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tlanta rapper-producer MexikoDro is 10 minutes late to our Zoom call, but he comes on apologetically, telling everyone about an errand at his bank that took longer than he expected. But he’s not sweating it. After all, an issue at the bank might be considered one of those good problems, especially compared with what Dro used to deal with in the streets of Atlanta.  

As a former member of Atlanta-based production crew Beat Pluggz, he’s a beloved pioneer of “plugg” music, a dreamy offshoot of trap music that made waves on SoundCloud in the mid-2010s. Playboi Carti’s rise dovetailed with the plugg era, and Dro collaborated with him on songs like “Don’t Tell Nobody,” “Broke Boi,” and “Plug,” also lacing beats for Drake (the officially unreleased “From Florida With Love”) and Kodak Black (“Boomerang”). But even with that success, Dro calls the ages of 16 to 28 the worst time of his life, with multiple jail stints, and the trauma of his mother’s cancer diagnosis (she’s now cancer-free) almost derailing his music career.

But then he experienced a reckoning. Around 2019, during one of several jail stints, he had the realization that he had to change his life, and also expanded his craft from production to rapping, buoyed by fans who were inspired by his interviews (and these days, his inspiring X presence). Now, he’s not just an in-demand producer, but one of rap’s great motivators. 

“[I wanna] make sure these young folks, to the Uncs, to the Goddamn dads know who God is,” he says. “[And] give everybody a sense of direction to do the best that they could do and be the best that they could be. I just started realizing that I do got some type of voice. I could be able to let people know what the real is instead of the fake, [and when] it’s smoke and mirrors you lookin’ at. I want to change lives.”

He’s on the way with songs like “No Date,” his breakout single that caught fire earlier this year. Sounding like his inspirations Project Pat and Juicy J, he dishes off simple-yet-potent couplets like “I got a crib where I lay my head at/Knowin’ that I’m blessed ’cause that’s where my bed at,” and “Just a couple years ago, Dro life a mess/I be goin’ through it, but I still passed the test.” His lyrics are often delivered over classic synth that feel like so many of Atlanta rap’s main sonic moods converged: triumphant, spooky, menacing. 

The track, like most of his November Still Goin EP, feels like the best of classic Atlanta rap’s properties without the gruff trap tales or drug metaphors attached. What kind of message would prime Jeezy have presented without the pyrex parables in tow? Something like MexikoDro’s.  

That’s why he’s the subject of X observations like, “MexikoDro makes ‘get your life together’ music.” On the surface, his raps can come across like mundane (“Wake up, pray, finna start the day/Brush my teeth, wash my ass, then I wash my face,” on “Marta”), but he intersperses those straight-to-the-point reflections with gems like “Life got better when I prayed and it did,” from “Height,” that hint how arduous his journey was. 

Hip-hop is more segmented than ever, allowing artists like Dro to be off in their own corner of the landscape, dishing mantras to loyalists, completely apathetic toward “mass appeal.” Songs like “Marta,” “Hurt,” and “Height” offer the kind of motivation that stirs a cult fan base and allows an artist to tour forever — but, as he says in almost every song, Dro isn’t interested in the typical trappings of fame.

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“I’m not doing certain things. I ain’t doing all ’em shows and all that stuff,” he says in his bellowing baritone. “That’s not what I’m trying to do.” When I ask why he’s uninterested in performing, his answer is succinct: “That’s something I don’t do. I’m a pescatarian. A lot of people eat chicken and beef. I don’t eat that,” adding that he’s always seen himself as a more “behind-the-scenes” type. And when it comes to a full-on studio album, he seems uninterested in the investment needed for a successful rollout. 

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“I ain’t thinkin’ about no album. The album stuff is big,” he says. “You got to put some real money behind everything, man. Don’t nobody wanna [be] sittin’ around here waiting all day for me to drop an album, man. You got my real listeners who want more Mexiko. They want that shit now.” 

For now, he’s focused on continuing to flood the market like he’s been doing over the past five years, and staying to himself in the meantime. When he raps “Most of the time, Mexiko, I be at home,” he’s not joking. “I don’t give a fuck about being around nobody,” he says. “I done gained peace. I done gained a sense of direction. I done gained a closer relationship to God. I’ve learned who Jesus was. I’ve been trying to do the right thing. I’ve been trying to help others — young people, old people, don’t matter who it is — I want to help what it is, because I was at a time [where] I ain’t had no help.“

Dro was born in the Ellenwood section of Southwest Atlanta. He learned how to make beats at 10 on Fruity Loops software, crafting them from feel — like he still does today. “This music theory that people be talking about … man, what does that consist of?” he asks rhetorically. “I don’t know no notes. I play by ear. My ear is good, of course. I ain’t have to go to no music school or none of that. I ain’t had the time for all that.”

His early musical inspirations were Atlanta giants like Gucci Mane and OJ Da Juiceman, as well as scores to video games Resident Evil — Code Veronica and Goldeneye 007. He melded those influences into his distinct sound, which manifests in four different types of beats (which he won’t reveal). He was the standout member of the Beat Pluggz, who became entrenched in the rap underground with their “Plug!” tag and syrupy beats. The musical layman might frame anything with an 808 and hi-hats as a trap beat, but there are distinctions: Whereas trap beats tend to be haunting and menacing, plugg beats are wistful, with cloudy, saccharine synth melodies spread across 808s like icing on a cake. Dro ushered in that movement, making him an underground pioneer.  

But while he made a name for himself as a producer, he was also dealing with the trauma of his mother’s cancer diagnosis. He says watching her nearly two-year treatment took a lot out of the then-14-year-old. “Boy, it was awful,” he says, vaguely implying how dark his thought process got. “I ain’t going to get too deep into what I had going on, but I wanted to go out. You don’t know nothin’ about the cancer and how it’s going to take people out and all that. So back then, I wanted to go a little closer to my mother if it came down to it.”

He says the pain of her illness led to him getting into “a lot of trouble,” and “being out here doing stupid stuff, almost getting into situations I couldn’t be able to get out of.” During a 2016 interview with The Hundreds, the then-20-year-old passed on giving his real name because “I got a couple cases pending on me.” Over time, he grew apart from his fellow Beat Pluggz and ran into a cycle of carceral drama that undermined his talent. Hip-hop is an unflinching chronicle of underserved communities, speckled with “what-if” artists who couldn’t transcend the environment of quick bucks and fast tempers that beget life-altering mistakes; Dro was poised to become one of them. 

By his mid-twenties, he says, “I was in that stage of thinking about changing, but I wasn’t taking the initial steps.” That shift happened during one particular jail stint, in 2019, that had him think hard about his future. “I had to really have a conversation with myself and God,” he says, adding, “God had sent signals through to help me be the man that I am right now.” By that point, he had started writing songs at the behest of fans inspired by the wisdom he’d drop in interviews. 

Not only did he start writing more songs, which ended up on his Down Bad solo debut, he also wrote down a “covenant” to God, promising to forge a more productive path. From that point, he’s been strictly about the music, releasing a steady stream of projects, producing for different acts while dropping a trio of solo projects. “I still ain’t no rapper,” he says. “I ain’t step out to be no rapper. I just do a little something.” But nevertheless, he’s making a more indelible mark with listeners than many in-demand rappers. 

Producers ESS, Babe Brazy, and ZiggyMadeIt are core contributors to Still Goin; the latter is the 19-year-old son of Dallas rapper Yella Beezy’s manager. When I ask Dro why he isn’t rapping over his own beats on the EP, he notes, “I just wanted to hear some new things. And at the same time, [with] my team and who I mess with, I want to do something on they stuff too. I ain’t got to get all the money in the world. I ain’t greedy.“ But still, he proudly says, “I could do that too. [It] don’t take me nothin’ to pull up the beats on my laptop and do my thing.”

These days, he says, his biggest goal is “making sure my team is straight.” He tells me that he works diligently with his manager, videographer, photographer, and engineer, a small braintrust that shields him from the aspects of the industry he doesn’t care for.

Dro is content with where he’s at. These days, outside of making music, he’s into cars, playing with his dog, and cooking. “I handle my business, man,” he says in his Southern twang. “I might make two starches, macaroni and cheese, rice pilaf, and some salmon with shrimp. I might throw some oysters in that thing, too — make some oyster Rockefeller. [I] do my thing, man. It just depends. You might catch a big old pair of fish on my grill. You might catch a black sea bass … you ever heard of black tiger bass?”

I haven’t.

“You’ll probably catch that on my shit, too. Got a lot of things I be putting together, man.”

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He tells me he’s open to starting a label, scoring for movies, and doing video game themes down the line (his “WATCH ME” beat for Bktherula was in 2K22). But that will come in due time. 

“When I got a time for all that, for sure,” he says. “I look into all that different type of things.… I would do [a label], but that ain’t the focus right now. I got to get me right.”