{"id":618475,"date":"2026-09-08T18:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T18:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/618475\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T18:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T18:42:09","slug":"karrahbooo-interview-on-lil-yachty-and-new-album-not-da-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/618475\/","title":{"rendered":"Karrahbooo Interview: On Lil Yachty and New Album \u2018Not Da 2\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tKarrahbooo<\/a> says she hasn\u2019t felt like her life has changed very much over the two years since her last project with Concrete Boys, the collective founded by Lil Yachty<\/a>. She says she\u2019s been sitting on new music, unable to release it thanks to label complications. Apart from a few times experimenting with live streaming (\u201cIt\u2019s just really harder than it looks. You have to be entertaining, and I\u2019m more chill,\u201d she says), she\u2019s been pretty much stuck in place. \u201cI would say it\u2019s only been stagnant because \u2014 wait, is that the right word?\u201d she says, interrupting herself. \u201cI would say it was only not changing so much because I wasn\u2019t able to drop, so I really was stuck a little bit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tKarrahbooo spoke to Rolling Stone the day before she released her long-delayed \u201cdebut\u201d mixtape, Not Da 2, a refreshing and invigorating set of tracks that manage to make up for the years of relative quiet. \u201cIt feels kind of exciting and nerve-wracking,\u201d she says over Zoom. \u201cIt feels relieving too, because I couldn\u2019t drop for so long. Now, that I finally can, I don\u2019t really know how to feel. I feel so many ways.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite this technically being her debut, Karrahbooo is arguably one of the more recognizable new faces in hip-hop. The Atlanta-born MC, who got her start as Lil Yachty\u2019s personal assistant, made waves with 2022\u2019s\u00a0\u201cMoney Counter,\u201d a breezy and melodic bop that sounds like it almost came too easily. Karrahbooo\u2019s flow, kind of like Veeze or Lucki, manages to feel both laid-back and conversational and deeply and intricately rhythmic, an enchanting combination made more potent by her almost dance-leaning sense of melody.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tShe followed up with \u201c40\u201d and \u201cRunning Late,\u201d before her On the Radar freestyle would introduce her soft-spoken, endlessly clever and menacing cadence to the masses, turning Lil Yachty\u2019s Concrete label into a venerable force within rap. For a while, it was all moving according to plan. She toured with Latto, Mariah the Scientist, and Key Glock. She played Coachella and Rolling Loud. And then, it all stopped.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI only dropped four songs before that whole thing happened,\u201d she says. \u201cThen I couldn\u2019t drop at all for two years. So I just feel like people don\u2019t know what to think of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat whole thing,\u201d of course, is her falling out with Yachty and the Concrete Boys in 2024. A personal dispute between her and Yachty, who have been longtime friends, quickly became internet-gossip fodder.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo hear Karrahbooo tell it now, one of the most lasting misconceptions is also one of the simplest. People saw the music stop after Concrete Boys and assumed she had run out of ideas.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor some reason, a lot of people don\u2019t know I was in a deal with Yachty,\u201d she says. \u201cWe got into it, and I was just stuck in the deal for a very long time and I couldn\u2019t release music. People just thought I wasn\u2019t dropping because I couldn\u2019t do it without him. But I was already doing it without him before he even got in the picture.\u201d (Yachty has previously disputed claims he was holding up Karrahbooo\u2019s music.)<\/p>\n

\n\tKarrahbooo says she is now fully out of that deal and signed to Mercury Records. Her recent releases have appeared through her own NotTheTwo LLC, in partnership with Mercury Records\/Republic. \u201cHe\u2019s just my friend,\u201d she says of Yachty now. \u201cHe\u2019s just there to support me. He\u2019s not my boss anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGetting from one status to the other turned out to be considerably less dramatic than their falling out. Earlier this year, Yachty posted an old picture of Karrahbooo on his private Instagram account. She saw it and commented something along the lines of \u201cWhat, do you miss me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tKarrahbooo was with a friend when she FaceTimed him. \u201cI was like, \u2018You miss me, bro?\u2019\u201d she remembers. \u201cAnd then he was like, \u2018Yeah.\u2019 And then we had this long talk just about everything that happened, and we just patched it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe reconciliation has even made its way onto Not Da 2, where Yachty appears on a song appropriately titled \u201cPatched It Up.\u201d Karrahbooo says the two have also recently recorded an episode of Yachty\u2019s A Safe Place podcast, where the subject of his old accusations that he was behind all of her music came up again.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou know what bothers me so much?\u201d she says. \u201cHe wrote a verse for me on his song. It\u2019s just like \u2026 he didn\u2019t write my songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe admits she herself did not always handle that period particularly well. For the first few months, she stayed quiet, hoping to keep the dispute offline. Eventually, she says, the constant comments and competing narratives got to her. \u201cI just couldn\u2019t take it anymore,\u201d she says. \u201cI just started crashing out. I don\u2019t think I handled it very well, but I learned from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lesson?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI just feel like you shouldn\u2019t beef with anybody online,\u201d she says. \u201cYou have each other\u2019s number. I feel like you could talk it out. I feel like I should put business over emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAbout 90 percent of Not Da 2, she says, was recorded during the two years when she was unable to release it. Much of it captures a version of Karrahbooo who was watching her career sit still while the conversation around her continued without her.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was just angry and hurt a lot of the times,\u201d she says. \u201cSo I kind of sound angry. But I\u2019m nice. I\u2019m not that angry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYou can hear some of that restlessness in the production. Working with Truebeatzz, Karrahbooo deliberately began moving away from some of the muted, Detroit-influenced production that accompanied her earliest music and toward harder, more animated beats.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe remembers asking Truebeatzz why he kept sending her what he thought a Karrahbooo beat was supposed to sound like. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you ever give me the beats that the hood niggas do or the trap niggas do?\u201d she asked. \u201cWhy you never give me no turnt shit? Let me try that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, the harder sound of Not Da 2 may already be temporary. Karrahbooo spent years as a DJ before becoming a rapper, and her listening habits stretch further than her own records suggest. Her parents separated when she was young, and she says moving between different branches of her family exposed her to \u201cold white music,\u201d Black music, and the Caribbean records on her Jamaican mother\u2019s side. These days, she says, she probably listens to R&B and alternative music more than rap.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Not Da 2, she experiments with that palette on \u201cUnderstand Me,\u201d working with producer Noah Breakfast on something closer to the hazy alternative music she likes. Her ambitions for her eventual debut album go even further. She talks enthusiastically about working with Ghanaian American singer Moliy and, especially, Laila!, whose idiosyncratic production she hopes will play a major role in the record.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy mixtape, OK, it\u2019s good,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I want my album to be great.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tFor all the drama attached to the last chapter of her career, Karrahbooo doesn\u2019t sound interested in turning Not Da 2 into a referendum on her merit as a rapper. What she\u2019s really interested in is finally getting enough music out for listeners to have an opinion about Karrahbooo that is based on her actual output. \u201cI feel like I never got really a chance,\u201d she says. She thinks that may be about to change.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI hope people see that I don\u2019t need anybody,\u201d she says. \u201cI could do it myself, and I did.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Karrahbooo says she hasn\u2019t felt like her life has changed very much over the two years since her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,262477,106618,278],"class_list":["post-618475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-karrahbooo","tag-lil-yachty","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}