With his first LP, a Coachella appearance and a documentary looming, the soulful artist opens his heart.
Blxst recorded some of his debut LP at the Red Bull Music Studio in Santa Monica. The highly anticipated album will drop this summer.
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There were songs and features and production credits and a mixtape and wild-ass club dates and delusional goals and brutal mistakes (and lessons) and big wins—but Blxst only well and truly blew up at the end of 2020. It had been a death march of a year, and in Southern California, where Matthew “Blxst” Burdette was born and raised, shit was still pretty much shut down. Kids who should have been getting up to hood hijinks or heading
to (canceled) Coachella were caregiving, or grieving, or unmasking at mansion parties. DJ D-Nice smoothed over some of our mangiest midnights with his Instagram Club Quarantine, but there was little outside of liquor (or whatever) to douse the parallel thirsts for community, and also silence, and a license, really, to kill anyone who sneezed near your face. We’ve blocked out those unmoored, unmourned, dog days of COVID, when Grand Theft Auto was played ’til the servers burst. When waxy daylight hours melted, one to the next. When, even with Zoom suppers and virtual sex, intimacy was stretched so thin, it vanished.
People were listening to Blxst, though, for that chill, two-step energy. For the melodic rapping and situationship sonnets. In Blxst’s universe, the narrator is usually leaving, returning, wanting too much, making excuses or delicious promises. The urgent, sensual, sexual asks—Can I pull up on you?—are vintage and viral-ready at the same time. And while musicality is always key, Blxst’s vocals are the moonlight, the cognac shot, the primal and post-pandemic perfect pitch. As producer and Blxst collaborator Ben10k says, “In the ’90s, there was a clear distinction between rap and R&B. But in this era, if you can’t hold a tune and you’re trying to make a rap record, you’re definitely at a disadvantage.” And if the work isn’t based in authenticity, and vulnerability, people will scroll past as fast as they swipe left.
“Love, to me,” Blxst told me in Santa Monica, just before Christmas, “is patience, and understanding. I wish I had a fancier way of saying it.” Maybe the new album he’s been working on is that fancier way. As songwriter, rapper, singer and producer, Blxst is a ruthless romantic of these tilted times. Yet his songs come from a personal, long-ago place. “It’s me understanding the child version of Matthew,” says Blxst. “Wanting to be heard. Wanting my opinion to matter.” He was the youngest. “I remember,” Blxst says with a small laugh, “my sisters and my cousins making fun of me. I just wanted to be accepted. That’s what kinda channels through my music, to where I’m so open and authentic and even ugly—so you have to see it within yourself.”
Blxst, 31, was photographed in downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica in February for The Red Bulletin.
“When you listen to my music, I want you to be a fan of yourself… not just a fan of me.”
Islam produced for Ice-T, bounced so hard that Kendrick Lamar, YG and Problem jumped on a remix. “That was all I needed,” Blxst told the Los Angeles Times in 2022. “It lit a fire.” For a while, Blxst was central in a crew called TIU Muzik. He did some producing and rapping, learned about branding and realized he was a pretty good videographer. He also realized it was time to put together his own thing. In 2015, he and two partners, Victor Burnett and Karl Fowlkes, launched Evgle. As Blxst often says, “The eagle is the highest-flying bird that doesn’t fly in flocks. I look at that as confidence.”
The kind of confidence he felt in 2017, when Blxst added a Rhodes keyboard to his repertoire. The kind of poise evident in songs like 2018’s “Can I,” featuring the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Eric Bellinger, and 2019’s “Savage,” with Nipsey Hussle collaborator Bino Rideaux. Blxst’s songs—so steeped in California lyricism, lowkey cynicism and love—stood out in an era of rap that included cool kids like Saweetie, Drakeo the Ruler and Roddy Ricch, as well as heavyweights like Tyler, the Creator, Mac Miller and Travis Scott. But by 2020, lockdown was upon us, and Blxst was suddenly on his own. “I got my first [solo] apartment in Inglewood,” he told me, “and I’d just be in there, making music.” He was working on his first EP. “Just me and my laptop,” he says. “And my interface and my RØDE microphone that I bought for $200.”
“The eagle is the highest-flying bird that doesn’t fly in flocks. I look at that as confidence.”
Pandemic emotions are alive in Blxst’s No Love Lost, the project he released that September 4, 2020. “Be Alone” is a prime example: You be paranoid / Hearin’ sirens again / I been tryna make time / I been movin’ statewide / Hope I’m on the safe side / Flyin’ in the wind. In “Forever Humble,” things are even more literal. We pandemic dealin’ / Me and Vic young bosses / Lessons ain’t losses. No Love Lost is music built in the shadow of lockdown alerts, curfews and the George Floyd uprisings. It soundtracks a span in which people were confused about what even to yearn for. Southern California was chockablock with drive-thru graduation parties, and drive-by baby showers, and Blxst’s own big moments were dampened as well. “This was around the time we got in conversation with Red Bull Records,” says Blxst. “Everything was over Zoom, my label meetings and everything. I was signing my contract at home, in my one-bedroom apartment.”
Tracks of All Time
“This song is something special to me because it speaks on the topic of loyalty, you know—just the test of love. Like, would you love me despite what I’m going through, and if I’m in a position to even be loved.”
50 Cent ft. Nate Dogg
“21 Questions” (2003)
Tupac Shakur
“Can’t C Me” (1996)
Pharrell Williams “Happy” (2013)
Erykah Badu
“Window Seat” (2010)
On December 4, 2020, Blxst released “Chosen,” featuring Tyga and Ty Dolla $ign, into this quagmire of isolation and emergency. It was a single, off the deluxe version of No Love Lost, and it hit, off the rip. Girl, you chosen / Fuck it up when you bust wide open / It’s an ocean / I’m just imposin’ / That you give it to me and just me only. There’s so much tangibility in that “ocean.” So much glorious La La Land. And the melody, grabbed from a hip-hop sample pack called Electric Soul/Guitar Loops and Riffs (by Treehouz), is pure allure. When team conversations had first begun about a deluxe version of the EP, Blxst knew what he wanted to do. “I was like ... I’ve been sitting on this verse, and this hook, for a minute. The EP kinda gave me that extra fire to be like, anything is possible.”
Blxst ran with it. “Didn’t second guess it,” he says. “It felt good from the jump. Felt tropical, like a good time. Which led me to the confidence of even sending it to somebody like Ty Dolla $ign. This was the first record we’ve ever done together.” He knew Ty through a mutual, the L.A. rapper and songwriter Glenda “Gizzle” Proby. “I was like, OK. Let me get over myself and see if he’ll rock with it.” Once released, the song was off and running. People, holed up in their homes, were performing their own rap features, playing the song’s melody on saxophones and creating their own choreography. TikTok and Instagram Reels were on fire. The song took on a life of its own.
By August 2022, it was not only a viral phenomenon but also certified platinum. It had soared to No. 1 at Rhythmic and Urban radio. It earned Blxst a feature on “Die Hard,” the third single from Kendrick Lamar’s 2022 Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers—which in turn earned him two Grammy nominations, for Best Melodic Rap Performance and Album of the Year. “Chosen” hit so big, Blxst could tour globally—from London to Frankfurt to Auckland and beyond—and became known for the fact that his shows stay lit. He’s playing Coachella this year.
The song changed Blxst’s life, and his family’s lives forever. “I feel like the pandemic was part of the reason why I got a good reception,” he told BET as the deluxe was being released. “People were able to sit down and actually listen to what I’m saying, to actually feel the words, instead of just vibing to the music.”
Blxst is a self-proclaimed fan of entertainment. “Maybe because I’m a Virgo like Michael Jackson, a Virgo like Beyoncé. I like to make people feel good. I like when people laugh. I like when people smile. I like when people feel emotion. And I like to be connected with those feelings.” Blxst is very serious about not “underestimating” the listener. “People want to be heard. People wanna be connected with, just like artists do. We all want to be loved and acknowledged at the end of the day. So I try to translate that on stage.”
And he’s firm on the idea that his generation has created a new wave. “When I say ‘we,’ I think of artists like Ty Dolla. Like Roddy Ricch, Young Thug, Rich Homie Quan. It’s just like, boundary breaking—we came up off of hip-hop. But also came up off of neo-soul and R&B. So naturally, that bleeds into the music I make—without even overthinking it.” And then he adds, “I feel like I was born for this moment.”
The ’92 “L.A. Riots” are among the most catastrophic civil disturbances in American history, and South L.A. has been in a slow-motion physical, economic and spiritual recovery that even in 2024 remains incomplete. South L.A. is where young Matthew lived with his parents and siblings until his mom and dad separated when he was in elementary school.
“Where we lived,” says Blxst, “was 75th Street and Central.” The area is home to a vibrant and very stopped-and-frisked community. Gang violence was decreasing around the beginning of Matthew’s tween years, but it was far from gone. The high school nearest his home was John C. Fremont. Its motto? The salty: Find a path or make one. Fremont was known for the kinds of fights that the Los Angeles Police Department responded to in riot formation. “My dad, he didn’t grow up in the gang life,” says Blxst. “And he’s from L.A. My mom, she’s from Oakland. So it was never a conversation, as far as gangs, in my household. It was like, Just go to school.” But the State of California had to file an injunction to shield Fremont students from the violence and intimidation of loitering gangs like the Swan Bloods and the Main Street Crips. And Matthew’s older siblings were in school there. In an upcoming documentary produced by Red Bull Media House, which paints the story of Matt’s whole life, his mother, Deanna, is factual when she says that sometimes, in South Central, there was no place to just “be.”
It takes a village, and Matthew’s grandparents lived in a “back house,” behind his parents. “They were Jehovah’s Witnesses,” he says, “so it was very strict. When I came home from school, it was like, OK. We got to go to meetings. We got to go door-to-door. But I [also] remember days where I was riding my bike with my friends and being places I knew I shouldn’t be.” When asked how he got through it, his answer is faith-based. “I was just protected,” he says, looking back. “By God. By the higher power. And I always had a level head on my shoulders.”
But then the sister closest to Matt in age was assaulted in the neighborhood. “Chanel was graduating junior high school,” says Deanna, “and for no reason, some girls ... jumped her on the last day of school. I was so mad. I was so pissed, because they ganged up on her and kicked her.” Deanna left work, got Chanel, went to the school, talked to the principal and the administrative staff. Deanna went to the police station to file a report. “Then I went to the ringleader’s house and talked to her people.” I mean, that’s definitely how Oakland does it, but even with all that proactivity, an alternate plan was put in motion.
In the spirit of the Fresh Prince’s mom saying, You’re moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air, Deanna sent young Matthew and Chanel to live with their father in Upland, a town in the Inland Empire, at the foot of the lush, snowy and always visible San Gabriel Mountains. Matt was in the sixth grade. Upland, while a far cry from swank Bel-Air, is nearly an hour and a world away from South L.A. About one tenth of the people, less chaotic public schools. Culture shock. Seclusion. Yet at the same time, more freedom. “It’s an isolated place ... where you can authentically just be you,” says Blxst. “You can be a weirdo. You can be a skater. You can be a rapper. You can be a junkie ... and nobody judges you. You are who you are.” Away from his old hood, Matthew, influenced by Billionaire Boys Club skater Terry Kennedy and some older cousins from Long Beach, moved from his bike to a skateboard. “People was wearing skinny jeans, and dying their hair,” he says. “It was Black community. So I took that to Inland. You know Inland—a lot of white people out there, so skating was just like, second nature.”
High school Matthew took skating seriously. Ollieing stair sets, riding handrails. “I was everywhere,” he says. “We’d skate the streets. I’d be at Upland Skatepark ... taking a train, just traveling to different parks.” As so often happens with skate kings—it’s all fun and games until someone is on concussion protocols, or sprains a wrist. For Matthew it was a broken ankle, and it set him on a course toward his destiny.
Cousins from the South Bay of L.A. visited Matt while he was sitting around with his foot up, and they brought a song they created. Matt was wowed. “I was like, ‘How’d y’all do this? Did y’all go to a studio?’ They were like, No. We just had a laptop. They had a Rock Band microphone from the video game. And they just made a song. So I was like, I gotta try that.”
Matt soon got on his father about going to pawn shops to find him a laptop and mic. But before he even recorded, Matt bought a notebook and started writing raps in it. His interest in words beyond school came from an uncle who consistently tasked him with looking up words in a dictionary. “Just seeing how different words can mean different things,” says Blxst. “The power of words, it’s always been crazy to me.”
Once his father got him a “dirt cheap” laptop, “I’d be in my room every day,” he says, “trying to figure it out.” Matt was basically at YouTube University majoring in FL Studio. “As soon as I heard my voice on a mic,” he says, “I fell in love. It didn’t feel like I had to ... what’s the right word? Overdo it. It just came naturally.”
He wasn’t the only one noticing. It was at a talent show that Deanna realized her son’s talent truly affected people. “Through high school, he was in plays and stuff, but this one time ... it was his turn to get on stage, and I noticed the whole crowd gave him attention and rushed to the stage.” She says he was 17 then. “Matthew is very clever with how he expresses himself. He’s relatable with what he says. People get it. That’s one of the things I admire, being a fan of Blxst. Not just loving my son, but as a fan of Blxst. That’s what I really admire about him.”
All of this was around the time MySpace was peaking as a huge yet intimate scene that dripped with the tastes and energy of kids finding their tribes. This was where Soulja Boy and his “Crank Dat” blew up. Lily Allen, too. Other MySpace fledglings included Nicki Minaj, Drake, Jhené Aiko, Metro Boomin, Arctic Monkeys and Kid Cudi. “It made me believe in myself to see that people from different parts of the world believed in me, too,” Blxst told Passion of the Weiss in October 2020. “When I would go to different girls’ pages that I liked, and they had my song on their page, I was like, Dang, I really must be somebody out here.” Media was transforming, music was shifting, and technology was rising, just as Matthew was discovering that he was an artist, and committing to the life.
Music is in the family’s DNA. Blxst’s grandmother, Deanna’s mom, was a singer. “A lot of opera and stuff,” says Deanna. “She had that range. Had a contract to sing in the ’60s. Music was my mom’s lifeline to everything. She sang in school, she sang in the choir, in church, she sang at home.” Even the manner in which Blxst creates has family precedent. “When my sister and I were growing up,” recalls Deanna, “Mom had a tape recorder, and we would tape ourselves singing, on the play/rewind kind of a tape recorder, and that was fun times. Music wasn’t just on-occasion—I don’t know why that is, it just is.”
Beyond the homemade tunes of her adult residence, Deanna was also the literal house DJ, and she had her favorites. “Gladys Knight & the Pips. Stevie Wonder is all up in there—Songs in the Key of Life is my jam. Michael Jackson.” But then in the ’90s, when Matthew was born, she was very much influenced by the neo-soul movement. “Jill Scott, Erykah Badu ... and oh, Mary J. Blige.” Deanna played Snoop Dogg as well, and Dr. Dre.Matt remembers those artists being played, as well as Prince, Donell Jones—and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, perhaps the most undercelebrated pioneers of melodic rap. He really loved the idea of rap—and melody. “I used to be a big fan of how DJ Quik would link with Tony! Toni! Toné! I was just a fan of where hip- hop met music on that level ... the musicality, the instrumentation. Like a Raphael Saadiq, people who actually play instruments.” Blxst says that his dad, similar to his mom, always had his radio on. “He’s a huge fan of Nate Dogg, Ice Cube—a lot of West Coast stuff ... that’s always been in West Coast music, the instrumentation.”
It’s this kind of energy that Blxst was creating in that Inglewood apartment, when the pando was on turbo. “When I approach music,” he says, “a lot of it starts with just the melody. The lyrics come in afterwards. But I keep the melody as the driving force.” Perhaps he feels it, flowing in his veins.
producer Ben10k (DaBaby, G-Eazy, Rico Nasty, Leyla Blue). It could have something to do with Blxst’s own Oakland roots (he understands hyphy, gets Messy Marv, and the late Young Curt), but they vibed in other ways. “Blxst and I have been in dialogue for a while,” Ben told me in January. “He was a fan of some work I did with Joony, and with Brent Faiyaz.” When Blxst flew a bunch of producers to Utah to make magic happen, Ben10k got the call.
Blxst’s team found a big ol’ Airbnb and pulled together a workspace. “It was like a theater room,” says Blxst. “And we pretty much just set up a mic. It felt like a home studio. I love recording at home. That’s the environment I feel most authentic in. We called it the Evgle Camp.” Utah’s landscape reminded Blxst of Upland’s inspiring, mountainous energy. Plus, it was just away from everything, and a place where people could actually work together, and not just send each other beats via text.
Ben10k feels like the in-person thing—in a post-COVID world, and in an era ever more wary of technology’s impact—is back, and that music will be better for it. “People are going back in the studio,” says Ben. “I’m not against sending beats, but the best music is made in-studio.” Ben is about the “sonic trust” they built at Evgle Camp. “It enabled us to go places we would never be able to go if I was just a name on a beat-pak.”
As for Blxst, he was in the mood to expand creatively. “I’m not Stevie Wonder or nothing,” he says with a laugh. Blxst is being modest about playing the keyboards, which he does by ear. “But I get the job done.” When Blxst describes his debut album, he’s rhapsodic about the lush instrumentation—strings, trumpet, flute, live drums—therein. “This is the album I dreamt of as a kid. Like, When I get enough money, I’mma bring in every element.”
One of the songs he’s loving most on the new album is about self-reflection. “About how fast the industry is, and how I got caught up in it,” he explains. “And how you’ve got to understand the role you’re playing. You’ve got to understand the value you hold in the relationships you’re in.”
There’s that nitty-gritty part of the music universe, but Blxst is self-aware about the rare and magical part of making a great living making art. “I’m living a dream,” Blxst says. “My family has literally supported me to the point where I’ve never had a job in my life. It’s literally been [just] music ... I’m living in my purpose. Before, it was like, Is this what I love? Am I doing it? Then I was like, This—it’s destined.” Blxst feels he’s doing exactly what his ancestors (DNA says majority-Cameroonian, by the way) knew he would be doing: making music that brings joy and inspires creativity and camaraderie at a time when, for better and worse, old ideas of love and partnership are being punctured. When every day, pandemics of worry, discontent, anger and nihilism can overshadow the most commonplace moments of romance and celebration.
“It’s like I’m wearing a cape,” Blxst says. “I know I got to go fight this ... monster or whatever. But I’m equipped with the tools to overcome this battle.” His current energy is less, say, one-person-in-an-apartment-recording, and more glowy with collaborative spirit and wide-open spaces. “It’s no boundaries on the album, musically. I went above and beyond on the production side. So when it comes to the lyrics, I had to match that.” You gotta love the next-level progression. Especially since the artist born Matthew Burdette is definitely still Blxst: “You can also,” he says happily, “dance to it.”
“I like when people feel emotion. I like to be connected with those feelings.”
Matthew Dean Burdette was born in South Los Angeles on September 17, 1992, five months after a jury acquitted four LAPD officers charged with beating Rodney King. These acquittals led to uprisings in which more than 50 people died, 2,300+ were injured and more than 1,100 buildings were damaged. South Los Angeles smelled like burning edifices for what seemed like years after.
“That one is like my alter ego. I think Tupac is like my spirit animal, and he speaks from an unapologetic place. You know, just raw, authentic, and sometimes that’s how I feel inside.”
“That’s a great song. I don’t know anybody who hates this song, you know? It just puts you in a good mood, instantly. It’s an automatic pick-upper. Pharrell’s one of my favorite producers and songwriters of all time, and I think it’s one of the greatest songs to be a soundtrack in a movie.”
“You know, I’ve got a big fear of flying, too, so that song gets me through. I love neo-soul. And I love
Rhodes keyboard—that’s my favorite instrument. When
I’m on a plane and
there’s turbulence, Erykah Badu is like
my therapist.”
50 Cent ft. Nate Dogg
“21 Questions” (2003)
Tupac Shakur
“Can’t C Me” (1996)
Pharrell Williams “Happy” (2013)
Erykah Badu
“Window Seat” (2010)
“By God. By the higher power. And I always had a level head on my shoulders.”
“The power of words, it’s always been crazy to me.”
“We’d wake up in the morning with music,” says Blxst’s mother, Deanna. “I want people to wake up to a good spirit. The radio was on.”
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2024
Sat,
APR 13
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2024
Sat,
APR 20
Nashville Municipal Auditorium
Fri,
JUN 14
Indio, CA
Indio, CA
Nashville TN
Tour dates
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2024
Sat,
APR 13
Indio, CA
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2024
Sat,
APR 20
Indio, CA
Nashville Municipal Auditorium
Fri,
JUN 14
Nashville TN
Tour dates
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2024
Sat,
APR 13
Indio, CA
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2024
Sat,
APR 13
Indio, CA
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2024
Sat,
APR 20
Indio, CA
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2024
Sat,
APR 20
Indio, CA
Nashville Municipal Auditorium
Fri,
JUN 14
Nashville TN
Nashville Municipal Auditorium
Fri,
JUN 14
Nashville TN
For his debut LP, which is slated to drop this summer, Blxst worked a lot with Bay Area–born, L.A.-based
Without question, young Matthew grew up in a musical household. Even with his otherwise strict upbringing, Matt-Matt (as his family will sometimes still call him) was not that kid who had to listen to rap, or any music, in secret. “From a very young age, Matt’s always been interested in music,”
says Deanna. “Music was just part of our fabric at home, naturally.” Deanna has been living in Los Angeles a long time, but her voice still has that Oakland lilt. Matt is her youngest child, and she says right off the top that though he was the apple of his sisters’ eyes, Matt was not an overly babied baby of the family. “We made songs ... I’m just talking about me and him in the kitchen cooking. What are you cooking? A song would be made up about whatever dinner was going to be.”
The Blxst movement officially took off in 2014, when he produced Hitta J3’s “Do Yo Gudda.” The song’s sound, which flashed back to Too $hort’s 75 Girls era and the stuff Afrika
WORDS BY DANYEL SMITHPHOTOS BY THE TYLER TWINS, KATHERINE AND MARIEL TYLER
50 Cent ft. Nate Dogg
“21 Questions” (2003)
Tupac Shakur
“Can’t C Me” (1996)
Pharrell Williams “Happy” (2013)
Erykah Badu
“Window Seat” (2010)