All clothing and accessories by BOTTEGA VENETA. — All clothing and accessories by **BOTTEGA VENETA.**

We’re in an alleyway in Hollywood, California. The distant Hollywood sign is painted orange by the setting sunlight. The traffic is heavy. The smell of honeysuckle is mixed with hog leg blunts full of EXXXOTIC.

We wait. This is what we do in Hollywood. We wait for superstars. Not because they don’t give a damn about us, but because they’ve got things to do. We’re on their list of things to do. We’ve been waiting for over 24 hours, yet it’s cool because we all know that the superstars are on their way.

MIGOS. Super. Stars. They’re on their way in big black cars. Black KINGS in Black CARS. QUAVO. OFFSET. TAKEOFF. Say it in whatever order you like.

Fast forward to when MIGOS arrive.

QUAVO, the certified quarterback of the gang, not that the quarterback is the most important position, but maybe because he played the football position in high school, pipes up, “The certain type of cloth that we’re cut from, we can’t go too far without each other.”

Each other. They’re blood after all. Basically brothers. Raised by QUAVO’S mother.

We wait for MIGOS and smoke and talk. We wait for the gang, the family, the trio to arrive. Publicists on cellphones. Stylists carrying Louis Vuitton backpacks filled with mysterious objects. Grips carrying bright lights. Stage managers sweating and pulsing with instruments like gold objects. Me. The journalist. Sweaty palmed.

We wait in the alleyway at Gallery Dept., a clothing store and fine art salon, founded by Josué Thomas. MIGOS are collaborating with Gallery Dept. on their newest merch and are going to be performing a Tiny Desk concert here in T-MINUS 1 hour for NPR RADIO. Get ready. Gleeful whispers. A publicist speaks to me through an N95 mask, “They’re getting ready to fly to New York tomorrow for Summer Jam. CULTURE III is out, and it’s on fucking fire.”

CULTURE III is the final installment of MIGOS CULTURE trilogy. Nineteen songs of icicle chains, big body ROLLS, asses phat and potentially fake, but who cares, we enjoy them, grand dreams of more money / more money / more money in an all but scorched EARTH, and, notably, MOST notably, don’t you ever forget: FUCK 12! Wait. Sweat. Breathe. Smoke. COOKIES. ZAZA. BLUNTS. RAW CONES.

“Do you have a lighter?”

“Thanks.”

Every time a ROLLS ROYCE pulls up, I think it’s them. A white PHANTOM. A black ROLLS truck. A red DAWN. That’s got to be them pulling up. No. Misfire. Who is that though? Is that one of MIGOS’ super producers fresh off a jet from THE BIG PEACH? Is that MURDA? No. MURDA is White. False alarm. Is that BUDDHA? Maybe. Is that ZAYTOVEN in the caramel PORSCHE? Don’t know. Is that DJ DUREL? “Siri: Google DJ DUREL.” Picture comes up. Yes, that’s DJ DUREL. Age unknown. But judging by his baby face he must be about the same age as the MIGOS cats, anywhere from 27-30. Still young. Very young. All of them.

Security patrol starts lurking in the alleyway. Men too large and gnarly looking for a sane mind to handle. They must be here to scope out the scene before MIGOS arrive. I have to wonder what it’s like being a famous rapper. The envy and nefariousness must be as thick as the mud the lotuses have sprouted from. Everyone wants a piece. Everyone OUT OF THE GANG is lurking and wondering HOW DO WE GET IN? That must be why MIGOS rap so heartily about extendos exterminating haters. TAKEOFF raps on CULTURE III’s track “Why Not”: “FUCK ALL THE OPPS THEY GET RED DOTS (FUCK EM!).”

Bass twangs. Bass drums. Music is starting to be rehearsed now. MIGOS’ band is walloping and keyboarding. Every member looking like a million dollars. Teeth glistening. Clothes pressed. The aura exuded is liberated. Music makes us feel this way. The music is floating out of the big Gallery Dept. space. It sounds like the 70s meets THE BANDO.

It is actually. Recreating the BANDO here at Gallery Dept. The BANDO is the place where it all started. The BANDO being the trap house, in case you didn’t know, the BANDO being the epigenetic heart of CULTURE III. The BANDO is where the drip was born.

Fast forward again to the interview while we wait in the alleyway in Hollywood smoking ZAZA beneath the honeysuckle scent and butterflies betwixt pigeon shit.

OFFSET, the wry smiling and famously Cardi-B husbanded Atlanta crooner speaks through red-tinted-baguette-flourished-heart-shaped Cartier sunglasses, “I remember when our group was just aiming to get number one on MyMixtapez. Now it’s number one on Apple and number one on Billboard. A lot of people slept on us. My momma always told me growing up that I’m going to always have to prove myself even if you show people that you’re great. Going through different obstacles made us much stronger and better and more dedicated to our craft. If I stayed the same as I was in the beginning, we wouldn’t have lasted.”

The light is fading. The Hollywood sunset being eaten by smog. Everyone is told to go inside the building. I want to wait in the alley and see when MIGOS arrive, but I go. Brace myself. It’s like being in the ocean and seeing a great white shark. Where are they? They’re coming. Brace.

I think of the obstacles OFFSET went through to get here. He’s been locked up. Some of the early years of MIGOS were without him. FREE OFFSET campaigns were alive while TAKEOFF and QUAVO made “Versace” a smash hit. Then came “Bad and Boujee” and OFFSET tore through the sonic stratosphere with his guttural and husky lilt, reverberating the now infamous intro: YOU KNOW A LOT OF YOUNG NI**AS WE AIN’T NEVER REALLY HAD NO OLD MONEY BUT YOU KNOW SOMETHING WE GOT A WHOLE LOTTA NEW MONEY...HEY!

I beg the question: at what point does new money turn into old money? Generational wealth? There are a lot of Ms cranked into MIGOS’ accounts, don’t worry. And for OFFSET, he’s setting up his s five children mightily for their economic futures. (Congratulations to the father of five.)

It’s been so long since the gang got started. 2008. Boys to Men. From mere children to father figures. Ten years and counting. It feels like they’ve broken through an artistic threshold. They feel settled. CULTURE III feels like very little bullshit. Tapped in. Locked in. Fucking up BAGS. “Picasso” is insane with a feature from FUTURE, spilling out lyrics like cough syrup on a marble table: A MILL TICKET WHEN I POP OUT FEEDING ALL THE TRILL BITCHES LOBSTER. “Straightening” goes dumb for the mere fact that MIGOS euphemized the word PANDEMIC into BANDEMIC. (‘Band’ being moola.) Dare I say MIGOS are more Street Shakespeare than New-Age-Beatles or Rolling Stones?

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“We’ve been rapping constantly in the basement,” relates TAKEOFF, his voice deep, his eyes gentle yet full of energy, “[Even before 2008, That’s just when THEY—the public—heard about us]. What about the shows nobody heard about? We worked countless nights in the studio. There are days that WEREN’T counted, and you also got the ones that WAS counted. We ain’t gonna let nothing get in between us. It’s like a three-headed monster when we come together. There’s going to be magic happening.”

Alarm. Alarm. An Alarm goes off. The waiting is over. It’s dark outside. Full moon. MIGOS are here. Somewhere. In the building. Necks are craned. Ears pricked up. Mikes have been checked and levels have risen to capacity and the room is now full. I’m surprised there are no strippers or bad bitches with asses phat or fake, but it doesn’t matter.

Something I realized when I got to Hollywood and met the superstars is that these cats WORK. Yes, they play, yes. But this is work. Million-dollar work. Two comma-type work. Maybe the bad bitches with asses phat or fake come later. For now, we do music, and music is more interesting. People are fluttering around. I recognize other superstars in the room that have come to pay homage to the gang.

There he is. QUAVO. The quarterback. He’s rounded a corner. His chest is proud and his face is as clean as fresh French butter and his diamonds are dancing like Fred Astaire. He doesn’t really look at me. We sit down. The room is too crowded. But I’ve waited and time is running out. the NPR Tiny Desk show is in T-MINUS 30 Minutes. A publicity person just whispered in my ear before QUAVO arrived, “You know what I say around here, I say, get it while you can. GET IT WHILE YOU CAN.”

It rings in my skull. Get it while you can.

QUAVO is close. His hat is low and he doesn’t really look me in the eyes. Diva? Maybe? ‘Diva’ is a corny word. Artist? Yes. Real one? Yes. He’s lighting a joint. Big. Fiery.

“Congrats on the album.”

“Thank you.”

His assistant comes over and hands him a crystal ashtray. His assistant is a millionaire. QUAVO posted that on his Instagram recently: 5K A DAY MY ASST. A MILLIONAIRE! Is this what it’s all about? Being a millionaire? No. Yes. It’s worth noting. QUAVO slowly puffs. He looks unfazed.

“What is the magic that happens when you guys are recording together as opposed to solo?”

QUAVO lifts his head. I can’t tell if he’s been asked this question a thousand times. Interviewing superstars on the fly is like catching hummingbirds with hands covered in oven mitts, “Well…” He starts to speak but his phone rings. He answers. I avert my head. I look down at my notes. The trance of MIGOS are more interesting than the banality of questions. I look at QUAVO’s sunglasses, full of pavé set diamonds. I think of people on Skid Row starving to death not far away under the Los Angeles sky.

Black people, Brown people, White people dying of thirst.

I think about how everything in life is relative. I think about how everything in life is perfect, it can’t be any other way, otherwise it’s all too painful. So we make music.

I look at QUAVO’s chain hanging heavily off his neck. The chain is an iced-out YODA face full of multi-dimensional rocks. YODA used to say DO, OR NOT. THERE IS NO TRY.

QUAVO hangs up his phone. He lifts his eyes infinitesimally, his mouth is cocoa butter clean. There is a rawness in his body and demeanor, QUAVO looks poised to rap smooth or hard at any moment, “MIGOS are blessed,” he grumbles through thick smoke, “We get the energy from God. The longevity is from God,” pause, toke, feel, listen, “We’re thankful for each other, and we just know how to make great music. We know how to turn the page of the CULTURE. We know how to put them onto new things, instead of following trends. We always connect ourselves with the streets and community and CULTURE. We have to be embedded in the CULTURE and go back in and tap in and be in touch with people and see what’s going on. Once you do that, I feel like you’ll have a pretty good picture of what to rap about, ‘cause you’re in the field every day.”

I nod. Take it in. Did QUAVO’S answer sound canned? Yes and No. What more can I expect QUAVO to say? The mind works fast. It has to in this moment. The superstar is here and then gone, like supernova flashes, “GET IT WHILE YOU CAN,” the publicist echoes.
“What are your goals?” Could there be a more canned question from a journalist?

QUAVO leans in, his eyes go from 100 to 1,000, “There’s always room to grow and be even greater. We still got goals as a group and goals individually. Until we get them then, we’ll have new plans. We haven’t headlined an arena tour yet, so we want to do that. We want to win a Grammy. We want another number one single as a group.” Laser-focused. Tapped the fuck in. People don’t like to tap the fuck in because it takes a tremendous amount of effort of heart and mind. The greats tap the fuck in because that’s all they know how to do.

Alarm. Alarm. Alarm again. QUAVO has to go. Time dwindling. The quarterback needs the playbook for NPR Tiny Desk performance T-MINUS 30 minutes and counting. QUAVO has better things to do. And that’s honest.

“Are you okay?” a voice says nearby.

“What?”

The millionaire assistant is in front of us holding a big icy chain out to QUAVO full of blocks of baguettes like baby fingers made of Arctic raindrops, “Are you okay, QUAVO?”

QUAVO stands, half-jokingly-half-dead-serious, “No, I’m not okay! I need an outfit.”

We dap with QUAVO. He bounces. He’s cordial yet no bullshit. 100 to 1,000. One of the publicists is concerned and asks me if he just walked off. I nod to her that everything is okay. She smiles. She shakes her head clutching a Prada purse with long neon green gel fingernail claws digging into the fabric of the bag. More people now. Gallery Dept. is teeming. Everyone looks either tired or rich. This is Hollywood. Tired or rich.

You, in Ohio, in Tampa Bay, in Indiana, in Orange County, in whatever bed you are reading this in, dreaming of Hollywood… remember that in Hollywood you either end up tired or rich. Either way, go from 100 to 1,000 and commit. If we learn one thing from MIGOS, it’s to commit. Commit to your dreams. And never let go. We can fail at our nightmares, so we might as well try to succeed at our dreams. And just like a dream, I morph.

“We need a better room,” I whisper to a publicist.

Of course, of course, of course, they say.

Now, we’re in a room covered in velvet. It looks like a speakeasy from 19th Century New York. Low ceilings. Hot. Quieter. Perfect.

TAKEOFF materializes. He’s the youngest, but he has the longest dreads. We sit on a couch close to each other. In a way, he feels more relaxed than QUAVO. Less concerned about how I, the journalist, might fuck him over. He smiles and says hello like an old sibling I haven’t seen in a while, but I feel very close to. His mouth is sticky from what must be very high THC smoke.

“Congratulations on the album.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, that’s very kind.”

He taps his hand on my shoulder like we’re old friends, like we knew one another from the BANDO. TAKEOFF makes me feel like part of the CULTURE even if the word lightly stings him. “I might be a little biased, but I feel like MIGOS made the word CULTURE,” he says, finding the rightly judicious words, “We put it on and everybody started saying it: Food-Culture, Sport-Culture, whatever it was. Maybe people were using it before and I wasn’t hearing it, but that’s what it seemed like to me. But not everything is accepted right away with flowers and roses. Sometimes they love you later and respect you later.”

It feels like TAKEOFF could care more or less about the performance that is about to take place. NPR Tiny Desk T-MINUS 15 minutes and counting…Producers are scrambling. The band is drinking water, and they’re ready and sitting on their instrument boxes. The room is full of weed and money and laughs and a strange hierarchy of people, and I can’t exactly tell who is who.

If QUAVO and OFFSET are the eldest of the group and the more incendiary pop-culture spirits, then TAKEOFF must represent an anchor for MIGOS. TAKEOFF is a meditative key to the puzzle of the gang, “Yeah, but…” And TAKEOFF leans back, flips his hat to the side, “you know, I don’t feel like the youngest anymore.”

And it’s true. Over the years TAKEOFF has been establishing himself as a lyrical heavyweight. He carries songs as much as the other two dragon heads, even leading off mightily in spots on CULTURE III, with tracks like “TYPE SHIT,” a hard-hitting homage to glass wrists and artistic singularity and giving no fucking quarter to a fuckboy or thot!

TAKEOFF actually makes the superstar deal look simple, effortless—like a 21st Century Rap Star Monk. Is he stressed out at all?

“Is this easy?” I ask him.

He smiles, he hits my shoulder again in a friendly way, calm, chill, as icy as the necklace his assistant has just brought in on a red velvet platter, “I feel like it’s easy. Yeah,” he says, taking the chain off the platter, “This is always what I wanted to do. I rap. I didn’t have a plan B. I didn’t want a plan B. I didn’t even want to fix my mind to have a plan B, because that could make me not too confident with Plan A. This is my plan A, and it’s gonna work. Yeah, it could be cocky in a way, but this is what I do. I don’t want to be forced to do a plan B. When I hear the music, I feel comfortable. Yeah, I’m still hungry and I ain’t never too comfortable, but I’m comfortable with my music.”

Alarm. Alarm. Alarm again. Minutes are turning into seconds until the performance.

TAKEOFF and I are gazing into his necklace. We can’t look away. The diamonds form a rocketship. He hands it to me, and it’s heavy. He proceeds to put it around my neck. I’m initiated into the CULTURE. I feel good. Humbled. The diamonds are dancing and weighing heavy against my heart now.

“Heavy, huh?” TAKEOFF says. Then QUAVO walks in. We wonder where OFFSET is. I have to speak with OFFSET.

“You got a lighter?” QUAVO asks TAKEOFF. QUAVO looks fired up and ready to go. TAKEOFF feels around in his pockets for fuego, but he has none. Before QUAVO leaves he offers me some final words, “WE’RE UNLOCKING A NEW UNIVERSE. WE’RE TAKING YOU TO ANOTHER WORLD.”

Write that down. Someone. NOW.

QUAVO leaves. TAKEOFF daps me like an old sibling.

The chain is released from my neck. Maybe that’s something he does, I think. He adorns the homies with the chain for a minute. Or was that him pulling a rabbit out of the hat, letting me in on the icy life for a split second? One last look at the rocket ship made of diamonds, “I like outer space,” TAKEOFF says to me with sincerity, “I’m waiting on Elon Musk to hit my phone.”

Then. Gone. Sadly. It felt like we could have continued talking about God knows what. The superstar evaporated. As fast as he appeared.

I enter the crowd again. Minutes melting into seconds. OFFSET’s chiseled face is revealed behind a crowd. Another publicist appears. He’s talking to OFFSET about the interview. OFFSET looks skeptical, or that could be me projecting. He relents. Walks over. Into the room. Sizes me up. Some feeling is there. It could be false. But I’m white. The journalist, me, is white. Is OFFSET perhaps not really stoked about answering questions from a white person? It would be understandable.

“How are you?” I say.

No answer. Uh oh. Something is off. Maybe.

OFFSET sits. His face, a jewel of tattoos. He’s preternaturally handsome yet his face looks scarred with intense rap star road. His leather outfit is from where? Bottega? The ice around his neck is bulky and thick like ropes of rich, salty ocean water.

OFFSET sits very close. I’m surprised at how close. He beams with openness now. His knee is touching my knee. He smiles. He has a smile that is infectious. I smile back. I was projecting my insecurity about my white skin. Or maybe I wasn’t. Either way, whatever that was has evaporated.

OFFSET and I smile, and I want to be in the group, I want to be the fourth member of MIGOS. OFFSET feels almost shockingly laissez-faire. OFFSET feels like the things he has seen and what he has been through makes performing in front of ten people or a million people nothing but expressionistic child’s play. He grabs the tape recorder out of my hand. He leans in like a BANDO gentleman. Speaks, “Through our journey we had ups and downs like everybody else as far as career and everything, but we always stick through, because even prior to this we had a lot of friends, but it was always Qua, Take, and Set.”

His eyes peer out of the side of the Cartier’s. The ink is tumbling off his face. His fingernails are manicured to a pearlescence. Rich. Happy. A long way from the pen. The top of the heap. Glowing with gratitude. Subconscious or not, “First and foremost the vibe is always excitement. Just to have brothers working in one room. It’s never boring and it’s supportive,” he gets closer to the tape recorder, he is speaking directly into it. His teeth look like blocks of sugar in his mouth. “When we go in the studio with each other we show support, like giving each other a tip or letting each other know a certain way to say something. There’s no pride or anything with MIGOS, it’s part of the program, and just to have that is a plus, because we all understand the sound of music. We all molded each other prior to being superstars off our own energy since we were young, and that’s a beautiful thing about us, and that’s what separates us from a lot of groups. I believe other groups sometimes get to a certain level and change up the method of recording, but we always stick to our foundation and the base, which is getting in there together. Being in the studio with us, it makes you step your bars up, that’s why every project is always developing, because there ain’t no slacking. Everybody comes with something hard. There is no weak leg. It’s a beautiful competitive thing, not competitive in a bad way, we feed off each other. Especially with CULTURE III, we took our time. Making this project was special to us. We wanted to make a piece of art that would last.”

Alarm. Alarm. Alarm again. NPR Tiny Desk SHOW T-MINUS 3 minutes.

“Avalanche” off CULTURE III is playing in the background. Bass twangs fire up again. OFFSET knows he has to go and I know it too. I waited and met the stars. The stars met me. The humans collided. Stardust skin. Fuck the colors, just show up and tap in.

QUAVO and TAKEOFF can be seen on stage. The lights are flashing.

OFFSET has more words. Serendipitously he chimes in on the old money new money sentiment, bringing us back to the beginning. Reminding us what the whole deal is for, making music, a serviceable act, and if one gets big enough, then the CULTURE can really be shifted.

“You gotta hit all alleys. I got a family. I got four kids, one on the way. It’s about building an empire and a legacy for them. I want to have more titles than just being an artist. I don’t want to put myself in a box. Dip and dab in different areas and become successful. I was often misled and told that I couldn’t do this or that. So opening the doors for people in the world and showing them that something like, say, voting or being a part of your environment is very important. We have a big message and word and following. I’ve been traveling the world and I’ve been places and they don’t speak English, yet they know word-for-word our songs. That’s the beauty of music. We do music to touch people.”

A stage manager appears in the doorway tapping his wrist. The rocketship is ready for liftoff. The three pilots are in their couture suits. I dap with OFFSET, and it almost feels bittersweet like I don’t know if we will ever see each other again.

I suppose that’s what it’s like getting in a rocketship, getting on a stage. Flying. Into the spotlights of creation. MIGOS. Super. Stars. Each rapping pilot offering some very particular talent to the greater good of musicology. A gift. A gift. A gift.

As a matter of fact, what’s that line from “Why Not” off CULTURE III? QUAVO keeps it 1,000: GIVING OUT GIFTS LIKE OPRAH HE GETS SOME P’S AND SHE GETS A BIRKIN!

Boom. The lights flash.

There they are. QUAVO. OFFSET. TAKEOFF. Say it in whatever order you like. Three dragon heads exploding into lyrics of rap glory.

Hollywood. Dreams.

The BANDO. The WORLD. The CULTURE COSMOS. THE FAMILY.

Now.

Fade out.