Second chances are precious and often compel us to catapult further than before. That’s the case with PlayThatBoiZay, the South Florida rapper who dropped his long-awaited VIP album in September. The heavily Kwes Darko-produced project is right on time not just because of its eerie, Spooky SZN-ready soundscapes, but also as it’s Zay’s first project since a May 2021 car accident that left him mentally and physically recovering for roughly nine months.
Before the accident, Zay was prepping VIP, his debut on Loma Vista Recordings, which boasts features from Kenny Mason, Mike Dimes, JPEGMAFIA, Denzel Curry, and A$AP Rocky, who Zay says EPed his way onto album standout “Hoodlumz.” The project was meant to be a cathartic expression of pain after dealing with a recent heartbreak. He crafted it in Los Angeles in a month with producer Kwes Darko, whom he met and instantly built a rapport with. Zay says their connection made the recording process pretty simple.
“Once I came to Kwes’ house, I walked in the house, put my bags up, [and] Kwes was already making a beat,” Zay recalls. “[I] instantly hopped on that beat. We just wake up, probably smoke, vibe, talk. He’ll start working on the melody; I’ll start rapping to the melody. And by the time we finish the song, I already got a 16 laid down. That’s how [the majority of] all the songs came.”
The end result is a fiery project where Zay’s intense delivery unfurls over Kwes’ rambunctious, bass-heavy soundscapes; it feels undoubtedly influenced by the classic era of South Florida sound that Zay says initially inspired him to rap after his dreams of playing college football sputtered in 2018.
“I saw that whole wave of young teens like myself, and I see myself in them,” he remembers of the so-called SoundCloud rap phase. “I saw what they was doing, and it didn’t look hard. And then when I saw all of them, like X, he [took] it to that big level [and] Denzel, it was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa.’ They took it there. So it was like, nah, let me try this. And I tried it and I’m [here].”
Zay is a member of Curry’s Ulttaground collective. The two initially met in 2015, and they reconnected through Zay and Denzel’s mutual friend Lord Lu C N in 2018. The South Florida Rap scene is different from what it was during that time, but Zay says he’s intent on encouraging the next generation the same way his peers and predecessors did for him.
“Once I put out good music, people will become aware of my story, they’ll see my success, they’ll see everything I’ve done and hopefully that will motivate them on the back end, with the music and the shows that I plan on doing in the future.” We talked to Zay about VIP, the South Florida rap scene, and his arduous recovery from his accident.
What was it like for you, seeing that original South Florida rap wave?
It gave me hope. I’m from Miami Gardens — Carol City, that’s what we call it. And being from there, nothing happens. Nobody makes it out. A lot of people die. I’ve witnessed murders; I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff. So it’s like, you kind of get a feeling of loss, no hope. Growing up, I thought I was going to die young because that’s what’s happening now. My first friend that passed, I think he was 13. So to me it was like, before seeing all that, I thought it was like dang, almost like I was just growing up to doom. So when I saw the whole music thing happening, it kind of gave me a little bit of sense of hope because it’s like the only avenue for people making it out where I come from is truthfully is sports.
I feel like when people say SoundCloud rap, they talk about the online aspect of it, but I’m wondering as that scene began to cultivate, were there physical spaces that y’all would congregate at?
I mean, that was all available up until, it’s crazy to say it, but up until when X died. It has ceased to exist ever since X died. But before, when X was alive, it was a whole bunch of avenues. People, they had a whole bunch of underground shows and places where people will pull up and actually pop out, it was a community. And now I feel like, now in South Florida, there’s no community, there’s no places for artists to perform. When it comes to making music, [the energy is] a little bit off because nobody believes. Everyone cares about the dollar more than the actual art, and that’s where shit fucks up. Because if we not making good art, it’s not going to sell.
Would you say XXXTentaction was driving things as far as putting on shows and events?
Yes, definitely. And he gave everyone motivation, he motivated people. He led by example; he showed people that we could do it. Now, there’s no one showing us, there’s no one in Florida that’s actually pulling up and showing people. I saw X take it from small crowds at Wynwood to big crowds at Rolling Loud. I saw the transition. So it was just like, whoa, there’s hope. Now, ever since then, hasn’t been nothing.
In what ways do you hope to be that inspirational figure?
I want to inspire people through my music, and I would love to potentially be able to throw shows in Miami, to actually bring that community back. But I do know that all comes from my music. So as of right now, because me personally, I haven’t really been putting out music for real, for real since 2020. For me, VIP is a foundation and a restart to my career. I feel like I know I’m going to create a new era for Zay, and everything I’ve been doing before is like, yeah, that’s cool, but now it’s going to be a new era because it has been so much time. And people forget, so I have to remind them what I’ve been doing and bring it back to Miami.
The album title seems self-explanatory, but I was wondering if you could take me into the motivation for it. Was that always the title, even back in 2020?
No, the title originally was: 3. I have a heartbreak tattoo on my hand, it’s the minus, a slash, and a three. When I made VIP, I was heartbroken, and that was my mind state when I went to L.A. and created the whole project. The whole idea for VIP came back from Rolling Loud; I used to work at Rolling Loud. Rolling Loud is in the center of Miami Gardens. Almost everybody from Carol City works there, because they have so much job opportunities because there’s always events, there’s so many events and stuff.
I had quit working at the Hard Rock Stadium, but all my coworkers, I was still close with them. So they knew that I started pursuing my music career. When Rolling Loud happened, they was like, “Yo, come to Rolling Loud, I’ll help you get in backstage so you could network and meet people.” I called a couple of my friends, I was like, “Yo, let’s go to Rolling Loud.” And I told them to wear clothes that looked like we was working. So we was backstage with Gunna, Lil Yachty, X, a whole bunch of big names, they’re shining and stuff. And my friends, we from Miami, and the whole culture is flex, everything is luxury. So the fact that we pulled up not flexing, my friends, they were just like, “Bro, we’re foo. They shitted on us.” I’m just like, “Bro, what are you talking about? We VIP, this is our city. We ain’t do nothing to deserve to be VIP, like we’re VIP.”
And that’s how the whole VIP agenda even started right then. Ever since then, VIP turned from just a saying between me and my friends to a movement that I was pushing throughout my music. Just telling people, you are important. Go do what you want in life. You’re alive. That’s how you know you’re important. People die every day.
Where was your head around the creation of VIP? What were your prioritizing?
I had just created Nocturnal before that; this project was supposed to be the fourth project in a three-EP run. I released two EPs that was just me and my underground friends. And then Nocturnal, I had Denzel, my first industry feature. I was trying to keep it in that same world, but at the same time, introduce them to more Zay, newer sounds and songs like “MoodSwings,” where I harmonize and stuff like that. And even my approach for “Hoodlumz;” I usually don’t rap nonchalant, my music is usually a lot of yelling and stuff. So with this album, I would try to give them a whole bunch of new Zay, but keep it in the same world that they were familiar with.
How did you connect with Kwes Darko?
I originally met Kwes when he was on tour with Slowthai in 2019. We watched them perform and we connected. I showed Kwes my song “Swarm” and my video, and he was fucking with it. So when Kwes had the idea to come [back] to America, my manager Mark had just mentioned to Kwes that, “Oh, Zay, you guys can work.” And that’s how it happened. I literally just flew out [to L.A.] only knowing Kwes from that one interaction we had in South Beach when they was on tour in my city. That was the first time I did something like that.
What is it about Kwes that makes him a special producer in your opinion?
He knows how to create atmospheres; he knows how to create worlds that bring people in. When we was making “Lil Jit,” I think he was making a vibey beat, and I was like, “Yeah, this is cool, but I’m feeling kind of angry right now.” And then he made a beat that matched that feeling, but in the same world as all the other songs we was creating. I feel like that’s where his talent really shines. He knows how to shift emotions, but in a similar world. You keep that same pocket and make you feel different ways in that same world.
How much creative freedom did you have with this project? Did you feel any kind of pressure to have certain kind of songs or anything like that?
When I originally made a project in 2020, I made a good, strong four-eight songs that we ended up using for the final project. When I originally made it, it was going to be an EP. So now that I was going to shift it into an album, I had to add more songs to it. When adding those extra songs, I had to connect back into those emotions and the world I created in 2020 in 2023, so that was a little bit hard. I flew out to London with work with Kwes, when I had did the Outbreak Fest in 2023. We worked for two days, and we made “Beauty in Pain” and another song that we didn’t end up using.
There’s another song called “Cut Up” — that’s the only song that’s not produced by Kwes on the project. But it did speak on a large, big event of my life that I experienced with the crash that I had. I was talking about the lifestyle that I was living before, just driving fast. Because that’s something in Miami — that fast lifestyle, driving fast, fast cars.
When I got into a car accident, it was very bad. People was recording me laying on the floor and stuff like that. And the song “Cut Up,” it does include actual audio from the videos of me laying on the floor and people like, “Zay. Zay.” That’s the one song that doesn’t really talk about heartbreak, but it still talks about the journey that I experienced since creating a project leading up to now.
How did you feel, in hindsight, realizing that people were recording you in those moments and it was a serious accident you were dealing with?
The impact of the accident, it wiped my memory. I fractured my skull; my brain was bleeding. I was just seeing memories of all the stuff I experienced, but I just kept hearing random people screaming my name and for some reason I thought they were fans. So when I woke up in the hospital and I later saw the video, I remembered that moment when people was like, “Zay, Zay,” and it was random voices.
Going through all that trauma, it was a dark time for me. I’d never been through nothing like that before, so I didn’t know what was going on. I woke up in the hospital fighting the doctors; they kept having to put me out because I was trying to break out. [Laughs] I had no memory of what was going on. My memory of before, I was just in the car with my dawg, and the next thing you know, I’m in the hospital with all these needles in me.
What was your support system like during that recovery period?
Shout-out to my mom. It was my mom and my sister: They really stepped up to the table. I couldn’t walk after that car accident; I needed help to live a normal life for a good nine months. I broke a lot of bones, I lost my memory, I couldn’t even take a shower. I needed help. They was in the hospital with me, sleeping overnight while I didn’t know what was going on.
Do you remember the first time you heard your music after the accident? Did you recognize it?
I don’t remember the first time hearing it. But I remember the first time getting on live while I was in the hospital. I got on live and I was talking and there was a whole bunch of people because I guess people found out about the accident. I didn’t really know what was going on, and I was reading the comments like, why do they care? Why are so many people watching me? I was really confused. The first time I probably heard my music I heard it, but I didn’t connect to it. When I lost my memory, I was disconnected from all those other memories. So it didn’t even feel like it was me.
I remember sitting in the hospital, my manager called me and he was like, “Oh, Brickz had recommended you for tour.” That was the tour I did in 2022. So while I recovered, the whole time I was recovering, I knew I was recovering to go back on tour. Because like I said, nine months, and tour was a year after that. So I recovered, it took me nine months, me doing my own physical therapy, me getting myself mentally, physically ready for me to go back on tour a year later after that accident.
When you went on IG live, was that your idea or did somebody suggest that to you?
I was asking my mom, “Can you just give me my phone?” I think it was my sister idea because she was like, “A lot of people have been asking about you. You should go live and talk to the people.” And they let me go live, but then they took the phone away because I guess I was talking crazy. [Laughs]
That’s interesting. Wanting your phone, having certain memories and desires but then forgetting other stuff too at the same time.
Yeah, it was crazy. I remember even me being in the hospital, one thing I remember, I remembered my mom, that was the one thing. When I woke up in the hospital trying to break out, I saw my mom holding me down [like], “Calm down, calm down.” It was like, OK, I can listen to her. But everybody else, I don’t know what was going on.
How did it feel that first time you got back onstage? Where was it and how did you feel?
First time I was onstage, it was with Slowthai and Kwes, they came to Miami. They had a festival in Miami. That was the first time after covid [quarantine] too, because when I got through the car accident, it was a month before covid [quarantine] stopped. Before I got into the car accident, it was masks everywhere and everything. When I left the hospital, Rolling Loud was happening. I was like, what the fuck?
What’s been your reacclimation to making music?
The process has been different because it’s a whole different world now. Before, I had a whole lot of people around me. Now my circle’s smaller: I don’t have as many people in my corner, not too many people to leave. A lot of people around me got older and stopped believing in dreams. A lot of people fizzled out. Except one, my main producer, Russel Black, [he’s] all I really have in my corner back in Miami, because everybody else fizzled out. So now it’s like I’m doing it by myself. That’s the main difference. I’m the driving factor. As for my motivation and everything, it’s just me against the world. Before, I had a team, I had VIP. It was a group of people. I had a little collective that me and my friends started — now VIP is just me. It’s the album. VIP is the album now. It went from being a collective to an album.
It seems like frustration, betrayal, heartbreak were the driving emotions behind VIP. For your new music going forward, what do you think some of those driving emotions might be?
The driving emotion now is hunger. I’m hungry. I feel like that’s one thing that I won’t be able to hide in my music, you will definitely feel my hunger. I been through so much and I seen so much that it’s like, it feels like I know exactly what to do because I done been at the bottom. For me, I had my worst nightmare sitting in the hospital bed looking at my mom crying. I never wanted to put her in that position. And I done lived that. So it’s like I done lived my worst nightmares, and I done lived my dreams.
How much new music have you recorded since then? Do you have an idea of what your pace might be with releasing music going forward?
I’ve created so much music, but I haven’t played it out. I’ve been just creating little drafts, I guess, just ideas. I do have an idea of what I’m going to do, but I have an artistic direction visually more than sonically. I know sonically, the best music comes, for me, [as a] feeling. I can’t predict how I’m going to be feelin’ when I’m making these songs. I have a couple [of] songs; I have a EP that I already had made before I had went on tour. Artistically, it’s going to be the exact same thing, but just a little bit bigger. Everything I’ve been doing, I’m just going to make it bigger. Make it appear bigger, more to life, and more relatable.
How involved in the visual creation would you be as far as videos and graphics? Or will you more so collaborate with people to achieve that vision?
I definitely collaborate, but I steer them.
What are some of the things that you feel like you’ve learned from observing Denzel through the years?
He’s taught me how to package music. Before I would just make good songs and I would put them out regardless if they mixed or anything. If it sounded good to me, I’ll find a good cover art, probably wouldn’t take too much thought into the cover art, and put it out there. But then when I started working with Denzel and the first project we put out was Nocturnal, and I saw the difference: That was one of my first projects that was like mixed, it had a proper cover art where John went and he edited it and made it feel like the songs and everything. That was all cohesive. I learned that from Denzel. He taught me that and he showed me how to do it by how he do it, he executive produced Nocturnal. And performing, bro definitely taught me how to perform.
How did “Hoodlumz” with him and Rocky come together?
That came 2020. I laid down the song and I was just like, I knew instantly, once we done, we finished the song, I was like, “Yeah, this is fire.” And in my head I was like, I feel like Denzel would snap on this. Me and Denzel, we from the same hood, and in the song it had the samples about hood life. I had went to the dispensary. When I came back, I guess Kwes had called Denzel and showed Denzel the song, and Denzel fucked with it so, so much that he just Ubered from his house to the Airbnb and laid the verse down. So by the time I got back from the dispensary, Denzel’s already laid the verse down. And I’m just like, “Damn, nigga, this shit hard.”
So now, me and Denzel, we just hearing the song over, we vibing, we chilling. Then out of nowhere, we see a random-ass Tesla pull up and we just like, “Who is this?” Some guy hopped out with a hoodie, super incognito. We just like, “Who the fuck is this?” And he walked through and it just happened to be Rocky. He walked through said, “What’s up?” Kwes, he’s in the background just mixing the song, and Rocky just vibing. He’s just like, “Yo, it’s fire as fuck.”
He like, “Yo, this is so fire. But I have one critique: Y’all verses too long.” So me and Denzel, we was literally arguing with Rocky for probably 30 minutes. [We’re like] “Yo, the song’s good, bro. I hear what you’re saying, but nah.” Then eventually I was just like, “This is Rocky.” I was like, “Denzel, he has been arguing with us for 20 minutes about this shit, let’s hear him out.” And I was just like, “OK, let’s hear you out.” Then we let him sit down with Kwes and edit the song and make [the verses] 16s, Denzel was like, “Rocky, you doing all this stuff, why don’t you just be on the song?” And then Rocky was like, “That’s what I was trying to do.” And then that’s the song. [Laughs]
Albums of the Moment: Three recent records you should listen to
Free Party, Cut Your Teeth
The music journey can be a lonely one. While an act is on the road, building music-listener bonds, they also run the risk of sacrificing connections with loved ones. That’s the story Largo, Maryland, duo Free Party are telling on their latest EP, Cut Your Teeth. MCs Jay Veno and MoCo dropped their first EPs in 2021. And since then they’ve steadily built a buzz in the DMV and beyond for a sound that meshes melody, storytelling, and relatable introspection over layered production. Cut Your Teeth is the latest glimpse of that.
The first voice heard on the project orients the listener in the project’s focus on melody, as well as its predominant theme: “How can you be all in your feels in the Hollywood Hills?/Like, this ain’t why you signed up,” she croons. Once they start spitting on “DND,” it’s evident that they could rhyme all day with their dizzying cadences and slick wordplay, but they prioritize song structure on the EP’s four tracks.
Nick Innella*
Veno starts off “DND” with his distinctive, high-pitched voice and dexterous flow, reppin’ for the hometown accent by rhyming, “Say she usually don’t geek off the first meetup/But she like how we talk from ‘Murrlyn.” Deftly, he stretches what sounds like 30 seconds of a conversation into a landscape portrait of life back home where “cuzzo got the chopper,” and a glimpse of his new experience in the hills, where the next kickback is a group text away. His partner in rhyme follows up with a verse rhyming, “CLB with my bitch if I mean it,” but that’s not his intention on this verse, where he depicts life at an Airbnb party and rhymes, “She wanna talk ’bout the rest of my life/But I told her, ‘Look, I’m only here for the night.’” It’s a smooth track that feels ripe for a ride through palm tree-lined streets with the hills in the distance.
Most of the project carries a similar sonic vibe, though the thematics shift. On “ILY,” the two pen odes to love lost over a vocal sample. MoCo rhymes, “You held it down before all this shit popped/Think it’s shame that you gave up your spot,” while Veno reflects, “Thinking how I gave you most of my 20s/Don’t regret it but girl I’m just saying.” The interplay of their distinct vocal tones is most evident on this track, where you hear two different lamentations on the same query — what could’ve been.
“EYESPY” is the project’s most intent lyrical exercise. At first glance, the title reads like it’s a play on ESPN’s ESPY Awards, which would make sense for the triumphant horns that sound primed for the theme song of a football game. But those woodwind flares give way to an atmospheric canvas where the two MCs go back and forth while showing off their lyrical prowess. The track is aggressive enough to feel like a change of pace, but still layered enough to maintain the vibe of the rest of the projects. Overall, Cut Your Teeth is a light dose of music, but a strong example of what they have to offer.
John Wells, Whole World Burning Down
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or on top of a mountain, you know a lot is going on in the world. Turning on a news station at any given time invites a treatise in calamity’s malleability, with genocide, poverty, bigotry, and MAGA hats abounding. Different people are handling the stress in different ways. For Baltimore MC John Wells, he’s acknowledging our Whole World Burning Down with the title of his latest project, a two-step confessional on grief and the pursuit of money in “an amount only mad professors can count” as he rhymes on “Free U Again.”
The project starts with “Peloton,” a bold record where John rhymes with a vocoder. He’s lyrically impressive on the track, surmising “you never really get it ‘til you don’t cry when you gotta cry,” but the Auto-Tune could be a barrier for some listeners. His opening “I’m-a hit the Wayne on ‘em” announcement orients us in the expectation of a Wayne Rebirth or Linkin Park moment, but the song’s sonics and the vocal effects aren’t what to expect from the rest of the project, which relies on warm, evocative samples such as on “Belief in God,” “Keanu Reeves,” and “Trying to Quit.”
For the most part, Whole World Burning Down is an excavation of Wells’ current life and times, as he makes sense of the loss of his father and shares his poignant observations on society — and our purpose within it. An invisible hourglass seemingly runs in the project’s background, as Wells focuses not just on loss, but how death encourages him to go for his before it’s too late. On “Keanu Reeves,” he rhymes, “I be tryna clear my mind but I be sayin time is fleetin’/and I be feelin’ like I don’t have enough time for meditation,” with his Baltimore accent fully pronounced on certain inflections. And on “Honor My Mans,” he cherishes “enough time to honor” his deceased loved ones. On “Rubberbands,” he offers the IG caption-worthy reminder, “Time does not wait for John Wells, so please don’t waste none with me.”
The album alternates between John riding the beat with an easygoing delivery, such as on “Keanu Reeves” and “Rubberbands,” and a more urgent flow on “SOS” and “Belief in God.” That last track showcases his knack for catchy, easy-to-recite hooks. He also has memorable choruses on “Keanu Reeves” and “Trying to Quit.” It’s refreshing to hear someone be intentional about hooks a crowd of people can recite in unison.
Wells is pouring his heart out, but he keeps a sense of humor about it on the project (which will be receiving a deluxe release on Nov. 15). At the end of “SOS,” a vocal clip bemoans, “that motherfucker goin’ crazy not gonna lie, but it sound like he gonna kill himself.” And on “no, you goofy bitch,” Wells makes a humorous insight into how people assume that anyone consuming a substance must have a dependent relationship with it. The reflections are relatable, the production is palpable, and his wit sticks with you. Wells has been pretty active release-wise over the past four years; it feels like we’re at the start of something special. Tellingly, though money is a major focus on the album, he doesn’t spend many bars talking about the trinkets of wealth he’d pursue — it seems like he’s seeking solace above all. Maybe in a better world, having money isn’t about a tool to flex, but security for him and the people who make it there with him.
Messiah!, The Villain Wins
Charlotte rapper Messiah! starts out his The Villain Wins album with “My Eyes,” a meditative song where his slow harmonizing melts into the vast Angelo Leroi soundscape. He’s slightly talking, kind of harmonizing, but certainly striking a chord with the bars, “every time I fell on my sword/I impaled another layer and grew up some more.” The echoes of his soft ponderings seep into the beat, creating a dreamlike vibe that immediately arrests a listener. If we start off Messiah! somewhere in the cosmos, he immediately seeps us back to the ground on the everyman offering. He sounds something like Little Brother’s drug-dealing cousin, not fixating on puffing himself up, but intent on simply telling you what happened.
The 10-track, 24-minute album is a short listen, but it’s a dense reflection not just of Messiah!’s struggles, but how he overcame them. He turns the vibes up a notch on the album’s next two songs, rhyming alongside Niontay on “Wipe Down Music,” and his Killswitch-collective comrade Mavi on “Our Daily Bread,” where he boasts, “I ain’t got a plaque yet but my dentist said my smile’ll bring me a few” over a bouncy synth-driven beat.
Adu Dua*
These moments feel like outliers on the project, which is grounded by songs like “In the Mourning” and “Dirt Don’t Hurt,” where Messiah!’s solo storytelling shines through. On “In the Mourning,” he gets candid about the times he felt far from his rap dreams, rhyming about working a nine-to-five: “Tryna play the staff role like I ain’t come from eights, and halves, and ‘bows.” And on “Dirt Don’t Hurt,” he recalls prior days of struggle where “me and my partner went platinum on that campus.” He talks his talk occasionally, but he’s not bulletproof on The Villain Wins; “Dancing in the Dark” shows him lamenting, “don’t know how to cry but I sure know how to bleed,” and reflecting “you go home and cut yourself with more broken bottles/immortal for the moment up until the mornin that follows.”
He’s a versatile MC who, like Mavi, showcases how one can imbue a song with captivating melody without sacrificing the power of their lyricism. “Song Cry” is a bluesy production by Angelo Leroi where Messiah! continues to fight his urges and lamentations, rhyming “I woke up without my backbone/but I feel way too playa to sing the sad songs.” Within that couplet lies the heart of The Villain Wins, where he’s just too conscientious to be a convincing villain.
Aside from the moodier moments, Messiah! explores that inner player on “God’s Fav,” where he rhymes over a lustrous SoChildish beat and is joined by a braggadocious Vayda, who lets us know “you should be happy at me ‘cause your man hit me up and he in my DMs and I curved it.” And after the storm comes triumphant album closer “Can’t Stand It,” where Messiah! urges us to “get up get out, get off your ass” and become the best you possible — just as he has on The Villain Wins.
No Filler is an indie-rap column by Andre Gee running monthly on RollingStone.com. You can check out the No Filler playlist right here.
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