![]() Lil Peep and Juice WRLD both died of drug overdoses aged 21, and in the song 21 Polo G says he took his last ever Percocet – an opioid painkiller – with Juice WRLD. “I’m focused on longevity,” he says, “I’m trying to make sure that me and my momma straight, my kids’ kids straight.” That fixity comes following a rocky relationship with drugs: in 2019 Polo said that he almost died of an overdose, and the opioid crisis is visible in the lifestyle and lyrics of his contemporaries, many of whom have documented their struggles in music before being consumed by them. Polo, who became a father at 20, has his sights set on a big picture. It’s up to us to make up our mind one day if we gon’ keep falling for this same shit.” There’s a lot of traps that we may fall into, or that we might be privy to. Coming up from where we coming from, having the colour skin that I do, it’s a lot of things that go against us. You could know these things, and you could preach these things in music, but until you actually act on them you’re going to be forever trapped up in this mess. Is music one of the only escapes from that system? “It can be an escape, but like …” He pauses and rolls his head to the side, looking out of the car window. Wishing for a Hero samples the instrumental from 2Pac’s Changes, and continues the spirit of the original song in addressing the struggles of his country’s poor Black population: “Stuck in the system, they just watchin’ us fail while they sittin’ back … It’s hard to get a job, so we hustle and flip a pack / It’s all a set-up, that’s why they call this bitch a trap” (the trap being somewhere drugs are sold or prepared). Using plangent guitars and pianos alongside the crisp snap of rap percussion, his lyrics often centre on violence and race in the US, and are frank about the trauma of experiencing years of hardship – he says he writes so that his fans “know that they are not alone”. “But it’s just a matter of me getting back into the loop of the world opening back up.” “It’s kind of stressful: the constant ‘we need you to do this’,” he says. ![]() The disorienting whirl of album promo is taking its toll. ![]() When it does happen, the camera shows the ceiling of a car as he is driven to the bank. His recent success means his schedule is filling to the point where our video call gets repeatedly pushed back due to flights and late-night chatshow recordings. A candid but tense meeting with him shows the reality of those lyrics. The track also reached No 3 in the UK in April, and his previous album The GOAT has spent 47 weeks on the UK album chart, with his brand of mournful melodic rap perhaps particularly appealing during the introspection of lockdown. They’re written by 22-year-old Chicago rapper Polo G, and taken from Rapstar, the lead single on his new album, Hall of Fame. “Every day a battle, I’m exhausted and I’m weary / Make sure I smile in public, when alone, my eyes teary / I fought through it all, but that shit hurt me severely.” Even acknowledging the widespread vulnerability and emotional honesty in today’s rap scene, these are still startling lyrics for a US No 1 hit.
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