It’s a trick Cordae has performed a hundred times, but it never gets old.
From the stage, the 25-year-old, Grammy-nominated rapper directs the crowd like a master conductor. Raising his hand, he wordlessly instructs the audience to get louder; lowering it, he turns down the volume. He dances mischievously across the stage, bouncing his hand up and down as the crowd enthusiastically follows his every move. Here’s the maestro at work.
Backstage, Cordae gushes about how much he loves pulling this trick, his eyes still sparkling with that same sense of youthful mischief, even though his words sound like a weathered veteran waxing nostalgic. “I just like performing, bro,” he says. “I just love being on stage. I'm really an MC in every sense of the word. Not on no braggadocio. MC is master of ceremonies so I know how to control a crowd or I'm learning how to at the highest level. And I'm trying to get better at it, no matter whether it's 500 or 50,000.”
Tonight’s crowd is on the lower end of that spectrum. We’re at Inner-City Arts in Los Angeles, a learning center that provides arts education for over 10,000 at-risk youth from LA public schools each year. This event is a summer fundraiser for the upcoming year ahead, a private event for donors and patrons of the arts to extend their support for the program, which offers a diverse array of classes in disciplines ranging from sculpture to performing arts. Some of the students’ pieces are on display, while food trucks line a small makeshift patio.
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EDITION 18
OCTOBER 2022
OCTOBER 4 2022
BY: AARON WILLIAMS
Cordae is one of two acts that has been booked to provide the evening’s entertainment and runs through a set list including festival favorites like “Broke As Fuck” and “R.N.P.,” thoughtful slow burners like “Bad Idea” and “C Carter,” and the soulful ballad “Chronicles.” While these tracks rightfully wake up crowds at festivals like Dreamville, Coachella, and Summerfest, Cordae has to work to win over this artsy audience. While he freely admits that the crowd is not the usual demographic for which he’s used to performing, by the end of his set he has them eating out of the palm of his hand.
I’ve seen him do this in numerous venues over the years, since he first captured my attention in 2018 with his viral single, “Rich N****s.” In the time since, I tell him that I’ve made it a point to see him at every available opportunity, whether it’s at Rolling Loud or on Cordae’s own tours in support of his critically-acclaimed albums. He has yet to disappoint.
Even his banter tonight endears him to a crowd that might ordinarily have never engaged with his music – at one point, he jokes that he’s going to give a girl in the crowd a gift via CashApp, a promise he’s careful to follow up on with his team backstage. It’s also important to note that this sincerity is another one of the elements that first drew me to the 25-year-old, along with his “old soul,” as the elders might put it. Where many of his peers – and even his seniors – often struggle with engaging a crowd, Cordae never shies away from a potential touchstone moment.
"I just love being on stage. I'm really an MC in every sense of the word."
He explains how he has managed this feat, night after night, since he first rose to prominence in 2018 as part of the YBN collective before striking out on his own ahead of the release of his debut album, The Lost Boy, in 2019. “You're performing at some festivals, especially when you super early on, you're going to get a lot of fucking Sponge-Bob meme,” he chuckles. “Where everybody is looking at you and shit like a bunch of fish. So, if they don't know you or your music, they're not going to be turned up for you. You gotta find ways to go above and beyond and make sure they're in a daze.”
This ability and commitment to craft has paid off since those early days with the YBN crew. In less than five years, Cordae has risen from relative obscurity to becoming a fixture on the festival circuit, enjoying two headlining tours for each of his two critically-beloved albums. The first of those records, The Lost Boy, was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards in 2020, opening the door to collaborations with the likes of musical legend Stevie Wonder, hip-hop icon Q-Tip, and personal heroes Eminem and Nas.
Even folks outside of the hip-hop world know Cordae’s face and name, thanks to his relationship with international tennis star Naomi Osaka. Putting in appearances at her tournament matches to support her, he’s quickly becoming recognizable across generations. He's as readily appealing to “aunties and uncles” that make up the ICA fundraiser crowd as he is his own peer group. It’s a duality that I noted back in 2018 when I first predicted that he would become every generation’s favorite rapper. He’s well on his way to fulfilling that prophecy, walking a tightrope between tradition and trailblazing, critical acclaim and mass appeal, corporate and cool.
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Cordae first began this delicate balancing act even before he found his way into the spotlight four years ago as a member of the YBN crew. Born Cordae Amari Dunston in Raleigh, North Carolina, he was raised in Suitland, Maryland, crafting his own mixtapes before joining YBN at the behest of YBN Nahmir. Even as he toured with Nahmir and YBN Almighty Jay as a collective throughout the summer of 2018 and appeared on the group’s debut full-length release YBN: The Mixtape, it was clear that he stood on his own as a solo artist as well.
Thanks to his viral freestyles over Eminem’s “My Name Is…” and J. Cole’s “1985” and his own thunderous single “Scottie Pippen,” YBN Cordae quickly began to make waves. This was largely thanks to his gift for balancing technical, multisyllabic wordplay with catchy, SoundCloud-friendly beats that allowed him to share stages with the likes of the late Juice WRLD while still building credibility with rap purists. It was his J. Cole freestyle, aptly renamed “Old N****s,” that best exemplified his mindset and the dualism that has come to define not just his music but also his career as a whole.
A sharply-worded but non-combative response to J. Cole’s finger-wagging closer from K.O.D., “Old N****s” flips Cole’s nostalgic beat to refute his accusations against younger generations. “These supposed to be our heroes? Negro, please,” he taunts. “Old n****s unreliable like D-Rose knees.” By pointing out the positives and negatives on both sides of the hip-hop generation gap, Cordae became a bridge. Fittingly, Cole himself did this as well with his own return single “Middle Child” in 2019, seemingly getting the hint that the bridge would be a better tool to ensure hip-hop’s evolution and survival than a fence.
Duality is a subject that keeps coming up as we talk about not just Cordae’s music but his life – the idea that for every light, there must be a shadow. You can seek to only put out positivity and still get negativity back. Even in Cordae’s intentional approach to music, he says, “Being too intentional is unauthentic.”
“My intentions are good. And I always have the intention to be a light in the world. But then also, I just got to speak freely. That's what I mean. Like the new music I'm working on; I'm just here to be honest and transparent. If you love it, that's great. If you don't, kick rocks.”
Cordae says he doesn’t mind the criticism because he never sees it. He shows me his app list, noting the absence of Instagram and Twitter. “I'll download it a couple times a week so I'm tapped in,” he allows. “But that shit ain't on my phone, bro, I can't do it. I try to act like whatever, just oblivious. I just like to live as a human being, and maybe I'm just not that famous to where it bothers me, truth be told.” This is, again, a contrast to some of his contemporaries, who can’t seem to help getting into spats with caustic fans on Twitter. And while that sort of controversy does help artists climb into the spotlight quicker, it also burns them out. Cordae has yet to make a dramatic pronouncement of his impending retirement on social media – another unfortunate habit of the chronically online. But if he ever does, he’s the type to actually follow through.
Another example of his intentionality: earlier this year, Cordae became the first rapper to do a TED Talk. Like everything else in his career, it was something he carefully considered before jumping in headfirst. “I just wrote it down,” he muses. “It was at the beginning of the year, I just wrote it down, sent it to my managers. I'm like, ‘Yo, this the things I want to do.’ Honestly, I was just shooting in the dark. They was like, ‘Yeah, they excited about it. They really want to have it. They actually reached out to you, funny enough.’ I said, ‘Do you think it's too early in my career to do a TED talk? Should we just do it later?’ They're like, ‘Nah, you just gotta do it.’ I had the best speech that whole day, by far.”
I'm just here to be honest and transparent. If you love it, that's great. If you don't, kick rocks.”
“The point I'm making is it'll be people that will judge or making an opinion about my music and A, you don't know this environment, or B, never took the time to even listen to what I'm really saying on the album,” he says. “That happens far too many times. You wish people would really listen, but I don't even blame them because there's so much music coming out.” Does he feel as though he’s gotten overlooked or lost in the furor?
“Yes,” he agrees. “I don't think a lot of people don't know that me, Cole, and Pharrell opened for Jay-Z. We did a whole college tour... A lot of people don't know I opened for Jay before that, even in Europe… A lot of people don't know I opened for Rihanna in Europe. Because there was no Snapchat. I wasn't walking around with a cameraman for YouTube all day. It was a weird time… We got a little bit of the Mandela effect going on in this generation.” However, he says, “I might just try to do the best I can because there'll be a time when it will all connect and everybody is going to put everything together and then it'll all makes sense to some people that it might not make sense to. I would not be lying to say it wasn't frustrating, but ain't nothing to do about it but just keep pushing. It’ll be on Folarin II, where I wrote these subtle reminders all throughout the album.”
When I ask him how this album will be different from the 2012 Folarin mixtape, which featured appearances from 2 Chainz, Chinx Drugz, French Montana, Nipsey Hussle, Rick Ross, and Scarface, among others, Wale compares the project to Jay-Z’s career-defining 2001 release, calling it a “Blueprint” record. “I feel like the process on this one was pretty much, as soon as I got into the mode, it just started feeling like, ‘You know what? Where I am, how I feel, how I know who I am, regardless of what anybody's talking about,’ it started just speaking to me more. I was like, ‘This is Folarin II.’ Folarin is when I started really coming into my own. I really was in that space. I was just singing with my chest. I think that's what's happening now.”
“It's a space that I was in, this bubble,” he continues. “Some days I felt like telling the stories and some days I felt like talking about things going on back home. Some days I felt like talking about shit. The next day I felt like talking about shit. Then the next day I felt like talking about shit. Then the next day I want to do something else. It was just a moment in time, this bubble of where I'm at…. I made sure I spelled it out, it's more grandiose. I think all of them have a different thing, man. Folarin II is its own thing, but it's just the same intentions and the same feeling that I had when I made Folarin 1.”
Cordae’s willingness to follow through on his goals has not only led to his career flourishing but also put him in the spotlight for his activism. In the summer of 2020, he was arrested for protesting outside the home of the Kentucky Attorney General, Daniel Cameron, in the wake of the police shooting of Louisville resident Breonna Taylor during a raid on the wrong apartment. While a felony trespassing charge was eventually dropped, he says it still comes up when he travels, as customs agents often question the mark on his record.
Recalling the arrest, he plays it cool but the pride seeps through his voice. “It was cool until I was in there for more than 24 hours. I just knew I was going to be in and out in a couple of hours. I'm like, ‘Okay, I got lawyers.’ When it's like 2:00 AM, I'm like, ‘I'm gonna spend the night in this bitch. Oh, this is ass. This is actually ass.’ But, it's something I'm proud of to this day. It's crazy. That's something I think I'm going to be able to tell my kids like, ‘Yo, man, I went to jail about this shit, n****.’” Again, we relate through a pop culture reference; he recalls an episode of the satirical cartoon show The Boondocks in which the main characters’ grandfather, Robert Freeman, remembers being arrested alongside Rosa Parks on that historical day, but gripes that only she is honored for it. “I ain't no Rosa Parks, but I say that to say it's something I'll always be able to be proud of,” he emphasizes. “ I always make jokes with my friends like, ‘N****, I did real time.’”
There’s a parallel to be drawn here as we sit backstage at a show aimed at supporting the arts, another arm of Cordae’s growing record of philanthropy and activism (previously, he donated the proceeds from a collaboration with original “conscious” rapper Common to benefit Historically Black Colleges and Universities). When I point it out, he’s typically playful, then serious. “Well, I could use some good karma, so it was for purely selfish reasons,” he grins. “ICA reached out and wanted us to do it, and then they had us come to the campus and I was like, ‘Okay, yeah.’ It's a dope campus, this is a dope thing what they're doing, giving students an opportunity to learn about creative arts.” He notes there was no such program for kids back home in Suitland. Instead, he says, he played trumpet in band class – something he “wasn’t good” at.
In saying so, he sounds wise beyond his years, but still full of youthful optimism that can’t help but rub off on everyone in his immediate vicinity. It’s no wonder he has the ear of aged soul legends like Stevie Wonder but the audacity to joke about misleading Stevie about being in the studio on a late-night video call.
Oddly enough, it’s toward the end of the interview that the conversation crystallizes and sums up his dualistic persona. When I ask if there’s anything he wants to talk about that no one ever asks, he enthuses about a movie almost as old as he is, 2006 stoner comedy Grandma’s Boy. I joke that I was almost his age when it came out and it’d probably be considered wildly problematic if it came out today.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Times have changed… But, its gags hold up.” There goes that duality again. The more things change, the more they stay the same. But even behind that, there’s one reason movies, music, movements resonate across generations. I wonder about what surprises Cordae’s next project holds. “I wouldn't compare it to anything, but it's going to be vulnerable, bro,” he promises. “Honestly, you're never gonna lose with that.”
“Being too intentional is unauthentic.”
CORDAE is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
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This feels like the result of that careful consideration with which Cordae regards his work; ask him, and he’ll tell you that he considers the album a cut above its predecessor. “From the standpoints of pure songwriting, skilled penmanship, structure of the album, cohesiveness, theme, and staying on topic and all that, it's a better album,” he asserts. “My lyricism is better, my songwriting is better. The sequencing of the album is better. The transitions are better. So on paper, crossing all the dots, I think From A Bird's Eye View is better.”
But, contrary to his detractors’ view that he takes himself too seriously, he’s just as capable of taking the piss out of his own hard work, as well. In July, Cordae tweeted, “l just drove on a lil 4 hour road trip and listened to both my albums front to back. And fuck I must say it's most definitely The Lost Boy > FABEV lmaooo. My bad y'all. Ima do better next time. I got sumn to prove.” He’s since deleted the tweet, but I ask him about it anyway. “I'm going to tell you, honestly that tweet was premature because I realized, too, that From A Bird's Eye View just came out,” he admits. ”I just listened to all of them songs hundreds and hundreds of times whereas Lost Boy, I haven't heard it in three years. So that's all that was, honestly. That was bullshit. But I felt it and I was like, ‘Yo, it was true to me.’"
He looked on the bright side back then, though, following that tweet with a joking encouragement to “keep streaming ‘Chronicles,’” the album’s standout, throwback R&B-influenced single featuring H.E.R. and Lil Durk. It’s the one song that’s universally beloved, the analog to The Lost Boy’s “RNP” with Anderson .Paak. (I firmly believe that if he’d led the album’s rollout with this single instead of the wordier “Sinister,” its reception would have been entirely different). It’s also the song that best displays both his artistic growth and most clearly reflects the elements that first garnered him an audience among more thoughtful hip-hop heads, tying the nostalgic threads of tracks like “Thanksgiving” and “Bad Idea” together with a more contemporary vein of melodic rap delivery and soulful interpolations.
“I'm just here to be honest and transparent. If you love it, that's great. If you don't, kick rocks.”
"You gotta find ways to go
above and beyond and make
sure they're in a daze.”
BRIDGING THE
GAP
"I just love being on stage. I'm really an MC in every sense of the word."
“Being too intentional is
unauthentic.”
The song also endeared Cordae to his millennial elders – it didn’t hurt that he name-checked Mos Def and Talib Kweli, arguably the godfathers of the rap traditionalism movement for rap heads in their 30s. He’s gotten advice from older contemporaries such as Cole, Chance The Rapper, and Anderson .Paak and seems genuinely proud of being able to appeal to both age groups. Cordae nods, “But when it’s somebody that you respect and you admire their work, that feels good to you. It's always dope to be recognized by your peers and the OGs.”
Earlier this year, he released the follow-up to The Lost Boy, From A Bird’s Eye View, taking another step into the spotlight – and potentially experiencing his first stumble. Although the second album avoided the so-called sophomore slump by charting just outside the Billboard 200’s top 10, the critics were split. While some considered it a resounding success, others gave middling reviews, arguing that the album is too safe and cerebral for its own good. Many fans echoed this sentiment; although the enthusiasm among Cordae’s live audiences hasn’t dampened, some Twitter reactions suggest that while the album is more cohesive, it doesn’t meet the engaging highs of his debut. The album eschews rambunctious high-energy barn burners like “Have Mercy” and “Broke As Fuck” for more heady displays of lyrical virtuosity on tracks like “Sinister” and “Super.”
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