Roddy Ricch Opens Up About New Album, Lessons From Kanye West

Roddy Ricch is in album mode.

As he gears up for his next project, the Grammy-winning rapper graces the digital cover of Complex. In the interview, he opens up about the long-awaited follow-up to his 2019 debut Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial.

“With my next project, I’m going to be more vulnerable,” he said. “I’m going to bring fans into my world more. I’m learning the balance. Like, OK, I’m not on Instagram, so I feel like I’ve got to bring them into my life more so they can feel me a little more.”

In February, the reclusive rapper hinted that his next release would be Feed Tha Streets 3, the third installment in his acclaimed Feed Tha Streets series that started in 2017.

“Coming off one of the biggest albums I could’ve done, I feel like taking them back to the basics with me,” he explained. “There’s all the old fans I had when I first started rapping, and these new fans that I got since the big album and Grammys and everything. So I want to bridge the gap between my old fans and my new fans. That’s what I’m on a mission to do with this next situation that I’m working on.”

When pressed for details, he added, “I feel like when the streets is hungry, you just feed them.”

Roddy gave fans a taste of new music during his Grammy performance earlier this month, where he debuted his new song “Heartless (Live From L.A.).”

“I feel like nobody does it like me,” he told Complex. “A lot of n****s talk that shit, but I just do it different. I do everything that everybody’s talking about. I just don’t show it. I don’t have to. I take trips, I buy this, I do that. There are certain things I have experienced that n****s don’t know, but I just don’t show it. It’s just not my personality.”

Fans have also noticed that Roddy has been less active on social media. “I unfollowed everybody, just to get off the internet,” he said. “I unfollowed my closest homies. I be with them all the time, so it ain’t like I don’t see their life.”

Elsewhere in the interview, the 22-year-old MC shared lessons learned from his inspiring meeting with Kanye West.

“I pulled up on him in Calabasas,” recalled Roddy. “He showed me there’s more to life than just music. He taught me [about] really building empires. You’ve got clothes, or you’ve got a drink, or you’ve got this or that, and it’s all attached to you. He was building things that don’t got nothing to do with music, with different rooms having different ideas. Even building up a community or a civilization that can start and become something else. That’s a crazy thing to do. Just growing your own produce, and all these different things… It opened my mind.”

When asked his favorite album, he named Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. “Mainly because of everything he put into the album. Just having all the different types of elements to it, and making it one body of work, that’s commendable,” he said.