There’s no pretense around Anycia, the Southern belle whose alluring voice and unabashed authenticity have made her a rising star. When she logs onto Zoom for this interview, she’s relaxing on her couch. Talking with her feels more like FaceTiming with a friend; at one point, she has to pause the call because her dog started peeing in the house. The Atlanta rapper, 27, tells me that the confidence displayed in her music was cultivated over time.
“I’ve had moments where I wasn’t myself,” she admits. “I was younger and I was trying to figure out who I was. I was trying to fit in. But as time went on, I just grew this confidence within, and it was like, ‘You got to stand on who you are.’ You could be in a room with a bunch of opposites, but you got to stay within who you are. I feel like when I started doing music, I was already in that head space of, ‘This is who I am.’”
Her sense of self was developed during a nomadic childhood where she lived all over Atlanta as well as New Orleans, constantly being the new kid in school. Withdrawn in her younger years, she eventually embraced the extroversion evident on breakout songs “BRB” and “Back Outside,” with the latter dedicated to getting back to yourself after dealing with an ain’t-shit guy. Her brashness, and her ear for smooth beats, shone on her 2024 mixtape Princess Pop That. Anycia says she initially thought it would be more of an underground sensation. Instead, it got her an opening spot for Kehlani on a national tour, some upcoming acting and fashion endeavors, and a wide national audience. Her 2024 success made her realize that the best artistry is the truest.
“I hate to say it like this, but this here really not that serious,” she says. “The business gets serious. But when it comes down to being an artist, all you’re doing is being yourself.”
She’s currently working on her debut album, Grady Baby, which she’s releasing as part of DJ Drama’s Gangsta Grillz series. She says Drama has “always been supportive” of his career, and his presence cinches the album’s theme: ”DJ Drama is an iconic person to have on your tape, and I wanted my tape to feel like an old Atlanta tape. He was the cherry on top for the whole project.” Grady Baby refers to Grady Hospital in Atlanta, one of those places that rappers reference so frequently that it’s become internationally known.
Grady Baby, set to be released some time this spring, is a more intentionally crafted project than Princess Pop That, from top to bottom. Anycia crafted a playlist of her favorite Southern rap songs and worked hands-on with producers to flip them. “I had a lot of creative input on the producing. I did my little one, two,” she says. “I let them know what instruments I wanted and how I wanted the beat to be sampled.” Her M.O. for sample flips was “songs that’s like, ‘Oh my God, I forgot about that song!’ … I wanted to make it super-duper Atlanta, super Southern, super nostalgic.“
She hits that mark on “Never Need” with Karrahbooo and GloRilla, where she jokes that she urged her featured guests to be as degrading to men as possible on the track: “I just wanted the most belligerent, rowdy, disrespectful bitches I know. The shit that these bitches is saying in this song, it’ll make any man crawl up in the corner and want to die.“ The song vies to add to the prevalence of women in rap pulling an Uno reverse on rap’s coarse misogyny, slinging back the mud that male artists have thrown on women for years.
The old Atlanta feel radiates in the project’s visuals, too. While Princesss Pop That featured creative direction from multi-hyphenate Trinidad James, Anycia decided to make her elders her mood board this time.
“I was trying to come up with an idea for my album and my mom was like, ‘Why don’t you just base this album off of the shit that you was around, girl?’” she recalls. Anycia peered through family photo albums featuring her mom and aunts in front of airbrushed backdrops wearing Baby Phat, Timberland heels, jersey dresses, and other ‘00s fashion staples. She tells me her aunt styled R&B artist Ciara for her “Goodies” and “1,2 Step” videos. Anycia jokes that her family members were “actually pretty offended” that she didn’t immediately realize they should be the album’s inspiration. “They was like, ‘Girl, what the fuck? Are you serious? Do you not see us? We them girls.’”
And by embodying their energy, Anycia is poised to become one of “them girls” for the new Atlanta. In her opinion, the city that became the modern rap mecca is having a bit of an identity crisis.
“Atlanta is my home. Atlanta’s culture is what I feel like made me who I am today,” she says. “This is me having a little tough love: I feel like Atlanta could be doing better right now when it comes to showing who we really are. We’re losing our culture a little bit.”
She notes how aughts Atlanta favorites like T.I., Ludacris, and Outkast simultaneously succeeded while being nothing like one another. “Everybody just had their own thing going on,” she adds. “It was authentic. Now I feel like it’s a lot of the same shit. I hate to say that and I hope don’t nobody kick my ass. But I’m from here born and raised, so you can’t really tell me much.”
