I drove downtown early. Parked the Z on the street and sat in it for a minute before I went in.
I wasn't nervous in the way people usually meant when they said nervous. My hands weren't shaking. I wasn't spiraling. It was more like a sharpness. The kind of feeling that meant something actually mattered and my body was taking it seriously.
GQ was different from The Breakfast Club. Different from Power 106. Different from the blog runs and the radio sweeps. This was the kind of thing that lived somewhere permanent — print, archive, the version of you that people found years later when they were trying to understand where you came from. It had weight.
I checked my fit in the rearview. Good. I got out.
* * *
The building was what you'd expect. Clean lobby, people moving with purpose, someone waiting for me at the front with a visitor badge and a name they said correctly on the first try, which I appreciated.
They took me up to a conference room that had been set up like a studio good lighting, two chairs, a small crew running cameras and sound. The photographer would come after. First was the interview.
The writer was a woman, maybe early thirties. She had her recorder already on the table and a notebook open next to it and she stood up when I walked in and shook my hand with a real grip.
"I've been listening to the album since it dropped," she said. "Three times through. I have a lot of questions."
"That's the right number," I said.
She smiled and we sat down.
* * *
The questions were actually good. I'd done enough interviews by then to know the difference between someone who had done the work and someone running off a list they could have typed in ten minutes. She'd done the work.
The album is called Till Death Do Us Part. When did you know that was the title?
Pretty early. Before I had most of the songs. I knew what I wanted to say and that phrase kept coming back to me. It's what you say when you're committing to something for real. Not until it gets hard. Not until something better comes along. Until death. I wanted the album to ask whether people actually meant that anymore about anything.
The EP came out right after the trial. That felt like a statement. Was it?
Yeah. I needed to put something out that was mine. The trial was other people telling a version of my story in a room I had no control over. The music was the version I controlled. I wasn't going to sit on it.
You were seventeen when most of what you rap about on this album was happening. How do you look back on that version of yourself?
I don't spend a lot of time looking back. I understand why people want me to there's a narrative in it, the kid who came up through all of this. But I was just living. I made some decisions I'd make again and some I wouldn't. The album is honest about that. I didn't clean anything up.
cars keep coming up in your music. What is that about for you?
Cars were the first thing I was ever actually good at. Before the music, before any of this. I could get under a car and understand what was wrong with it and fix it. That felt like power when I didn't have a lot of it. It still does. The music and the cars are connected for me they're both about building something with your hands and then letting it go out into the world.
There's a track on the album, the eighth one, that a lot of people are calling the standout. It's also the most personal. Was there any hesitation putting that one out?
No. If I was going to hesitate on anything I would've ended up with a different album. The tracks that scared me a little are the ones that needed to be there. That's usually how it works.
You signed with Sony at seventeen. A lot of artists talk about what they wish they'd known going into their first deal. What do you wish you'd known?
I actually felt prepared. I had a lawyer and a manager before I took any meetings. I didn't walk in alone. I think the thing I'm still learning is that the business side never stops — there's always another contract, another decision, another person trying to get something. You have to stay sharp. But I knew that going in.
What does the next chapter look like for you?
Second album. I already know what it's about. I started on it the night the first one dropped.
Anything else you want people to know?
Just listen to the album. Start to finish. That's all I want.
* * *
The photographer came in after. We moved to a different room white backdrop, different energy, the kind of session that required you to be comfortable being looked at for an hour. I wasn't uncomfortable. I'd learned to be still.
They put me in a few different looks. Between setups the photographer asked me about the Z, had seen it parked outside. I told her a little about the build. She said she wanted to shoot it sometime.
"Call June," I said.
She laughed and kept shooting.
* * *
I got back to the loft in the early afternoon. Maddy was on the couch with her laptop and a coffee and barely looked up when I walked in.
"How was it?"
"Good. She actually asked real questions."
"Shocking."
I sat next to her. She tilted the laptop toward me to show me something she'd been looking at a mood board she was building, fabrics and silhouettes and color references. She talked through what she was thinking. I listened.
It was a Tuesday afternoon. Nothing was on fire. I had somewhere to be that night but not for a few hours. The album was out. The interview was done.
For a minute there was nothing pulling at me from any direction.
I let it be that for a while.