The Rise Of A Popstar Like Post Malone

Where were you when you first heard Post Malone’s single, ‘White Iverson?’ I remember being at a friend’s place with someone controlling the auxiliary cord and the song being played. And when I heard the song, I didn’t know what the artist looked like, I just knew the song was a banger. The production, the melodic flow — everything about the song was top notch, an instant classic on first listen.

It was so good, I had to find out more about the artist. I found out the artist name was Post Malone and that he was Caucasian, had braids and gold teeth. Personally, I didn’t care what he looked like. I’m the type of person who still likes Milli Vanilli songs, even though they didn’t sing it because if the song is good, it’s good, but how he looked like did matter back in 2015. Especially in this hip-hop, rap culture.

Because at the time, 20-year-old Post Malone, real name Austin Post, was starting to become successful in the hip-hop, rap culture world and because of this, had people going, here we go, another culture vulture trying to get rich off black music. And you have to understand the severity of being labelled a culture vulture. Even the highest selling rapper of all time Eminem had to admit on his song, ‘Without Me’, that he made money off the culture in the way of the lyric, “I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley, to do black music so selfishly, and use it to get myself wealthy.”

So, when you are potentially seen as a culture vulture because of the way you look, you have to really convince everyone that you aren’t. And for Post Malone, it wasn’t easy and he was subsequently asked about it in interviews. In one particular interview on the Breakfast Club, Charlemagne Tha God directly asked, “Are you afraid as a white rapper that you may be considered a culture vulture?” Post Malone’s answer in 2015 is really why he’s successful currently. He replied, “I’m not scared because I’m not trying to be anybody that I’m not.”

And it’s that honesty and truthfulness within Post Malone and in his music, that has made him successful over the years. It’s now October 2017 and Post Malone right now has one of the hottest, if not, the hottest track of the year with the song ‘Rockstar’ featuring 21 Savage. The single, presumably, the first single from his upcoming sophomore album, Beerbongs And Bentleys is a smash. The song completely destroyed Apple Music’s one-week streaming record with 25 million streams in one-week toping DJ Khaled’s ‘I’m The One.’ And just today the single became Post Malone’s first Billboard №1 in his career.

All of this success coming from the guy that was labelled just a one-hit wonder and everyone told him that he would never top his debut single success. But Post Malone proved us all wrong and knew it. On his mixtape, August 26 he said on his song ‘Hollywood Dreams/Comedown’: “They thought I was fuckin done with Iverson, but I’m still balling on these bitches, let them know.”

And after releasing August 26, Post Malone released his debut album Stoneyand almost a year later, the album is still doing extremely well, well after its release. It’s now four times platinum and it generated four platinum singles.

As of right now, Post Malone is currently the most streamed artist in the world with over three billion collective streams across Spotify and Apple Music. Now based on numbers, his current success in music and streaming, it’s clear that his upcoming album, Beerbongs And Bentleys will take him to another level — the superstar level — so the music world needs to start preparing now because a storm is coming.

In an interview with Paper Magazine this past month, Post Malone said, “I don’t even understand how I got where I am and how I did it. It doesn’t make sense to me.” But here we are.

This story first appeared on The 405