To ILoveMakonnen, diamonds are not just forever — they're for healing. 

"We wanted to be able to heal our broken hearts and heal our fans with this music," rapper and producer ILoveMakonnen tells GRAMMY.com. "That was the whole mission behind Diamonds, to let everybody know that they are a diamond and they're waiting to be found."

Diamonds, ILoveMakonnen's newly-released album with the late Lil Peep, was   recorded in the summer of 2017 and wrapped just months before 21-year-old Peep’s death from an accidental overdose. How the record came about, and why it took so long to be released, is a story of a sudden and intense friendship, internet leakers, lawsuits, and a long-delayed happy, if bittersweet, ending. 

Makonnen first became aware of Lil Peep towards the end of 2016. Makonnen was at that point best known for his 2014 hit song "Tuesday," which benefited from a viral Drake remix. But his association with Drake’s OVO label, which started in the wake of "Tuesday," had ended and he was searching for something new. 

"I was looking online and saw some of [Peep’s] videos, and I thought that he was really intriguing and cool," Makonnen remembers. "We had some mutual friends. People would tell us, 'oh, you should check out this guy.'"

Peep was at that point a popular, if still somewhat underground, emo rap star. (Just weeks later, he would be proclaimed "the future of emo" by Pitchfork.) It took Makonnen making a dramatic announcement for the two to finally connect.

"I came out as gay in 2017, in January, and Lil Peep was one of the first people to reach out to me and tell me, ‘Thank you. I love you. You're so brave for this. I always support you. I want to meet you.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I'm in L.A. right now. We should meet up.’"

The artists met at a mutual friend's house and "really hit it off,"Makonnen explains. "We became best friends as soon as we met. And then we got to start talking to each other more, and we would be on the phone all day."

The two already  had business ties — Makonnen's manager at the time  was business partner’s with Peep’s manager — so doing an album together seemed like the natural next step. 

They began sessions in July 2017 in Los Angeles, but getting work done proved difficult.

"Everybody in L.A. knows where we’re at and everybody’s pulling up to the studio and wants to get on the song," Makonnen recalls. "It’s just too much going on, to where me and Lil Peep can’t focus."

The duo decamped to somewhere quieter, and brought  a few trusted collaborators  to Eastcote Studios in London. 

Somewhere in the middle of this process, Peep came out as bisexual. Makonnen recalls that Peep felt two openly queer artists teaming up could make a huge impact on their young fanbases. 

"He said, ‘I feel like we can really make a change in the world by showing this because so many of us young fans and young people are dealing with all types of things,’" Makonnen remembers. "That was the start of everything that bonded us together."

The two artists were inseparable during the London sessions, staying in the same hotel and doing everything together.

"We really lived together like best friends, if not more. We were wearing each other’s clothes," Makonnen says. "It was truly special and fun. It just felt surreal. It felt like a dream. We were having so much fun and smiling and laughing the whole time." 

Throughout, Makonnen and Peep were dead-set on combining their styles. They typically began improvising melodies, while discussing what topics they wanted to talk about on each track. They addressed problems in their own lives, with hopes that fans would be able to relate.

There was a specific mission for the sound of the record as well. Peep had always loved Makonnen's songs with sad lyrics and happy-sounding music. That gave Makonnen an idea.

"I was like, ‘And your songs sound very sad!’" Makonnen says, laughing at the memory. "So I was like, we need to give that same emotion, but make it sound a little happier and friendlier so that the listener can have that sense of celebration, crying, transformation — where this music is hitting me and allowing me to let things go, but also to uplift the things in my life that have been bearing down."

As the record neared completion, Peep and Makonnen visualized what would come next: a joint tour, a merch line. Makonnen says he planned to perform some of the new tunes in a Vegas-style live act where he would play piano and a suit-clad Peep would sing. 

"I was telling Peep, you’re going to be like Frank Sinatra," Makonnen says.

Makonnen and Peep split after London, with plans to reconvene and mix the album after their respective tours wound down. That never happened, and after Peep’s death fans wondered about the fate of the album that he once proclaimed the best of the century. 

In spring 2020, after conflicting reports about whether the album would ever be released, it leaked to the internet. Makonnen recalls how it happened: People involved in the album got emails from someone claiming to be him, asking for its contents.

That wasn’t the end of the hacking. Many of Makonnen’s other unreleased songs — he claims about 500 in total — were stolen by hackers as well.

"After that happened, I literally had a nervous breakdown," he says. "I was shaking and sweating and got sick for three days. I felt doomed and destroyed. My mom had to really help talk me back up."

Following that debacle, Makonnen tried to put Diamonds out of his mind. "I didn’t even like listening to it," he says. "It just brings back too many memories."

But in early 2023, Peep’s mother Liza won back control of her son’s music following a lawsuit settlement with his record label. That cleared the way for the album to be finished, at long last. The entire Diamonds team reconvened in Los Angeles to mix the album.

The project is 22 songs long, reflecting pretty much all the finished material from the sessions. But that wasn’t Makonnen and Peep’s original vision.

"We had a lot of songs," Makonnen admits. "We maybe weren’t going to put out all of these songs if he was still alive and we were down to edit it. But since he passed and we didn’t get to that point, I felt it would be best to show all that we did. We had a lot of fun creating this stuff."

The release of Diamonds is bittersweet for iLoveMakonnen. On one hand, he’s still extremely proud of the music. On the other, he’s reminded of the loss of his best friend. 

"A lot of emotions I’ve had buried down in my subconscious and in my heart that I haven’t been able to express because I never felt like the time was right, I’m happy to be able to speak about now," he says.

"It’s a weird feeling in your throat. I’m happy, I want to laugh, but I feel like crying."

Listen To GRAMMY.com's 50th Anniversary Of Hip-Hop Playlist: 50 Songs That Show The Genre's Evolution

There was a time in the not so distant past when hip-hop was likened to disco. A flash in the pan genre defined by its hyperbolic expression of sound and style, disco fizzled out in the early '80s once the fashion and sonic trends attached to it expired.

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Hip-hop was presumably following in its footsteps, especially when so many break records were layered with disco samples to create the early framework of hip-hop's sound — think the Sugarhill Gang's 1979 hit "Rapper's Delight" (GRAMMY Hall Of Fame, 2014), which sampled Chic's 1979 No. 1 smash, "Good Times."

But hip-hop persevered and brought with it an evolution of the R&B genre as well. Combined, the two genres became unstoppable, eclipsing a flimsy stigma of being confined to an "urban" box. Now, four and a half decades since hip-hop's inception, the genre has seemingly taken the music industry over along with R&B, beating rock at its own game. How did we get here?

Theoretically, the move has been gradual, though 2017 marked a quantifiable shift leaning in hip-hop and R&B's favor. First, there are the sales figures: Hip-hop and R&B accounted for 25 percent of music consumption in 2017, with rock trailing at 23 percent. Add to that an uptick in audio streaming in 2017 by 72 percent — with 29 percent of music streamed online being hip-hop and R&B combined, matching rock and pop, which also combined for 29 percent of music streamed online. The two previously gigantic leaders in major genres are now neck-and-neck with the "underdogs" of R&B and hip-hop.

But per Nielsen's 2017 year-end report, eight of the top 10 albums were, in fact, hip-hop or R&B albums, including Drake and Kendrick Lamar for More Life and DAMN., respectively. Meanwhile, Drake and Lamar held down the top two spots on the list of most popular artists based on total consumption (sales and streaming), while Bruno Mars, Eminem, Future, The Weeknd, and Lil Uzi Vert were also among the other artists that proved hip-hop and R&B were the most widely consumed collective genres this past year.

The 60th GRAMMY Awards further punctuated that claim, as artists like Jay-Z and SZA found homes in the General Four categories, with Mars — who earned Record, Album and Song Of The Year — and Lamar sweeping wins across the board.

Phrases like "the death of rock and roll" have been continually tossed around since this cycle of news arrived. The latest strike against rock came when Coachella announced that for the first time in its 19-year existence there wouldn't be a rock act headlining the festival. The three headliners for the 2018 installment will be Beyoncé, Eminem and The Weeknd.

"I think it speaks to the strength of the music and the strength of the fan base," explains Jeriel Johnson, Executive Director of the Recording Academy Washington, D.C. Chapter. "The fans dictate who shows up on those stages."

While the 2017 tallies may suggest that sales and streams have finally caught up, industry insiders have seen the trends shifting over the last 5 to 10 years.

"Now so, even more than ever, music can be created and put out so much more quickly so when something is happening, urban music is reflecting that really quickly."

"R&B and hip-hop have always had a huge influence and impact on our culture, regardless of the time period — from fashion to slang to our tastes in music [and] cars," says GRAMMY-nominated producer Harvey Mason Jr.

However, with rap artists growing into cross-cultural icons, hip-hop poured into rock and vice versa.

"I immediately think of artists like Run-DMC, Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Kid Cudi. These are a few of the pioneers who helped lay down the foundation for artists like Post Malone, Lil Uzi, [the late] Lil Peep, and Lil Pump to become the new generation of artists to continue the push forward the borders of hip-hop," explains Matthew Bernal manager of media for Republic Records. "From their trend-setting fashion, genre-bending sounds and riot-like live performances, millennials grew up watching these icons and the influence is clear in their music today."

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Artists such as Rae Sremmurd, who released the groundbreaking "Black Beatles" with Gucci Mane in 2016, extended that aesthetic — the music video for the hit single showed the duo breaking TV sets with electric guitars.

"Post Malone's 'Rockstar,' which was the No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 for eight consecutive weeks last year, is a strong indication of how today's hip-hop artists view themselves: as rock stars," continues Bernal.

"Urban culture is the new rock," adds GRAMMY-winning producer Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins. "[In] every era there's a change that takes place, and right now Migos, Kendrick Lamar — they're the new rock stars."

"I feel like it was bound to happen," says Nicole Johnson, industry relations at music streaming service Pandora. "Back in the day, rock and roll was started by an urban genre and urban people. But then it became 'sex, drugs, and rock and roll' and, now, isn't that what these hip-hop [artists] are now talking about? Here are rappers just living their best lives, being themselves, tattooing their faces if they feel like it, wearing dresses on the cover of their album if they feel like it. It's all about self-expression."

Johnson adds that Pandora's Next Big Sound has been driven by hip-hop and R&B as of late, leading to the service's launch of the weekly urban station, The Sauce. "There are now so many [sub]genres within hip-hop, of course, it's gonna take over.”

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But in the wake of hip-hop and R&B's takeover, so was the digital boom. Urban music jumped onboard streaming services early, with platforms like SoundCloud birthing its own scene, SoundCloud rap, which has given way to artists such as Chance The Rapper and Rico Nasty who have equally dominated the space as other hip-hop artists.

"I think R&B/hip-hop is benefitting from changes in technology," says Mason, underscoring how today's fast turnaround in music creation has placed hip-hop and R&B at a unique vantage point, especially when it comes to topical music. "R&B and hip-hop really seem to have their ear to the ground culturally and in society with everything our country is going through.

"It just seems to be such a transparent outlet for people with feelings and opinions, and now so, even more than ever, music can be created and put out so much more quickly so when something is happening, urban music is reflecting that really quickly."

So where will we go from here? Is rock really fading away? And, if so, can it come back? While the cyclical nature of music would reflect an inevitable return, perhaps rock will have to once again evolve the way hip-hop and R&B had to in order to rise up.

"It'll rebound in a different kind of way, I believe," says Jerkins. "Someone will come along and do it in a newer and cooler way. But right now? Hip-hop, R&B — that's pop. Because pop music is anything that's popular."

(Kathy Iandoli has penned pieces for Pitchfork, VICE, Maxim, O, Cosmopolitan, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Billboard, and more. She co-authored the book Commissary Kitchen with Mobb Deep's late Albert "Prodigy" Johnson, and is a professor of music business at select universities throughout New York and New Jersey.)

American rapper, singer, and producer Lil Peep — née Gustav Åhr — died Nov. 16 prior to a tour appearance in Tucson, Ariz. A spokesperson for the Tucson Police Department has confirmed that evidence was found on the rapper's tour bus indicating the cause of death to be a drug overdose, according to The New York Times.

The SoundCloud rapper and rising alt-pop star was on tour in support of his debut album, Come Over When You're Sober, Pt. 1. He died just two weeks following his 21st birthday. 

Best known for his self-produced bedroom-recorded tracks such as "Crybaby" and "Hellboy," Lil Peep built a rabid online fanbase through his unique blend of emo-rock hooks and trap-inspired rapping. References to heavy drug use as self-medication to deal with severe depression were a staple of the young rapper's songwriting, and his soul-baring acknowledgement of his real-life trials and mood swings forged a powerful connection with a fanbase built almost entirely via SoundCloud and Instagram.

"I suffer from depression and some days I wake up and I’m like, 'F***, I wish I didn’t wake up,'" he said in an interview with Pitchfork. "That's the side of myself that I express through music. That's my channel for letting all that s*** out."

Lil Peep began his career in music after leaving high school early and earning his degree via online courses. He began releasing self-produced music on YouTube and SoundCloud, where he discovered an unexpectedly fervent fanbase, prompting him to release his first mixtape Lil Peep Part One in 2015.

Though ostensibly a rapper, Lil Peep drew acclaim from his fans and music critics alike for his refusal to be pinned down by the conventions of any one genre, often sampling artists such as Underoath, Brand New, the Postal Service, Oasis, and the Microphones to build the sonic bed for his Southern-rap inspired vocal deliveries. His lyrical content — touching equally on themes of relationships, revenge, angst, and self-harm — prompted Pitchfork to label him as an artist who was "reinventing heart-on-sleeve agony for a new generation."

Lil Peep was vocal on social media and in his songwriting about his close relationship with his mother. She has released a statement through a representative of First Access Entertainment, stating she remains "very, very proud of him and everything he was able to achieve in his short life," and that she is "truly grateful to the fans and the people who have supported and loved him."

CyHi The Prynce Gives The Scoop Behind 'No Dope On Sundays'

Grief is 360°, and so are the best albums written about it.

Sorrow-weighted breakthroughs of the past decade, like Sun Kil Moon's Benji and Mount Eerie's A Crow Looked at Me, both grabbed you by the collar and read between the lines. Retro-tinted rockers Shannon and the Clams' new album, The Moon is in the Wrong Place, is no exception.

Out May 10, the band's seventh LP deals with a tragedy in leader Shannon Shaw's life: the loss of her fiancé, Joe Haener, in a freak car accident outside his Aurora, Oregon, family farm. As Shaw picked up the pieces, the songs poured forth — and as bruised as they are, that loss opened vistas of clarity and range in their gritty, mid-century-rock sound.

Take the ascendant highlight "Bean Fields," where Shaw maps Haener's spirit onto the soil he loved. "Gather up, sisters, cousins, and brothers/ Friends, Nan, and Delbert too/ Let's go be where the bugs sing/ And where the pole beans bloom/ We love this land 'cause it's you."

Shaw was concerned about "Bean Fields" being a single. "It's so peppy and joyous and celebratory," she tells GRAMMY.com, with Clams guitarist and vocalist Cody Blanchard in an adjacent Zoom window. "I was afraid of that being a confusing message for people without knowing the rest of the album."

In the end, they made the right call; sometimes harrowing losses, and their attendant life changes, can carry exhilarating headwinds. In short, it's not all doldrums.

And that's why that song — as well as other lush, blooming highlights like "Real or Magic" and "Life is Unfair" — feel right at home on an album borne of sorrow. Read on for an interview with Shaw and Blanchard about the making of the Dan Auerbach-produced album.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

How's the press cycle been, dealing with something this intensely personal?

Shannon Shaw: It's been good. I feel like everyone I've spoken to has been really super respectful and prepared. I think [PR firm] The Oriel did a good job at making sure people that have no idea what this album's about aren't interviewing me. So, that's been a good thing.

It would be weird to talk about anything that doesn't involve grief and loss really, because that's what the album is about. But it's been good. Definitely hard for me, but good.

For a long time after I lost a parent, I resented when people would drag me back into suffering. People would be like, "I'm so sorry," and I'd be like, "I'm chillin', but thank you."

Shaw: Oh, yeah. People have some really bad timing. I think most people are coming from a good place, but yeah, that is weird when fans will try to engage with me about it at really bad times. 

When I'm working and trying to be on, that's when I do not want to go deep. It's hard for me to not go deep, so to just be really surface and thank people for their condolences — I don't want to be surface with it at all. I also do appreciate people trying to be kind, but yeah, there's timing.

What really annoys me is when people want to pretend like it didn't happen. That doesn't happen with any press. More like people purposefully skirting talking about Joe or this experience, or trying to get me to not go there or something. And I know that's also because none of us are trained to talk about grief. It's just so not a part of our culture.

I'm a lot more comfortable really talking about it than pretending my life has been just really f—ing great for the last year and a half. And I love talking about Joe.

Obviously, this traumatic loss was an impetus to make The Moon is in the Wrong Place. But it's not a one-dimensional record, as you're not a one-dimensional person. How did this music start flowing, in any regard?

Shaw: I mean, music started coming to me right away, very soon after [Joe] passed away. And the way that looks is: I'll have either a phrase repeating in my head or a melody, and so I just start singing those little pieces into the recorder on my phone. So I'll have a ton of weird little vocal chunks to sort through later. "Bean Fields" came to me really soon after. Lots of them, really.

"The Vow" is the only one that I had written a lot of before the album. That's the only one, at least on my end, that I'd done before. Because I was going to perform that at our wedding, just that first part.

And I wrote that on guitar, which is unusual for me. I wrote "The Vow" on guitar from chords that Joe taught me, so it was significant in that way.

That song wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Joe, in two ways. If we hadn't had a relationship, that song would never have been written, and if he hadn't taught me a few chords on guitar. He forced me to learn some chords. I was really resistant. But if he hadn't taught me those, I wouldn't have ever written a song on a guitar using chords, probably.

So, that one was just haunting me after I'd already started writing for the album. It was just pissing me off that no one was going to get to hear this semi-collaborative effort from me and Joe, even though Joe never knew it. He never got to hear it.

But yeah, so it happened right away, and I knew that it was going to be all about Joe. I don't know how it couldn't have been.

If someone were to tell me, "I don't think you should write an album like this. That's too sad," or something, I don't think that I could make music ever again. If someone was trying to stop that creative process, I wouldn't even have any interest in writing music, because music is how I process everything.

I'm sure Joe was a kind of co-pilot through this process, even though he's not here anymore.

Shaw: Oh, totally. I feel like I use Joe, and I make a lot of decisions now based on WWJD: what would Joe do? How would Joe feel about this? And I feel like Joe would love anything creative that we're doing to get through this or to learn to live with this.

Blanchard: He also was always pushing people. I mean, not pushing, but quietly encouraging people to make more stuff.

Shaw: Yeah, he was such a good fan. He had so many ideas, always, and was always trying to inspire me about more merch ideas, or, "Why don't you guys do more live karaoke?" Or just always encouraging us to put out more content, because he knew what the people loved. He was very conscious of that stuff.

Was bringing this incredibly raw music to market a strange experience?

Shaw: I was really stressed out about choosing singles because I always think of singles as teasers to represent the whole album, but I believe that in the industry, the way you use singles is different now. They're looking more for things that are going to sell and have a lot of plays because they're really catchy or whatever.

And us musicians, we have to try to keep up with those things because we need to keep this as our job. So, I understand being flexible, but there was this toddler in me that was like, No, I don't want to do it that way. I want songs that are going to be my favorite, most important songs that I feel like represents Joe and this tragedy the most.

But at the same time, I was too scared to use songs that are too intimate. To me, "Real or Magic" — I was really, really resistant to using that song as a single because it's so sad and tender. That's maybe one of the most tender, vulnerable songs I've ever written, and it's about the realest moment I've ever had.

It was the last song I showed the boys because I was so nervous about it, and they really saw a lot of beauty and potential in the song and wanted to make it soar. And then when everyone wanted it as a single, I was just like, "No, it's too sad. It's too intimate. People are going to know everything."

Blanchard: That's what people want, man.

Shaw: Now I'm used to it because I'm building some armor before a tour, but the idea of doing that one every night [was daunting].

People want to hear your singles when you're playing live, and playing that, I was like, "Am I going to be able to play this all the time? How is it going to feel to have people singing that song with us?"

And it turns out it feels good. It's not like people are singing "Real or Magic" and have no idea what it's about. I mean, I'm sure there's lots of people that don't know, but the overall feeling is that people are with us.

Blanchard: I'm conscious of it a lot, because you're playing these songs over and over and you become a little bit numb to them, but they were so intense when we first wrote them. And they're still intense.

We've been doing these weird or silly cover versions of these songs that we're going to start releasing on social media. And we did a version of "Real or Magic" that's ... I don't know, it's not silly, I guess, but it's a totally different vibe.

Humor is a powerful tool amid grief.

Shaw: It's definitely a powerful tool. You're taking a break from the misery, and just letting yourself go, and [allowing yourself] to be free and enjoy [yourself] for a while.

Can you talk about the point where it started to feel like a full-fledged record? Because that's what it is; it's lush and multifaceted. It doesn't feel like a hastily scrawled diary entry.

Shaw: I am glad we were able to get that across. I'm really glad that it doesn't just sound depressed and low all the time. I think it really has an overall positive feeling.

I really feel like the album is kind of like an adventure. I think about Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee going on their adventure, and the album really does a beautiful job at representing the variety or the spectrum of emotions.

I feel really, really proud of that. It's hard to put into words, and I felt it was much easier to put into music.

Marcus King Is Spilling His Guts On Mood Swings — But He's Always Serving The Song

If you were online during the summer of 2022, chances are you’ve heard Pheelz’s viral hit single "Finesse." The swanky Afro-fusion track (featuring fellow Nigerian artist Bnxn) ushered in a world of crossover success for Pheelz, who began his career as a producer for the likes of Omah Lay, Davido, and Fireboy DML.

Born Phillip Kayode Moses, Pheelz’s religious upbringing in Lagos state contributed to his development as a musician. He manned the choir at his father’s church while actively working on his solo music. Those solo efforts garnered praise from his peers and music executives, culminating in Pheelz's debut EP in 2021. Hear Me Out saw Pheelz fully embrace his talent as a vocalist, songwriter, and producer. 

"I feel important, like I’m just molding clay, and I have control over each decision," Pheelz tells GRAMMY.com about creating his own music. 

2022 saw the release of the first two tapes in his Pheelz Good trilogy: Pheelz Good I and Pheelz Good (Triibe Tape), which was almost entirely self-produced. The 29-year-old's consistency has paid off: he produced and sang on Usher’s "Ruin," the lead single from his latest album Coming Home, and also produced the album's title track featuring Burna Boy. But Pheelz isn't only about racking up big-name collaborators; the self-proclaimed African rockstar's forthcoming projects will center on profound vulnerability and interpersonal honesty. First up: Pheelz Good II EP, out May 10, followed by a studio album in late summer.

Both releases will see the multi-hyphenate "being unapologetically myself," Pheelz tells GRAMMY.com. "It will also be me being as vulnerable as I can be. And it’s going to be me embracing my "crayge" [crazy rage]...being myself, and allowing my people to gravitate towards me."

Ahead of his new project, Pheelz spoke with GRAMMY.com about his transition from producer artist, designing all his own 3D cover art, his rockstar aesthetic, and what listeners can expect from Pheelz Good II.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

What sparked your transition from singing in church to realizing your passion for creating music?

For me, it wasn’t really a transition. I just always loved making music so for me I felt like it was just wherever I go to make music, that’s where I wanna be. I would be in church and I was the choirmaster at some point in my life, so I would write songs for Sunday service as well. And then I would go to school as well and write in school, and people heard me and they would love it. And I would want to do more of that as well. 

A friend of my dad played some of my records for the biggest producers in Nigeria back then and took me on as an intern in his studio. I guess that’s the transition from church music into the industry. My brothers and sisters were in the choir, but that came with the job of being the children of the pastor, I guess. None of them really did music like me; I’m the only one who took music as a career and pursued it.

You made a name for yourself as a producer before ever releasing your music, earning Producer Of The Year at Nigeria’s Headies Awards numerous times. What finally pushed you to get into the booth?

I’ve always wanted to get into the booth. The reason why I actually started producing was to produce beats for songs that I had written. I’ve always been in the booth, but always had something holding me back. Like a kind of subconscious feeling over what my childhood has been. I wasn’t really outspoken as a child growing up, so I wouldn’t want people to really hear me and would shy away from the camera in a sense. I think that stuck with me and held me back. 

But then COVID happened and then I caught COVID and I’m like Oh my god and like that [snaps fingers] What I am doing? Why am I not going full steam? Like why do I have all this amazing awesomeness inside of me and no one gets to it because I’m scared of this or that?

There was this phrase that kept ringing in my head: You have to die empty. You can’t leave this earth with all of this gift that God has given you; you have to make sure you empty yourself. And since then, it’s just been back-to-back, which just gave me the courage.  

How did you react to " Finesse" in former President Barack Obama’s annual summer playlist in 2022?

Bro, I reacted crazy but my dad went bananas. [Laughs.] I was really grateful for that moment, but just watching my dad react like that to that experience was the highlight of that moment for me. He's such a fan of Barack Obama and to see that his son’s music is on the playlist, it just made his whole month. Literally. He still talks about it to this day. 

Experiences like that just make me feel very grateful to be here. Life has really been a movie, just watching a movie and just watching God work and being grateful for everything.

At first he [my dad] [didn’t support my career] because every parent wants their child to be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. But when he saw the hunger [I have], and I was stubborn with [wanting] to do music, he just had to let me do it. And now he’s my number one fan. 

Your latest single, "Go Low" arrived just in time for festival season. What was it like exploring the live elements of your art at SXSW and your headlining show in London at the end of April?

I have always wanted to perform live. I’ve always loved performing; Pheelz on stage is the best Pheelz. Coming from church every Sunday, I would perform, lead prayers and worship, so I’ve always wanted to experience that again.

Having to perform live with my band around the world is incredible man. And I’ll forever raise the flag of amazing Afro live music because there’s a difference, you know? [Laughs.] There are so many elements and so many rhythms and so many grooves

I’ve noticed that much of your recent cover art for your singles and EPs is animated or digitally crafted. What’s the significance, if any, of this stylistic choice?

It still goes back to my childhood because I wasn’t expressive as a child; I wouldn’t really talk or say how I felt. I’d rather write about it, write a song about it, write a poem about it, or draw about it. I’d draw this mask and then put how I’m feeling into that character, so if I was angry, the mask would be raging and just angry.

The angry ones were the best ones, so that stuck with me even after I started coming out of my shell and talking and being expressive; that act of drawing a mask still stuck with me. And then I got into 3D, and I made a 3D version of the mask and I made a 3D character of the mask. So I made that the main character, and then I just started making my lyric videos, again post-COVID, and making them [lyric videos] to the characters and making the actual video mine as well.

In the future, I’m gonna get into fashion with the characters, I’m gonna get into animation and cartoons and video games, but I just wanna take it one step at a time with the music first. So, in all of my lyric videos, you get to experience the characters. There’s a fight [scene] among them in one of the lyric videos called "Ewele"; there is the lover boy in the lyric video for "Stand by You"; there are the bad boys in the lyric video for "Balling." They all have their own different characters so hopefully in the near future, I will get to make a feature film with them and just tell their story [and] build a world with them. I make sure I put extra energy into that, make most of them myself so the imprint of my energy is gonna be on it as well because it’s very important to me.

You and Usher have a lengthy working relationship. You first performed together in 2022 at the Global Citizen Festival, then produced/co-wrote "Coming Home" and "Ruin." Take us through the journey of how you two began collaborating.

It started through a meeting with [Epic Records CEO] L.A. Reid; he was telling me about the album that they were working on for Usher and I’m like, "Get me into the studio and lemme see what I can cook up." And they got me into the studio, [with Warner Records A&R] Marc Byers, and I wrote and produced "Coming Home." I already had "Ruin" a year before that. 

["Ruin"] was inspired by a breakup I just went through. Some of the greatest art comes from pain, I guess. That record was gonna be for my album but after I came home I saw how L.A. Reid and Usher reacted and how they loved it. I told them, "I have this other song, and I think you guys would like it for this album." And I played "Ruin," and the rest was history.

Before your upcoming EP, you’ve worked with Pharrell Williams, Kail Uchis, and the Chainsmokers in the studio. What do you consider when selecting potential collaborators?

To be honest, I did not look for these collabs. It was like life just brought them my way, because for me I’m open to any experience. I’m open to life; I do it the best I can at any moment, you understand? 

Having worked with Pharrell now, Dr. Dre, Timbaland, and the Chainsmokers, I’m still shocked at the fact that this is happening. But ultimately, I am grateful for the fact that this is happening. I am proud of myself as well for how far I’ve come. Someone like Timbaland — they are literally the reason why I started producing music; I would literally copy their beats, and try to sound like them growing up. 

[Now] I have them in the same room talking, and we’re teaching and learning, making music and feeding off of each others’ energy. It’s a dream come true, literally.

What's it like working with am electro-pop group like the Chainsmokers? How’d you keep your musical authenticity on "PTSD"?

That experiment ["PTSD"] was actually something I would play with back home. But the crazy thing is, it’s gonna be on the album now, not the EP. I would play it back home, like just trying to get the EDM and Afrohouse world to connect, cause I get in my Albert Einstein bag sometimes and just try and experiment. So when I met the Chainsmokers and like. "Okay, this is an opportunity to actually do it now," and we had a very lengthy conversation. 

We bonded first as friends before we went into the studio. We had an amazing conversation talking about music, [them] talking about pop and electronic music, and me talking about African music. So it was just a bunch of producers geeking out on what they love to do. And then we just talk through how we think the sound would be like really technical terms. Then we get into the studio and just bang it out. Hopefully, we get to make some more music because I think we can create something for the world together.

I’ve noticed you dress a bit eccentrically. Have you always had this aesthetic?

I’ve always dabbled in fashion. Even growing up, I would sketch for my sister and make this little clothing, so like I would kick up my uniform as well, make it baggy, make it flare pants, make it fly. 

I think that stuck with me until now, trying different things with fashion. And now I have like stylists I can talk to and throw ideas off of and create something together. So yeah, I want to get into the fashion space and see what the world has in store for me. 

What can fans expect as you’re putting the finishing touches on your upcoming EP Pheelz Good II and your album?

Pheelz Good II, [will be] a close to the Pheelz Good trilogy of Pheelz Good I, Pheelz Good Triibe Tape and Pheelz Good II. The album is going to be me being unapologetically myself still. But it will also be me being as vulnerable as I can be. 

It’s going to be me embracing my crayge [crazy rage]. Like just embracing me unapologetically and being me, being myself, and allowing my people to gravitate towards me, you get me. But I’m working on some really amazing music that I am so proud of. I’m so proud of the EP and the album.

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