“D.C.! Y’all the best crowd we had on this tour,” Isaiah Rashad announced from the stage of The Fillmore Silver Spring, and I believed it. Of course, this was just the artist’s fourth stop on his 29-date North American headlining tour, Lil’ Sunny’s Awful Road Trip, but no doubt, Rashad had the whole crowd going up on a Monday.
Packed tight but still dancing, vibing, and rapping along with the charismatic Chattanooga native, his fans seemed to know practically every word of tracks off his latest LP, It’s Been Awful, released in the spring through Top Dawg Entertainment and Warner Records.
Rashad’s third studio album — and fourth full-length, including 2014 EP Cilvia Demo — reps a “powerful new chapter” in the rapper’s “deeply personal journey,” according to press notes. Continuing his musical evolution, the album mingles head-bobbing beats with confessional lyrics, and breezy yet reflective bangers with moody hybrids of hip-hop and blues.
As he has throughout his career, Rashad expresses vulnerability candidly on tracks like the brooding lead single “Same Sh!t,” or the semi-romantic “Supaficial,” where he raps to a lover, or potential lover, “Baby I’m worth more than the rap shit/Worth more than my rap sheet/Getting caught in a rapture.”
Arriving five years after his previous album, The House Is Burning, It’s Been Awful is also Rashad’s first album release since leaked videos of the rapper in sexual situations with men dropped like a bomb in early 2022. Essentially outing him, the leaked videos prompted Rashad, a single father of three, to confront the rumors head-on, describing himself in a podcast interview as “sexually fluid.”
Isaiah Rashad at The Fillmore Silver Spring – Photo: André Hereford
Not one to shy away from the scandal, he even boldly opened his live set at Coachella, later that spring, with a video explicitly referencing the leaks and speculation, concluding with words of support from fans and his peers in the rap community. “I’m glad that he can finally be himself,” one says.
Rashad has since gone on record identifying as bisexual and seems glad that the episode, which brought him to an emotional low point, has passed. He indeed can be himself. “I feel like I have a freedom that maybe a lot of people don’t have,” he tells me over a Zoom call.
“I can date whoever I want to, and so I date whoever I want to without having to worry about it,” he laughs. “So I think if I was outed, it’s less that somebody took my agency of being able to tell people about my life. I wasn’t living a hidden life. But yeah, I guess I’m out. We out. We out loud.”
He’s out loud and thriving, as his fans have largely stuck by him. If anything, Rashad’s audience might have grown, based as much on the notoriety as for his assured response, and, of course, for his sound, which was never set in stone for Rashad and his collaborators.
“I feel like me and my brothers and my producers, we have so much appreciation for different types of music that, if anything, we’ve held back at certain times,” he says. “So as we’ve gotten older and as the audience has expanded, it just gives us more opportunities to implement those sides of music, from folk to, shit, elements of ’90s nostalgia R&B, and shit that we love, and being able to put all that together, it just brings new fans in.”
Still, he adds, “We got a solid-ass base. At the base of it is cold rap, so that’s why they come.” However, audiences at Lil’ Sunny’s Awful Road Trip are also going to get a taste of real rock ‘n’ roll from his tour opener, singer-songwriter Alemeda. “That shit rocks,” declares Rashad.
“Dude, we love rock music. The Sun’s Tirade, my second project, was made in the Eagles’ studio,” he reveals. “We have a huge appreciation for rock music. So [Alemeda] coming on, for me, if anything, makes my show easier for people who might be new fans, because you’re not coming in with an opener that’s doing this super hardcore, maybe in one lane of rap. You’re already opening your ear up to something eclectic when you walk in, so it just makes it easier for me on the stage.”
Rashad commands that stage solo, not surrounded by his crew, as per usual for a rap show. Asked whether he’ll be joined onstage somewhere on tour by his Grammy-winning labelmate SZA — with whom Rashad shares a handful of songs, including the sunny rap-pop bop “Boy in Red” on It’s Been Awful — he responds with a coy, “I can’t be spoiling that. I know two good locations where you might be primed to see her.”
So, while fans can stay on the lookout for SZA, Rashad will keep rolling on his road trip, gathering new verses along the way. “We got so much music that I’m really just waiting to get off tour to keep recording the rest of it,” he says. “I was having so much fun before we got back on the road, because after we put out the album, I didn’t stop recording. We just kept going.”
In fact, so intent on making more music, he barely celebrated the It’s Been Awful album release. “We went to the studio and kept going. I got so much more stuff to say about my life and about what I’m seeing that I want to put on wax. And I want some more music to dance to, man, some shit that I like, so I want to make that.”
Vowing that he won’t go another five years between albums, Rashad is hungry to get back in the studio. “We don’t have a lot of off days,” he says, “but hopefully one of them I can get in the studio and finish recording what I have written and everything. I’m just trying to keep jamming, dawg. I miss motherfuckers. I don’t want to be gone from my people for five years.”
Lil’ Sunny’s Awful Road Trip keeps rolling to New York (8/22), Cleveland (8/28), Detroit (8/29), Toronto (8/30), Milwaukee (9/01), Chicago (9/03), Nashville (9/10), Memphis (9/11), Tampa (9/13), Orlando (9/14), Dallas (9/17), Austin (9/19), Denver (9/22), Las Vegas (9/26), Phoenix (9/27), and Tucson (9/28), among many other stops. Visit vipnation.com.
Elegance Bratton doesn’t make timid movies, and he doesn’t give timid interviews. In this week’s cover story, he talks about directing By Any Means, the unnerving sight of 20 actors in Klan robes on his Georgia set, the battle to preserve the Black and queer history of house music, and the dating-app sandwich that led to a 12-year marriage.
In The Feed, the “go woke, go broke” mantra for corporations runs into hard data, Florida’s LGBTQ congressional hopefuls lose even as equality candidates win down-ballot, and Virginia Rep. Eugene Vindman faces the fallout from his vote for a “forced outing” bill.
These are challenging times for news organizations. And yet it’s crucial we stay active and provide vital resources and information to both our local readers and the world. So won’t you please take a moment and consider supporting Metro Weekly with a membership? For as little as $5 a month, you can help ensure Metro Weekly magazine and MetroWeekly.com remain free, viable resources as we provide the best, most diverse, culturally-resonant LGBTQ coverage in both the D.C. region and around the world. Memberships come with exclusive perks and discounts, your own personal digital delivery of each week’s magazine (and an archive), access to our Member's Lounge when it launches this fall, and exclusive members-only items like Metro Weekly Membership Mugs and Tote Bags! Check out all our membership levels here and please join us today!
You must be logged in to post a comment.