Lil Muk

Muk got into music at an early age through his mother’s influence: “She’s a neat freak—she’d clean the house all day and play music. I started listening to all this old music and started writing.” Keyshia Cole and JAY-Z loomed large, but none more so than the late rap icon the Notorious B.I.G. “I heard one song and that made me wanna rap,” he recalls. “I fell in love with the lifestyle.”

As he hit high school, Muk’s friends played a substantial role in getting him off the streets and into the recording booth. “Friends kept telling me that I was talented, and that I should take it more seriously,” he explains; as he started building out what would be a successful musical career, the biggest influence in his life was not a musician, but the person closest to his heart. “What inspires me the most is my mom,” Muk exclaims. “She’s a provider and a team player, which I learned how to be from her. Everything I do, I’ve learned from my mom and the streets.”

His debut single was the indelible “Gang Wit Me” in 2018, and last year Lil Muk unleashed an unstoppable run kicked off by “Wildin’”: “That song’s about my lifestyle and everything that was going on around that time. I was wildin’—getting kicked out of the crib, living from house to house, out in the streets. I was just wildin’. My man was like, ‘Put that shit in a song,’ so I played around with it and went in.”

Then there’s the sorrowful “Best For You,” in which Muk reaches deep into his personal life to express love for those he’s lost around him. “I was losing a lot of friends and homies to the streets,” he states while talking about the song’s creation. “It was a tough time when I came up with that song. I put all my pain in my music.” His most recent single, the bouncy “Like You,” is a collaboration Philly singer FH Snoop that counts as Muk’s first real-deal team effort in the studio. “I can’t collaborate with other artists, but I like Snoop,” he exclaims. “We linked up and I felt real good about our collaboration—we just clicked. I knew what type of style she had, and when we were in the studio we just vibed up.”

What’s next? More singles and music videos, more live appearances, more features—and, above all else, a constant grind to continue scaling the top of the hip-hop crop. “I’m desperate to be great,” Lil Muk ruminates while discussing his surely bright future. “I want to be the best there is, and I ain’t gonna stop trying.”