When he’s in the mood to write a song, the first thing Post Malone does is have a cigarette in the studio. Next, he pulls up some unfinished tracks. The third: “You go home and you take a shit and you’re like, OH. Oh. Okay. And then you come back and finish it,” Post tells me, meaning the song, not the shit. “It’s the toilet and the shower. I got a guitar in the bathroom ready to rock.”
For Post, the formula works: Over the past few years, the 22-year-old rapper/singer/songwriter has a) befriended Kanye West and Justin Bieber and released music with each of them, b) cracked Billboard’s top 10 songs in the country with “Congratulations,” off his first album, Stoney, which c) was certified double platinum last October, ten months after it debuted. More recently, Post’s first #1 song, “Rockstar,” with 21 Savage, sat at the top of the charts for eight consecutive weeks. That’s the first single off his next album, Beerbongs & Bentleys, set to drop sometime this year.
When I meet Post in L.A. at a photo studio, it’s hard to square the guy in front of me with the voice on “Rockstar” that croons: “Threw a TV out the window of the Montage/Cocaine on the table, liquor pourin', don't give a damn/Dude, your girlfriend is a groupie, she just tryna get in/Sayin', "I'm with the band" (ayy, ayy).” Post is taller and stouter than I thought he’d be, and ever so slightly more unkempt; it’s undeniable, though, that I’m in the presence of a genuine star. There are thirteen people fussing over his hair, his makeup, and his clothing while he casually crushes beers.
Along with his peers Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Pump, and Lil Peep (RIP), Post is part of the new wave of rappers blurring the borders of hip-hop. Their music is a melange of pop, R&B, rap, emo, punk, and indie rock, thrown together in unpredictable and unpredictably compelling ways. It’s a consequence of their youth—Vert is 23, and Pump was literally born in the year 2000—but their music works because it suggests an instinctive understanding of the elements that make up one musical genre and the ways it might fit together with another:
Emo + rap + folk = “White Iverson,” a soft, folksy 808s-led affair, and the breakout song that earned Post a record deal.
Country + R&B + pop = “Go Flex,” Post’s hedonist acoustic-ish ode to…flexing.
“It should just be music, you know?” Post says. He explains that his project was to eliminate genre entirely, although to me all the music he’s making sounds like traditionally black music. “Because I’ve met so many people that’ll say, ‘I listen to everything except for this, or this,’ you know? And I think that’s stupid. If you like it, you should listen to it.” It should go without saying that this kind of musical experimentation is very difficult to pull off convincingly—Post’s genius is to make it seem effortless, that it only takes a few cigarettes, a couple beers, and a leisurely shit to write a chart-topping hit.
Post says his next record will be out in early 2018. (It features Motley Crüe’s Tommy Lee on a track, so either genre has gone completely out the window or we’ll be treated to Collision Course, redux. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.) Post told me he’s been listening to a lot of the blues, Nirvana, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Hank Williams Sr., and Fleet Foxes. He wants to capture the warmth of analog music before fusing it with a drum-machine kick to make it club-ready. “So you could chill to it, you can smoke to it, but you can also go crazy to it,” he says. Post is trying to create bops for everyday use—morning jams that double as late-night music, that can fit every time in between.
I do know what he means, because it’s what pop music is starting to sound like more and more often; you can’t go to a club these days without hearing “Rockstar” or something that sounds suspiciously like it. Which is to say it sounds like a chopped and screwed lullaby, complete with eerie, minor-key synths, a booming 808-forward beat, and 21 Savage’s percussive delivery. As you may have guessed, it’s about what it feels like to be a rock star. A secret: This kind of song is Post’s favorite to make—The Loathing Stunt. “So it’s like you’re stunting very hard, but at the end of the day this isn’t going to make me happy,” he says. And those lyrics come from real life. “I’m 22. And you know, as young people, we go through a fuckin’ ride.” It’s a timeless sentiment: That it’s tough to be young. And now it’s especially difficult, because factors out of our control—the economy, Generation X—make our futures seem bleaker than ever. “There’s a lot of shit that goes on behind the curtains that a lot of people don’t see,” he says. In other words, it’s hard to be young, even if you are a legitimate rock star.
This seems to me a very Drake thing to say. So I ask, Do you ever get nervous? “All the fucking time,” he says. “I always get nervous before the show, I pound a couple of these bad boys back [beers], and it goes away. And as soon as I step on stage it usually gets better.” He continues: “By the second song, I’m in the groove and my dance moves come out.” Post knew he wanted to be a musician at 12 and has been performing live since he was 16, as a rocker teen in the Dallas suburb of Grapevine, TX. He used to play with bands, in acoustic sets, at Battle of the Bands—seemingly wherever he could find a microphone and an audience. And it paid off. When he moved to Los Angeles a little later, Post gravitated toward producers who liked and understood the sound he was headed toward. Although that makes it sound easier than it was.
“When I was young and I came out here, I had a super dark time. I didn’t have a fucking…I was sleeping in a closet, I didn’t have any money, and I would just fuckin’ scrounge in my fuckin’ friend’s center console for quarters so I could buy cigarettes, or buy fuckin’...an ounce,” he says. “Or buy fuckin’ pills. Or anything like that. And that was a super shitty time.” “White Iverson” was the song that came out of that period. While it doesn’t exactly detail his life then, there are some gestures behind the curtain, like the last line of the chorus: “I need that money like that ring I never won, I won.”
By now the sun is gone, and me and Post have moved to a weird dining/conference room overlooking the spot where he’d just shot a video; he signals for a couple more beers. We crack them and toast. After the first is down, I ask: Do you, Post Malone, ever feel anxious about working in a primarily black-identified genre of music? I’m black. I’m young. I’ve been put off by some of the things he’s said about distancing himself from rap, from R&B, from anything, really, that’s musically black-identified. I enjoy Post’s music, but I’m skeptical: What’s worse than appropriating a black sound without giving appropriate credit is doing that and not realizing why that might be wrong.
“I definitely feel like there’s a struggle being a white rapper. But I don’t want to be a rapper. I just want to be a person that makes music,” he says. “I make music that I like and I think that kicks ass, that I think the people who fuck with me as a person and as an artist will like.” He sighs.
Do you see that it’s political to be a black rapper?
“Yeah, yeah!” he says. “I mean…shit.”
And you also recognize that there are separate struggles that go along with race, right?
“Yeah,” he says, “of course.”
And as I watch him struggle with the question—struggle to find an answer that he believes, but one that he doesn’t think will damage his brand or his relationship to his fans; something that might fit neatly within all of the numerous concerns of his label, his management, his publicity team, and his peers in the industry—here’s what I realize. First, that it’s impossible to find an answer that can satisfy everyone; and second, that attempting to appease everyone is, paradoxically, what people don’t like. (See: Taylor Swift’s last album.) I believe he’s sincere. I don’t know if he’s wrestled with what it means to be black in America, but it seems to me that nobody’s asked him to do that, or held him accountable for that. At least not yet. I do, however, think he’s ready to listen, ready to learn. That’s the Post I’m waiting for.