Post Malone

Austin Richard Post, known to the wider public as Post Malone, picked up on Drake's insight of blurring the lines between hip-hop, pop-rap, trap and r'n'b. He broke through with the single "White Iverson" in 2015, and released his hazy debut album "Stoney" (2016), but became a superstar above all with "beerbongs & bentleys" (2018), whose pop-trap single "Rockstar" and pop-rap single "Psycho" considerably widened his audience. Plagued by addiction to smoking and drinking, melancholic by nature and highly sensitive, Post Malone embodies a new idea of popstar, one that emerges from contemporary hip-hop culture (mainly trap, that is) but is ready to push past its boundaries to embrace a more crossover audience. This evolution towards a new, contemporary pop-rap hybrid is fully realized with the mega-hit "Sunflower", 17-times platinum at home and the lead single from the film "Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse" (2018). "Hollywood's Bleeding" (2019), his third album, which also features "Circles" and showcases his recognizable vibrato, and the following "Twelve Carat Toothache" (2020), which widens his stylistic range even further, hosting even Fleet Foxes, confirm the rise of a new popstar, one who combines the arrogance and flashiness of certain strands of hip-hop with sincere emotion and a ruthless knack for nailing instant hooks (helped along by the many producers involved). His fifth album, "Austin" (2023), aims, from its very title, to strip away the persona and reveal the man beneath, and is billed as his "guitar" album; it features no guests on the tracklist.

(Antonio Silvestri)