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Get the tissues ready—Eminem is about to hit us right in the feels again.
The rapper is releasing the music video for his deeply emotional track “Temporary” on Oct. 3, and fans are already bracing themselves for a tearjerker.
In a post on Instagram on Oct. 2., the Detroit native shared a picture of his daughter, Hailie Jade, as a child, taken on the iconic stage of The Eminem Show. The image was handcrafted into a card by Hailie herself, and the post included a poignant quote from the song: “It won’t be too long…” followed by the tag “#Temporary.”
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If that wasn’t enough to get fans tearing up, Em also dropped a sneak peek of the music video, which features never-before-seen Polaroids of him and Hailie over the years.
He then shared a snippet of the music “The tears are temporary,” he captioned the post, before revealing that the visuals for “Temporary” will drop tomorrow at 1 p.m. ET.
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On the track from his latest album, The Death of Slim Shady, Eminem gets personal, lamenting the countless hours and days he missed due to his struggle with drugs and alcohol; Em celebrated 16 years of sobriety in April.
The 51-year-old rapper’s emotional tribute to his daughter has already struck a chord with fans. Hailie, now 28, recently opened up on her Just a Little Shady podcast about how the album’s songs, especially “Temporary” and “Somebody Save Me,” brought her to tears.
“I audibly sobbed… I think for both songs, but especially ‘Temporary.’” However, after watching the video and listening to the songs, Hailie praised her parents for “doing such a good job” when she was growing up to shield her from the reality of “how bad things were.”
“But now as an adult in hindsight, it’s so scary to think about and I think that’s why I get emotional… I will say if you’ve ever lost an addict or loved one, I feel for you,” she added.
“The older I get the less I can listen to any of the songs.”
For longtime fans, “Temporary” feels like a continuation of Eminem’s history of dedicating music to his daughter, like “Hailie’s Song” and “Mockingbird.” The tracks have always given a glimpse of the softer, more vulnerable side of Em—a stark contrast to his fiery diss tracks and rapid-fire rhymes. And with “Temporary,” it looks like we’re about to get another look into that emotional side of Slim.
The Death of Slim Shady has proven to be yet another success for Eminem. The album, released in July, peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and marked his 11th chart-topper.
The lead track, the rhythmically tight and razor-sharp “Houdini,” quickly soared to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, while “Somebody Save Me,” a deeply personal collaboration with Jelly Roll, reached No. 27. “Brand New Dance” and “Tobey,” both climbed into the top 30, while “Temporary,” featuring vocals with longtime collaborator Skylar Grey, debuted at No. 56.
Check out the teaser for “Temporary” below.
Two decades ago, while hip-hop maintained its cultural dominance, reggaetón began to carve out a niche in the global music scene, and Fat Joe — deeply connected to his Puerto Rican and Cuban heritage and known for his unmistakable New York swagger — bridged the two genres. As both have evolved, so has he: His involvement in Don Omar’s 2005 “Reggaetón Latino (Chosen Few Remix),” alongside N.O.R.E. and LDA, marked a pivotal moment in bringing reggaetón and rap closer together.
Since then, he has consistently fused Latin influences with hip-hop, from his 2019 salsa-infused track “Yes” with Cardi B and Anuel AA (which samples Héctor Lavoe and Willie Colón’s “Aguanile”) to the more recent single “Paradise” with Anitta and DJ Khaled. Fat Joe spoke with Billboard ahead of his conversation with N.O.R.E. during Latin Music Week about the intersection of hip-hop and reggaetón.
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How has your Latin heritage influenced your music?
Man, I just love making music for everybody. But every time we can tap the Latino market — because I’m Puerto Rican and Cuban, my wife’s Colombian — we do it for everybody. And you know, nobody knows how to celebrate like Latinos. It’s about time we teamed up with Anitta from Brazil and then DJ Khaled [with “Paradise,” which premiered at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards] and make a Latino national anthem.
Since “Reggaetón Latino,” how have you seen the relationship between these two styles evolve?
I’m just proud of reggaetón and everywhere [those artists have] gone because when we started out, they were the little guys. Now they’re killing the whole game — Don Omar, Tego Calderón, Daddy Yankee, Wisin & Yandel, all the guys who pioneered the game and brought it over to America and then the world.
In your view, how have hip-hop and reggaetón supported or influenced each other’s wider cultural acceptance over the years?
Hip-hop is the blueprint. It’s the foundation of everything. Reggaetón came after and just took it to another level in the Latino space and the global space. Even people who aren’t Latinos love reggaetón, but hip-hop is always the blueprint. It started everything when you talk about the flow, the music, the fashion… It just runs neck and neck.
This story appears in the Sept. 28, 2024, issue of Billboard.
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.
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.
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.
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of his mixtape Days Before Rodeo, Houston-born rapper Travis Scott has dropped a special edition titled Days Before Rodeo – Live from Atlanta: Chopped & Screwed – Vault 1 & 2.
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The limited-edition release, available exclusively on shop.travisscott.com, features previously unheard snippets from the Days Before Rodeo era and a full live set from Scott’s recent anniversary performance in Atlanta. Alongside the music, vinyl bundles, exclusive merchandise, and other limited-edition items are also available.
Released in 2014, Days Before Rodeo was Scott’s second mixtape, setting the stage for his debut album Rodeo in 2015.
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The mixtape featured standout tracks like “Mamacita,” featuring Rich Homie Quan and Young Thug, and “Don’t Play,” featuring Big Sean and The 1975. The tracks, along with production from Metro Boomin, Lex Luger, and Travis Scott himself, introduced a moody, atmospheric style that has since become a hallmark of the trap genre.
The release comes following following Scott dropping the music video for “Drugs You Should Try It” more than a decade after its original 2014 release.
La Flame released the trippy “Drugs You Should Try It” visual on Aug. 18 after DBR came to streaming services on Aug. 23. The clip kicks off with an homage to Virgil Abloh, who designed the neon-lit smoking cowboy sign that makes an appearance. Scott starts free-falling into a pool of despair and allows his mind to drift into the depths of his conscious.
Scott’s chart success includes his sophomore album Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight, which topped the Billboard 200, and the Astroworld album, which spent three weeks at No. 1. His hit single “Sicko Mode” became a staple on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 1, while his collaborations with artists like Drake and Young Thug have secured multiple top 10 hits
In the back room of an industrial art space in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood, A$AP Rocky is venting. Not about the muddled reaction his first official AWGE clothing collection garnered at Paris Fashion Week. Not about the devoted fans who keep asking what’s going on with A$AP Mob, the long-dormant hip-hop collective he co-founded nearly two decades ago. And, surprisingly, not even about the potshots Drake sent his way during the Rap Civil War that took place earlier this year.
Nah, tonight Rocky is venting about children’s TV shows — Cocomelon, to be specific. “That s–t is driving me nuts! Don’t tell my girl I said that,” he says before flashing his million-dollar smile, tonight speckled with platinum and diamonds, and letting out a laugh. “I’m totally joking, I don’t give a s–t. She’s tired of it, too, probably.”
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His girl, of course, is Billboard chart-topping, Grammy Award-winning, billionaire business mogul Rihanna. The two first met over a decade ago when they were rehearsing for their joint performance of her “Cockiness” remix at the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards. The following year, Rocky joined the North American leg of her Diamonds World Tour as the opening act; a few public appearances together later — 2018’s Louis Vuitton show at Paris Fashion Week, Rihanna’s 2018 Diamond Ball and the 2019 London Fashion Awards — speculation began swirling that the two were more than just friends. By 2021, after a series of high-profile outings including a Bajan vacation, the two stylish superstars made their relationship official when, in a GQ interview, Rocky called Rihanna “my lady” and the “love of my life.”
Tonight, however, Rihanna is simply a “great mother” — to their two children, 2-year-old RZA Athelston Mayers and 1-year-old Riot Rose Mayers — and an inspiring partner. “It’s crazy how we find balance with our chaotic schedules,” says Rocky (born Rakim Mayers). He’s wearing a custom black AWGE suit that he designed himself, complete with the multiwaist pants that he’s popularized recently. “[The relationship] is going great. I don’t think there’s a more perfect person because when the schedules are hectic, she’s very understanding of that. And when the schedule’s freed up, that’s when you get to spend [the] most time together. It’s all understanding and compatibility.”
AWGE suit, shirt and tie.
Ruven Afanador
That may seem a bit rich coming from one half of the couple who seems to relish keeping their fans endlessly waiting for their next project to drop. But despite not releasing an album since 2018’s TESTING, Rocky’s schedule has been surprisingly hectic — and music has kept him surprisingly busy in recent years. He went on his Injured Generation Tour and headlined major festivals (multiple Rolling Louds both in the United States and abroad; Montréal’s Osheaga in 2022) — much to the chagrin of the pundits and haters who wondered how a guy with little to no new music (and fewer plaques and Billboard chart-toppers than many of his contemporaries) was getting all these looks.
To be fair, it’s not as if Rocky hasn’t tried — if he had it his way, the streets would be flooded with his product. For one thing, there was the small matter of his July 2019 arrest in Stockholm, where a jury found him guilty of assault. (In a bizarre turn of events, then-President Donald Trump called for his immediate release but, according to Rocky, was unable to make anything happen.) And over the past six years, every time he’s gotten into a good creative groove and amassed a worthwhile collection of songs, they’ve been prematurely leaked to the public. “At this point I’ve been working on music for six years, but they leak my music and I get over it and say, ‘F–k it,’ ” he says. “They leak a lot of the music and it ruins it. Like my ‘Taylor Swift’ video. I was pissed off about it, so I never released it.”
In case you haven’t been keeping up, he’s not referencing a video featuring The Eras Queen — he’s talking about the trippy visual for a song named for her that found its way onto the internet last year. Directed by Vania Heymann and Gal Muggia, it would have felt right at home on The Eric Andre Show, while the music was Rocky’s usual brand of experimental, location-agnostic, luxury rap.
Today, Rocky seems confident that he’s in full control of his creative output and says he’s finally ready to drop his long-awaited fourth album, Don’t Be Dumb. He’s only been working on it for the past year but he believes, like most artists discussing their new work, that it’s the best album he’s ever made. (During the course of reporting this story, he does push its release date from Aug. 30 to the fall.)
Don’t Be Dumb skews slightly heavier topically and goes deeper than Rocky’s usual vainglorious works. The 35-year-old jack-of-all-that’s-fly chalks this up to him getting older (“I’m an OG now”) and wiser and the world being bats–t crazy at the moment; one of the first songs he recorded for the album is a grim, experimental track called “Shroom Cloud” that deals with “current affairs and world wars and, you know, the world dying and whatnot.”
“At times like this, only two types of people strive and survive,” Rocky theorizes. “I’m not trying to sound like I’m glorifying wars, [but] I think artists and druggies, they make it through. I mean, what was the hippies doing? They was getting high at Woodstock and f–king and having a great time and having these hippie babies who subsequently had us.”
AWGE suit, shirt and tie; Ray-Ban sunglasses.
Ruven Afanador
Tough times have been occupying Rocky’s thoughts for at least the past year or so. German expressionism — the popular art movement born in 1919 that focused on the artist’s innermost fears, desires and turmoil — has been a major influence on not just this album, but all his recent artistic endeavors. When asked to describe who he is at this moment, he says, “Grim.”
“In this very moment, it’s very grim. That’s an abbreviation,” he explains. “It’s infusing German expressionism with ghetto futurism.” When making Don’t Be Dumb, Rocky tried to get one of its most famous American practitioners, director Tim Burton, to lend a hand and create the cover art. The two couldn’t align their schedules to make it happen, but Rocky was able to play him the album. “I sat and I played the album for Tim Burton, and he was f–king with it heavy,” he says. According to Rocky, when the Beetlejuice director heard it, “he was rocking his head and he’s like, ‘Wow! I didn’t know you made that kind of music!’ ” And though he couldn’t get Burton himself involved, Rocky did succeed in nabbing the director’s longtime collaborator, composer Danny Elfman, to contribute musical snippets throughout the album, including on a song produced by The Alchemist.
Don’t Be Dumb will still feature the kinds of collaborators Rocky’s fans expect, like rapper and friend Tyler, The Creator, and an all-star roster of producers including Pharrell Williams, Mike Dean, Hitkidd, Madlib and Metro Boomin, as well as some they most definitely won’t, like Morrissey. But getting such a crew on your album when you’re as famous and renowned as Rocky isn’t a feat; the hard part is making all of those disparate sounds work together to make something cohesive and accessible.
“You got to know yourself,” Rocky says when explaining how he connects everything. “You got to know, ‘OK, this is too much. This is too far. This is overkill. This is not enough.’ That’s what I think makes you a unique artist: when you could determine what’s needed. And what’s unnecessary.”
A$AP Rocky knows himself very well. The painter Jackson Pollock once said that “every great artist paints what he is” — and the joy of discovering new artists is watching them figure out the best version of what they are. But A$AP Rocky entered the game seemingly fully formed, with a well-hewn aesthetic, image and point of view. Sure, some of his outfits and songs from 2012 may make him cringe today, but that’s the price you pay when you’re on the cutting edge of culture.
Few rappers have the innate self-confidence that Rocky has had since he first burst onto the scene in 2011 with “Purple Swag” from his debut mixtape, Live. Love. A$AP. Along with his Harlem-based crew, A$AP Mob, Rocky reenergized New York rap by melding the promethazine-drenched sounds of Three 6 Mafia with the swag and styles of his Harlem hood. New York rappers before him had hopped on tracks with Southern rappers — Jay-Z and Ma$e come to mind — but they all did so either on their own terms or those of the guest MC. Rocky, aided by his late collaborator and mentor Steven “A$AP Yams” Rodriguez, utilized the internet to break down geographical walls and make some of the first post-regional rap. Their style literally changed the game: No longer did rappers have to sound like the city in which they were born. Influence could come from anywhere your Wi-Fi could take you.
AWGE jacket, shirt, belt and pants; Puma sneakers.
Ruven Afanador
Even as his star grew brighter, Rocky never rested on his laurels, using his albums as laboratories to cook up what he felt the game was missing. His heavily anticipated studio debut, Long. Live. A$AP, expanded on the NYC-meets-Memphis amalgamation of his 2011 mixtape by bringing in a slew of collaborators from across the musical world including Skrillex, Santigold, Drake and Kendrick Lamar. The album cemented Rocky and A$AP Mob as the ones to push NYC hip-hop into a new era — and also proved, for better or worse, that Rocky knew how to swing for the fences for a pop hit. At. Long. Last. A$AP, released in 2015, five months after Yams’ untimely death at 26 from an accidental overdose, was another departure, with Danger Mouse and Juicy J joining Yams as executive producers. The album slinked from track to track, mixing psychedelic rock with modern trap and acoustic folk, the lattermost courtesy of a guitarist named Joe Fox whom Rocky met on the street while traveling in Europe.
It was a critical and commercial success, topping the Billboard 200 — Rocky’s second straight No. 1 album — and proving that he had a clear and unique creative vision. And he was concurrently demonstrating that vision wasn’t limited to his music. At a time when Ye (the artist formerly known as Kanye West) was revolutionizing sartorial horizons for Black men everywhere, Rocky was working to push the style game even further. He partnered with up-and-coming brands like Hood by Air that sold the kind of garments most fans never imagined they’d see a rapper wear. Before Rocky, it wasn’t common to see a rapper rock a kilt, or tight leather pants or a handbag (or a satchel, quite distinct from a simple “purse,” as he taught listeners on his and Tyler, The Creator’s “Potato Salad”). He helped make all of that not just cool, but normal.
“I grab inspiration from so many different places, genres and cultures, and I make it original. Originality is a skill set. I think I have a talent in finding and recognizing that in people,” Rocky says. That skill set helped him launch AWGE in 2016. A collective that’s part record label, part clothing brand and part creative agency, AWGE has allowed him to explore each of his diverse passions.
But it took until earlier this year for Rocky to produce an entire collection worthy of a runway show at Paris Fashion Week. Titled “American Sabotage,” the collection featured pieces that looked as if they came straight out of an ’80s sci-fi flick. Rocky calls it “ghetto futurism” and, much like everything else he does, he believes that despite the mixed reviews the show received, it’ll be the norm sooner than later. (On the latest tease for the new album — the song “Highjack,” which takes Rocky back to the block with a woozy but airy beat that melts into a folk-rock ditty, assisted by indie artist Jessica Pratt — he reminds listeners that he was the one who started most of the trends they enjoy today: “Before we dropped ‘Peso’ on you n—as, you ain’t like Raf,” he raps in his usual laid-back lilt, referencing Belgian fashion designer Raf Simons.)
To hear him tell it, it took him these many years just to learn how to really make clothes. “You learn the game before you play it. Crawl before you walk. I wanted to do what was right,” Rocky says. “I’m from New York. I’m a Black man. The fact that we premiered my first show in Paris, France, with some of the biggest people in fashion? It was just surreal.” At that moment, he says — even amid a crowd that included some of the biggest names in art and culture — he was just Rakim.
“I’m not cocky in the sense where I’m like, ‘I got the president’s number in my phone right now!’ Until you sit back and say, ‘Oh, s–t. Pharrell and Pusha T and Malice is [at my show], man.’ That’s support,” Rocky says. “[Designer] Tremaine Emory is here to show his brother some support. Kris Van Assche, he gave me my start [as a face of Dior when he was artistic director of Dior Homme] and they signed me in 2015. [Tiffany & Co. executive] Alex Arnault was here. My girl was here! There were so many people, and I’m so appreciative of them coming to see me do my thing because I wasn’t about to fall flat on my face. We made sure of that. It’s like I said: Any critique, save it, ’cause my mindset is already like, ‘This is what it is. This how everyone should look. This is what it’s going to be for the next couple seasons. So get with it or get left.’ ”
AWGE suit, shirt and tie.
Ruven Afanador
AWGE’s most successful division so far, however, is its record label — and a lot of that success is due to the imprint’s first signing, Atlanta’s Playboi Carti. Rocky first met Carti when Carti was crashing at a friend’s house in New York. Carti’s 2017 debut mixtape became an internet sensation, spawning the hits “Magnolia” and “Wokeuplikethis,” and his debut studio album, 2018’s Die Lit, debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, solidifying both his burgeoning star power and Rocky’s prowess as a music executive.
The success of Carti’s debut made him a sort of cultural folk hero, the inspiration for memes and entire subreddits dedicated to deciphering his coded language and Dracula-meets-suburban Hot Topic fashion sense. But more importantly, he became rap’s new vanguard, with his next album, 2020’s Whole Lotta Red, spiritually picking up where Rocky’s third, TESTING, left off. Both albums eschewed popular rap tropes, sounds and themes for something wholly original; both got mixed reactions, but Carti’s transformed him into a cult hero.
When I ask if Carti is the future of rap, Rocky gets serious. “That’s where rap is. I knew that’s what it was going to be. What do people expect? We not just signing people to be signing people. We want to be the best of the best and that’s all it is, and his s–t speaks for itself.
“Statistically, what I’m saying is right. Sonically, theoretically, what I’m saying is right,” he continues. “Because there’s a Pharrell that comes with [each] generation. There’s a Jay-Z that comes with [each] generation. There’s a Kanye West that comes with [each] generation. There’s a 50 Cent that comes with [each] generation. The people that’s been most influential in the past 10 years, nine times out of 10 comes out of our camp. If not, we rubbed off on them or they picked up some type of influence. That sounds cocky, and I didn’t want to go there with it, but I swear it’s true. Behind the scenes. On the scene. I promise you.”
AWGE jacket, shirt, belt and pants; Puma sneakers.
Not content with leaving his mark on music and fashion, Rocky looked to Hollywood early in his career. After landing a bit role in the 2015 coming-of-age indie film DOPE executive-produced by Williams, in which he basically played a fictionalized version of himself — a young, fly, street-smart dope dealer — Rocky began looking for newer and better opportunities. “I’m tired of being a gangster,” he says. “I guess because I’m so removed from being a gangster in real life. They always want to cast me on some gangster s–t.” He pauses for a moment, reconsidering. “I ain’t tired of being a gangster, I’m lying. But I need to play a doctor or a lawyer or some s–t. A therapist. Something.”
Outside of fashion, film is the art form he’s most serious about now. “When I do movies, I show up on time. I’m rehearsing. I’m practicing, I’m reciting. I literally take it as a real job. Nothing else matters,” he says. “I’m a Method actor, so I embody whatever character I’m playing at the moment.” His upcoming projects include Spike Lee’s much-anticipated High and Low, a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 opus starring Denzel Washington. It’s damn near impossible to not pick up anything when working alongside two legends like Denzel and Spike, right?
“Denzel is still a heartbreak kid,” Rocky says with a smile, clearly comforted by this discovery. “That man going to be 101 years old and he still going to have girls fainting and s–t. So I learned how to keep my pizzazz even when I’m his age. I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m going to be aight. I’m Young Denzel. I’m Himzel, you heard?’ ”
On Sundays during the summer, Melba’s, a locally beloved soul food restaurant on 114th Street that’s been a Harlem staple for close to 20 years, partners with neighboring businesses along Frederick Douglas Boulevard to host big outdoor parties. Go at the right time, and you might catch some Harlem royalty partaking in the live music, food and drink and general good times.
On this particular Sunday, around 3:30 p.m., A$AP Rocky is strolling through the crowd, his hair in tight cornrows, his ensemble of a button-down shirt and jeans unusually unassuming. (His teeth, on the other hand, are adorned with enough diamonds to fund an indie film.) He slinks into Melba’s trying to go unnoticed, but even in his everyman outfit that’s a fool’s errand. He’s Harlem’s hometown hero, and as soon as he steps inside, people jump up to ask for a photo. A police officer approaches him and tries to convince him to attend a local event. Another Harlem legend, fashion designer Dapper Dan, just happens to be stopping by to grab a bite and embraces Rocky.
When we step back outside Melba’s, true chaos erupts. A throng of Harlemites encircles Rocky, clamoring for a moment with the local superstar. Despite it all, Rocky remains calm and courteous. He poses for what seems like 100 photos, even helping some elderly women with their phone cameras. Some people walk up just to tell him that they remember him and his mother, who grew up around this corner; one man sees us and crosses the street to tell Rakim that he’s proud of him. Rocky says the man once babysat him. “People calling me by my first name; he said ‘Rakim.’ That’s how I knew he knew me,” Rocky explains, still basking in the tumult of the crowd. “If it would’ve been A$AP or Rocky… But that man said Rakim. So you turn around and respect your elders and show love and grace, and I think that’s what’s most important. This is somewhere I would consider raising my family. You know what I’m saying? Seriously. If I found a brownstone nice enough to, you know what I mean?”
AWGE suit, shirt and tie; Ray-Ban sunglasses.
Ruven Afanador
Rocky says he comes back here often, though the response from the public makes it seem like he’s an exotic whip you would only see in magazines or YouTube influencer videos. People lean out of windows screaming, “Harlem!” or “I love you, Rocky!” Cars zoom by and screech to halt; as we walk to Morningside Park, one slowly pulls up next to us — worrying, at first, though it turns out to be a group of women so nervous that they simply yell, “I love you! You’re so fine!”
It’s clear that Rocky revels in this. Being in Harlem brings him back to his childhood: to the days long before he became known as the Pretty Motherf–ker, before he became involved with one of the most famous women on the planet.
We walk to his first childhood home, an apartment building on 118th Street and Morningside Avenue. He says he would like his children to have a Harlem upbringing even if they’re not raised here. “I think being in Harlem allows you the freedom of walking to the store, walking to the park, getting clear in your mind, going to the swings, being more present and active,” he says. “I think if you live in a suburb somewhere, you’re probably more inclined to just go to work, go to the mall, driving and s–t. Here is just present. You are more in the thick of it.”
But surely Rocky and Rihanna’s kids won’t be able to live the same kind of childhood he did here in Harlem, right?
“Yes, they do,” Rocky snaps back. “Man, let me show you little RZA last night, bro. Look, this is my little man right here.” He pulls up a video of Rihanna and RZA walking and playing along a cobblestone street in SoHo, as if that indicates the type of life the child of a billionaire creative couple can live. “They still human. They human beings,” he tells me.
AWGE shirts, tie and pants; Ray-Ban sunglasses; Bottega Veneta shoes.
He doesn’t have a Range Rover (he drives a Hummer EV), but, to paraphrase Cam’ron, Rocky is a changed man. He’s no longer the rambunctious kid from Harlem who was trying to prove to the world how much iller than everyone he was. For a guy who already had a supreme sense of self, he’s even more comfortable in his own skin. For example: Instead of launching into a full-on rap beef when it was reported that Drake sent a few disses not only his way but Rihanna’s as well, Rocky simply hopped on “Show of Hands,” a bonus track on Future and Metro Boomin’s We Still Don’t Trust You, and threw a few light jabs his way.
“You got to realize, certain n—as was throwing shots for years. I ain’t in the middle of that s–t,” he says, looking off into the distance. “That’s not how I retaliate right now. I got bigger fish to fry than some p—y boys. It is real beef outside. It is real. N—as getting really clipped and blitzed every day. N—as sniping n—as every day. That little kitty s–t ain’t about nothing.” His voice trails off as he looks at the photos of his kids on his phone.
This story will appear in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Cash Cobain is exhausted when he arrives at Billboard’s Manhattan office in late July. But that’s to be expected when chasing the momentum of a breakout hit like “Fisherrr.”
The rapper’s last few months have been a blur, from performing an impromptu park jam this April in New York’s Union Square after his Irving Plaza show was shut down (due to police concerns about crowd size) to featuring on his first Billboard Hot 100 entry in June to recently hitting the studio with Frank Ocean. Cash has quickly become a staple — and propellant — of hip-hop today, particularly in New York City.
The 26-year-old (born Cashmere Small) grew up in the Bronx listening to his grandparents’ Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder CDs alongside Biggie Smalls, 50 Cent and Aaliyah and developed an early interest in music production. His mother bought him drum pads and Yamaha keyboards, while he taught himself how to incorporate samples into his trap and drill-inspired beats on a jailbroken version of FL Studio.
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As he carved out his sound, he was careful to avoid impersonating his biggest inspirations, telling Billboard earlier this year: “ I wanted to add my own flavor… I didn’t want to bite guys like Southside and Metro [Boomin].”
Cash Cobain photographed on July 25, 2024 in New York.
Elianel Clinton
The result is a style all his own, best known as sample drill. As the name suggests, Cash’s beats often incorporate other tracks in some capacity, whether he’s flipping Snoop Dogg and Pharrell’s “Beautiful” on Don Toliver’s “Attitude” — which peaked at No. 58 on the June 29-dated Hot 100 — or Ciara’s “Body Party” for his song of the same name with Chow Lee.
He’ll even snatch a sample out of thin air: “I can be in the elevator or watching a movie,” he says, “and if I like the song or hear a part that I can use, I’ll Shazam it.” Ironically, the music discovery app is also how Cash’s team realized “Fisherrr” was gaining traction.
His A&R at Giant Music, Daniel Byrnes, says they first noticed that Shazams for the song were taking off in New York and that it coincided with a spike on TikTok. “That’s when you know it’s time to go to radio,” says Byrnes. “We then hired [independent] radio plugger GOAT Troy Marshall and Shazam started going even crazier. Then [the song] broke the Top 100 Shazams in the country and it was No. 1 in New York for weeks. Nothing was touching it.” By May, “Fisherrr” debuted on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay and Rap Airplay charts, and it has since reached the top 10 on all three.
Cash was initially connected to Byrnes through his co-managers, William Foster, Glyn Brown and Makeda Tewodros. (The Bronx rapper started out independent, beginning his career under the guidance of Casanova and his 2x Entertainment label, but eventually decided to seek out new management around 2020.) And while his new team wasn’t focused on getting him a record deal at first, Byrnes jumped when the time was right. “[He] was just one of those people that was always there, continuously checking on us and checking on Cash’s growth,” Tewodros says.
Giant signed Cash in June 2023, and the rapper has leaned into his social media savvy since then, becoming notorious for previewing unreleased tracks on Instagram that he then deletes as the official release nears. “He’ll hide the song, or he’ll archive it after a day or two, and everyone’s like, ‘Where did it go?,’” Tewodros says. “Then they’ll start to chase for it.” Adds Cash: “I’m not the type to post a snippet and then you never hear it,” he says. “Nah, it’s going to be on the album.”
Cash Cobain photographed on July 25, 2024 in New York.
Elianel Clinton
The strategy is exactly how “Fisherrr,” which Cash started teasing on TikTok and Instagram in January, started to thrive. As Cash recalls, when he walked into the studio at the top of 2024, producers FckBwoy! and WhoJiggi were already cooking up the beat. “I cut it up,” he recalls. “The beat was taking too long to drop; I didn’t like that. I wanted it to drop right away.”
From there, he and Bay Swag “started going crazy” in the booth — humming some of the song’s bars as he remembers its creation. Over an intoxicating loop, Cash and Bay Swag go back and forth like a horny Jadakiss and Styles P, with easy-to-remember one-liners like, “And your ass fat, know you eat your rice and your cabbage too/She a savage too, I’m a savage too, it’s compatible.”
The song soon started bubbling on social media and in the streets thanks to a From the Block performance clip from its release day in February that went viral. A couple weeks later, when Brooklyn rapper Kareem Gadson (aka Reem) did “The Reemski” dance to the song — in which he dances like a cobra to the tune of a snake charmer — “Fisherrr” grew even larger. “Once Reem came out with the dance, it was over,” says Cash. Byrnes felt the same way, saying the team dropped their own marketing plans to focus on the dance. “You couldn’t plan for it to be that big,” says Byrnes in astonishment. “Everyone on social media was doing the dance.”
To capitalize on the song’s momentum, Cash came quickly with a remix in April, tapping his old friend and fellow Bronx rapper Ice Spice. “Shout out to Makeda, I know she wants her credit. She made it happen,” Cash says playfully. “There were some ideas and names thrown about and I think we all kind of unanimously agreed Ice made the most sense,” adds Tewodros. “It felt really New York, so we felt like this would be the best amplification for the song.”
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The remix not only resonated with fans, but more importantly, with Cash himself. “I felt loved when I heard her verse. She had the whole flow, it was fire. She was on some Baddie Drill s–t.” Following its first full tracking week, “Fisherrr” debuted on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs at No. 33.
Cash has been an opener for Ice during her stateside Y2K! trek since the end of July, and he’ll continue on the tour through August. And come Aug. 23, he’ll drop his sophomore album, Play Cash Cobain. “He’s in the zone,” says Brown. Everyone on his team shares a similar sentiment. “I saw him cook up a beat in a bowling alley parking lot and record it in like, 12 hours — and it sounds like another hit,” says publicist Sam Hadelman. “He’s making the best music of his life right now.”
“Straight sexiness. Back to back, play it out — no skips, sexy music,” Cash adds, previewing what fans can expect. “I just want to show y’all I’m really serious about this. I’m not no one or two hit wonder — I am here to stay.”
From left: Glyn Brown, Cash Cobain, Will Foster, and Makeda Tewdoros photographed on July 25, 2024 in New York.
Elianel Clinton
A version of this story will appear in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Houston-born rapper Travis Scott has announced an expansion of his Circus Maximus World Tour in Australia, adding a second date at Sydney’s Allianz Stadium due to overwhelming demand.
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The tour expansion is part of a purple patch for Scott, marked by record-breaking album sales and tour performances.
The Australian and New Zealand leg of Scott’s tour will kick off after stops in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Puerto Rico, and Mexico in September.
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On Oct. 9, between the Latin American and Australian legs, Scott will also perform for one night only at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
Scott’s latest album, UTOPIA, released on July 28, 2023, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, selling 496,000 album-equivalent units in its first week and earning Scott his third consecutive leader.
UTOPIA held the No. 1 position for four consecutive weeks, making it the longest-running top rap album of 2023. The album’s debut week also saw an impressive 330.68 million on-demand streams.
Featuring collaborations with music icons like Drake, Beyoncé, and The Weeknd, UTOPIA showcases Scott’s ability to create chart-topping hits. The album’s lead single, “ESCAPE PLAN,” peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The North American leg of the Circus Maximus World Tour has proved equally impressive, grossing $95.7 million across 44 dates with a total attendance of 686,000 and making it the highest-grossing rap tour of 2024. He also made history with a show at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, where he became the first rapper to headline the venue in 2023.
Currently on the European and U.K. leg of his tour, Scott has already grossed over $23.6 million with nearly 200,000 attendees across the first seven dates.
His performance at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium drew over 48,500 fans and grossed more than $6.6 million, marking his largest headline show to date and breaking the stadium’s merchandise sales record.