Texan Rapper Post Malone (Austin Post) has had a mammoth 2015. With his debut track ‘White Iverson’ becoming one of the biggest track of the year and gaining over 400,000 streams the Rapper seemed to come out of the nowhere and take the game by the horns.
Things could have been very different for the star of 2015. Malone was first exposed to music at 13 years old when he began to teach himself guitar with the help of YouTube videos. After falling in love with legendary music video game Guitar Hero the teenager had a yearning for more and joined a hardcore band during high school and at 16 he released his first mixtape on Audacity. Malone confesses that while his “beats were hard”, he himself was not so hot.
The track is based on NBA player Allen Iverson and is more intellectually written than most would give Post credit for. One line in particular, “I’m spendin, I’m spendin all my fuckin’ pay”, is symbolic to the fact that Iverson is broke due to over indulging on life’s luxuries. The song is drenched in symbolism throughout as Malone spits “Cigarettes and a headband, commas, commas in my head man, slumped over like a dead man, red and black, bout my bread man.” Both Malone and Iverson sport headbands regularly and both have braids/cornrows; commas are the name of designs left by these styles. As for slumping over like a dead man, when Iverson hit a crossover he would slump over the ball, meet his opponent and get set to change direction.
Malone has joined a new wave of artists breaking through. Classic rap ideology combined with wavey, dream-like production come together to create the sound that dominated 2015. This, along with the dreary, mumbling tone of Malone himself, that only heightens the emotion of each track further, have created a familiar aesthetic that makes the Dallas bred emcee instantly recognisable. Well, that and his mouth full of gold teeth.
Such has been the rapid development of Malone that he has recently teamed up with 50 Cent, collaborating to produce ‘Tryna Fuck Me Over, and has also hooked up with Kanye West on ‘Fade’, which was premiered at the showing of Yeezy 2 Season.
Post flipped the instrumental for 50’s classic ‘Window Shopper’ on its head with his song ‘#Mood’. This may be the reason that 50 recruited Malone to appear on his delayed The Kanan Tape. New wave meets hip hop royalty, and it works. Scoop Deville does an admirable job on production, creating a beat that twinkles throughout to suit both artists differentiating styles.
As if having one of the hottest tracks of the year and working with 50 and Kanye in your first year as an artist isnt enough, Young Thug recently opened up to Mon Entourage, informing the public that his mixtape with Malone is finished. Thug is arguably one of the only artists in the industry that has had a bigger year than Post, and if 2015 is anything to go by then we can expect the tape to be one of the biggest drops of the year.
Finally, Malone has announced that he will be going on tour with Fetty Wap, yet another artist who dominated the scene in 2015. The Welcome to the Zoo Tour begins in February and runs further into March.
We’re only a few days into 2016, but already it looks like Malone is set to dominate. As time goes on the better position we will be in to decipher which artists we will hold close, and which we will soon forget.
You can view the video for Malone’s latest track, Boy Bandz, below.
The next move for the Rapper is his debut LP which is set to be released in March and has already been credited as something that is going to “change the world”, by Malone himself.
my album in March…. i believe will change the world. i can't wait for everyone to share my journey with me.
— me (@PostMalone) January 1, 2016
Follow Post Malone on Twitter at @PostMalone to keep up with his Musical journey.
Words: Andrew Moore – @andrewmooree
