Photo: Verse Ent.
Playboy Fresh will never forget the conclusion of his recent tour.
The Bay Area native hit the stage at Tree Dallas last month to close out Shordie Shordie's "Memory Lane 2 Tour." There were thousands of fans in the crowd watching as he performed songs like "Blessed & Cursed," "For Nothing" and other fan favorites from his recent project Heartbreak Tape Deluxe. He even gave away some authentic diamond Playboy Bunny chains to loyal fans and inducted them into his "Bunny Gang." All went well inside the venue. Yet, on the outside, raging winds and torrential rain from a ferocious thunderstorm battered the Lone Star State.
"We stayed an extra night in Dallas," Playboy Fresh tells iHeartRadio. "It was thunderstorming all day. So I just waited and waited. Some of the team had got out. They left, but they ended up being on the plane at the airport for a long time."
Playboy Fresh managed to escape Texas after the rain died down. It was a riveting end to his third tour of 2024. He had previously performed alongside Eric Bellinger during his recent "Rebirth Tour" run in Europe and served as a supporting act for Phora's "Saints & Sinners Tour" earlier this year. Now that the clouds have cleared, the 31-year-old rapper is fixated on dropping more new music this year.
During our interview, Playboy Fresh talks about his latest tour run and his plans to drop two new albums later this year, Back On Some Player Sh*t and My Life. Scroll below to read the entire discussion.
It's been a minute since you first started rapping. How did you launch your music career?
I always forget exactly when it was, but it was like I had artists signed to me at that point and stuff, and there was a point I just decided I wanted to try to make a song. So I hit up my buddy, my boy Southside. I just hit him and I was like, 'Can I come record a song?' And I did, and I just enjoyed it. It was something special about being able to just do it and make it. Before that I was doing film, and there was something about just being able to just make a song and it be done in that night and that speed of it was cool. And I just kept recording.
You started dropping music under the name "MG Fresh." Then you recently rebranded and changed your name to Playboy Fresh. Let's talk about that. What inspired that rebrand?
I think it takes a certain amount of time to actually learn how to express yourself through any artistic medium. I felt like, when I finally had figured out how I wanted to express myself, it was just time for a fresh start. It wasn't the same as the music before. I started releasing music this time around in July of last year, a little less than a year.
You recently released your new project The Heartbreak Tape Deluxe. Talk about the creative process behind your latest project under this new name.
I had a six song EP called H.I.M. that came out first, but really it was just like I had a lot of s**t from my breakup that I had wanted to talk about. I actually initially had wanted to put it out first before H.I.M., but by the time I kind of had everything organized and sort sorted and was ready to start dropping music, it was summertime, so it didn't feel like heartbreak season. That's why I went with Him and then came back to The Heartbreak Tape. It was a chapter in my life that I felt like I wanted to make a lot of songs about. I wanted to really express that and get that out as part of my story and then move on from it. That's kind of part of it too. There's a lot of emotion wrapped up in a lot of that music, and I definitely wanted to get that out, but I also wanted to get past it and put it out so I could move forward. I gave people the full experience of that chapter, but not staying in it any longer.
Which song would you say is the most impactful record on that project?
Probably "Sacrifice" or "Numb." They both very much talk about the feelings of expressing how much I gave and how little I got, you know. I mean how much I put in and how underappreciated it was. "Sacrifice" is more of a slower somber tone. "Numb" is a bit more of an aggressive tone, but the subject matter on them is very, very similar.
Who helped you produce those songs on the album?
I think "Numb" was Few and Up North. "Sacrifice" is Up North. Those two really did most of the songs on the project. Few is out in Atlanta and Up North is a group of three producers out of Northern Europe, and they're dope too, especially when it comes to that darker kind of sound. I think they live somewhere that's very cold and s**t, you know what I mean? So I think they kind of make that dark sound.
How have the fans reacted to your latest project? Is it still resonating with them?
I wanted to put it out because what I'm making new music about now is different. I definitely very much feel a connection to that project and I think fans have as well. It's probably the most vulnerable work I've put out. So I definitely seen people resonate with it, and I definitely love it for that purpose and that reason.
I know you've toured with a lot of artists before, but this one with Shordie Shordie was a little bit different for you. Talk about the Bunny Gang and how you recruited all these ladies with real diamond chains.
I want to do something different. I want to do something special. I figured everybody got merch and people going to wear it whenever they wear it, but you got a little diamond pendant, you know what I'm saying? You probably going to wear that a lot more. It go with a lot more. You wear it with everything. So that was kind of the idea behind that was, and then creating a community out of it. That was fun.
How did you come up with the idea?
I was kicking it with some of my homegirls and s**t, and I was wearing my bunny chain and they were like, 'this would be cute or whatever,' and then that kind of sparked the idea.
And you gave away to one or two fans per show right? That's a whole lot of ladies in that gang man.
Yeah, it started out being kind of uniform like that, and then it was kind of like, let's go with who deserves it. Sometimes there were shows that we'd give away three, and sometimes there were shows where we gave away one or none depending on how people was turning up. We felt like you have to earn it because it is something special.
How did you determine who would earn a chain?
Whoever's going the craziest, whoever was really putting that energy out there and being excited. That was definitely what we tried to look for. At first it was bring girls up on stage and then there was a show that we couldn't bring 'em up on stage because of the way the stage was set up. I had went down to the barricade and they found the girls and gave it to them. We actually liked that better so we started doing that. I'd go out after my performance and find the girls who I seen turning up. It was able to be a little bit more of an intimate moment. So yeah.
Of all the people that you've traveled with, who was your favorite act to tour with and why?
I'd probably say Eric Bellinger because I've known Eric for a while and he invited me to Europe. It was just a dope thing to do. I appreciated it a lot. He didn't have to do that, and it was fun. It was fun to be out there and be in that space. That was someone who I always kind looked up to. We had the same publicist back in the day for a while. He's just a really talented musician.
What would you say that you learned from Eric during that time?
I've learned so much from every tour, but I think really just connecting with the fans and seeing how connected he is. Mind you we're in Europe, we're in places where people don't even speak the same language. Just seeing how much his fans connect with him and are tapped in with everything that he's done. Also how to continue to build that fan base, feed that fan base and give back to that fan base. It was a really cool thing to see.
So going from recording your first song with Southside to where you're at right now, how do you feel like you've grown over the past years since you started?
I've grown a lot. I think it takes a while to really get to that point of finding yourself in it. After I made my first song at his house, I never asked him to get a beat from him or anything like that because I knew I wasn't at that level where it would make sense for him. I have people who ask me all the time for s**t that only make sense for them. It doesn't make sense for me, so I don't want to be in that position doing that to somebody else. I just kind of went out and found and developed my rap skills. I put out stuff that I wish I hadn't, but I did. And then I just worked at. You work at anything long enough and you dedicate enough, you get better. I think, for me, I always had something to say. It was just about figuring out how to say it.
It's great to see that you've really taken a lot from your early beginnings and incorporated that into who you are today. So what's next for you? Any new music you've got coming up?
I got two projects really ready to go, but I got one that's going to come out this summer called Back on Some Player S**t. I'm excited for that one. That was going to be fun. After that one is going to be 'My Life.' 'My Life' is more of a darker, more like fall/winter. But 'Back On Some Player Sh*t,' is just like some summer s**t. It's going to be fun. It's going to be a vibe. I have to put out something after The Heartbreak Tape.. something to let them know I'm back outside.