Ray Vaughn has arrived at New York’s Billboard office for the second time in just over a week. He previously popped in and played a few tracks off his first official release with TDE, The Good The Bad The Dollar Menu, before flying out to continue his first-ever project rollout.
As Vaughn settles in the second time around, his voice is gruff, worn from rapping, recording, interviewing, and flat-out existing. Regardless of the physical wear-and-tear, he’s chatty, in high spirits, and devoid of exhaustion. When asked if he’s feeling winded at all, he says with a laugh, “I don’t wanna go back to that f—in’ car.”
The Good The Bad The Dollar Menu is a product of years of strenuous grinding. Born in Long Beach, California, Vaughn was raised by a family of local rappers; he says his uncle nearly signed a deal with DMX before he “crashed the f—k out,” and his mother went by the rap moniker Sassy Black, hosting “Freestyle Friday” sessions at their house for friends and family.
Vaughn’s earliest indicator that rap could be in his future came to him during those sessions in his living room. When he’d spit, people would listen. He locked in to rapping almost immediately, and at 15, Vaughn’s reputation had made the rounds in his community. A few labels even came calling, including Def Jam.
“My mom kept blowing meetings,” Vaughn says. “She just kept being like, ‘Oh, you’ll go next time.’ We was already so thorough, she didn’t even know. We was already robbing houses, shooting at people, we was doing s—t that could have got us real f—kin sentences. I was moreso like, ‘Let me go!’”
His mom had fallen down the rabbit hole of early YouTube conspiracy theories, believing the Illuminati had infiltrated major labels like Def Jam. No matter how hard he pushed, she always said no. After one particular nasty fight, she threw Vaughn out and he turned to the streets to make ends meet while still clutching onto his rap dreams.
Success trickled in and out of Vaughn’s life: he went viral a few times for various freestyles, but they didn’t lead to anything concrete. A promising moment came in 2019, when he ran into Ye’s cousin Ricky Anderson, who was managing G.O.O.D Music at the time, at a New Year’s Eve party. After Vaughn stealthily queued up his own songs to play at the party, Anderson suggested he meet with Ye face-to-face.
“He’s crazy, but he’s a genius,” Vaughn said of his meeting with Ye. The conversation went well, and Vaughn penned a few songs for Ye before arranging a meeting about a label deal. On the day of the meeting, however, Vaughn showed up to an empty room. He never spoke with Ye or the G.O.O.D. Music camp again.
“That same day I said to my manager, ‘Bro I’m still sleeping in my car, I don’t know what the f—k I’m doing!’” Vaughn recalled. His manager brought up an opportunity to record a song with an artist who was trying to get Jay Rock on as an additional feature. Two weeks later, Vaughn received a call from Top Dawg Entertainment CEO Anthony Tiffith.
“I hung up on him — I didn’t know what he sounded like, so I thought it was a joke,” Vaughn remembers. Tiffith called back, invited him to Interscope Records for a sitdown, and the rest was history.
After Vaughn’s first TDE project dropped on Friday (Apr. 25), the rapper spoke about it with Billboard.
Just to clarify, this is a mixtape and not an album.
Yes. I never wanted to call nothin’ an album if it wasn’t an album. I always was like, “With my first album, I wanna go crazy.” I’m very, very careful about calling something an album. That s—t counts. You could have 1,000 mixtapes and flop, but if you have an album and it flops? I know that’s something internally that’s gonna scratch my soul.
You don’t waste a bar on this mixtape. How did you approach writing for this project, and how do you approach writing in general?
Just make sure you keep it full of integrity. That’s the lost art form, period. Some records I don’t have bars on, it’s just a message, like ‘Pac. He didn’t have metaphors in every song. He was just very direct, and said what needed to be said, and you felt it.
I feel like nowadays we got so many people who punch in. It’s not even a cohesive thought. What is that verse about? What is this song about? Who are you talking to? Who is the audience? I still believe in that art form. If I rap this a cappella, does this s—t make sense? It’s like poetry. If you can’t say it a cappella and it [doesn’t] makes sense, it’s like rambling.
Now that you’re officially entering the game, how do you feel about your place in rap?
Once I turn into the star I’m supposed to be, where other people see the star that I am, the influence will come after. Like Kendrick [Lamar], the fact that he’s making music that slaps, but it’s still got some conscience to it. People wanna follow that because they’re like, “Oh, he’s talkin’ about something.”
Outside of the Drake and Kendrick situation, it does feel like mainstream rap is heading away from lyrics. What are your thoughts on the more party-oriented rap?
We need those type of artists too! It’s a talent in being succinct. [Starts singing]”Soulja Boy off in this oh, watch me crank it, watch me roll, watch me crank dat Soulja Boy, Then Superman dat oh.” That s—t is hard to make for people who actually write lyrics, and nobody wants to feel like they’re being preached to all the time.
When you were writing songs like “DOLLAR menu,” how did you toe that line, to make sure you weren’t being too preachy?
I feel like there’s a very thin line between being preachy and delivering a message with wittiness. I have to change lines sometimes. I’m just speaking from my experiences, mostly. This is me and how I look at it from my perspective. I don’t want people to put me in a box with Kendrick. When Cole made “Grippy” with Cash Cobain, people tried to cook him. If [Cole] had been somebody else, it’d be like, “Oh this song is hard.” The expectation for his lyrical content is set so high that if he dumbs it down too low, then they be like, “What the f—k are you doing?” So they don’t even get to have fun.
With that in mind, what are you hoping to communicate with The Good The Bad The Dollar Menu?
I’m just perfecting a pepperoni pizza before I say I have wings, salads and calzones. That is my pepperoni pizza.
On songs like “FLAT Shasta” and “Cemetery Lanterns,” how do you revisit such traumatic memories and not get bogged down by it? How do you make sure the resulting art is authentic?
I just tell it like it is — exactly like it is. I’m in a good space. I’m signed to a f—king label that’s at the f—king peak of their career. I got nothing to complain about right now. Reflecting? That’s easy.
There’s a lot of soul-baring on the project. Do you ever worry you’re revealing too much for a first mixtape?
There were songs we moved out of the way because they were too heavy. I don’t want to go too crazy, because I want people to actually listen, but I also want people to know that if you listen to it and feel something? You just witnessed the super power.
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