- I wouldn't say I was born with this mentality,
the hustler mentality.
I feel like I developed this by watching other people like,
okay, I look up to Jay-Z, right?
I feel like if this guy could do it, I could do it.
You know what I'm saying?
And since he did it already,
I just watch everything, study everything.
I could do it in a shorter span of time.
You know what I'm saying?
I tell my younger self to read more books, man.
I wish I would have read books earlier, man.
That shit changed my whole way of thinking.
It changed everything, like, reading is super important.
That shit —
that's the reason behind my success, reading books.
I'm Lil Bibby, founder of record label Grade A Productions
Born and raised on the East Side of Chicago.
I give a lot of credit to where I came from.
I was raised pretty rough.
My moms was drug addict.
My pops was a drug addict.
From where I'm from,
it's like, different, like...
I was like, an adult at the age of 12
so, they was not in my business.
I saw a lot of shit I wasn't supposed to see
and this type of shit can affect people
and it kinda make people crazy.
I was really good at basketball
so I used to shoot really good,
and one of my homeboys that passed away,
he used to always call me, "Bibby, Bibby."
He was like, really popular, so
he used to call me that all the time
and then everybody else just started calling me that.
I seen a lot of stuff at a young age,
a lot of life or death situations,
but that's all I knew.
I did get caught up in it a little bit,
but doing music kinda kept me in different states
so it kept me out of it a little bit.
I never used to rap or freestyle.
A lot of rappers I got a lot of respect for —
rappers that used to do it,
really do it when they was young,
because I never even thought about it.
I just saw Chief Keef and Lil Durk
and I seen them doing it
and I'm like, man, I can do this.
I went, they paying for this?
Oh, alright.
I'm finna do it too. [laughs]
And I just started it and it just worked super quick.
Music kinda kept me out of trouble.
If you come from a place where I come from,
trouble was always there and it finds you
but when I started doing music,
I started recording and staying inside a studio
so it kept me out of trouble.
So once I saw Chief Keef and Lil Durk and Lil Reese
rapping, I'm like, alright.
Watch this, you know. [laughs]
2018 when I was like, 18 years old,
my first mixtape was called "Free Crack."
That was a free mixtape, right?
So I'm giving out free music and I'm like, man, you know,
what's the most addictive thing?
Crack. [laughs]
Because I signed at a young age,
I didn't know about the music business.
I didn't really have a lawyer. None of that.
I just wanted to help the newer artists make a lot of money
'cause I knew the business at this point.
I had a problem from as soon as I started,
I just wanted to know everything.
I was always like all ears,
all trying to figure out everything, and I feel like
I was basically doing everything for myself
and so that's how I learned the business.
- [Interviewer] Was it difficult for you
to be a rapper and then now
you're behind the scenes?
- No, it was super easy for me
because I always hated attention anyway.
I love this, you know.
I love being in the back because I hate cameras.
I hate attention.
This was really what I really wanted to do
because I want to make money
without being bothered by fame.
I was just doing it for money.
I never questioned to leave it behind
until I found out something else that I liked to do.
Once I heard "Lucid Dreams," then I knew —
from Juice WRLD, once I heard that song,
I knew what that was
and I know what I could do with it.
Then I was like, okay, I can stop.
♪ "Lucid Dreams" by Juice WRLD ♪
My brother, he heard some music
from one of my friend's DJ, G Herbo's DJ,
and he sent me the songs and they had like
"All Girls Are the Same"
and a few other songs, but those was good songs,
but they was just good songs. You know what I'm saying?
And then I typed his name up myself 'cause my brother was like,
"Man look at his SoundCloud," and I found "Lucid Dreams."
And then I'm like, okay, this is, you know,
I knew exactly what that was, you know?
♪ I still see your shadows in my room ♪
♪ Can't take back the love that I gave you ♪
♪ It's to the point where I love and I hate you ♪
♪ And I cannot change you so I must replace you ♪
- I had relationships with executives like Steven Victor.
He was running Def Jam.
And before he even heard Juice WRLD's music,
he was trying to give me a label deal.
He flew me to New York to try to give me like,
a label deal because just like,
the new talent that was coming,
I used to tell my A&Rs and like, man, look,
this is about to happen with this.
Steven Victor just wanted to give me
a bunch of money to find artists.
So he flew me to New York.
He like, "Alright, I'm finna give you this money.
What's the first artist?"
I'm like, "A matter of fact,
I just met this kid a week ago, Juice WRLD."
I played him the music.
He like, "B, you think this is going to go, B?"
That's how he talks, he's from New York.
He said, "Do you think this is gonna work, B?"
I said, "This finna be the craziest shit."
He's Black, but he's gonna have a fan base with both.
And I explained it to him, like —
you can ask him these exact words.
I'm like, "Man, this is the best song I heard in 10 years."
I'm talking shit like that.
But everybody trusts me because I don't say shit
that I don't mean.
I won't even take no money
if I know I can't make it.
He's like, "Alright, B,"
and he put a crazy offer.
He put a crazy offer in for Juice and then
shit just went crazy from there.
♪ Thinking of you in my bed ♪
♪ You were my everything ♪
♪ Thoughts of a wedding ring ♪
♪ Now I'm just better off dead ♪
He was really good at what he did.
I think I'm really good at what I do.
So, I remember it just clicked.
Like, he trusted me with the music
and we put together the right first project
and that shit just went crazy.
It had a message in it
and the fans just really connected to it.
It's like —
as soon as I saw him go into the studio,
he went through the whole beat
and he was on beat and it made sense.
So once I saw that, I'm like,
"Oh, you know,
I can't even do that.
I've been doing this shit for a long time." [laughs]
So once I saw him do that,
I just knew that he could record super easy.
Kid Laroi and I was in one of my friend's office,
he worked for Interscope, and he was just like, playing music.
So he had one of his friends there,
and his friend just cut on some music
but he — they only played five seconds of it.
I heard like a little bit of the hook.
Once I heard The Kid bounce off of the hook,
like, "I wake up and count my blessings."
Then the second half of the hook,
he switched his whole flow. He was like,
"I've been on the low, low, low."
And then I'm like, whoa, if he, you know — I just know music,
I just know melody. I know how hard that shit is.
If he can do it at 13, he could do almost anything.
And once I found him, we tried to contact him.
Boom, boom, boom.
We was hitting him up every day,
Like, you know, trying to sign him
any way that I could get it.
I needed it, you know. [laughs]
I tell my artists, "Don't tell no lies."
It's gotta be a true story.
I studied them for this purpose.
I try to see what's 100% true to them.
And I say to my artists, "Make 50 songs."
I'll listen to all 50 of 'em,
and all 50 of 'em,
if you listen to all of them hard enough,
it's one message that is going to be in every song.
You know what I'm saying?
And Juice was always heartbreak and depressed and you know,
drug addiction.
So I felt like we had to talk about that type of stuff.
With Laroi, he always was like, "Fuck love, fuck these girls.
I'm chasing money, I'm chasing money."
So we named his project "Fuck Love."
Yeah, I try to, you know, study my artists.
It's really hard to see what's genuine to them.
They might not even know, but I study them so hard
and I'll be trying to see what's the message
that they relay, 'cause that's just how I do it.
When I sign an artist, I think of a bunch of stuff like —
okay, it's different types of fan bases.
It's different types of fans.
Some fans with rap music,
they'll go to the club and see you,
they'll YouTube and whatever.
Other fans, for Juice's type of music,
they spend a lot of money.
You know, Juice, Laroi,
you know, they come to your concert
and they buy the merch.
So, it's different types of fans,
so I just look at artists,
I listen to their music and I just try to figure out what
type of fan base that I'm going to get for these people.
You know?
And I figured out how to turn a listener into
a real down fan.
- [Interviewer] What was the feeling like
when you made your first million?
- The feeling?
I'm a crazy type of person,
that don't even be hitting me, like — [laughs]
I know it's hard to say but that type of shit
don't even hit me.
I don't even really be caring about that type of stuff.
I just be feeling like I got weight on my shoulders now,
you know what I'm saying?
That's just like, alright,
I got responsibility now. I got artists.
I have to break these artists.
I have to make my artists as big as possible.
And then like,
that's just all I think about all the time.
I listen — I gotta listen to music all fuckin' day.
I gotta figure out how I'm finna market this music,
how I'm finna market my artists.
And I gotta study my artists all the time because
the shit gotta be 100% genuine to,
you know, the story they want to tell too.
Yeah, I definitely get satisfaction out of watching my artists
make money and become big.
For sure, yeah.
But then I kinda started looking at it different,
'cause I think I'm doing a good thing,
but then it's like, what money and fame do to some people.
It's like, I kind of been thinking about that lately.
I listened to all classic albums and I dissect them like,
"Alright, why is this a classic? What is the message behind this?
Why do people take —" You know, like,
that is the cheat code that people don't understand.
Classic stuff never gets old.
But like, what is one thing that everybody —
that happened to everybody.
This is why, like,
I put together a Juice album the way I did heartbreak, right?
'Cause I can get the biggest audience
if we talk about heartbreak,
'cause everybody been through it.
And I was talking to Juice and I asked him,
"Why, why you make this music this way?"
He told me, 'cause it was this girl, that dadadadada —
I said, "Alright, we got to tell that exact story."
And that's how he got diehard fans
because everybody been through the same shit, man.
And he told,
we told the story perfectly, you know what I'm saying?
- [Newscaster] And turn to the sudden
and shocking death of rap star Juice WRLD.
The 21-year-old who was named
Billboard's Best New Artist this year
suffered a medical emergency at Chicago's Midway Airport...
- I think it was like, four in the morning.
Somebody called me and was like,
"Juice just had a seizure."
And that's how I received the news.
I just wanted to do what he wanted to do, you know?
Which was put out music
but I kinda wanted to tell a message with the new album.
Like, try to help kids
that's fighting the same fight as him.
Juice was talking a lot about depression,
anxiety, drug addiction.
So I try to, you know, put together the right album
to talk about that and to tell the story
about how he dealt with it,
to try to help the younger kids
that could be possibly going through it.
Because I feel like that type of stuff,
you really can't explain it
'cause coming from where I come from,
I can't come to my mom and be like,
"Oh, I got anxiety. I'm depressed."
My mom would slap the shit outta me, you know?
What are you talking about?
I feel like, if you pick places where I'm from,
that type of shit is unexplainable.
Man, it'd take a lot to be a music executive.
Man, I don't stop thinking. I can't sleep.
I think all day about different ways to make my artists bigger.
First of all, you gotta break the artists
and to break an artist,
that's really hard too.
And then once you break the artist,
you gotta figure out how to not make him
a one song-type of artist.
You put together the right project and you tell a message
that's going to connect with the most people possible,
you know, make people feel where your artists coming from.
So, that's how you get the fans with the first project.
And then, the shit never stops, man.
Never stops, like —
Once the beginner's hype is up,
you gotta, you gotta do it again.
And it just gets harder and harder just to stay on top.
That's why you gotta respect certain artists that been
on top for a long time, like Drake.
You gotta keep coming with — [snaps fingers]
You're only as big as your last hit.
The most important key is
you just can't stop.
You gotta keep scoring, man.
You just gotta keep scoring.