REACEYUNG on 50 Years of Hip Hop and the future of the genre

Missouri native and 2x Billboard Heatseeker REACEYUNG recognizes Notorious B.I.G. as one of his biggest inspirations with his lyrical verses and big boy swagger. Following a slew of album and EP releases, as well as a recent show-stopping performance at NYC’s Quad Studios to celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip hop, REACEYUNG is now poised to release his latest project Heart Of Lou 2. His inimitable style and nostalgic flow has already put him firmly on the map as the next big hip hop artist to watch, so Headliner caught up with him to find out what makes the boy from St. Louis tick…

Tell us about your early years in music. When did you first realise you wanted to work in this industry?

We had a recording studio in my high school in St. Louis, Missouri, at Roosevelt. I was introduced to music early on from the DJ side as far as selling CDs goes. We had two record stores in my family growing up, one on my father's side and another on my mother's side. With the one on my mother's side, I got a chance to have a lot of firsthand experience in terms of really learning about music and certain genres, and I really understood the retail side of things from an early age.

I was seeing big classic artists come in there in the early and late ‘90s to promote and sell their albums, so as a kid I knew for a fact that’s what I wanted to do for my city. It was around the time when Dr. Dre was putting out The Chronic; he was in St. Louis signing his albums, and I was just looking at him like, ‘wow, I want to do that too’. Growing up I was exposed to a lot of things that the average young artist in my city wasn’t. That led me to try to create my own songs, and I’ve built it up from there.

Who were you most inspired by musically growing up?

When I was a young kid I was teased about being big, black and ugly, and one person that I really idolised the most, because he was a big dude, was The Notorious B.I.G. Those heavy set rappers like Biggie and Big Pun were my inspiration. At that time I also looked up to Jay-Z, Big Daddy Kane, Kool G Rap, Wu Tang and Tupac. So I’ve pretty much shaped my sound around those guys.

Tell us about some of the projects you’re working on at the moment.

Honestly, I’m always working on 12 albums at one time. I've always been able to navigate my future works to put out over the next few years. I’ve just finished my project Heart Of Lou 2, which is my little series that I started in the early 2000s. It started off as a simple mixtape which a lot of artists were doing back in the day, but after I hit the billboards I felt that I needed to reintroduce myself to my city a little bit. I thought why not start from the beginning, and that's when I created Heart Of Lou, which was my first ever mixtape. I’m thinking of dropping Heart Of Lou 2 at the end of February, and I’m also working on my follow up project, Thoughts Of King Sullivan. Right now I'm just setting up all the bowling pins and knocking them down. It takes a lot of creative space mentally to be able to harness that energy and stay focused. It can be a task, but I'm doing it.

How about your creative process?

I try to keep things very simple. Sometimes my producers will have things set up for me already, and then sometimes I’ll just hear something and jump on board. My mind will just connect with it and then we just see what happens – it's kind of like cooking with no ingredients, and most times we’ll leave with something crazy. A lot of people get me confused because I'm more of a cross-genre emcee. I’ve got rock band songs that I never let people hear. People have me gridlocked in hip hop because I love it, but sometimes my team wants to pull out the guitars and drums and go crazy on a different kind of level. Hip hop is just where my heart is, so that’s where I reside.

How have you seen hip hop evolve in recent times, and what do you think the future holds for the genre?

In the ‘90s, hip hop really used to be about uplifting our people through the culture and the music that we're creating. From an artist perspective, now it seems like that message isn’t as important anymore. I didn't grow up listening to music that was created on a low vibration, so I’ve never really been drawn to a lot of what’s being put out today. Hip hop and rap are very much two different things these days because of all the sub genres that are involved.

As far the future goes, all of this AI stuff looks crazy. I’m not really used to it yet; it’s kind of funny but scary and dangerous at the same time. I just hope we can find a way to track things and pay artists better for their work. I feel like music isn’t as valued as it once was, or as much as it should be. Other than that, I'm still pushing hip hop culture the furthest that I can in this capsule that I remain in, because I don't ever really want to walk out of it. It's been a hill to climb for those folks that stand for the culture of hip hop, but it’s all about adjusting, and I've been learning how to adjust within this climate regardless of what's going on.

Tell us about your recent performance at Quad Studios in NYC.

A good friend of mine Dave Malekpour of Augspurger® Monitors asked me to play at Quad, and I was terrified. I'm always terrified when I perform. A lot of people don't believe that, but I am because I don't know how people are going to perceive my work. I grew up loving hip hop in the early ‘90s, and I haven't really shaped or changed my style to conform to what's going on in today's style.

So at Quad I just put on my track with no background vocals, and just tuned everybody out. I took it to a whole new level that night and it really put me in a different place with regards to where I can really take this thing, with the relationships I’ve been gaining and the people I’ve been meeting.

The end of 2023 has been crazy, and that just lets me know that the plateau is set high for 2024. I have some high octane, high energy performances coming up. Dave wants me to perform at NAMM, and I've never performed in L.A. before, so things are about to get real crazy. I'm just here for it and I feel blessed, for real.