Roddy Ricch has released a new single called “Late at Night” today, after catapulting to rap popularity with the release of his debut album, Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial, in 2019.
Ricch revealed to Power 106 yesterday that an encounter with JAY-Z encouraged him to return to the studio following his Grammy defeat in 2021. The 22-year-old was nominated for six prizes but did not receive any of them.
The rapper said in the interview that he didn’t expect to win because Hov lost all eight of his Grammy nominations in 2018.
“Everybody was just like, ‘Why you saying that? Why is it so negative?’” he said. “I don’t know. I just had a feeling like I ain’t really worried about it. So, I end up going, and I ain’t win, but I wasn’t mad. I ain’t going into it expecting nothing. I’m already a winner. I don’t do it for money, so it’s like, I’m not just gon’ rap for no reason.”
“When I lost all that, I was like, ‘I put a lot of time [into] music, you know? Damn,’” he continued. “I just sat back. I was talking to my ni**as. I’m like, ‘Man, I’ma chill back. I’ma kickback on the music for a little while.’”
Ricch, on the other hand, saw JAY during the ceremony, which provided him with the motivation he needed.
“I had seen JAY at the Grammys, and he didn’t say, ‘What’s up?’ The first time I met him, he was like, ‘What’s up, young man?’ So I just expected that,” Ricch explained. “And the first thing he asked me was, ‘When you dropping music?’ At the time, it didn’t really hit me, but later on, I just thought of the power of that. I manifested, just talking about how they did him one year and [how] it happened to me. And the same guy this happened to ended up asking me when I’ma put out more music. So, it just kinda led me to think for a while like, ‘Damn, I gotta keep doing this.’ Even though I done went No. 1 for 11 weeks, No. 1 for seven weeks, that’s stuff that we don’t really see too often.”
He continued, “After that, I kind of wanted to back up, but he really gave me that inspiration like, ‘You gotta keep going. You gotta just see it through. When you got something to talk about, say it, put it out and keep it going,’” he added. “So, I just wanna publicly appreciate JAY-Z for that. Like I said, it helped me keep going. It be real life that keep me going with this. It don’t really be like, ‘I’ma just do this feature for this.’ If something really happen to me, that’s what really keep me going in this shit ’cause honestly, I won already, bro.”
