Roddy Ricch burst onto the music scene in 2019, showing himself to be a talented singer, rapper and songwriter. However, given that he is so new to the music scene, many people might be wondering about Roddy Ricch’s history and how he became famous.
Roddy Ricch came to prominence in 2019 with the release of his debut album, Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial, which scored several top hit singles and three Grammy Award nominations.
Read more below about Roddy Ricch and how he went from a kid growing up in Compton to a Grammy Award-winning artist.
Childhood in Compton
Roddy Ricch was born Rodrick Wayne Moore, Jr. on October 22,1998 in Compton, California. Ricch’s love of music began early, with the rapper experimenting with beats by the time he was eight.
Despite his talent, Ricch got swept up in Compton’s pervasive gang culture. He was a member of the Park Village Compton Crips, an apparent rite of passage for generations of his family members.
Illegal affiliations aside, Ricch didn’t just show an interest in music, but he was also a good basketball player, despite his small stature. The rapper, who is 5’7”, said of his basketball playing days, “Yeah! That was thing for me I’m short so I really didn’t think of going to the league, wasn’t thinking about nothing like that. I didn’t take it that serious.”
Ricch and Hussle
After graduating from high school, Ricch released his first mixtape, Feed Tha Streets, which caught the attention of Meek Mill and Nipsey Hussle, both major names in Hip-Hop.Hussle was so impressed he even brought Ricch out on stage with him during one of his concerts.
Unfortunately, less than a year later, Nipsey Hussle was shot an killed by an acquaintance. Though Hussle had once been a gang member himself, he had turned his life around and was working with the city to help the gang violence that has plagued the area for decades.
“Die Young” and a Debut Album
A few months later, Roddy Ricch releases his single, “Die Young,” written in honor of three fellow burgeoning rappers who were shot and killed in the months prior to the song’s release.
The song was written around tragic circumstances, it achieved rave reviews, with Rolling Stone, writing, “It isn’t clear when rappers started singing better than pop stars… The line between rapping and singing has never been thinner, often displayed over superb, simple production. Roddy Ricch, a buzzing rapper from Compton, is the latest example of that shift.”
“Die Young” would rack up over 80 million views on YouTube during its initial release and had an even higher streaming number on Spotify. These numbers were incredible for a fledgling Hip-Hop star who hadn’t even turned 21.
You can watch Roddy Ricch’s video for “Die Young” in the YouTube video below.
In February of 2019, a posthumous release from Nipsey Hussle titled “Racks in the Middle,” which featured Roddy Ricch, landed on Billboard’s Hot 100 and scored both Ricch and the late-Hussle a Grammy Award. The following year saw Ricch collaborate with several other Hip-Hop artists.
In December of 2019, Ricch’s debut album, Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial, was released, where it reached the number one spot on Billboard’s Hot 200 multiple times over its first few months on the market. The album’s fourth single, “The Box,” would go on to be Roddy Ricch’s highest-charting song and was well-received by critics.
Though Roddy Ricch’s career has barely begun, the rapper is still in awe of his success. Speaking of his newfound fame, Ricch told Rolling Stone, “I been through a lot. Going through s*** like bullets flying, it’ll f*** you up a little bit. It triggers something else in you. This fame s*** is new to me. Being in rooms where you don’t have to worry about s***, I don’t get that side of life yet. I’ll be in the room with millionaires and billionaires and still be like, ‘What’s going on? Who’s that at the door?’”