interviews
How Omar Apollo Became One of Pop’s Most Exciting New Stars
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Photo by Kevin Lombardo
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Photo by Kevin Lombardo
Fivio Foreign Says the ‘King of New York’ Title Doesn’t Matter. He’s Aiming Higher.
Fivio and Nicki had been in talks about collaborating since he reached out to her in January 2021. Pulling out his iPhone, he shows me messages between the two. “I hit her up a year ago, like, ‘Yo, let’s do some drill shit,’” he says. “She’s like, ‘You got something in mind?’ So we’ve been going back and forth trying to get that perfect song, and I feel like we got it. She’s a super genius.”
Fivio didn’t get home from the music video shoot until 8 a.m., and the day before that, he was out celebrating his 32nd birthday with close friends and family. Now, he tells me the celebration will continue later tonight with a dinner party.
The sleepless nights will likely last a little longer, especially now that his debut studio album, B.I.B.L.E. is finally dropping. It’s a milestone he’s been working toward for the past three years. Back in June 2019, Fivio Foreign, born Maxie Lee Ryles III, was a new artist who had just dropped his breakout anthem, “Big Drip,” which would become a quintessential song of the Brooklyn drill movement. He followed the single by signing a deal with Columbia Records and dropping two EPs, Pain and Love and 800 B.C.
“You’re the King of New York? Well, I‘m trying to be the King of the World.”
Remembering those early days, Fivio says he was in a hurry to conquer the industry. “When I first came out, I thought I was ready to drop. Like, ‘Give me an album now,’” he recalls. Now, though, he admits, “I definitely wasn’t ready,” explaining, “I was new to the game. I didn’t really know a lot about the industry, about rollouts, about getting the buzz up and having hot moments. I was enjoying it, but the more I learned, the more I felt like it wasn’t my time.”
Now, the Fivio Foreign who is sitting across a conference table from me, stirring his ramen, is a little more seasoned and “a little more ready,” as he puts it. “I could be a little better, but I’ll take it,” he shrugs, diving into a conversation about his debut album.
At first glance, the album’s title (B.I.B.L.E.) hints at heavily religious themes. Fivio identifies as a Christian (“I’m not living like a perfect Christian, but I’m very religious and I pray a lot,” he says) but he clarifies that the title is representative of a larger concept.
“Naming the album B.I.B.L.E. was like a metaphor,” he explains. “The Bible consists of a whole bunch of stories from people—huge stories—and things that happened. When you read it at some points in life, you can learn from it and deal with your life through the Bible. I feel like my [album] is kind of like that. It’s a whole bunch of stories in my life. People can relate to it, and there’s a lot of motivational shit to take from my life.”
The project includes songs that were recorded as early as two years ago, but to Fivio, the road to his debut has been much longer. “I feel like I’ve been working on this album my whole life,” he says. “To get to this point being as nice as I am, being able to make the song, and being able to put together a project that I like… Yeah, I’ve been working on this shit all my life.”
B.I.B.L.E. is a drill album at its core, Fivio confirms, but with the inclusion of mainstream features. Fivio says he wants to take the subgenre to the next level. “People put drill artists in a box,” he says. “I want to show people, there’s reggae drill, there’s pop drill. There’s all types of drill. As one of the front faces of drill, I feel like it’s my responsibility to widen it. Let’s make everybody able to do drill rap.”
The album has 17 tracks, featuring appearances from major artists like Quavo, DJ Khaled, ASAP Rocky, and more. Out of the 16 features on the album, though, none of them are Brooklyn drill artists. Fivio says his collaborator choices weren’t made out of malicious intent; he just had another vision in mind.
“Right now, I’m elevated,” he says. “For sure, I want to help people and put people on… But I wanted to have elevated, lit songs. I was thinking about going viral.” Fivio moves his noodles around with a fork before clarifying, “I got a couple [drill] niggas on the deluxe.”
With Fivio’s quest for virality in mind, it should come as no surprise that he called on Kanye West to serve as the album’s executive producer. Fivio hasn’t known Ye for very long, but he refers to him as a “big brother.” The two first met around in the summer of 2021. Fivio had just returned from jail following a weapons charge and visited Funk Flex for a freestyle on Hot 97, in which he rapped, “Now I got a question for the reverend/ If you a killer, do you go to heaven?”
“People put drill artists in a box. I want to show people, there’s reggae drill, there’s pop drill. There’s all types of drill.”
Kanye, who was in the process of recording his own album, Donda, reached out to Fivio after watching the freestyle. “He said that’s the type of bars he needed for his shit,” Fivio recalls of their initial conversation. “[Ye] called me up and we got busy. We go viral every time.”
The first song they made was “Off the Grid,” which debuted during the first Donda listening event at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium in July 2021. Kanye was living out of the stadium while he completed the album, and he flew Fivio to Atlanta shortly after their phone conversation to record the track.
In the booth with Ye, Fivio tried out a new approach, spending more time on each bar than his usual off-the-dome style allows. “It’s a crazy experience,” Fivio remembers. “I go in the booth, right? I hear the beat, I freestyle a couple of lines, probably like three or four bars. Step back, listen to it. Hear the beat again, then we go back in and put another three or four bars. I’m not spitting the whole thing. I’m changing things, figuring it out in my head. I never wrote it down.”
Kanye gave Fivio a few pointers throughout the process, but Fivio was allowed ample space to do his own thing. “[Ye] basically just let me work,” he says. “He likes when I keep rapping. He wants me to rap for a long time.”
Fivio’s verse received rave reviews, and for many listeners who hadn’t been tapped into the Brooklyn drill scene, it was an eye-opening moment, revealing Fivio to be a skillful rapper with more range than anyone realized. Though some of his day-one supporters griped at the new revelation, Fivio says he isn’t trippin’ about the newfound support. “When I was doing songs like ‘Big Drip,’ they were mostly ad-libbed and shit. That’s mainly what people wanted at that time,” he says. “I know what they want from me now, so I just gave them what they wanted. I just be testing shit out. I’ll test some raps out, give them some good bars. If they like it, I’ll keep giving it to them.”
Kanye’s approach to executive producing Fivio’s album was similar to the leadership style he displayed during the making of “Off the Grid.” Fivio says Kanye joined on after most of the album was recorded, only adding to the finishing touches. “It was already a masterpiece, but what [Ye] would do is, he would call in a feature if I needed it. He would structure the beat a little bit different,” Fivio explains. “He perfected it. He’s a painter. So, he makes everything more beautiful and made it even more of a masterpiece.”
Kanye contributed vocals to the album’s single “City of Gods,” alongside Alicia Keys. The track, which officially dropped on Feb. 11, is an ode to Fivio and Keys’ hometown of New York City, and it feels like a more menacing cousin of Jay-Z and Keys’ 2009 anthem “Empire State of Mind.” Two weeks after its release, Fivio, Kanye and Keys performed the track for the first time at the Donda 2 listening experience in Miami, going viral once more.
“It was crazy,” Fivio remembers. “There were like 30,000 people. It was like the biggest show I ever did.”
“Ye would call in a feature if I needed it. He would structure the beat a little bit different. He perfected it. He’s a painter. He made it even more of a masterpiece.”
The arrival of B.I.B.L.E. comes at an interesting point in the evolution of Brooklyn drill. The subgenre was kickstarted around 2016, but really skyrocketed to national attention in 2019, thanks to the success of Pop Smoke records like “Welcome to the Party” and “Dior” as well as Fivio’s “Big Drip.” The movement was putting New York rap back on the map in a major way, but Pop Smoke’s tragic death in February 2020 left a hole in the scene. In Pop’s absence, other artists have kept the sound alive, thanks in large part to the efforts of Fivio, but the fate of Brooklyn drill is still uncertain in some eyes.
When asked about the current state of Brooklyn drill, though, Fivio sounds very confident. “It’s big,” he says. “No other genre is growing faster than drill. I feel like so many artists want to be a part of the drill scene. I appreciate all of the artists that are reaching out to it.”
Despite its upward movement, the subgenre faces hurdles, with its biggest critics accusing artists of having connections to gang activity and promoting gun violence. The NYPD has notoriously kept close tabs on Brooklyn drill artists, going to long lengths to limit their festival appearances and keep them from playing live shows inside city limits.
Fivio chooses his words wisely when discussing his current interactions with the NYPD. “I guess—no, I mean, not really,” he replies when I ask if he’s experienced any pushback from the department during his album rollout.
“In the beginning, we had to learn,” he elaborates. “We had to grow. In the beginning, I was going up to the club. Then this guy sat me down and told me, ‘Yo, listen, chill out.’ If you play by the rules, you’ll be alright. If you’re going to be a leader, you’ve got to learn how to lead. You can’t be a leader and then police don’t fuck with you. I see them, and I try not to get in no trouble. They try not to give me no trouble. We stay out of each other’s way, because when I’m coming, I ain’t starting no trouble. I’m here to make money, put a roof over me and others.”
The police aren’t the only ones closely surveying the subgenre. In February, Mayor Eric Adams urged social media companies to ban drill videos after his son, an employee at Roc Nation, showed him local music videos. “I had no idea what drill rapping was, but I called my son and he sent me some videos, and it is alarming,” the mayor said during a February speech. “We are alarmed by the use of social media to really over-proliferate this violence in our communities. This is contributing to the violence that we are seeing all over the country. It is one of the rivers we have to dam.”
Following his comments, Adams took a meeting with Fivo and other local rappers, including Maino and B-Lovee, to open a dialogue about the subgenre.
“I knew Eric Adams already because I did a peace walk in New York with him,” Fivio tells me. “So I reached out to everybody, and then Maino was like, ‘Yo, I got you a meeting. He wants to sit down and talk.’ Me and Maino called a couple other people up. Moreso, he was saying he’s not really trying to stop drill rap. He said with the media and internet, it’s making it seem like he wants to stop drill rap. But he was saying he’s not trying to do that. He just don’t want niggas incriminating themselves, making Black culture look like wild animals, making the city look like it’s not safe for people. So what he was saying was, ‘Change the narrative.’”
Improving the perception of the Brooklyn drill scene was a big motivator for Fivio as he made B.I.B.L.E. “That’s what I’m doing with this album, for sure,” he declares. “That’s where I feel my responsibility is, to take the negativity away from it. To show them the album and be like, ‘Yo, listen, we got a song like this. We got Alicia Keys singing, ‘New York go easy on me.’ That’s more like the opposite of violence. But it’s saying this is drill rap, though.”
Whether you call him “King” or not, Fivio Foreign is undoubtedly one of the most recognizable faces coming out of the city right now, and he’s still based in New York (although he plans on moving at some point). For that reason, he feels immensely indebted to the city that raised him. “[I have a] big responsibility,” he says. “If I’m going to be the artist coming out of New York, I’m going to make New York look like it’s the place to be,” he says. “I’m going to make sure they keep it a good, safe place. I want to make it possible for other new artists to come out of New York.”
If everything goes according to plan, B.I.B.L.E. will go down as that bright of a moment for both New York and Brooklyn drill, Fivio tells me, as our conversation draws to a close.
“If I do what I’ve got to do, [Brooklyn drill] is going to stick around,” he says. “People are going to start to realize we can do it all. Once it’s widened up a little bit more, people will get it. Drill rappers are the pop stars.”
Uncle Waffles, Amapiano Princess, On Her Rise To DJ Superstardom
Pusha-T Is Outdoing Himself
Before going to work on his current album, Pusha-T allowed himself space to prioritize his personal life over music. Not long after closing out his touring schedule in December 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and like everyone else, he was stuck inside. Meanwhile, his wife was expecting their first child, a son who was born in June 2020. Push was also building a new home for his growing family, and he tells me, “I wasn’t thinking about recording. We got acclimated to the whole lifestyle, just living in the crib.”
After a while, though, he felt a stroke of inspiration and phoned longtime friend and collaborator Pharrell Williams. “I was like, ‘Man, you know what? Let’s just cook up while there are no expectations. Nobody’s thinking about us. We can actually find shit that we like. We can go through the processes,’” he recites, reenacting their conversation. Soon, Push and his family flew down to Pharrell’s compound, and he began working on the album.
“This is all about making sure that the subgenre of street rap is seen at the highest levels, and can compete with everything that’s popular.”
Push jokingly told Spotify’s Carl Chery on Twitter that the songs on the album would be “about feeding the conscious mind,” instead of a bunch of coke references, but now he clarifies, “I was only fucking joking.”
This album will, in fact, have all the nose-candy references you might expect. And it’s because of his creative way of describing the lifestyle that Push declares his status among the all-time greats when it comes to coke rap. “Hov is first, because he made Reasonable Doubt, and that is the grail of all drug levels, without being all about drugs. It spoke more to the lifestyle,” Push explains, ranking his top three coke rappers of all time. “Lyrically, I’m going to say that I’m next. And I’ll say Jeezy is third, because I don’t believe there was a stronger moment in time than Trap or Die.”
Pusha-T has put himself amongst good company in his personal ranking, but he says coke rap still gets a bad reputation. “I don’t know when it became cool for people to slight the cornerstone of rap,” he says, dipping one hand out of the water bowl and giving it to the manicurist for clipping.
“It’s funny, because I come under a lot of scrutiny for the term ‘coke rap’,” he continues. “Either they’re knocking it or they’re finding ways to cheapen it. Like, I drop an album, I go through a cycle and by the time the album cycle is done, then it’s back to, ‘Oh, it’s only this, it’s only that.’ And then I watch the same people who shoot down the genre when I’m at it, they’ll sit back. Then, in my absence, it turns into, ‘Oh man, this is great lyricism.’”
To Pusha-T, coke rap is a “lazy way of describing” the style, since it’s essentially no different from street rap. For the sake of time, he’ll embrace it, but he says his new album will bring some regality to the name.
Push has grown accustomed to being called a coke rapper, but he drew the line when Pharrell called him a “mixtape rapper.” The story that Push first shared on Instagram took place shortly after he recorded “Hear Me Clearly.” When Pharrell heard an early cut of the track, he said, “It’s cool, but I don’t want you to be a mixtape rapper for the rest of your life.” Push’s ego was bruised.
“He was being snide and nasty,” Push says now, scrunching his face up as if he smelled something foul. To some, “mixtape rapper” has a negative connotation, but Pusha has a different opinion. “He knows that my heart is mixtape rap. I only like mixtape verses actually,” he explains. “I’ve known him my whole life, and there was a time in which we both had the same taste in mixtape verses. And that’s a time that I try to get him to revisit a lot, in dealing with me. I particularly believe that our success and our greatness is when we’re in those pockets.”
Pharrell wanted to push his friend to reach beyond his comfort zone, though, so he signed on as an executive producer for the project, alongside Neptunes partner Chad Hugo, and Kanye West. The album isn’t cut into separate sides, but Pharrell and Kanye contributed equally to the album, and fans will be able to pick up on the subtle differences in their styles.
Working with Pharrell is an involved process, Push says. While the two were living with each other during the early days of the pandemic, they would each wake up around 6 a.m. and sift through P’s music library. Pharrell’s focus was on the compositions of each song, from its structure to melodies. “I’m trying to get to the bottom of the barrel of some street shit, and I’ve got to go through an orchestra,” Push remarks, shaking his head and laughing. The manicurist moves on to his cuticles when he sighs, “But you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to let him go through his process.”
Because of their contrasting ideologies, things got tense at times, and depending on Push’s mood, he’d have to stop the session. “Sometimes, I’m just like, ‘Man, alright, let’s go ride a bike or play pool.’” Other times, they’d watch The Joker—specifically the sinister origin story with Joaquin Phoenix, Push reveals. “That was helpful,” he says. “What happened was, we would mute [the movie], and we’d be playing the music or the beat while it’s muted. You could see the motion and we’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s a marriage right there.’”
“Ye just wanted to listen to me rap all day.”
Pharrell also referenced The Notorious B.I.G. throughout the process. “Man, Big did this,” he would say. Push jumped back and forth between listening to Big’s Life After Death and Jay-Z’s Hard Knock Life Vol. 2. It made it easier to work with Pharrell, but he says, “Trying to live up to some of them standards is kind of crazy.”
When it came to working with Kanye, Push says Ye’s sole priority was the raps. “He just wanted to listen to me rap all day,” he adds. “He likes when I talk about all types of things. He just likes to hear my perspective. It shows him my attitude.”
“Diet Coke,” Pusha-T’s first single from the album, is co-produced by Kanye and 88-Keys, but also incorporates some of the compositional elements Pharrell was looking for, specifically the use of repetition. The artwork, created by artist Sterling Ruby, was also facilitated by Kanye. “I met [Sterling] at Kanye’s warehouse,” Push recalls. “We were actually talking about kids’ clothes and going through ideas when Sterling came through. Ye kept saying, ‘Listen, this is going to be next level. He’s the next level.’ He kept pushing me because we’d been beating ourselves up about how outdo DAYTONA.”
The cover art for DAYTONA was controversial and provocative. Kanye reportedly paid $85,000 to license a photo of the late Whitney Houston’s drug-infested bathroom. At the time, Houston’s ex-husband Bobby Brown said it was in “really bad taste.” Now, Pusha-T says that he’s not concerned with anyone’s feedback, but he knew he was on the right track with the “Diet Coke” artwork when he received one particular email.
“Randomly, right before this meeting, Jay-Z emails me, and he was like, ‘This is the best artwork I have ever seen.’ I mean, he just goes on this rant in the email: ‘Man, this is what this shit’s supposed to be,’” Push shares. “I showed Ye the email, like, ‘I wonder what brought this about.’ But I thought, this is how good the artwork is. It doesn’t have to be one to one with the DAYTONA cover. It just needs to raise the taste level.”
There’s a pause in the conversation as Pusha-T converses with the manicurist about which hand to buff first. It’s awkward timing, since we’re in deep discussion about the album, but the mention of Kanye leads us to the recent news cycle. Ye has made recent headlines over Instagram posts about his children, ex-wife Kim Kardashian, and her new boyfriend Pete Davidson. And in a more positive light, he inspired fans with the three-part Netflix documentary, Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy. These are two juxtaposing storylines about Kanye that have become increasingly difficult to make sense of, so I ask Pusha-T what people are getting wrong about Ye.
“You know what,” he begins. “Man, we just had a conversation about this yesterday. I don’t know what people are getting wrong. I want people to admit, though, that he’s right a lot of times. The way in which he delivers [his message], a lot of people aren’t ready for. It may be off-putting, because I don’t think people like true opinions all the time. But I watched that doc again the other day, and I got to say, he’s been right a lot. And when you’re second-guessed and you end up being right, that can only fan the flame of how a person’s going to act the next time they want to be right about something. I think people’s opinions are based more about the communication versus the actual end-all-be-all result.”
Now that that’s settled, we get back to the album. Aside from Jay-Z’s “random” email, Pusha-T also recently confirmed that the mogul will appear on the album. He won’t directly talk about the song, but it’s very possible that Hov drops some gems. “You can only say the type of shit he says when you’ve reached that level of success,” Push suggests. “I reach out to him because I know it’s something that I can’t say. It’s dope, and it should be inspiring when you hear it. To say some of the most outlandish shit, and it actually be true, that should be aspirational to all rap artists.”
So, how do you compete with someone like Jay-Z? You don’t. “Hell no,” he exclaims. “I don’t compete, but I do try to impress him. I write my verse, then give him my verse, and be like, ‘Can you please add something to this?’ The battle for me is him hearing it and saying, ‘Yeah,’ because if it’s not that impressive, he might be like, ‘Eh, I don’t need to do it.’ Or, ‘This ain’t the one.’ That’s my competition.”
“Jay-Z emails me, and he’s like, ‘This is the best artwork I have ever seen.’”
With a Jay-Z feature on deck, Pharrell and Kanye on production, and Pusha-T doing what he does best, the Virginia Beach rapper says this is going to be his best album yet. To be exact, he claims it will be “1,000 percent” better than his critically acclaimed 2018 album DAYTONA. With 12 tracks total (five more than his third studio album) Pusha-T says this LP “is more well-rounded. It’s more colorful. I think DAYTONA was solid. It’s that thing, and I gave you that thing. I feel like this one is more well-rounded, with the same amount of greatness, but the bars are better and I push myself as a songwriter.”
In 2018, Complex named Pusha-T the Best Rapper Alive. And Push thinks highly of himself, but he’s also fair. I ask him who he thinks the top candidate for Best Rapper Alive is right now (besides himself) and he gives me a top three. Since he hasn’t dropped yet, he concedes the title to either Tyler, The Creator, J. Cole, or NBA YoungBoy. “Tyler going crazy. Cole is doing his feature things, and YoungBoy, his output is dumb,” he continues. “To me, rap is just that multilayered and multi-genered that you have to name those three.”
In January, veteran music executive and Pusha-T’s manager Steven Victor announced the rapper’s album will fulfill his contract with Def Jam. “Def Jam has been a good partner,” Push says now, “It’s always good to have options, though.” Going independent has crossed his mind, and he explains, “I’ve actually been talking about that as of late. Right now, I’m going to take this time and the luxury I’m afforded to just create and then figure out what I’m going to do. It’s a lot to think about when you just want to rap. I really want to get this album out. I want people to love it. Then I want to get onto the next because I’m on my next shit already.”
With Kanye and Pusha-T’s ties with Def Jam seemingly coming to an end, there are also questions about the future of GOOD Music, which Push was appointed president of in 2015. When the topic comes up, Push deflects and says to ask its owner about the state of the label, but he will always rep the brand with pride. “GOOD Music is a staple, and it’s what I’m representing wholeheartedly when I drop,” he explains. “As far as the business goes, and how he wants to run that, that’s up to the label owner. But as far as the brand and the shield on my back and my chest, I’m rocking with it.”
The legacy of GOOD Music is intact, but the label isn’t as active as it was in the early 2010s, as Ye has devoted most of his time to other projects. There have also been relationship issues with former members. In October 2021, Big Sean announced he parted ways with the label over money issues. And this February, Kid Cudi and Ye had a public disagreement. Still, the possibility of a reunion isn’t completely out of the question. “I’m only speaking for myself, but I think the relationships are still there,” Pusha-T assures. “I’m going to the studio with Cudi next week. Big Sean is just a phone call away. So, the relationships are still there. I just think it would have to be a central focus on music. And, of course, with Ye involved and on the same type of time. We always try to do something different or outdo what was done before. So, maybe it’ll come back in a different way.”
The manicurist’s job is complete, and Pusha-T admires his glossy, clear fingernails before getting ready to head to the video shoot. His schedule is stacked. In addition to the music video, Push is scheduled to appear on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, before taking care of some other business endeavors. He keeps a tight schedule these days because his first concern—even before the music—is being a father. Push and his wife welcomed their first child, Nigel Brixx Thornton, on June 11. He says becoming a dad is his “proudest moment ever,” explaining, “Fatherhood is the best thing. That’s my best verse ever, like a 48-bar verse. The best one, line for line. No wasted bar.”
Now, he doesn’t have a second to waste. “I’m very precious of my time,” he explains. “My team definitely knows I could be home.” Before he left for New York, Push recalls how difficult it was leaving his son, remembering, “I kept forgetting shit in the crib, so I had to keep going back. My son was crying when I left, and I’m telling my nanny, ‘Sorry.’ All of those things wear and tear on me really bad, so I don’t have time to play.
“I’m really here to get it done,” he continues. “I don’t play in the studio with people. If you tell me to come to the studio, let’s go in the studio and get it done. I don’t want to toy with you. I don’t want to sip Hennessy with you. Nine [times] out of 10, I don’t want to do your feature. I’m sure I don’t. I don’t want my time to be taken from him. I’m not playing about anything that could disrupt his comfort.”
Despite his familial obligations, Pusha-T says retirement hasn’t even crossed his mind. “Aww, man, no! There’s no such thing,” he responds, putting his shoes on. “See, I have a new goal: to see how long I can stay rapping at this level. As long as I’m rhyming in this way, I think that’s good for rap as a whole. We haven’t gotten a chance to see who our Phish or Rolling Stones or Grateful Dead is. We’re the youngest genre. So, we’ve got to keep it going.”
Nevertheless, Push acknowledges that he knows when to bow out. “When my jeans become a little too bootcut and I start talking like, ‘That shit ain’t hot like it was!’ When I start talking like that, it’s time for me to pack it up,” he laughs.
For now, he’s still ascending, and there’s unfinished business to take care of. “I want to show people the difference between myself and other artists,” he explains. He holds his freshly manicured hands at an arm’s length apart, and adds, “I always want to be this far away from everybody else. I feel like sometimes people forget that until I drop.”
On Pusha-T’s “Hear Me Clearly,” two lines stand out as particularly striking: “Hear me clearly, if ya’ll niggas fear me/ Just say ya’ll fear me, fuck all these fairtytales.” Soon, the world will hear Pusha-T again, and his message will be clear.
“I’m always looking to heighten what it is I do in the rap game,” he says. “This is a legacy thing with me. This is all about being great. This is all about making sure that the subgenre of street rap is seen at the highest levels, and can compete with everything that’s popular. This is the realest real estate in hip-hop, and I’m the Martin Scorsese of it.”
Ella Mai’s New Dawn
Finding Teezo Touchdown
As I watch, he digs through the locker and pulls out costumes, including some pieces he put together for a character he calls Bloody Hell, who only appeared during his London show in 2021. I ask him about all the characters he’s introduced to fans over the years, and he recalls a conversation he had with Austyn a few months back. This is when I learn that Teezo Touchdown—even with his Tyler, the Creator co-sign and gifts from stars like Madonna—is still figuring it all out.
“[Austyn] was like, ‘It seems like you have more fun being everyone else but Teezo,’” he shares. “I was like, ‘Damn, that’s really true.’ Because I don’t know what I want Teezo to be yet. Right now, not to be cliché, but Teezo is literally myself. This is the same person that my dad gets. And it’s like, when you look in the mirror, and you see yourself, I don’t see the big hoopla. But these other characters, they’re bigger than life to me.”
This first time I spoke to Teezo Touchdown was a year and a half ago, when I helped introduce him to readers for his first major interview with Pigeons & Planes. Instead of answering my questions in a traditional fashion, he took the time to write new songs and create skits in response to each one. At the time, very little was known about the alternative naysayer, besides his “uniform” of jeans and a beater, his reputation for making critically acclaimed music videos, the aforementioned nails, and a string of eccentric singles (“Sucka,” “Strong Friend”) defined by an ear for wacky beats and an eye for even wackier metaphors. During that first interaction in 2020, I learned that he’s the most theatrical guy in the game, and now I’m ready to learn more. Apparently, so is Teezo.
Somehow, Teezo has managed to keep his full name and his age (which is estimated to be around 29 or 30) to himself. When he pulls out his ID at the storage facility, I try to get a glimpse to see if it’s actually “Anthony Thomas,” which he’s hinted at before, but I’m unable to. The mystery continues.
Earlier in the day, I was greeted by Austyn and Jacob, who walked me up to Teezo’s hotel room at the Spring Hill Suites. At each of Teezo’s shows, Austyn appears onstage, but he’s less of a hype man and more of a “co-host” on tour, participating in a performance that they call “Heavy Metal Only.” Jacob, too, hops onstage every now and then, but most of his work with Teezo can be seen in music videos like “Technically,” where he plays characters like mailmen and waiters.
“I don’t know if I’m romanticizing it now, but me smiling and cleaning up sh*t felt like a movie. I felt like something was coming.”
Once we made our way to room 2022, Teezo’s presence was immediately noticeable. Yellow sticky notes sat in stacks on his bed, and a couple of them were stuck to the wall to remind him where he was that day. For months, Teezo has been leaving sticky notes around the country in locations he’s visited, and occasionally in the hands of fans, before posting pictures of them to Twitter and Instagram. They usually include puns and uplifting messages of sorts, or just acknowledgements of where he is at the time of writing them.
“If I don’t have these, I can’t communicate,” he said, referring to the sticky notes.
As Teezo got ready in the bathroom, calling for someone to pass him shaving cream, he rattled off the kind of snappy one-liners that fans are used to hearing him say in his skits. Looking around the room, though, it became clear that Teezo isn’t just a viral-sensation robot. Crumpled sticky notes littered his bed, scrawled with work-in-progress ideas and rough drafts. Sure, he has the ability to go viral, but he’s not just stumbling into it—there’s a lot of care and intent that goes into each of his creations.
As we stepped out of the hotel, he told me all about how New York is a lucky city for him. Whenever he’s here, something new happens to propel his career forward, like linking with Madonna at her Madame X premiere, or taking his relationship with Telfar to the next level during Fashion Week.
When we walked over to Teezo’s storage space at Gotham, I’ll admit I felt out of place, traveling by foot with three guys dressed as construction workers, but the Southern hospitality of Teezo Touchdown is enchanting. He shared some ridiculous stories, like how his license was suspended while he drove 120 miles with his friends to catch a show in Houston, or how his “only night in jail” came as a result of a driving warrant, and how the arrest interrupted a music video shoot.
“I seen Frank Ocean one day,” he interjected, remembering another story from a recent afternoon in Manhattan. “Well, he seen me that day. Apparently he rode by on a bike and blew me a kiss. It was a shoot for Interview Magazine. They were like ‘Frank just rode by and blew you a kiss.’ I was like, ‘You’re lying.’”
This is Teezo’s life now, and much of it is sitting in this storage space. Before he gives me the grand tour, he realizes he has the wrong keys on him, so he calls for someone he’s nicknamed “Padlock Papi,” a very tall man who broke his combination lock months back to do the job again. In the meantime, we start chatting about fashion.
Since 2020, he’s been a brand ambassador of sorts for Telfar, and even earned some ties to Balenciaga. The clothes are a far cry from his original uniform of jeans and a beater, and while some of his most vocal critics have labeled him a “fashion rapper,” he makes it clear—as we’re 18 dates deep into one of the biggest tours of the year—that fashion isn’t his priority, before reminiscing about his days of wearing the same thing every morning.
“I’m still an MC at heart, man.”
“Fashion still isn’t even on the forefront of my mind, man,” he explains. “I’m still surprised at all the looks I get. It’s expensive trying to come up with this new, spontaneous thing that you want to make a statement with. It’s so easy to look like someone else. No matter how cool you look, you’re gonna get compared to Carti, man.”
Once the lock is open, Teezo starts pulling out boxes of old memorabilia, including pins from his “Rid the Mid” campaign (one of which he gave me as a souvenir), camera equipment from his early music videos, and performance setlists. He’s sitting on the floor, showing me everything from his past, like a grandfather going through a photobook with his grandkids.
When he finds his first vintage hardhat, he tells me, “I’m coming from Beaumont, which is a refinery town. You’ve got the party promoters who have money, and the drug dealers would have money. But the people you know have money, this is their design: these work fits. That’s where this came from. I’m pretty much dressing like the common working person. They are the high class of Beaumont.”
Repping Texas is everything for Teezo. His inner circle largely consists of friends from back home. And on the streets of New York, when people ask him if he’s from Texas, he can’t help but grin.
“You could be a Z-list celebrity, but when you pass through Beaumont, we treat you like, ‘Ah, a celebrity,’” he tells me. “Now I’m the celebrity that passes through. Whenever I mention Beaumont, I start talking more country. Or I talk about the niche things from my city, just to really wave a flag, like yo, someone from here is doing it.”
Teezo’s pre-success memories are still fresh, and he jokes that he has “post-traumatic job disorder.” Before finding success in music, his workplaces included a movie theater, a Tex-Mex restaurant, and Joe’s Crab Shack. His most recent gig, for a family friend in a custodial role in 2018, happened at the same time that his hip-hop group Cvke Supply was starting to take off locally.
“I was cleaning shit out of toilets, mopping floors,” he remembers. “People would come in with the merch for my group, and I would turn my head so they wouldn’t see me. I knew. I was like, ‘Yo, this is temporary.’ I was telling the dude at training, while he’s showing me how to stock the icebox. I just remember that second day, man. They showed me how to clean the bathroom, and I’m like, ‘Whatever.’ Then this guy, man, he’s about 7 feet tall, left something mean in the toilet. I was just like, ‘Yo, this is it, man.’”
Things changed for Teezo in December 2018, when he invested in a camera and a gimbal stabilizer with the money he saved up from cleaning up, apparently, a large man’s shit. With that camera, he recorded his live music video for “100 Drums,” released in early 2019, which caught the attention of his manager Amal Noor. The next two years have been spent watering Teezo’s ever-growing online fanbase with social media skits and daring rap cuts like “SUCKA!,” rock slappers like “Social Cues,” and even a feature on Tyler’s latest album Call Me If You Get Lost, with “RUNITUP.”
“I don’t know if I’m romanticizing it now, but me smiling and cleaning up shit felt like a movie,” he says. “I felt like something was coming. And it’s weird now, I thought it would be a movie montage. But it’s normal day to day. I’m just going to MSG today. It doesn’t feel like this grandiose [thing]. It’s not like a movie score. We’re waiting on an elevator. Soundcheck is in a few, and we go to MSG. Even now, I take it back, because we just romanticized that storage unit. It feels real, but it feels normal.”
Nothing feels too normal about life with Teezo Touchdown, though, at least when you’re only following along for a few hours. Sure, he has to do some mundane tasks every now and then, like calling up managers to get comp tickets set up, and breaking open storage lockers, but he’s on tour with one of the biggest artists in rap right now. Hell, he’s even doing an interview with publications like Complex (he excitedly points out that Travis Scott’s first major interview was with Complex).
When we leave the storage unit, after having to replace the lock again, he starts reminiscing about how Tyler first discovered his music. As Teezo recalls, someone sent the “SUCKA!” music video to Tyler in a group chat. “He was like, ‘Nah, he’s up to something. He’s not just joking. Look at his hands. I can tell by his hands he knows what he’s doing,’” Teezo says, relaying Tyler’s immediate reaction.
When Tyler decided to bring Teezo on tour, alongside Kali Uchis and Vince Staples, he promised the up-and-coming artist that the most important aspect of the whole experience would be the fans who pay close attention—the ones who end up Googling the name “Teezo Touchdown” after his set to find out what he’s all about.
I ask Teezo about the biggest lesson he’s learned from Tyler so far, and he says, “Intent. Intent is one of the big things. You’ll be influenced by the music. But he told me, ‘By show four, you will get it.’ That first show was so bad. I stayed away from the internet that night. [My hair] was just jiggling. And I was like, ‘How was the show?’ He was like, ‘Great.’ ‘How was the sound?’ He was like, ‘Horrible, but you’ll get it.’ And that I did. One thing I’m watching, that didn’t tell me, is he’s a master of ceremonies. He’s so quick-witted. Every show, it’s a personal experience.”
Teezo has certainly taken notes from Sir Baudelaire. His sets on tour, which start right at 7 p.m., feature an exact replica of the iconic garage from his music videos. He and Austyn don’t just put on performances, they create interactive experiences reminiscent of live TV sets. They celebrate the first moshpits of the night to “Be Careful,” and even arrange chants of “Teezo Touchdown”—a sly trick to get everyone in attendance to remember his name—before awarding one fan with the “hardest hard hat,” which they toss into the audience.
Just as he’s slowly landing on what his intent is behind Teezo Touchdown, he’s still trying to put a finger on what he hopes to accomplish with his live shows. Even with several dates left on tour, he tells me he already wants to make the experience better, which he’ll be able to implement after he rides this one out.
“I’m just doing a show,” Teezo says as we walk to Madison Square Garden together. “One thing I get a lot about our show is, ‘You interact with the crowd so well,’ but I just don’t like how low-hanging it is. I’m gonna do the rest of the tour, but I’m very conscious of ‘OK, how can we slowly progress to [where] they know what’s up?’”
As Teezo is on his journey to figure out who he is, what type of performer he wants to be, and who he represents—outside of the entirety of Beaumont—he’s open to criticism, and even more open to improvement. Even as we walk to MSG, Teezo practices his vocal runs by my side, singing the words “all day” several times over to make sure his pitch is solid for “I’m Just a Fan.”
“I’m still an MC at heart, man. I still act like a rapper before shows, warming up,” he tells me. “You can hear Kali Uchis in whatever room she’s in, doing warmups. I think I’m gonna get a vocal coach. It’s like going to the gym without a trainer.”
Here’s Teezo, just a couple of years into his career and still finding his footing, on one of the biggest stages in the country, singing songs that (for the most part) had yet to be shared outside of the confines of the internet. An experience like this is something you just can’t prepare or train for, and he’s embracing that.
Before parting ways, as we stare at MSG and the thousands of fans waiting to get in, I ask Teezo how it feels to be walking into the employee entrance of such a legendary venue, just a handful of years after cleaning shit out of a bathroom. He can’t help but burst out laughing.
“One thing I told Tyler is something that someone else told me. They said, ‘You’re skipping a lot of steps.’ I was like, ‘Skipping steps is good.’ No one’s journey is the same. I was on myself hard about that, but this is my career. This is my career trajectory,” he said. “This is how my first tour went.”
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Photo by Keeley Parenteau -
Photo by Keeley Parenteau -
Photo by Keeley Parenteau