Post Malone
Austin Richard Post, known professionally as Post Malone, is an American singer, rapper, songwriter, record producer, and actor. His music blends various genres including pop, hip-hop, trap, country, R&B, and rock.
Malone began his musical career in 2011, and earned mainstream recognition with his 2015 cloud rap debut single, "White Iverson". The song led him to sign with Republic Records, and served as lead single for his debut studio album, Stoney, which spawned the Diamond-certified single "Congratulations". His second album, Beerbongs & Bentleys, debuted atop the US Billboard 200 and set numerous streaming records. It contained the US Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles "Rockstar" and "Psycho", and was nominated for Album of the Year at the 61st Grammy Awards. His third Hot 100 number-one single, "Sunflower", a duet with Swae Lee, was released for the accompanying soundtrack to the 2018 animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse; it became the highest-certified song in RIAA history and was the first to receive a 2× Diamond certification.
Malone's third album, Hollywood's Bleeding, became his second album to receive a nomination for Album of the Year at the 63rd Grammy Awards. It spawned the single "Circles", which spent 61 weeks on the Hot 100, becoming Malone's biggest hit single to date. Malone released his fourth and fifth albums, Twelve Carat Toothache and Austin, before achieving further number-one hits with guest appearances on Taylor Swift's "Fortnight" and his first country pop song "I Had Some Help" with the country singer Morgan Wallen. The latter served as the lead single of Malone's country sixth album, F-1 Trillion, which became his third number-one album on the Billboard 200.
Malone is among the best-selling music artists, with over 150 million records sold in the US alone according to the RIAA. His accolades include eleven Billboard Music Awards, five American Music Awards, six MTV Video Music Awards, and eighteen Grammy Award nominations. He holds several Billboard chart records: He is the first solo lead artist to top both the Rap Airplay and Adult Contemporary charts, while "Circles" set the record for longest climb to number one on the Adult Contemporary chart by a solo artist., Malone is second only to Drake for artists with the most diamond-certified songs, with nine to his name.
Early life
Austin Richard Post was born on July 4, 1995, in Syracuse, New York. He was raised by his father, Richard Post, and his stepmother, Jodie. His father had been a DJ in his youth and introduced Malone to many genres of music including hip-hop, country, and rock. When Malone was nine years old, he and his family moved to Grapevine, Texas, after his father became the manager of concessions for the Dallas Cowboys football team. According to Malone, his first foray into professional music began when he played guitar in a local metalcore band. His interest in the genre persisted past this endeavor as he also auditioned as a guitarist for the Texas-based metalcore group Crown the Empire in 2010, but was rejected after his guitar strings broke during the audition. He credited his initial interest in learning guitar to the video game series Guitar Hero.Malone has expressed his affinity for alternative rock music, and appeared for a DJ set at Emo Nite in Los Angeles, California, in June 2017, playing songs by My Chemical Romance at the event. He says soon afterwards he transitioned to softer rock as well as hip-hop, before beginning to experiment on FL Studio.
Career
2011–2016: Career beginnings and ''Stoney''
According to Malone, he chose "Post Malone" as his stage name when he was "14 or 15". The name was rumored to be a reference to the professional basketball player Karl Malone, but Malone later explained that "Post" is his last name, and he used a "rap name generator" to get "Malone".At age 17, Malone, along with his friend Jazzy Eff, released a parody synth-pop ballad song called "Why Don't You Love Me" under the alias Leon DeChino, intended for a school project. The song reappeared online in 2016. Malone later referred to the DeChino alias on his song "Psycho".
At the age of 18, using audio editor Audacity, Malone released his first mixtape, Y.A.T.R., also known as Young and After Them Riches, in 2014. He showed it to some of his classmates at Grapevine High School. He was voted "Most Likely to Become Famous" by his classmates as a senior in high school. He worked at a Chicken Express as a teenager.
Malone later enrolled in Tarrant County College, but dropped out. After leaving college, Malone moved to Los Angeles with his longtime friend Jason Probst, a professional game streamer.
After moving to Los Angeles, Malone, Probst, and several other producers and artists formed the music group BLCKVRD and recorded music together. Several members of the group, including Malone, moved into a house in the San Fernando Valley together. While living in the San Fernando Valley, Malone met record producers FKi 1st and Sauce Lord Rich, who formed the production team FKi, as well as Rex Kudo, who produced several of Malone's tracks, including "White Iverson". Malone recorded the song two days after writing it. The lyrics of "White Iverson" allude to Basketball Hall of Fame player Allen Iverson. In February 2015, upon completion, it was uploaded to Malone's SoundCloud account. On July 19, 2015, Malone released a music video for "White Iverson". The single received praise from rappers Mac Miller and Wiz Khalifa. However the song was mocked by Earl Sweatshirt.
After hitting one million views within a month of releasing "White Iverson", Malone quickly garnered attention from record labels. In August 2015, he signed a recording contract with Republic Records. Malone went on to work with a number of prominent rappers including 50 Cent, Young Thug, Kanye West and others. In August 2015, he performed at Kylie Jenner's 18th birthday party, where he met Kanye West, who enjoyed his music, leading to him collaborating with Malone on his single "Fade" from his album The Life of Pablo. Malone later began a friendship with Canadian singer Justin Bieber leading to Malone being an opening act for Bieber's Purpose World Tour. On April 20, 2016, Malone premiered his new single, "Go Flex", on Zane Lowe's Beats 1 show.
On May 12, 2016, he released a full-length project, a mixtape, titled August 26th, the title of which was a reference to the release date of his debut album. On June 9, 2016, Malone made his national television debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, performing "Go Flex".
In June 2016, XXL editor-in-chief Vanessa Satten revealed Malone was considered for XXLs "2016 Freshman Class" magazine cover, but she was "told by his camp that he wasn't paying attention to hip hop so much. He was going in more of a rock/pop/country direction." However, Malone denied these claims, explaining that his latest mixtape as well as his upcoming album were both hip-hop. In August 2016, Malone issued an apology for his album, Stoney, being late. It was available for pre-order on November 4, and was finally released on December 13. Malone later called the album "mediocre", despite the success of the single "Congratulations", Malone's first top-ten song on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number eight. Stoney also featured the top 100 hits "I Fall Apart" and "Deja Vu", with the album later being certified double platinum by the RIAA in October 2017.
2017–2019: ''Beerbongs & Bentleys'' and ''Hollywood's Bleeding''
In February 2017, Malone revealed the title of his next project, Beerbongs & Bentleys, and was set to be released in December, before eventually being pushed back to 2018. In September, Malone released the first single from the album, "Rockstar". The song peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and held the spot for eight consecutive weeks prompting Rolling Stone in 2017 to say he is "one of the most popular musicians in the country". In November of the same year, Malone released the official music video for "Rockstar", directed by Emil Nava.On February 20, 2018, Malone previewed his new song with Ty Dolla Sign titled "Psycho". "Psycho" was released on February 23, 2018, and a tour with 21 Savage was announced. The song debuted at number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Malone's third entry in the top 10; it would later top the charts in June of that year, becoming Malone's second number one. On April 5, 2018, Malone stated that Beerbongs & Bentleys will be released on April 27, 2018. The same day, he also premiered the song "Stay" during the Bud Lite Dive Bar show in Nashville. Upon release, Beerbongs & Bentleys broke the first day streaming records on Spotify, with 78.7 million streams worldwide. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 moving 461,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, with 153,000 coming from pure sales. The album was also certified platinum by the RIAA after four days and spawned three top 10 songs and six top 20 songs.
File:Post Malone Stavernfestivalen 2018.jpg|thumb|Malone performing on the main stage at Stavernfestivalen in Stavern, Norway in 2018
In an interview with Billboard in May 2018, Malone's manager announced that Malone was planning to start his own record label and film production company and Malone later won Top Rap Song at the Billboard Music Awards for "Rockstar". Malone confirmed in June 2018 that he was writing his third album, and confirmed that a festival would be taking place, organized by him, titled "Posty Fest", in Dallas, Texas on October 28. Malone promised a "blockbuster" lineup with headliners like rapper Travis Scott.
In August, Malone broke Michael Jackson's 34-year-old record for most weeks on Billboards Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, with Stoney reaching its 77th week on the ranking compared to the 76 weeks that Thriller spent. A collaboration album with rapper Mac Miller was also teased in August 2018. During his appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, he previewed his song "Sunflower", a collaboration with Swae Lee, from the soundtrack to the film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. In November 2018, it was confirmed Malone was recording his third album in his Utah home.
Malone was nominated for four awards at the 61st Grammy Awards for his album Beerbongs & Bentleys. Among the nominations were Album of the Year and Record of the Year. He performed with the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the awards show on February 10, 2019. In July 2019, Malone released the single "Goodbyes", and also announced the Runaway Tour with Swae Lee as the opener. On August 5, Malone shared a snippet of an unreleased track, "Circles", on YouTube. He then performed the song at his second annual Bud Light: Dive Bar concert and confirmed that the official song would be released the following week. That same day and on July 25, 2019, at Cheyenne Frontier Days he announced the album was finished. He released the song on August 30, 2019. He confirmed that his third studio album would be released on September 6, 2019. On August 26, 2019, Malone announced on Twitter that his third album is called Hollywood's Bleeding and would be released on September 6, 2019. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 489,000 album-equivalent units in its first week. Hollywood's Bleeding would also be nominated for Album of the Year at the 63rd Grammys.