Before Roddy Ricch had a Billboard Hot 100 hit, three Grammy Award nominations and a chart-topping album, he was a member of the Park Village Compton Crips. Street life had caught up to him by the time he was in his late teens and he wound up in jail.
But since then, Roddy Ricch has exploded in popularity. His smash single, “The BOX,” spent 11 weeks atop the Hot 100 while his debut album, Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial, landed at No. 1 on the Billboard 20o upon its 2019 release. Over two years later, Roddy has returned with his sophomore album, Live Life Fast, which finds the typically elusive rapper momentarily letting his guard down.
On the song “crash the party,” Roddy Ricch admits he once contemplated suicide but says music wound up being his savior. Toward the end of the track, the music stops for about 60 seconds as Roddy makes his confession.
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“I was walkin’ through Compton one night at like— ahem like 2 a.m. in the morning,” he explains. “I just left my girl house, I found out she was on some bullshit, you know what I’m sayin’? And I walked past the 91, I was walkin’ all the way down Central, past the graveyard and shit. I had made a l— a right on Alondra, um, walked up by the side of the airport and I passed the hood, you know what I’m sayin’, and I went all the way to The Cedars.
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“I had pulled up on my DJ at the time and he was just tellin’ me keep my head up and shit like that. Shit was crazy, you know? I felt like I wanted to die, I felt like I ain’t even wanna be no more ’cause I just— I ain’t have shit at the time, you know what I’m sayin’? And music was all I really had, so you know just from goin’ to jail and fucking around in the streets, I knew it wasn’t shit, so I had to just, keep my head up, keep goin’, get focused, grind that shit out, you know what I’m sayin’?”
Unlike many of Roddy Ricch’s peers, he’s kept his personal business of the internet for the most part. In a March interview with Complex,he proudly proclaimed, “I ain’t never been no internet n-gga.” He added, “Sometimes I want to tell people things, but I’m not the type of person to just talk into a camera. So I’ll say things, and it’ll almost be like a poem that I can share with people. It may never come out, but I’m just expressing myself. I don’t talk to people through a phone. You’ve always known me to communicate through music, so why should I have to communicate through a live video with you?”
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For now, the 23-year-old will have to hop in the spotlight as he promotes the new album. Check it out above.
