Harley Geffner wants to know what they even do in the Met Gala.
Rich, as in spirit.
This was the name of Rich Homie Quan’s only official studio album. But it was more than just a name: it was an ethos, a philosophy, and a defining mantra for the Atlanta rapper who passed away last week at only 33 years old. Everyone who touches Earth lives, but Rich Homie Quan felt SO alive. The bounce in his step was contagious – it shone through the camera every time he was in front of one. You could feel his brain hyping himself up every time he rapped. Arms swinging in and out, the stink face with the drawn lower lip when he would rap right at Young Thug, the camera, or the crowd. Every shoulder dip he hit right on beat. It was as if he could telepathically transfer his positive energy right to the listener’s brain. To come from where he came from, face the odds he faced, see the things he’s seen, and still come out with this dogmatically positive spirit made him as rich as any person could be.
Most will probably remember Quan for his energetic chart-topping hits, “Type of Way” and “Flex.” “Type of Way” met the 2013 moment with such clarity. This was early in Obama’s second term, when his healthcare plan was hitting some serious roadblocks, when George Zimmerman was acquitted, and when we saw super-magnates like Bezos and Zuckerberg consolidating power at the expense of the everyman. In other words, it turned the hopefulness of that first Obama term into the resigned realization that things are rigged, the cards are stacked, and the world is still getting worse even though there was a seemingly well-intentioned and relatable guy helming the country.
“Type of Way,” felt like it could wipe away all of that shit. This is about doing what you do. This is about getting to the paper, no matter what excuses or roadblocks exist. To use modern parlance, it’s about locking in, and not giving a fuck who feels some type of way about it. It’s strongly individualistic, but still stirs up a communal spirit. If we’re all locking in, we’re all grinding to level up our lives. It evokes that “fuck all this doomer shit, life is electric bro,” mentality. Together, we can claw more of that pie back from the fuckers at the top. Two years later, “Flex,” told the same story. Flex your stuff and who gives a damn what anyone else thinks.
For a certain set of people around my age (now 29), this music was truly spiritual. The world felt like it was falling apart, but I was a freshman in college and none of that mattered to me. Yes, the macro outlook was gloomy, but not today. Not here, on this campus, in this moment, with these people. There were infinite possibilities ahead of us, and all that mattered in the moment was turning up, how much half an O went for, and Quan’s dance moves. There was an unspoken and unseen current flowing between us, soundtracked by Quan, and it was that of an indomitable joy. A reckless joy. The type that Quan embodied, and made it feel like you could conquer any obstacle you were to encounter. It really meant, and still means something very foundational to those who experienced his music this way, which is not just limited to my age bracket.
From his very first interviews to some of his last, Quan always carried himself with a specific swagger and joy (while nonetheless reflecting on the darker times in the industry that followed his early run of success). But Quan was so much more than a joyful flexer. What may be forgotten among non-core fans was that he was also deeply reflective, a brilliant lyricist, a deft navigator of both conventional and unconventional flows, with an instinctual and gift for melody and humor. And yes, he was always down to play into the memes – like when he escaped from a security guard on a speedboat in Miami or the stretch of tapes named after the idea that he just refused to stop going in.
As a musical stylist, he was hard to pin down. Of course, he was a Southern melodic rapper who had one of the bluesiest voices this side of Boosie, but it wasn’t just that. To paraphrase what he said in one of his early interviews that I can’t find at the moment: “It’s not even rapping, it’s not even singing. One of my boys calls it Quan mode. I’m always going Quan mode.” Quan mode was the molecular makeup of his spirit, and it was inflected in his every word and every note. When asked when he started rapping, Quan said that he’d been rhyming for as long as he’d been talking. It really showed in how his raps felt – like they were forged deep in the belly of the spirit that inhabited him before he was even a sparkle in his father’s eyes.
According to Rabbi Jack Abramowitz, spiritual forces can be categorized into two types: Neshamos, which are souls designed to be placed into bodies, and Nivdalim, which are independent spiritual creations that are not designed to merge with bodies. Quan mode meant he was tapping into the ancient Nivdalim forces that were forbidden to mere mortals. So when Quan met another person who was able to embody ancient spiritual traditions through their oral gymnastics, it was a match made in heaven. Dequantes Devontay Lamar met Jeffery Williams in middle school. The chemistry was instantaneous.
The history that follows should be written on scrolls displayed at the entrance to the Library of Congress while “Lifestyle” plays on repeat on a halo screen. Directed by Birdman, Thug and Quan recorded some of the most forward-thinking, ceremonial and dramatic (yet playful and soft) music of the 2010’s. Maybe ever. Their chemistry was undeniable, as they went back and forth rapping, singing, and harmonizing circles around each other on Rich Gang: Tha Tour Pt 1 mixtape. It was a cultural shift — time stood still as the two invested years in the studio experimenting with new flows and unheard ways to rhyme to sculpt a new version of what trap music might become. The larger rap landscape started shaping itself in their image following the release of the mixtape, and as rap music went, pop music followed. The flows that RHQ and Thug were spontaneously inventing from this period wrapped themselves around your spinal stems and bled into your soul. Even though there are still dumbasses who think “Lifestyle” is a “mumble rap” meme.
Thug was a soaring purple maniac who saw in technicolor. Quan brought a steadying energetic ground game to the music. Later, Quan spoke about the pressure to stay in the studio all day and all night and how that spiraled him into a molly addiction, but we’ll get there. In the meantime, the two pushed each other musically as far as they could go, expanding their repertoires together. Individually, they were both incredible, two of the top rappers of that time, but together, they were invincible. They defied human and mathematical logic with their interplay and the creative ways they could find to talk about any number of subjects. They were going 730 while their opponents were going 630 (Sorry – Bix-30, as Thug would clarify on the song).
Watch the end of this studio session clip here, where Quan leans into Thug’s ear to introduce him to the flow that would carry their bar for bar back and forth. It’s watching a magician figure out the sleight of hand in real time. It’s a sword being forged, and watching the finer details taking shape in the furnace. “Love Her” was the result of this session, and skip to 1:50 for that exact moment on tape. Neither of them wrote any of their raps – the whole album, and all the unreleased songs from the Rich Gang era that ended up unceremoniously leaked in a massive data breach – all of it was off the dome, and it’s better than anything anyone else was writing at the time. That is Quan mode and both of them embodied that.
The enormous repository of unreleased music was supposed to eventually be released as part of sequel albums to Tha Tour Pt. 1, but the leak messed things up, the tour fell apart, and Thug and Quan ended up parting ways over differences that never became fully public. That vault they left behind though was approximately 130 songs of God-tier rapping from the collaborators. There’s an alternate history where these songs all get proper releases and Quan, as well as Thug, are reigning at the top of the rap and cultural kingdom as Jay-Z type mogul figures, and they’re in every Apple commercial, on Late Night shows, making appearances in Kevin Hart movies, and married to Beyoncé and Rihanna.
They could make a chorus made up solely of the word “bitch” sound like it was the best song that had ever been invented.
With Quan’s music, the difference was always in the details. His improvisational nature meant he would shine in the in-between moments. His songs often sounded like conversations with himself where he would ask a question and answer with an ad lib, or when, like on “Everything I Got,” he ad libs “deep voice” before dropping half an octave. Or on a personal favorite, “Woke Up,” when he instructs the engineer mid verse “ooh keep that,” then Thug riffs on it before Quan turns it into a whole new flow, following up with “Michael Jackson lifestyle, ooh beat that.”
He could flip from a sociologist to a big time flexer and back all in the same breath. There are the bangers, there are the ballads, and every mood on the spectrum is represented in his work. At the end of the day though, he was still as pure a rapper as anyone doing it. His first verse on “Pull Up” starts:
Imma pull up on a ***** in a new car
Then I might pull up on him in a blue car
Fuck 1 imma pull up with 2 glocks
And I still got money in a shoebox
Still got hoes on the south side
Off set, 24s, make em low ride
Talk shit I shoot out both eyes
*Note: Listen to this version as opposed to the any other one on YouTube, because this maintained Quan’s crazy vocal effect that made it sound like you were in an infinity echo vortex*
There was the lore around Quan and Thug. There was the hype around Quan’s early solo work (the seven-song stretch on I Promise I Will Never Stop Going In from “Get TF Out My Face” to “Walk Thru” is one of the greatest runs on any album). But what’s often forgotten is all of the solo work post-Rich Gang era. When Quan locked in with DT Spacely and released If You Ever Think I Will Stop Goin’ in Ask RR (Royal Rich) and then DTSpacely Made This, he was as focused as ever with his bars, thematic content, and flows. There’s deep romance, like when he made an ode to hand-holding, or “Chardonnay,” where he warbles about how his girl’s body tastes like a tall glass of Chardonnay. There’s fun, bouncy cuts like, “Beside Yourself,” where he bops between all the different types of cars he might pull up in. There’s reflective cuts about how far he’s come like, “Forever Millions,” where he raps about how bountiful his Thanksgiving table is now and trading in roaches for exotic animals.
This is where Quan’s musical trajectory stops for most people, but lest we forget, Quan never stops going in. After a hiatus, much of which he attributed to the drug addictions he’d developed out of the pressure and strain of music stardom, Quan’s recent output showed serious craftsmanship and a deeply spiritual relationship with the self that had developed out of all the misfortune from the previous half decade. 2019’s Coma was a return to form with a new perspective burgeoning. In 2022, he released Family & Mula, which retained that charisma with an even more fully formed feelings around his life, to that point. On one of the songs, “Risk Takers,” he raps:
Lotta pain, a lot of cryin’, what it took to get here
And I almost lost my mind, just to get here
Window shoppin’ for a chain tell ’em, “Look at this here”
Egg beater on a counter, tell ’em, “Cook with this here”
Too much money in a bank for me to trip with this here
And these scars on me show you what it took to get here
Those raps felt like such classic Quanisms – bouncing between the flexes and the stresses with the rolling ease of a wave kissing the shore. But as lively as Quan looked, he was still struggling with addiction through this latest period.
As much as the focus should stay on Quan’s life, rather than his death, we should acknowledge that his death was ultimately preventable. We put too much pressure on our favorite artists in the era of social media. The boom or bust, raise ‘em up then tear ‘em down fandom mentalities, combined with decades of policy failures and the impact of Citizens United and pharma lobbyists has led directly to the shredding of American culture in real time. The toxicology report isn’t confirmed yet, but it’s all but assured to show fentanyl in his system. Everything is stepped on now, and it’s a roll of the dice to use any sort of drug recreationally if you’re not first testing it for fent.
Fentanyl is the leading cause of death among 18- through 42-year-olds in the U.S. From 2019 to 2021, adolescent deaths doubled because of fentanyl. I haven’t seen the stats since then, but I’m sure it’s even exponentially worse three years later. More people in the U.S. died from overdoses than COVID during the height of the pandemic. There has to be a better way to operate. It probably starts on the individual level with people treating addicts with greater kindness, and an understanding of the macro-issues which lead someone down the hole of addiction. Like Gil Scott-Heron explained, what he meant by “the revolution will not be televised” was that it starts in individuals’ heads.
I have been shocked at how many “liberal” people in my life seem okay with what amounts to firing squads unloading on unhoused populations dealing with addiction issues. Even friends of mine who make over 100,000 a year are still probably two missed paychecks away from the street, given our culture of consumption and the day-to-day pressure cooker we’re all living in. There’s a lack of empathy that’s become so deeply entrenched in the American psyche that it’s hard to pull any lessons out of all of this.
This addiction shit cuts across every major cultural and economic line you can imagine too. I had a long conversation recently with someone whose job was trauma response, and their biggest takeaway is how there is no defining trait between the overdoses he’s treated. Old, young, rich, poor, Black, Latino, White – he treated all of them in equal measures. Not nearly as tragic as the deaths obviously, but the growing sobriety movement from teens who watched all their heroes die means a mourning of a different kind for the fun and hijinks teens should be able to enjoy from experimenting with mind-bending substances without fear of a horrific death.
Any solutions the big brains in Washington come up with to tackle the fentanyl epidemic lead directly or indirectly to more violence South of the border. Neither presidential candidate has stated their platform on it in any serious way, other than “take out the traffickers,” and Kamala saying that addiction treatment is healthcare without any real policy proposals behind it. Even treatment and harm reduction stuff (better than our current policy of nothing) doesn’t address any root pressures that result in addictions in the first place.
Quan didn’t live to see Tha Tour turn 10 years old, and that’s beyond tragic. He and Thug didn’t get to live their redemption story, and Thug is still behind bars without a guilty verdict on what’s being called the longest criminal case in the history of the country. Besides Quan’s music and its impact, which can be felt loud and clear in basically any young rapper coming up today, the most important thing here is that the world lost another kind spirit to the scourge of the opioid epidemic. By all accounts, Quan was one of the nicest dudes in any room he walked into. I always felt that I had a special connection with Quan’s raps, but the trick was, he made all of his fans feel that. His music was intimate, it was lived in. It flexed the full gamut of human emotion in ways that only the rarest of artists can access, and he was instrumental in the re-shaping of modern music.
So what are we left with? Nothing really. Everything feels cooked here. Autocracy is on the rise worldwide, kids can’t experiment with drugs anymore, nobody cares about each other, and all the shapers of our modern musical moment are being slowly wiped out by state or policy induced violence. The only thing left is to keep going in. And then to still keep going in after that. Embrace the Nivdalim that Quan tapped into and go Quan Mode in everyday activities. Beam with a radical empathy because life is full of bullshit. Combat it every way you can, every day you can. Lock in with the homies, dance in the mirror, go ride a bike and smile at strangers, love thy neighbors, and drop the top of your whip, baby.
The Best of the Rest
