COLLAB MASTER BLACKBEAR
The Alt-Hip Hop Singer In Our Earbuds
If you’re a fan of alt-rap, you’ve probably heard blackbear, even if you don’t know him by name. The 29-year-old rapper has his fingerprints all over the hip-hop and R&B scenes, including his side project mansionz, a collaboration with Mike Posner. Their catchy self-acceptance anthem “Dennis Rodman” was a radio hit in 2017 and helped put blackbear on the map.
Yet blackbear, real name Matthew Tyler Musto, has been working behind the scenes in pop music since the early 2010s. After co-writing Justin Bieber’s hit single “Boyfriend” in 2012, Musto debuted his first EP as blackbear while working on Lace Up, Machine Gun Kelly’s debut album. Though his first three albums, deadroses, help and digital druglord were modest successes, blackbear never quite rose to the level of notoriety achieved by his peers and occasional collaborators like MGK and G-Eazy.
Then something shifted: blackbear got sober, and in doing so, pulled off something that few other artists manage. As he got better, so did his lyrics. Where some rappers like Eminem fell off after sobriety, blackbear soared, tapping into a new kind of angst—angst that can’t be softened with drugs and alcohol. His fourth album, ANONYMOUS, takes on these themes and approaches blackbear’s signature style with a new sense of maturity.
Now, as he nears 30 and the release of his fifth album everything means nothing, blackbear is at the top of his game. If you’ve listened to pop radio in the past few months (and maybe you haven’t as most of us get our radio listening in while commuting and shutdown has changed that), lead singles “hot girl bummer” and “me & ur ghost” have shared plenty of airtime with MGK’s newest emo-inspired project. There’s a good deal of emo influence on these two tracks from blackbear as well; in a post-Juice WRLD world, there’s a renewed demand for that genre.
“hot girl bummer” initially dropped in 2019 and skyrocketed into the top 40 charts as blackbear’s most listened to single so far. The chorus is catchy; the message is essentially “fuck fake friends,” an evergreen theme and the play on “hot girl summer” felt appropriate in 2019. COVID killed any chance of a hot girl summer in 2020, but the song’s still a banger.
The second lead single, “me & ur ghost,” is a breakup bop that will appeal to anyone who wants to be over their ex but isn’t quite there yet. You know, speaking of evergreen themes. The first half of the new album is out now with the remaining six songs dropping August 21. It may have taken blackbear a decade of grinding, but this record could be the one that’ll finally make him a household name.
