built toward Whole Lotta Red — the album Carti had been waiting to make his entire career and, so far at least, his masterpiece. He still has more boundaries to push, more biting vocals to spit, but that swaggering, urgent album — some of the crudest, most raging rap music since Yeezus — forced Carti’s peers back into the laboratory, like any real masterpiece does. Production played a huge role in that: The guttural beats from F1lthy (who has also worked with Lil Yachty and Yeat) were engrossing. “It’s all based on confidence. I believe in myself,” Carti tells me. “The moment I started recording, someone came to me and said that they like my songs. I stay in the studio every day.”
Friends love to tell stories about Carti’s infamous nightly sessions — and by the time he was crafting Whole Lotta Red, Carti had fully bloomed into a studio madman with a rigorous process, somewhere between George Martin and Ye. Cardo remembers one time they pulled a recording all-nighter; he finally crashed around 6 a.m. — and only got two hours of sleep before Carti woke him up and exclaimed, “You ready, twin?” “I was up for a whole damn near 48 hours with Carti — straight up working,” Cardo gleefully recalls today. Carti sometimes calls himself a vampire and plays with the aesthetics of being one, and the description isn’t entirely off base. “Vamp Anthem” might be a song on Whole Lotta Red, but it’s also a way of life — music has consumed Carti.
Matthew Salacuse
That’s why the leaks of Whole Lotta Red bothered him so much. When music from the project prematurely hit SoundCloud and YouTube, Carti tinkered with the album, delaying its official release. (Leaked tracks from the sessions still litter YouTube.) Sure, Carti loses money when his music leaks, but the creative loss bothers him more: Fans hear something that’s not the exact product he wanted to put out, and he has to come up with new songs. “He’s giving people his absolute best, things that he wants to put his stamp on,” Larsen says. “It delays the process. You don’t want to see the Mona Lisa in an art museum before it is a finished piece of work.” Carti seems exhausted by this, and the broader rabidness of his fan base that it demonstrates. Last year, fans managed to send flowers directly to his mother’s house (presumably to thank her for birthing him); when they found out where his own place was, he had to move. “I’m very blessed,” Carti says. “But it is frustrating because [that’s where] we have to lay our heads.”
Now in the midst of making his third studio album, I Am Music (planned for release by year’s end), Carti is still the workaholic who made Whole Lotta Red, and the sessions for the project, at Carti’s Means Street studio in Atlanta, have been predictably long and meticulous. Carti’s style is in constant evolution, and he and Cardo already have a name for the sound they’ve been workshopping for the project: “burnt music.” “We’ll be in the studio, like, ‘This music is burnt,’ ” explains Cardo, describing the sonics of DJ Toomp, DJ Paul, Juicy J, The Legendary Traxster and even the aesthetic of John Carpenter’s movies as influences. When they first started working together four years ago, Cardo wasn’t sure what style of beats Carti would want — whether he would be on the disorienting F1lthy wave or his pugnacious trap Pi’erre Bourne wave. They ended up building their creative relationship off “H00DBYAIR,” which was originally intended for release on the 2021 Candyman soundtrack. (Carti ended up releasing it as a single in late 2023.)
But even as he has earned praise — and become a genre figurehead — for his work in the studio and onstage, Carti has made headlines for other, less admirable reasons. In 2017, he was arrested for domestic battery after grabbing a woman’s backpack and forcing her into an Uber. In December 2022, his then-pregnant girlfriend, Brandi Marion, told police that, amid an argument about a paternity test, Carti had physically attacked and choked her; when police arrived at the scene, they found her with visible injuries on her neck, back and chest. And that’s to say nothing of the nonviolent charges he has faced. In April 2020, he was caught driving with 12 bags of marijuana, three guns, Xanax pills, oxycodone and codeine. Rapper Iggy Azalea, the mother of Carti’s son Onyx, has publicly accused him of being a neglectful father.
When asked about his various legal issues, Carti declines to say much: “I don’t want to answer that, you know? Jail ain’t no fun.” But that’s not entirely out of character for him: Throughout our interview, Carti dodges questions about relatively benign topics, too, including his relationships with Lil Uzi Vert and Lil Yachty, two artists who have been involved in his career since his self-titled mixtape.
Matthew Salacuse
In the moments before Carti takes the stage, the thousands of fans assembled feverishly chant his name in unison at the top of their lungs. A full five minutes before he goes on, their phones are out, ready to capture him on video the moment he appears. When he does, it’s on a mount with windows, a stage over the original stage, and he’s screaming and athletic — the supreme commander of this sea of acolytes.
“He’s always wanted to produce his own concerts, and he has wanted to cultivate a fan base that has become what it has become in terms of its rowdiness,” CAA’s Thomson says. “He’s brought in the guitar element, the heavy rock aspect. It was night and day in terms of performance style once we got out of the pandemic.” Carti has even expanded the conceptual ambition of his shows: Tonight, fire roars above him as if he is Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate. Though they’re not performing, the Opium artists who huddled around Carti before the show have accompanied him onstage for the ride; between flame blasts, they emerge from the smoke that billows out of an onstage cannon.
Matthew Salacuse
It’s every bit as electrifying as punk rock, though even that might be an understatement. Over the next hour, Carti cycles through an eclectic range of features, album tracks and unreleased songs, from his collaborations with Future (“Type S–t”) and Travis Scott (“FE!N”) to “Stop Breathing,” a fan favorite from his own catalog. He also tests some unreleased songs on the audience, and while it’s hard to imagine anything he does getting a less-than crazed response, they all absolutely play.
After the concert ends, he’s clearly pumped about how it went. He thanks everyone, then enters a car that will drive him to a club in downtown Chicago. But once inside the vehicle, removed from the high of performing, Carti becomes distant — the vampire retreating into his coffin for the night. As I ask him questions, he seems disengaged, asking me to repeat them often. He’s back to real life, but for Carti, real life is onstage, where he experiences an electricity that will never be matched by normalcy. As we drive steadily on the freeway, his once-burning intensity peters out. But then another car pulls up and a group of white teenagers shout, sure that the dark-tinted windows of his SUV conceal their hero: “That’s Carti! Is that Carti? I know you have Carti in there! That must be Carti!” He hears them and slowly rolls down the window, greeted by their now even-more crazed exclamations: “Carti! Holy s–t, Carti! Carti! F–king Carti!” Their lives are made. “Love y’all!” Carti shouts back. “That’s what we do it for.”
This story appears in the Aug. 31, 2024, issue of Billboard.
When Nico Baran was 10, he discovered the popular digital audio workstation FL Studio during a class presentation and started making dance tracks. “That helped me build up my skills for making loops,” says Baran, who soon transitioned to R&B and trap productions.
Seven years later, in 2020, the Houston-born, Madrid-based producer started DM’ing loops to members of the producer collective and record label Internet Money. One member, oktanner, played the beats for CEO Taz Taylor, who brought Baran onto the team that year. Taylor asked Baran to send him ideas ahead of his session with The Kid LAROI, which led to Baran scoring his first major placement on LAROI’s debut mixtape, F*ck Love, co-writing and co-producing “Tragic” featuring YoungBoy Never Broke Again.
He has since compiled a genre-spanning résumé — and an impressive original loop library, which he often shares as sounds on TikTok — producing songs for rappers like Lil Tecca, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie and Shy Glizzy, as well as Latin artists like Bad Bunny with Young Miko, Eladio Carrión and Fuerza Regida. In June, when Baran posted a now-viral snippet titled “Love Is Gone” — a moody instrumental that has since amassed 1.8 million TikTok plays and 4.3 million official on-demand global streams, according to Luminate — Drake caught wind of the hype. “He reached out to me through Instagram,” Baran says. “I’m still sending him stuff to this day.”
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Wallace Joseph, SVP of A&R at Warner Chappell Music, calls the producer a “genius,” saying his talent is “purely natural. What he’s doing is next level; whether he’s playing keyboards, producing, or anything else, everything he touches goes viral.”
Ahead, Baran is hoping to make time for his own music as well, saying he “definitely” wants to release an album of his own — “kind of like Metro Boomin and DJ Khaled,” he says, “where I can bring artists into my own sound.”
¥$ (with Lil Wayne), “Lifestyle”
Last November, Baran wrote, “POV: Ty Dolla $ign & Kanye need beats for their next album,” over a TikTok featuring one of his loops. In December, when Ye previewed “Lifestyle” during an Instagram Live filmed at a private Las Vegas party teasing Vultures 2 (despite Vultures 1 not having dropped), Baran noticed a familiar beat: The song sampled “Love Is Gone.” As Baran recalls, “People were sending me screen recordings through Instagram like, ‘Kanye sampled you!’ ” One of the song’s producers, Australian duo FNZ, had sent Ty “Love Is Gone.” Baran says, “He liked it a lot. He showed it to Kanye, and Kanye loved it. It still feels unbelievable.”
Ice Spice & Central Cee, “Did It First”
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In 2023, songwriter-producer Lily Kaplan sent Baran a Dropbox link and asked him to tinker with her vocal tracks. He built a loop around one of them by chopping up the line “Baby, do you understand?” and adding synths before sending it to RIOTUSA, Ice Spice’s go-to producer. RIOT ultimately used it for Ice and Central Cee’s “Did It First,” one of the buzzier singles from her debut album, Y2K!, that dropped in July. “Ice Spice really loved that one loop, and it kind of went crazy,” says Baran of the track, which hit No. 10 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs.
The Kid LAROI, TBA
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Four years after “Tragic,” one of LAROI’s producers reached out to Baran about sampling a loop that he had posted on TikTok to use on a track from the Australian artist’s forthcoming second album. (His debut, The First Time, arrived last November.) “That’s mainly what I’m focusing on right now,” Baran reveals. “I’m sending a lot of ideas to LAROI’s producers. Aside from that one song, hopefully more [will] come about.”
A version of this article originally appeared in the August 31, 2024 issue of Billboard.
In August 2022, Allison Crutchfield, an A&R executive at ANTI- Records, traveled to Asheville, N.C., on a mission to sign the rising singer-songwriter known as MJ Lenderman. By year’s end, Crutchfield succeeded — and had also joined his tight-knit circle of friends.
“I’ve never had a meeting with an artist where they’ve been like, ‘Just come over and we’ll have a barbecue, we’ll just drink beer and eat,’ ” recalls Crutchfield, who got to know Lenderman at the property where he was living with several others, including members of the ascendant alt-country group Wednesday.
At the time, Lenderman had just released his breakthrough album, Boat Songs, a collection of detailed vignettes set to fuzzed-out country-rock riffs, on independent label Dear Life Records. And the 25-year-old hasn’t slowed down since: In late 2023, Lenderman made his ANTI- debut with his acclaimed live album Live and Loose!; in early 2024, he hit the road with Wednesday, for which he sings and plays guitar; and in March, Waxahatchee (fronted by Crutchfield’s twin sister, Katie) released her lauded album Tigers Blood, for which she invited Lenderman into her small creative circle. Lenderman made his Billboard chart debut, on Adult Alternative Airplay, with his feature on that set’s aching lead single, “Right Back to It,” and performed it alongside Waxahatchee on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
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As Lenderman’s profile grew, he was assembling Manning Fireworks, which is set for release Sept. 6 and his first studio album for ANTI-. “It was kind of strange,” he says when reflecting on the whirlwind that accompanied becoming one of indie rock’s most heralded new artists. “I guess it was more of an obstacle of making the new record — just trying to figure out how to not think about that and make a record like I would before.”
For Lenderman, that wasn’t so long ago. A child of music lovers — “My dad was a Deadhead,” he says, detailing the Derek Trucks and Gov’t Mule shows he saw as a kid growing up in Asheville — Lenderman began playing guitar in early grade school and eventually gravitated toward indie and punk music as a teenager playing in bands around his hometown. Soon he began recording, and the pandemic afforded him more time to complete 2021’s Ghost of Your Guitar Solo and, eventually, Boat Songs.
When Lenderman’s manager, Rusty Sutton, passed along a Boat Songs promo to Crutchfield, she knew she had to sign him “probably 10 seconds” into its opening song. “In a medium like indie rock,” she explains, “where there really is only so much you can do, for someone to do something where they’re honoring the tradition of this type of music but to do it in a way that does totally feel refreshing and like something that we haven’t heard, it’s really exciting.”
Lenderman is heavily influenced by Neil Young — “I can trace back most bands that I like to Neil,” he says, citing the rock legend’s scuzzy mid-’70s phase — and he also counts Drive-By Truckers, Dinosaur Jr. and Will Oldham as key touchstones. But his music has connected with younger audiences thanks to its modern sensibility and the way it careens from absurdist humor to deep, sometimes dark, profundity. (One new song, “Wristwatch,” is an ode to loneliness where the narrator notes that he’s “got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome.”)
“Obviously, my real life is going to bleed through a little bit, but I try to keep it more from a third-person perspective,” he says. “I feel like that opens more possibilities — and it’s kind of more fun writing fiction.”
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For Manning Fireworks, recorded whenever he could find time between tours, Lenderman followed a familiar approach, reuniting with producer Alex Farrar at Asheville’s Drop of Sun Studios, where he has recorded tracks several times before. But the album, which expands Lenderman’s country-rock creative palette without losing its signature wit or intimacy, is far from a redux.
“I want my records to be dynamic,” Lenderman says. “For a while, I was trying to maybe take it up a notch and go louder or faster or something — and then that just really wasn’t where I was at. So I decided to go in the opposite direction and make it more acoustic and quieter.”
On Manning Fireworks, Lenderman does a bit of both. The music has never sounded richer, with fiddle and brass bolstering his guitar, but he also explores the flip side, like on album closer “Bark at the Sun,” which ends Manning Fireworks with a multiminute noise outro driven by “bass clarinet abuse drone.” While Lenderman “couldn’t tell you why” he made the creative choice — “it just felt right to me” — it’s indicative of his growth. “There’s a level of confidence coming from [him] at this point that feels different from Boat Songs,” Crutchfield says. “This is a person who is unbelievably talented and now understands how to wield that.”
Not that the eternally nonchalant Lenderman would ever describe his intuitive choices so grandly.
This story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
When André 3000 released his debut solo album, New Blue Sun, in November, hip-hop die-hards were understandably upset: The set spanned 88 minutes, showcased flute-playing in a new age and jazz paradigm and included zero words.
At 49 now, André 3000 suggested that topics like getting a colonoscopy and checking his eyesight didn’t fit into hip-hop subject matter. “Sometimes it feels inauthentic for me to rap,” he told GQ at the time of the album’s release, “because I don’t have anything to talk about in that way.”
Less than a month later, Lil Wayne, 41, said on Young Money Radio that he was “depressed” to hear 3Stacks’ comments because he has “everything to talk about.” Pusha T, 47, agreed, telling Idea Generation in live-event footage uploaded in December, “It is kind of stifling to the genre to even think like that. As long as you live in hip-hop in all capacities and as long as you’re still sharp with that pen, you got something to say. We want to hear it.”
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Ironically, the chatter about rappers reaching an expiration date occurred at the end of a yearlong celebration of hip-hop’s cultural longevity. In 2023, genre pioneers including DJ Kool Herc, Kurtis Blow and Roxanne Shanté were honored with a celebratory Hip Hop 50 Live event at New York’s Yankee Stadium. Meanwhile, icon-heavy arena tours kicked off, including Masters of the Mic: Hip-Hop 50 Tour (featuring Big Daddy Kane and Doug E. Fresh, among others), and LL COOL J’s F.O.R.C.E. Live outing (featuring Queen Latifah, Rakim and more).
That attitude has continued well into hip-hop’s 51st year, with sold-out shows and buzz-worthy albums released decades into artists’ careers. “It’s been interesting to watch rappers get older and redefine what’s acceptable and possible in hip-hop,” says Carl Chery, creative director and head of urban music at Spotify. “Rap has historically been perceived to be a young man’s game, but we’re now seeing rappers have critical and commercial success [into] their 40s.”
In July, Eminem released his long-teased concept album, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), led by the top 10 Hot 100 hit “Houdini.” Its debut atop the Billboard 200 ended Taylor Swift’s record-breaking streak at No. 1 with The Tortured Poets Department. That same week, Common released his Pete Rock-produced The Auditorium Vol. 1, and in August, Rakim dropped his first album in 15 years with G.O.D.’s Network (Reb7rth) while Killer Mike delivered Songs for Sinners and Saints. Still ahead, LL COOL J will return with his first album in 11 years with The FORCE, due Sept. 6, and Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre have teased their joint album, Missionary, fresh off a performance at the Summer Olympics’ closing ceremony in Los Angeles. Will Smith has even returned to music with his first Christian/gospel single, “You Can Make It,” featuring Fridayy and Sunday Service Choir, which they debuted at the 2024 BET Awards in June.
How, then, are these rappers staying active while entering their fourth or fifth decades? Common believes it’s a matter of understanding the difference between “legacy” and “veteran.” “Sometimes when I hear ‘legacy,’ it makes me think that people don’t view you as still present in it,” he says, “that you are still creating music that is palatable and viable for the times. To me, it’s an honorable way of saying, ‘Man, you had a good run.’ ”
Meanwhile, being a veteran, he says, not only alludes but gives respect to the length of time an artist has sustained. “They have experience and some time in the art form,” he says — which is something Common felt was missing when he was starting out, as hip-hop was still a relatively new commercial art form. But now, at 52, he believes there is victory in having a passion that burns strong enough to want to keep writing raps.
“When we were coming up, we didn’t have any examples of people in their 40s and 50s making music,” he observes. “In my 20s, I was thinking, ‘Man, how am I going to make it in my 30s? Who is going to listen? I have to hurry up and make this happen.’ And now, in my early 50s, I’m like, ‘Wow, it’s a new life to this.’ ”
Chery says he’s been paying special attention to Eminem and Ye, both of whom have managed to appeal to a Gen Z audience. “Granted, Ye and Em have a unique appeal, but I wonder how many artists will be able to change their audience moving forward,” he says. “I’ve always been envious of how young rock listeners take pride in knowing Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin. They’re students. A lot of younger rap listeners are dismissive of older music.” (Upon the release of Common’s The Auditorium Vol. 1, Grammy Award-winning producer 9th Wonder proposed on X that “adult contemporary hip-hop needs its own category” at the awards show; during this year’s ceremony, Killer Mike swept the rap categories.)
While Common is less concerned with how the music he makes today is perceived, there is one thing he knows he wants: longevity. He admires the arc of many jazz musicians’ careers, recalling seeing pianist Ahmad Jamal, who died in 2023 at 92, play in Chicago; as Common says, Jamal “played until he left the planet.” He says the same of drummer Roy Haynes, who is 99 — and whom Common saw perform just a few years ago.
“If André 3000 decided to rap about a colonoscopy, he’s going to make it dope as hell,” Common asserts, “because this dude rapped about going to Whole Foods and made a whole story out of that.”
This story will appear in the Aug. 31, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Clams Casino doesn’t believe in the age-old adage of having to finish what you start — at least in a single recording session. Born Michael Volpe (no relation to the New York Yankees shortstop and fellow New Jersey native Anthony Volpe), he rose to prominence serving as the sonic architect behind a majority of A$AP Rocky’s seminal 2011 Live. Love. A$AP mixtape, which ushered in a new era of NYC rap and kicked off the A$AP Mob frontman’s Harlem Renaissance.
But nearly 15 years later, Volpe’s atmospheric beats has continue to leave an impact on the next generation of artists. Being a fan of his work with Rocky, Clams Casino was already on The Kid LAROI’s radar when a mutual collaborator, Billy Walsh, connected the producer to the Australian musician when he was just 17 years old. Though nothing came of the initial studio session link-up, a year-and-a-half later, Clams Casino cooked up another intoxicating beat that he felt matched the vibe LAROI was looking for, and he turned out to be right.
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“I hadn’t spoken to LAROI in a long time and I just had a feeling,” he tells Billboard. “I sent him that one and he immediately responded that he loved it and went right in, recorded it on his own and sent it back in like a day.
“He used the MP3 I sent him as-is,” he continues. What came out was pretty much the original demo, which is cool about.” That result is the euphoric “Nights Like This,” which ended up landing on The Kid LAROI‘s debut album, The First Time, last November. And while it didn’t take off immediately, the track would slow-burn to success with the help of TikTok and break through in July on the Billboard Hot 100, where it has remained for the summer and currently sits at No. 67 in its ninth week on the chart.
The 37-year-old producer and LAROI then continued their magic with “Nights Like This Pt 2,” a heart-racing second installment that on The First Time‘s deluxe edition, released in August.
Below, Clams Casino breaks down all things surrounding “Nights Like This,” what stood out to him about The Kid LAROI and working with A$AP Rocky throughout his career.
How did “Nights Like This” come together? How did you originally get onto The Kid LAROI’s radar?
Clams Casino: It was a few years in the making. LAROI first reached out to me online when he was like 17. He was in the studio working with a mutual collaborator, Billy Walsh — I think he played him some of my stuff, and they were brainstorming and brought me out to [Los Angeles]. LAROI knew a lot of the music that I had done. Later on, he told me he was a big fan of the [A$AP] Rocky stuff. I went out to L.A. and we met up in the studio and we talked and played some stuff, but nothing really came out of that first time we met up. I kept it in the back of my mind.
I think it was a year-and-a-half later, and I was at my own studio in New York making beats. That [beat] came up, and I just thought this was the one to send to him. This is kind of what they were talking about what they wanted [during the initial session] and the sound they were referencing. I just sent that one beat. He was excited about it. I had a feeling this was the one and it worked out. Once it happened, it was quick, but the roots were a long time in the making.
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Do you remember actually cooking up that specific beat before getting it into his hands?
I had the melodic stuff sitting around a little bit. I knew it was a special one. I didn’t really know what to do with it. I had half of the beat kind of put away. I was like, “When the time is right, I’ll come back to it.” I don’t do full things in one sitting. A lot of stuff, I’ll come back to it months or years later. I messed around trying to do a different arrangement, and I think he was just stuck on the original demo. There was something about it; he kept going back to that. He was right about it. I tried some other things out, but he just wanted that original version, which is cool looking back on it.
What stands out about his artistry?
What’s exciting for me when I hear his music is that he has a very unique sense of melody — his delivery and his vocals. There’s something melodically that just feels like he’s delivering in the tones of his voice [with] a genuine feeling and it connects with his music because of that.
“Nights Like This” was teased back in 2022 and released in November. What do you think about its slow burn onto the charts?
It spread around very organically and I think that’s the best way it could happen. There was like zero push from the label at the beginning — they thought, like, “This is a little interlude or something.” I don’t think anyone took it seriously. From the beginning, I knew it was a really special thing and he did too. He was really excited about it. We had the freedom to do exactly what me and him wanted to do. People really connected with that.
Was there a moment you realized the record was taking off, and saw the fan reaction really moving?
I started seeing headlines, and all of a sudden, it was getting jumps in streams. I started seeing things online with people saying it was going crazy on TikTok. It just slowly started building. That’s how it really happened. I’m glad everyone’s hearing it now and they got around to it because that’s how I felt about it when it came out. I was happy and really excited and proud of that. Even just for it to come out in the first place I was happy, but I’m glad it got to that point. I always knew it was special. I’m glad it really connected with everybody else.
How did this lead into “Nights Like This Pt 2”?
The beginning of that idea came from something I made for myself. An instrumental solo project — that was the first thing when I was starting on my own new stuff. When I was listening back, I was going to save it for myself, and I was like, “Something about it feels like this should be the part two.” This was in March or earlier this year. So, a few months after the first was released. I sent LAROI not the full beat or anything, but melody stuff and it was a start.
He loved it, and he immediately started teasing it online. Ten minutes after I sent it to him, he was on Twitter saying, “Part two coming!” I was laughing about that — he was real excited about it. There was a little bit of back-and-forth after that. Him and [co-producer] Dopamine recorded it and did some other production and sent it back to me. We sent it back a few times. Dopamine did a lot of work on it and we went back a few times. We got it finished up.
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When did The First Time track “Strangers (Interlude)” come into play?
I actually didn’t know about that. I had no idea about that until the album came out. They had done that on their own. I felt like it set up [“Nights Like This”] really nicely. I love how it sounds sequenced on the album. It’s a clip from “Nights Like This” — just the intro to it and filtered out a little and a little skit on it.
Is there more to come from you guys?
Yeah, it feels like we’re just starting to figure it out. We’re both really excited. I’m like such a fan of his music and I’m happy that I’m able to bring what I bring to it. It just makes sense and it’s a beautiful thing. I’m always working on more that I want to send to him and we got some other stuff that we’re going to keep going [at] hopefully.
Outside of those collabs, what else are you working on?
I’ve been working on different stuff, like getting into scoring things. I worked on some original music for an independent movie that premiered at Cannes a few months ago. [It’s called] It Doesn’t Matter and the director is Josh Mond. I’ll definitely be doing more of that. In the meantime, I really have been having fun getting in with a lot of young producers and young people I’m inspired by. A lot of them have been inspired by me since they were younger, and now they’re coming up doing their own thing. It’s really crazy. I just been having fun getting in with all these new guys and seeing what happens. Producers [like] Evilgiane, who did the Earl Sweatshirt song recently. [I] been working with other guys like Ok. I did some stuff on the JT album with Aire Atlantica. I’m always experimenting and having fun doing stuff I haven’t done before. That’s what keeps me going.
Did you work on A$AP Rocky’s upcoming album?
We did work [on Don’t Be Dumb]. I don’t know what’s going to be used or not. It always seems up in the air until the last minute. We definitely had some things in the works. I don’t know what’s going to be released or not.
Can you speak to Rocky’s influence and his enduring legacy as a 2010s rap titan?
I’m just happy to be part of his story and the ride of his career. Seeing it from the beginning when we first met to where he’s at it now, it’s an amazing story. Remembering where it started and seeing where he’s at now, it’s awesome. I’m just happy to be able to see some of that and some of the behind-the-scenes things.
What do you think makes him special as an artist?
Overall, he has a clear sense of vision for everything. All aspects of it. The music, visuals and everything else. He’s always developing and sharpening that. I don’t really know what it is, but he’s got it.
Do you have a favorite collaboration over the years?
All of the first mixtape stuff [Live. Love. A$AP] is super important to me. That whole time, we weren’t really working in the studio. I was sending stuff, but then I’d come meet up with him every couple weeks and he’d play me what he did, but he was recording it [on his own]. The first song we officially did together was “Wassup.” Then we did “Bass” and “Palace” and all that stuff. It was happening one at a time over the spring and the summer leading up to the mixtape. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew something good was happening. Those songs are really special. There was an energy there that something was happening. For me, it was exciting and I didn’t know what was going to happen, and we just kept following it.
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For me, I think I gotta go “LVL.”
That was a little bit after the mixtape. That’s another special one doubling down on the sound that we started. That’s when it went from this internet mixtape thing to a major label and we were doubling down on the sound like, “This is what we’re doing.” That’s one of my favorites too.
A version of this story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
These four memoirs from artists across genres and generations are among the most anticipated music books to arrive this fall.
Over the Influence: A MemoirBy Joanna “JoJo” Levesque
After breaking through in the mid-2000s with rhythmic pop hits like “Leave (Get Out)” and “Too Little Too Late” — which hit the Billboard Hot 100 at Nos. 12 and 3, respectively — JoJo retreated from the spotlight. Years later, she detailed an extended lawsuit with her record label, along with her own personal challenges. Now, with her memoir due Sept. 17, she discloses what happened during those years, illuminating exactly what kept her away — and what brought her back.
Life in the Key of GBy Kenny G and Philip Lerman
Grammy-winning saxophonist Kenny G has long been a jazz icon — known just as much for his skillful playing as his tight curls — but he has never let fans into his life like this before. Out Sept. 24 and written with author Philip Lerman (co-producer of America’s Most Wanted and co-author of host John Walsh’s memoir), the artist born Kenneth Gorelick details how he went from a bullied, skinny kid in Seattle to a teenage backing musician for everyone from Barry White to Liberace.
From Here to the Great Unknown: A MemoirBy Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough
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Two years ago, Presley asked her daughter Keough to help her finish an important, though daunting, task: her memoir. One month later, Presley died — and Keough was left with a mission to deliver her mother’s story, which is out Oct. 8. Keough gathered the tapes recorded for the book and listened in bed as Lisa Marie recounted her relationship with her famous parents: Elvis and Priscilla Presley.
Cher: The Memoir, Part OneBy Cher
As Grammy-winning, chart-topping icon Cher approaches 80, she will share the story of her extraordinary life in her own words — and two parts. In Part One, out Nov. 19, the artist born Cherilyn Sarkisian recounts her childhood and career beginnings up through her marriage to Sonny Bono, revealing more about the pair’s complicated relationship. There is no publishing date yet for Part Two, but as Part One’s bio teases, “It is a life too immense for only one book.”
This story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
While biking across Iowa this summer, Mark Michaels enjoyed a rare moment of reflection. “You’re riding about 80 miles a day among cornfields, and it gives you a lot of time to think,” the United Record Pressing chairman/CEO says. “I spent a lot of time while I was peddling thinking about United,” he adds of the oldest and largest American-owned, U.S.-based vinyl pressing plant in the world, which will celebrate its 75th anniversary this fall.
Michaels is speaking from his Nashville office, where he’s surrounded by signed records from Buddy Guy, Jack White and more of his icons, all expressing their thanks to him and his manufacturing team. (In 2014, White made history by recording, pressing and releasing a 7-inch of his single “Lazaretto” in under four hours, thanks to URP.) “It’s easy to forget those moments of euphoria and gratitude because you’re so focused on ‘How many records of this did we ship?’ or ‘What’s going on with that press?’ ” Michaels says. “But you don’t want too much life to pass by where you don’t stop and reflect.”
URP was founded as Bullet Plastics in Nashville in 1949, becoming Southern Plastics in the ’50s before landing on United Record Pressing in 1971. By the ’60s, a deal was signed for the plant to handle singles pressings for Motown, and in 1963, the first Beatles 7-inch, “Please Please Me”/“From Me to You,” was pressed, with a typo that spelled the band’s name as The Beattles.
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In 2007, a year before Record Store Day officially launched and just before the format was beginning its first-wave resurgence, Michaels bought the company — and helped sustain it through a particularly rough patch. As he recalls, half of URP’s output at the time was 12-inch singles created as promo records for DJs. “That was a lot of what we did, and shortly after I bought the company, the labels stopped doing that,” he says. “The DJs all got [music production software] Seratos, and the labels figured out that was a better business model. So all of a sudden, the health of the company was in serious jeopardy … We were doing everything to keep the lights on.”
By the summer of 2009, a career-changing order came in: a 50th-anniversary pressing of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue (a favorite of Michaels) — the plant’s biggest order to date. Michaels himself oversaw quality control, checking a record at random every 30 minutes. “I remember one night, it was two in the morning and I’m in my office listening to these records, and I thought, ‘This is crazy, but goddamn, I’m lucky.’ And it just gave me this boost of energy. The next month, we got another order of that size.” Since, URP has manufactured vinyl for every major artist, from Adele to Taylor Swift.
In the early 2020s, URP faced another challenging period: the coronavirus pandemic. “Demand for vinyl exploded” during lockdown, Michaels says, but the orders put an unprecedented pressure on pressing plants to keep up. He says that was the catalyst for URP to expand, resulting in an $11 million project that built new infrastructure and supporting equipment and added 26 new presses. “The challenge is you can’t do that overnight,” he says. And now, not only can URP meet demand, but “the plant runs better than ever.”
He and his team of approximately 130 employees — all of whom have been sporting anniversary T-shirts that detail the plant’s various logos over the years — are now ready to toast such a feat and storied history, with Michaels saying the energy “is palpable” at the plant these days. A forthcoming celebration will bring together partners, customers, vendors and “people who support the format … There’s a renewed sense of pride and interest in what we do.”
Already, Michaels is focused on how to maintain it for the next 75 years, doubling down on the honor he has in keeping the process — and workforce — in Music City. “Seventy-five-plus years of history gives you a lot of gas in your tank in terms of pride,” he says. “You don’t make the first Beatles record in America, you don’t make all these Motown records, you don’t accumulate all this history and know-how and not have something special. And I never want to lose that.”
This story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024 issue of Billboard.
Nearly a decade ago, as a college senior, rising country singer Kassi Ashton signed a record deal with Universal Music Group Nashville (UMGN)/Interscope Records. Now 30 — and following the success of her highest-charting single to date — the California, Mo. native will finally release her anticipated debut album, Made From the Dirt, on Sept. 20.
Foundation
Singer-songwriter Ashton is a study in contrasts: a motorcycle enthusiast who designs and crafts many of her stage and red-carpet outfits from scratch (including for this year’s Academy of Country Music Awards, where she was nominated for new female artist of the year). As a child, she competed in pageants mostly as a vessel for showcasing her music. Even then, her vocal prowess was apparent, thanks to influence from vocalists including Adele, Aretha Franklin and (later) the country-soul of Chris Stapleton. Ashton soon started writing original songs, enrolling at Nashville’s Belmont University to study commercial voice and music business.
Discovery
In 2016, as college graduation neared, Ashton signed a management and publishing deal with Nashville-based Creative Nation. By 2017, she scored a label deal with UMGN in partnership with Interscope. But the ensuing years were spent refining her sound and weathering setbacks, with none of her singles promoted at radio — and no debut album. “I never felt like I should quit,” she says. “When I signed, they wanted me to go straight to radio. I said no because I didn’t have a song I wanted to sing for the rest of my life.” Her first full-length was also delayed by the pandemic in 2020, but in 2022, she finally issued her debut country radio single, “Dates in Pickup Trucks,” followed by “Drive You Out of My Mind.” The two songs built momentum, but this year’s “Called Crazy” has resonated most, rising to No. 32 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart. “It came so easy,” she says. “I felt like I was finding a pillar.”
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Future
Nearly a decade after inking her label deal, Ashton will release her long-awaited debut album, Made From the Dirt, on Sept. 20. She teamed with longtime collaborator Luke Laird, as well as Oscar Charles, to craft an eclectic mix of uptempo jams (“I Don’t Wanna Dance”), grungy rock gems (“Son of a Gun”) and a heartfelt tribute to her late grandmother (“Juanita”). “I couldn’t have made this album at 23,” Ashton says. “It would have been rushed and not steady with who I am as a person. I can’t wait to see how what I’ve put energy, time and tears into is connecting.”
A version of this story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.