NLE Choppa won’t stop until he gets what he wants. The Memphis-born rap star sat down with Rolling Stone‘s Green Room ahead of a recent show to talk about his rapid ascent to success — and the mentality that’s allowed him to become one of the most promising rappers today.
“I’m just fearless. I’m the type of n–a that if I could walk up to the person that’s holding my blessings, I’d smack the shit out of them and take it,” he told Rolling Stone. “I have a real big hunger and persistence. Nothing gets in the way of what I want. I don’t like the word ‘can’t.’”
“That’s the type of person I am. When you train yourself to be that way, you gotta win,” he added. “Even when you lose, you keep trying. I’m gonna keep trying 100 times.”
After the virality of his explicit “Slut Me Out” last year, Choppa followed the song up with a sequel that’s been received with excitement by Choppa’s fans, along with LGBTQ users, thanks to his viral line: “If I was a bad bitch, I’d wanna fuck me too.”
“I took a selfie in the car. I looked at the picture, and I was like, ‘If I was a bad bitch, I’d want to fuck me too.’ I was deadass, too,” Choppa explained about the line. “After that, I realized I wanted to write it into a song. The beat was already there.”
Earlier this year, the musician was lauded for thanking the LGBTQ community for “showing so much love” to the track. “IDC what’s normalized as a rapper, I was raised to fuck with who fuck with you! So thank y’all for appreciating my craft,” he wrote on X at the time. “My music For ALL. We do NO Discrimination.”
In his Green Room interview, Choppa shared that performing the song is “electrifying,” calling it one of his favorites to play in front of a crowd. “All of the adversity that was surrounding me really drove me to appreciate the performances a lot more,” Choppa said. “Seeing everyone rock with it is a blessing that I’m honored to receive.”
Choppa cited Blocboy JB from Memphis as a major influence in his career and reflected on sampling Tupac and Nelly in his music, explaining that he “studies” all genres, including Afrobeats, reggaeton, and rock. “I’m not a person that discriminates art. If I don’t like it, I’ll just say it’s not my preference. I go through all music,” he said. About his music-making style, he said: “I let the beat talk to me for real and I talk back to that mothafucker.”
The artist is set to perform in Europe and Australia next month before returning to the U.S. and Canada in September for a handful of shows in Kentucky, Arkansas, and Vancouver.