It’s one of those fall Detroit days that can’t make up its mind if it wants to rain or not. It starts to sprinkle then it stops, and just when you think a real storm is brewing, the clouds dissipate. The uncertainty makes for a slow day at Clean Whips car wash, where Detroit rapper Veeze and five of his guys are scattered around talking and scrolling. The emcee is dressed in a gray “Detroit vs. Everybody” hoodie, black shorts, and Nikes. A friend of his shows Veeze his new blue Harley Davidson Trike. Veeze sits on it sideways, nodding his head in approval.
This is home to him; his dad has owned the car wash for years. “I grew up on Seven Mile and Southfield, where my mamma lives,” he says, looking out the open garage door toward Livernois. “And this same area right here, this my dad and my grandma neighborhood, a couple blocks that way is where my great grandma used to live.”
Veeze is in full chill mode, gearing up for his 22-city “Ganger Tour,” with a last stop in Detroit on Tuesday. This past May he performed on Babyface Ray’s “Courtesy of the Mob” tour that hit 25 cities. The back-to-back tours are taxing, but Veeze shows no signs of fatigue.
“It’s a lot of work, but seeing the fans, seeing the people that you may only see on the road is worth it,” he says. “I love performing, but touring is a lot of work.”
In 2019, Veeze’s first viral video “Rusty” was filmed inside this same car wash. The single featured Veeze’s slightly raspy bars over a piano-driven trap beat with a catchy melody.
“Even before that, this song I made called ‘Itself,’ it had a million views,” he says. “But ‘Rusty’ was the fave, though. It surpassed ‘Itself.’”
While “Itself” was a street anthem, “Heart Insurance” had a Bay Area-type of groove to it. All three were part of his 2019 mixtape Wavy Navy, which established him as a legitimate force in Detroit’s hip-hop scene. As a 25-year-old rap newbie, Veeze had songs that were reaching a million views about as fast as he could upload them. Being a new indepent artist and fighting your way through the noise of thousands of other rappers is tough. You would think he would’ve been doing cartwheels down Seven Mile, but that’s not who Veeze is.
“One million views ain’t enough, two ain’t enough,” he says nonchalantly. “It’s people in the world that get a million in an hour so it’s nothing to do a backflip about, forreal. … I’ve seen people with a million views that don’t go nowhere. A million views is basically the area code.”
Veeze is the rare hip-hop artist whose real life persona is nearly identical to his music. Lyrically and in-person, his level of unbothered is raw and relatable, while his unique form of dry humor feels like he should have been written in as a permanent character on Atlanta. Veeze carries the exact same stoic expression, whether he’s holding up 10 bands in a music video, getting interviewed, or on stage in front of thousands of fans.
When asked if any of this has created any misconceptions about him, he responds, “I like misconceptions, I don’t need random people to know the real me.”
Like other kids in the mid-2000s, Veeze grew up as a fan of local rap groups like Team Eastside and Doughboyz Cashout, but never considered penning any bars himself. When asked how his Mumford High classmates would describe him, he answers, “I would want you to ask someone who was in high school with me that question,” then takes a small pause. “Some of the stuff I say and the humor and stuff I say in my raps, like, that’s how I’ve always talked.”
When Veeze and his friends first found their way into a studio, the solemnity of their intentions was no different than a group of guys going to a basketball court to get shots up. He can’t name the exact moment he got behind the mic, but admits it was far from magical.
“It wasn’t like they was doing it for money, they was just rapping, making songs like high school kids do,” he says. “I was just having fun with it.”
But Veeze’s “having fun with it” turned into “you’re really good at it” very fast. His friend and fellow rapper Babyface saw the potential early on, poured tons of positive reinforcement on Veeze, and even paid for one of his videos to be shot.
“Ray really made me take it seriously, showing me what can come from it, the benefits and how far I can take it,” Veeze says. “At that point he was still growing, but he made me take it real seriously.”
“I didn’t know he was going to be successful, just knew he was different,” Babyface Ray says in a separate interview. “His style — meaning shit was new and fly.”
When Veeze released his single “Law N Order” during the middle of the 2020 pandemic, it was such a “Did I hear what I just thought I heard?”-type of reaction. The song sampled the theme music from the actual Law & Order TV series (which is almost as old as Veeze). The hip-hop site Genius posted a reaction clip from Detroit’s Royce Da 5’9” in which he says, “I love his approach man, laid back…” The track was the perfect canvas for Veeze to paint his indomitable bars:
“We ain't going on tour, but we got the bag up in the Sprinter/
I knew this shit was gone come just like I seen it on The Simpsons/
I think I’m seeing demons from beans and lean that I been sippin’/
I gotta keep praying to Jesus, I been thinkin’ bout leaving a nigga.”
Veeze says he was surprised but not so surprised by the reaction to the track, which has already become a Detroit classic.
“I don’t be knowing until I see the reaction,” he says. “I knew it didn’t suck! It was a collective amount of bars ain’t nobody heard before or said before.”
The single expanded his fanbase and brought Veeze national recognition. Rolling Stone named him one of the “11 Rappers Set to Make it Big in 2023.”
“It's good for people to kind of, like, to predict your potential,” he humbly says. “I mean, it comes with it. It’s a sport, so people are going to comment on it. I’m one of the new faces, so people are going to try to judge it. It’s good to even be talked about.”
Veeze cites one his biggest surprises through his journey so far has been learning that rappers he’s a fan of are also fans of his. He recorded “U Digg” with Lil Baby, “GOMD” with Lil Uzi Vert, and “Fight Night Round 3 Shit” with Lil Yachty and Babyface Ray. Each song represented a moment in which Veeze found himself recording a track with a hip-hop luminary that was now his contemporary.
“Even when I first met Lil Baby, when I first met Uzi, it was that moment like — I couldn’t believe these people listen to me,” he says. “They had heard my music before and these are people I was already fans of.”
His musical ascension hasn’t been without its fair share of hiccups. Instagram permanently deleted his first account for having too many rules violations. (Veeze insists it’s impossible to keep up with all of Instagram’s constant rule changes.) It’s also taken him a while to get used to the attention that comes with being a recognizable rap star. “It makes you feel like not being famous sometimes, but ain’t no going back,” he says. “I’m used to it now.”
He says he’s made it a priority to stay out of trouble. He’s witnessed too many friends and rappers go to jail, so he’s focused on the kind of decision-making and paper-chasing that doesn’t come with prison sentences. He moved to Georgia over a year ago. “I don’t think it’s too much to do for your career here, and I ain’t so much a local no more,” he says.
In efforts to get his music and business aligned properly, he reached out to Terrence “Snake” Hawkins, an industry veteran who Veeze met through his relationship with rappers Pooh Shiesty and Gucci Mane and has assisted and managed hip-hop acts Young Thug, Young Dro, and Gucci Mane.
“I was close to signing to 1017 [Records] before,” he says. “Me and Gucci still got a relationship, but Snake hit me up, he wanted to partner up. He’s been helping me ever since.”
“I saw what it was early so I wanted to be a part of it early,” says Hawkins in a separate interview, adding, “I told him, ‘I can’t buy you a chain and put it on Instagram, I can’t buy you a Benz and put it on Instagram. What I can do is teach you the business, help you understand your business.’ I made him a promise that you’ll own your masters and be a boss, and I kept my promise.”
As years started to tick by after Veeze’s 2019 Wavy Navy mixtape release, the demand for a full-length album grew. On the creative end, Veeze wanted to ensure Ganger was going to be the classic his audience wanted. “The fans might have deemed it great before it came out, so I wanted to make sure it was great,” he says.
And on the business side, Hawkins was doing everything he could to make sure Ganger and Veeze would both be commercially successful. There were a lot of interests from various record labels, but after several meetings Hawkins decided to stop communicating with them. “He had other offers but I felt the other deals on the table were traditional royalty deals and I felt like it wasn’t conducive to where we were going,” adds Hawkins. “I went to Veeze and told him, ‘Let’s put Ganger out ourselves.’ We pulled together our resources, we went half on marketing.”
Ganger finally arrived on June 21 of this year and the result was a 21-track album that debuted at No. 97 on Billboard’s Top 200 chart and was called “the year’s best rap album” by the Washington Post. “We did almost 9,000 units the first week,” says Hawkins. “That’s competing with artists on major labels that are doing 10, 20. We did that independently. We bet on ourselves and won.”
“It’s almost the same [as Wavy Navy], but just growing, seeing more things, l was living more life than I was living when Wavy Navy was getting made,” Veeze adds.
Songs like “Broke Phone,” “Tony Hawk,” and “WHOda1” are perfect for the backyard smokeout or the cookout, while “OverseasBaller” and “SEXY liar” are rich in Detroit trapisms. Veeze shines brightest on the Come On P-produced “Lick,” rapping:
“I don’t give a fuck, I’ll waste five thousand like it’s bottled water/
Drop a hundred, everybody think I’m Wilt like Otto Potter/
Veeze, you need a barber, but these hoes say you so adorable/
Pop a pill, that monkey on my back like Dora the Explorer.”
Veeze is the epitome of the new wave of artists that don’t write lyrics down, nor does he prepare in any way prior to a studio session. He lets the beat and whatever he’s gone through that day dictate what he raps about. When asked if he ever utilizes his phone’s voice notes as a way to store lyrics he responds, “I’m too cold for that. I done forgot better stuff than they ever thought of, like Kayne said,” he boasts.
“Not a Drill” is another standout track on the album. Pat Swish and BeatsByTaz used the perfect combination of drums and horns to complement Veez’s gruffy voice and lyrical wit:
“You know me, pull a Pluto move, take wife, Scottie Pippen/
This cup full of all rеd like it beef with Crippin’/
I damn near got hеad from every bad bitch in the city, keep that.”
“I don’t even be rhyming, but I be swerving them though,” he admits. “I feel like you can’t get into those type of thoughts if you don’t take your time,” he adds with a smile, the most emotion he’s shown during the interview.
At times on Ganger it sounds like Veeze is barely rapping above a whisper with his laid back flow. He’s aware of it all and finds a little humor that some of his fans consider him a mumble rapper.
“I don’t mind. If I made money off mumble rapping, that means the listeners are fooled, that don’t mean nothing to me”, he says with a laugh. “But you know what’s so crazy? I’ve been picking my voice up ever since, my boy son roasted me about talking low, saying I sound like a little motor bike.”
In September, Warner Records announced a partnership with Veeze and the launch of his new label, Navy Wavy. The deal was announced by Warner Records execs Aaron Bay-Schuck and Tom Corson.
“What Veeze and Snake have built independently is nothing short of spectacular,” Schuck said in a press release from Warner, adding, “Veeze is joining the Warner family with commercial success, real fandom, and incredible momentum, and we look forward to now adding our own expertise to make Veeze one of the most important artists in music.”
“We did a deal where he doesn’t have to worry about money for the rest of his life if he’s smart, and I’m going to do the best I can to make sure he’s smart with the money,” says Hawkins.
Hawkins feels all up and coming artists should make it a point to focus on the business foundation just as much as the music. The more equity an artist can build in their brand and business, the more bargaining chips they bring to the contract table with major labels.
“He got good terms,” Hawkins adds. “The more upfront money you take, the more you have to give up. This partnership is fair for Warner and fair for us. We built an infrastructure that gave us value, that gave us leverage to negotiate the partnership.”
Although his partnership with Warner created Navy Wavy as a record label, Veeze says he doesn’t have any immediate plans to sign any other artists. Right now he’s focused on the continued progression of Ganger and living life so raw that he has plenty of content to pour into his next project.
He summarizes his success simply as being the kind of artist that he would listen to if he was younger.
“I’m just sick bro, I’m going to be one of those people in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,” he predicts. “I represent the whole culture. I ain’t one of them fake people. I’m really from the trenches, I really know about the trap. I ain’t fake trapping. I really know about that in real life, I know about the other side of the celebrity world. I’m one of them. I’m one in a billion, bro.”
Doors at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 21 at Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; livenation.com. Tickets start at $48. Talibando is also on the bill.
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