Modern rap stardom can be both musical and extramusical. Offset, who came to fame as a member of the superstar Atlanta rap trio Migos, alongside Quavo and Takeoff, has had a heavy dose of each.
Born Kiari Cephus, Offset, 34, was one of the artists who remade the sound of hip-hop at the dawn of streaming in the 2010s, helping cement Atlanta as a center of rap innovation and success. Following the group’s early hits like “Versace” and “Fight Night,” which established their trademark flow through percussive repetition, Offset differentiated himself by writing the hook for “Bad and Boujee,” one of the decade’s defining rap songs and an unlikely Billboard No. 1.
But he was also the Migos member with the most fraught personal life: As the trio celebrated early triumphs, he was in and out of jail, facing a tangle of charges stemming from a youthful conviction for burglary.
Over the last few years, Offset has become as visible for his personal foibles and setbacks as his musicmaking. His marriage to, and split from, Cardi B provided years of tabloid fodder, making him a regular and reliable villain of the social internet. Earlier this year, he was shot outside a Florida casino. And he’s still living under the long shadow cast by the 2022 fatal shooting of Takeoff — a close friend from adolescence whom he continues to refer to as a brother — which occurred while Offset was suing Migos’s label and estranged from the group.
“GMFU,” his fourth solo album, out Friday, feels like a shaking loose of those cobwebs. For the most part, it’s a shift away from the introspection of last year’s “Kiari,” which captured Offset wrestling with his various personal stresses in direct fashion.
“People don’t want tragedy after tragedy — you won’t watch the same movie three times in a row,” Offset said on Popcast, the New York Times pop culture show. “When I’m saying ‘GMFU,’ it’s saying, like, your perspective about me is wrong, homie.” The album features two appearances by Quavo, a reunion that began on his own solo album last month, as well as features from the rising hip-hop star Don Toliver and Gunna, another resilient Atlanta rap survivor.
“How do I change the narrative?” Offset added. “I want to focus on this music.”
In conversation with the Popcast hosts Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, Offset spoke with a rare vulnerability about undermining his own ambitions with misbehavior, remaining steadfast in the face of personal tragedies and how he continues to rely on his mother to set him straight.
JOE COSCARELLI Let’s start with the title track, “GMFU.” This is the place you put years of angst, everything you’ve been through recently — Takeoff’s death, your own shooting, your marriage collapsing. What was your mind-set going into recording a clearing-the-air song, and how does it differ from the mind-set that you’re in now?
OFFSET I got lost. I went through so many hits, and I feel like it became a blur to what my passion is, which is music, you know? The personal takes went so far on things that have happened in my life that I’ve taken full accountability of before, and it’s like, sometimes I can’t escape the matrix of this narrative. And so when I made this album, I got in a bag where I was like, you know what, I’m going to just focus on this music. I don’t really hear all the noise. I am a great person. I know this. I have Black women around me that know I’m a great man at the end of the day: my mother, my creative director-slash-manager. And I got children that I look out for, that I’m a great father to. And sometimes other things blur that, and it bothers me.
Because you got to understand, when I first started, I was the knucklehead in the group. I was going to jail. I ain’t been to jail in over 10 years. I straightened that, and it was so hard to stray from that to become a professional. And to grow up. My music is my pulse, my heart. That’s all I have. And so I wasn’t treating it that way, because of all the other things that was happening. I went into the dark space, gambling. When I gambled, it’s just like, OK, this is just about this — I don’t have to see no tabloids or worry about somebody saying something about me. It blinds you as if it’s not an issue, and it really is an issue.
COSCARELLI This villain narrative out there — is it because of your personal life?
OFFSET Yeah, it’s the past relationship. What’s so crazy is we good — me and her good. It was a patch of time that happened. We have children. We see the bigger thing. Me and her cool. But it’s more the people, you know what I’m saying, more than what’s actually happened in real life. Like, I have no issues with my ex. I salute everything that she’s doing.
JON CARAMANICA But that doesn’t travel as well on the internet as when you’re not good. People are obviously going to amplify the negative. Are you trying to be proactive to demonstrate that things are good now?
OFFSET Nah, because I’m very considerate of her, too. That don’t need to happen. As long as I’m good with her and she’s good with me and our kids good. It’s not a show. I might take the hit from not showing it, but I respect her privacy, what she got going on in her world. It’s two different worlds now. I would never want to conjoin that and put her in discomfort — sometimes it’s the people or the fans that’s making it more discomfort than anything.
CARAMANICA Do you think that the things that people get frustrated with or talk about online — your villain narrative — are the same things that you experienced as you were lost, or is it two totally separate things?
OFFSET Uhhhh, they go together, ’cause I was doing lost [expletive], publicly. So it’s kind of on me. It’s not kind of — it’s on me.
COSCARELLI Was there any side of you that was like, you know what, they have a point?
OFFSET A million percent. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
CARAMANICA Was that hard to look at — like, these are strangers on the internet, and they can see that I’m not doing right?
OFFSET It wasn’t so tough when you’ve got a strong mama who’s going to tell you what it is.
Sometimes it takes for somebody at home to shake you up, like, hey, what you doing? And then I can sometimes see the hurt in my mama. And that burns my soul, bro. Burns my soul. I’ve been trying to change for my family’s sake, and then sometimes it don’t go nowhere. I don’t know what to do a lot of times, but I do have to acknowledge that I brought all this [expletive] on myself. I went through dark times.
COSCARELLI Your marriage is imploding.
OFFSET My brother died.
COSCARELLI Takeoff died, of course, in this same stretch. And then you have this incident at a casino. You got shot. There’s these photos of you in the hospital — you’re smoking a cigarette in a wheelchair, and your mom is with you. She looks like she’s —
OFFSET She’s getting on my ass. She ain’t playing, because I broke my mama’s heart, bro. I ain’t never seen my mama like that.
COSCARELLI Even with all you’ve been through?
OFFSET All I’ve been through, that was a different moment. Like, my mama eyes — like, her baby boy. You know, when I got hit, I called my mama, so she wouldn’t hear it from the street. You know, “I’m good, I just got to go to the hospital” — hung up. Actually, my phone died, which was worse. She flew in so fast. When I was outside, I’m talking to her — really, I wanted to get up out of there — but she gave it to me: You being a coward to your kids by making choices like this that’s affecting everybody. You could be dead. You know, she gave me the talk. You the savior to the family. What you doing? But it wasn’t that nice, you know what I mean? It wasn’t nice. My mama hold me accountable. She’s worried, but it was more like, you need discipline.
COSCARELLI How do you start to build yourself back up?
OFFSET When I was saying lost, I was not moving as Offset, because I didn’t want to be Offset at one point. Because it was just too much. It’s like, working hard to become an artist, and then your relationship smokes that whole [expletive]. And I ain’t playing no victim, though. I don’t want to play no victim. I don’t want people to see this and be like, are you playing a victim? I’m just saying, I’m tired of that.
COSCARELLI What did you have to change lifestyle-wise, post-shooting, to make sure you could be Offset again?
OFFSET At that time, I wasn’t even recording. I was literally trying to get away from folks. I wasn’t trying to go to no club, no strip club. I just was sitting around. I just want to be Kiari. I was trying to get back to the person, to be present. Because the opposite person ain’t working.
COSCARELLI Do you feel like you have a problem with gambling?
OFFSET I don’t know. I’m going to be a million percent real with y’all. I like to gamble, right? I feel like I need to stop. I need to stop. But I feel like a problem is when you, like, selling [expletive], you ain’t got the money to do it. I’m doing this [expletive] to get away. And I do like to gamble, to be honest. A lot of plays I get, you think I’m gambling, and I’ve been paid a lot of money to maybe promote it.
CARAMANICA Like from gambling platforms?
OFFSET Yeah, so I might have a sponsorship from them. They have a lot of budget. Sometimes you think I’m gambling and I might’ve collabed with somebody, but I just made $400,000 doing this. I’ma keep it real, like — I can say I got a problem. I’m not trying to give myself an excuse, because I sound kind of excuse-y.
CARAMANICA All this music on the new album was recorded after the shooting?
OFFSET All after. Yeah. I went right to the lab. I got out of the hospital, I’m in the studio.
COSCARELLI I remember the same thing happened when you almost died in a car wreck.
OFFSET You make the smashes when you go through stuff and go straight to the studio, ’cause now you got something to talk about. And I started just talking like that. It put me back in the focus mind. And I’m just being honest, you got to distract yourself from that. Because it’s a deep tunnel going into that, and you can’t come back sometimes, you feel me? So I just got to work.
COSCARELLI You’ve obviously been through a lot, but this is not exactly an introspective or dour album.
OFFSET Yeah, I kept it real on “Kiari,” but this can’t continue to be the story. This album was actually more confidence, bro, more like I’m back in my bag. I’m the truth in this music. I need my recognition. I’ve been doing this 13 years at different levels. I come from the biggest group to having to rebuild as a solo. It wasn’t easy. To come from that and then to try to build your own with all this torment that I got going on. It’s hard, bro. But at the same time, I like the challenge, because I never want to become no comfortable artist, because when you comfortable, you’ll be at the bottom and not even know.
COSCARELLI You’ve been more willing than a lot of rappers of your era to bring in new sounds. You’ve got OsamaSon on this album, Don Toliver.
OFFSET The reason I keep my eye on the underground is because I come from the underground. I’ll never forget our first interviews: This sounds like bubble gum rap, this sounds like gibberish. Then it became respected after years, right?
COSCARELLI There was a moment when you guys were the culture — Migos were the dominant sound. Rap changes. How frustrating is it to be like, “I believe in the sound, I know I’m good at rapping, these are the records that I’ve been making, they used to work, but now it doesn’t hit the same way?”
OFFSET I don’t look at it like that. For me, it’s like, I know I’m not Migos. That’s three monsters in one machine, right? So it’s not a frustration for me, it’s a building for me. I got four solo albums out, right? Every album, I caught a single that went to Billboard, right? So I never did a flop album, in my eyes.
Might not have been as peak as Migos, but Migos took 15 years to get to that peak. Y’all just seen it after five or six — we’ve been rappers since eighth grade. So I still remember that it’s a buildup. I feel like a lot of people really get lost in the sauce when they don’t recognize things are changing, bro. You still could be a big artist and in a good position, still make millions every year, but you’re not recognizing the change.
Credits
Popcast is hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli and produced by Kate LoPresti, Felice Leon and Sophie Erickson. This episode was filmed by Ilie Mitaru, Luke Mailander and Pat Gunther. It was edited by Mark Zemel with help from Rebecca Blandon. Our theme music is by Elisheba Ittoop. Nick Pitman is our audio engineer and Amanda Webster is our photo editor. Brooke Minters is our executive producer. Header video cinematography is by Diego Garcia.
Special thanks to Sarah Bonn, Dahlia Haddad, Mike Cordero, Nicole Huber, Aaron Byrd, Carl Mazurek, Zach Caldwell, Maddy Masiello, Brad Kimbrough, Andrew Wilcox, David Malitz, Elena Bergeron, Sia Michel and Sam Dolnick.
The post Offset Is Tired of Being Rap’s Bad Guy: ‘I Got Lost’ appeared first on New York Times.
