Photo by OG Maco
Through the cloud of weed smoke I can make out OG Maco's hair, this shock of platinum curls that stick out in some spots and seem cropped in others. The 22-year-old rapper spent a week gradually stripping his natural black color out, though earlier on in the process, when he feared it wasn't working, he'd pull out his hair in frustration. By this mid-January afternoon, this is both easy and impossible to imagine. In "U Guessed It", the southside Atlanta native's biggest hit yet, his haughty hook ("Bitch you guessed it—whoo! / You was right") bursts in between mumbled free-form verses. In the video, viewed over 21 million times, a shirtless Maco hops out of a Four Seasons elevator and past bewildered police, asking, "Why the fuck is you next to us?" "I'm not going to make that bullshit for the rest of my life," he says of the track. "Not even six months."
"If I went and reached out to Columbia, Universal or Sony, nine times out of ten they would box me in as a 'U Guessed It' artist," explains Maco. Late last summer he signed to Quality Control Records. He saw what happened with its flagship act, Migos: how they scored two Hot 100 hits, a still-rare feat for free mixtape cuts; and how one, "Fight Night", became their first Top 20 entry on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. Such progress wasn't "Fancy"-level success, but it was enough to silence those who said that Drake's "Versace" remix would be their first and last hit. Maco wanted that same sort of opportunity for himself—the freedom to never make another "U Guessed It" again.
The independent Quality Control has also signed Rich the Kid, Johnny Cinco and Skippa da Flippa—Atlanta hip-hop artists still perfecting their individual styles of trap rap. Like most labels, Quality Control hopes to cultivate global superstars. "No way Quality Control an 'Atlanta rap' label," says Kevin "Coach K" Lee, former manager of both Gucci Mane and Jeezy; Lee co-founded of the label with Pierre "Pee" Thomas in 2012.
Plenty of Atlanta rap artists have been signed off the strength of one song before, only to drop them unceremoniously if that hit can't be followed up with another. "Atlanta has some great artists and all these new artists, but they're not lasting," Coach K says."“I think the artists we have, they really have longevity —and if they don't, we're going to develop it." Quality Control has partnered with 300 Entertainment, the label that landed $5 million in investment capital from Google and a data-sharing agreement with Twitter to promote and distribute Migos' music, in order to be able to offer that longevity and push.
As Migos' manager, Coach K saw firsthand how the sudden ubiquity of "Versace" raised doubts in the hip-hop community; the first time HOT 97's Ebro interviewed Quavo and Takeoff, he confessed that he "never even listened past Drake's verse." The root of such willful ignorance may be a still-lingering stigma against Atlanta hip-hop in particular, as Ebro had nothing but praise for New York's "Hot Nigga" rapper Bobby Shmurda. Then again, the number of young, unsigned and hungry hip-hop artists in Atlanta has grown exponentially, to where "New Atlanta," as this class is often called, seems dated. Of Complex's list of "11 Songs That Made 2014 the Year of the Rap One-Hit Wonder", five of them were by Atlanta artists, one being OG Maco.
Since signing to Quality Control, OG Maco has answered to these claims at his own, rapid-fire pace. In December, weeks after he released his "U Guessed It"-featuring self-titled EP, Maco released his three-song Breathe EP. There he's initially contemplative, but then grows outraged and loses control of his emotions. He was thinking about the cable TV panels he saw, debating whether the Mike Brown and Eric Garner non-verdicts were indeed charged with racism; and John Crawford III, the black man who was fatally shot by police at an Ohio Walmart while holding a BB gun from the same store.
In the wake of those tragic events, Questlove had just called for more protest songs in response to such events, citing Maco as a dispiriting counterpoint: "I laugh and have fun with 'Bitch [U] Guessed It' like everyone else. But my soul is aching, man."
Maco is unruffled by the criticism, "I don't concern myself with stuff like that. I just pity them and keep moving."
Quality Control’s center of operations are a $1.5 million studio in northwest Atlanta; by this mid-January afternoon, there were just a few signs that its artists were breaking the facility in: ash stains on the carpet, a lone sock on the floor. Coach K plays a track off Maco’s forthcoming debut album Children of the Rage, "Hero", in which the young MC sounds like he's floating into space, lightyears away from the bandos, strip clubs and 24-karat emblems featured in the 10-part documentary Noisey Atlanta, on which he and Migos both appear. He follows it with a cut from the Migos album due out later this year. Takeoff and Offset boast in "Fantastic" of cooking dope in their bathrobes and a Lamborghini the color of a caterpillar. As in their last three mixtapes, they seem to be doubling down on their strengths—all loopy hooks, inventive catchphrases and seemingly endless ways of depicting stock drug rap imagery. Lil Wayne pops in during Offset's warbling hook. "It's fantastic, with Tunechi and the Migos," he sings—it feels like a new TV theme song.
Migos was once proud to be unsigned, as evidenced by their 2012 mixtape No Label. Last year, however, the group changed their tune slightly—"QC the label," as the quip often goes. Meanwhile in 2014, Quality Control evolved from a rap ad-lib into a bonafide label with a studio, chart hits and an innovative promotion and distribution partnership. The label had signed Migos in hopes of fostering their long-term development—to treat them like Migos the artist, rather than Migos the product.
It’s late January, OG Maco is back in the studio. He finishes smoking his weed and heads to one of the building's four studios. To an audience of five friends and Coach K, Maco plays songs off Children of the Rage, one of which he churned out in the previous 12-hour marathon session. If Coach K was at all worried that Maco was still recording barely two months before his album release, he didn't show it. The tracks are largely serious. One song he plays is set to an instrumental that sounds like a swarm of bees, and rather than yell to make himself heard, Maco mumbles of a missing father and finding enough cash for a friend's bail. The more songs he plays off his new album, the more excited Maco gets—he’s bouncing in his seat like a kid—and there wasn't a "U Guessed It" to be heard.