Post Malone Claims It’s a Struggle Being a White Rapper

t’s no secret Post Malone and hip-hop have a turbulent relationship. Malone clings to hip-hop as his main source of popularity and income, while turning his back on it in lyrics, interviews, and on Twitter. It’s a paradoxical, but not historically uncommon, approach for Post as a white artist to pick and choose what he likes without caring where it came from. In an apologetic new given the opportunity to claim/denounce a genre that he’s appropriated without fully paying proper respect.

Writer Bijan Stephen breaks down Malone’s sound as a genre-bending melange of emo, rock, pop, hip-hop, and country, comparing him to the likes of Lil Peep and Lil Uzi Vert—other rappers bringing a darker, rockier sound to the rap game. “It should just be music, you know?” Post says as he throws back an unknown number of Bud Light during the interview. (Within hours of publication, the article had been edited to read “beers.”) “Because I’ve met so many people that’ll say, ‘I listen to everything except for this, or this,’ you know? And I think that’s stupid. If you like it, you should listen to it.”