Ever since the dawn of hip-hop, the topic of white rappers has been a particularly contentious one. When 19 year old Matthew Peter DeLuca, aka Lil Mabu, started gaining traction in 2022 for his DD Osama assisted drill track “Throw,” discourse around cultural appropriation was inevitable—especially after the New York Post outed him as a student at Collegiate, a $60,000-a-year Upper West Side prep school.
Mabu now attends Emory University in Atlanta—but says he's still devoted to the music. “This hip-hop shit is everything to me," he told GQ from his Emory dorm room. “I eat it, I sleep it, I live it. The artists I rock with are actually my friends. I get why people have this misconception that I'm here to profit and run, but that's wrong.” He credits growing up in NYC and his familial roots in Brooklyn (Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge), for his admiration of hip-hop. “If this shit didn't mean anything to me, I could have cashed out after my first single and left it there, but I'll be here for a very long time.”
Living a Hannah Montana-esque double life, he attends class during the day and records music in a makeshift studio under his lofted twin-size bed—including his latest album Young Genius, self-released on his label YOUNG GENIUS ACADEMY INC. He’s also collaborated with and been supported by artists like PnB Rock, Kay Flock, DDThang, and Fivio Foreign, whom he calls his brother. Their 2023 joint single “TEACH ME HOW TO DRILL” currently has 34 million views on Youtube.
As he wrapped up his freshman exams, Mabu opened up to GQ about his controversial persona, his upcoming tour, and what he feels people get wrong about him.
GQ: What are you up to today? What did you do this weekend?
Lil Mabu: It's Monday. Exams are coming to a close, so I feel like it's the start of summer break. I don't have to wake up for class right now. So, just really focusing on the music stuff. I dropped the albums, so now I'm just hanging in.
Your PR team told me you just moved out of the dorm. Where did you move to?
I'll move back to New York. I'll be everywhere this summer, though. I look forward to traveling around, headlining shows. I waited until a point where I had enough catalog and songs out. Now that the album dropped, I can give my fans an experience of just me on stage and have enough music to perform to have a lengthy set where I'm not just on stage for 10 minutes.
Do you perform any shows at college or is your rap persona strictly separate from how people know you in college?
No, this is just me. This is just Mabu goes to college, Matthew goes to college. The academics and the message I have as a brand is communicated through my music as well. I talk about my double life being in school and being a rapper. School by day, being in the streets at night time.
Where’d you get the rap name Lil Mabu?
I got the name from my classmate in middle school who would mispronounce everybody’s name. In Urdu, a language spoken in Pakistan and India, Mabu means “a persevering and hard-working person.” In Japanese, “Mabu” is short for mabudachi—which means friend. It’s a play on the words “my boo” as well.
I’ve seen videos of you rapping from a young age. Tell me about the first time you tried to rap.
Growing up in New York, I just loved hip-hop. It was just what I was around and my father was always singing Frank Sinatra around the house as any Italian household would. That was my introduction to music.
It wasn't until I graduated middle school that I made my first song. I was always rap-battling kids in the lunchroom throughout middle school.
Do you remember the first rap you wrote where you beat someone in a rap battle?
In middle school, we were playing baseball indoors and I told the kid "You bought a baseball glove. You should have bought some Proactiv," or something. It was at a time when we started getting pimples and we were just fucking around. It was friendly fire.
Other than Frank Sinatra, what other musicians did you grow up listening to?
My dad actually was a singer. He used to have a band with his friends and he used to just sing a lot of Frank Sinatra, so it probably influenced me in that sense, just being around it and those being the songs he was singing. And some of my early tracks were more melodic to start out.
My sister put me onto Nicki Minaj, she'd be rapping “Super Bass” and yeah, and then 21 Savage and the Migos. I could remember bumping the Culture album when it came out. It's full circle too because I'm in Atlanta now.
Tell me about how you met Fivio Foreign. Is he your mentor?
That's my brother from Brooklyn. My family's from Brooklyn. He reps Brooklyn all day long. The song we did is a prime example of how a record should be put together amongst friends. It was very organic. I linked up with him in New York in the studio and came up with a concept. We were just watching a movie, just chilling as friends do. And then when I was moving out to Atlanta for college, we were just sitting on that conversation we had, and then Fivi was coming out to my college to perform at homecoming.
It’s funny because he brought me out as a surprise guest at my own school. He was given strict instructions to perform and leave campus, so I said "Bye" in front of everybody. He got in his car and he drove right up the street to my dorm room. You could just picture me handing Fivio a pair of nerd glasses and a mustache to disguise him before he walked into the lobby of my living facility with 20 people and an entourage. We ran up the stairs into my tiny-ass dorm room. We pack it out and we make a hit in there in the studio under my bed until 6:00 AM and then he went straight to the airport to go back to New York. That's how we put that one together.
How is college going? I saw the video that you made where you’re pondering if you should be pursuing your career instead of completing higher education. Do you think college was the right choice for you?
Definitely the right choice. It wasn't as much pondering if I should go—at that point I was going. It was more so explaining to my audience why I'm making that decision. I feel like it's normalized to be the dropout. You hear it all the time. I'm learning how to navigate two major life changes, going away to college from my family like I said, and becoming "famous" at the same time. And I hate the word “famous”, and I hate even calling myself that, because in my mind, I have a very, very long way to go.
Are you listening to anything else other than rap that you have on rotation that might surprise anyone or just literally anything in general?
I listen to everything. I have the mixiest playlists in existence. I'll play Christmas music in the summer. They'll catch me rocking around the Christmas tree all year round. I've been listening to a lot of non-rap songs. In my free time I usually listen to different genres, even country music.
What is it about drill specifically that drew you to that type of music?
The drill sound is something that I was exposed to in New York. It’s an energetic type of music. I am not a drill rapper. Right now, I am figuring it out. I'm going to experiment with my sound more. But a lot of the music I make that hasn't been released yet is all different genres and reflects more of my early career releases that I had mentioned, on SoundCloud—more melodic and more poppy. But, I mean, I was bottled up and enclosed during the pandemic and then getting back outside, my spirit changed. I had built up shit I had to let out. I'm exploring all around the city. You take for granted that you can walk outside of your house, and then something like Covid happens, you get locked inside, and then once you could free up again, it's go mode. It's a different beast. That's just the genre I was around in New York and that's what my friends were creating, and that's just some New York shit.
You’ve created a lot of viral moments that get people talking. A few months ago there was a clip going around where it looked like your gun had gone off during a video shoot. So, two-part question. One, what really happened there? And two, because I know you’re studying business, do you approach social media with a mindset like, “No matter what people say about me, this is good marketing?”
In so many of my music videos, I lean into the "joke," and I go to the hood and the joke is, it's not a fucking joke. But for example, I made that video, the video you mentioned, because I know that's who people really think I am. They think I'm a Cheddar Bob from Eight Mile who doesn't know gun safety and is scared to stroll through the neighborhoods in New York. And I'm in on that joke, and I leak videos like that for a reason. And it's funny to me that the reactions are always the same, and they're exactly what I hope for them to be. And the irony is when I see these things, they're saying all this while I'm in Utah on Gravedigger Mountain with YoungBoy making music on his compound. And free him. He ain't do nothing.
So just to confirm, that was not real at all, the video that we were talking about?
The Cheddar Bob video?
Yeah.
No, I'm not really Cheddar Bob. I wouldn't do something like that. I'm very serious about gun safety, and I don't do any illegal things, especially in New York. I don't participate in anything like that.
Are there any creative endeavors that you want to go into in terms of fashion or film or anything like that?
I see a lot of comments on my videos about acting, an acting career, and I mean, in school, for example, I was always doing the lead characters in plays and public speaking. That's something I was able to incorporate into my music through the visuals. That's something I would definitely entertain in the future. I think that's a real art that I should explore further than just the music videos I make. I think there's definitely something there and it's enjoyable to me.
What kind of plays were you in?
I remember I was Peter Pan. I mean, we even did operas and musicals and stuff too, like Peter Pan. I remember we did Strega Nona. I think that was my first play I did, was Strega Nona.
What do your parents think about your rap career? I'm sure they're very happy that you’re in college.
It's a concern for my moms. It didn't matter if I was on a billboard. It was always just, "Oh, you have a paper due tomorrow. How's that going? Is that number one on your priority list?" I could imagine how my life would play out differently if the first time I showed my dad a song if his reaction would've been like, "Yeah, that shit’s ass. What are you doing?" Who knows? I could have stopped right then and there and gone on with my day, but I'm happy they created that atmosphere in the house for me, and I'm forever grateful for that.
Was the first song that you played him and what was his reaction?
The first song I put out was “Blue,” and I made it with my friend Charles in my bedroom, and I put it on SoundCloud and I remember, I showed him the song. He was just like, 'Yeah, it sounds cool." He wasn't ecstatic. It wasn't like when parents gave their kids too much positive reinforcement. They always wanted me to have my eye on the ball, and that was usually academics.
There's been huge discourse within the rap world, with artists like Drake and Kendrick beefing. When you're seeing stuff like that take place as a relative newcomer, what goes on in your mind?
I think it's entertaining, and something I've been seeing a lot is that rap is a sport and I think it's true. And listen, as long as blood's not shed, go ahead.
What are you working on right now? Just singles, or is there another full-length in the works?
It's singles right now. I have plans for projects in the future, but given I just dropped the album, I think it's time to experiment with the sound. Being in Atlanta, I've been exposed to the sound of the South, and I've heard a lot of that club music for the females. That good-feeling summer music is something that I listen to and I'll be experimenting with all that stuff. Everything.