Karrahbooo Breaks Silence on Her New Chapter and Independent Future
Karrahbooo says she hasn’t felt like her life has changed very much over the two years since her last project with Concrete Boys, the collective founded by Lil Yachty. She says she’s been sitting on new music, unable to release it thanks to label complications. Apart from a few times experimenting with live streaming, she’s been effectively stuck in place. “I would say it was only not changing so much because I wasn’t able to drop, so I really was stuck a little bit,” she explains.
Karrahbooo spoke to Rolling Stone the day before she released her long-delayed “debut” mixtape, Not Da 2, a refreshing and invigorating set of tracks that manage to make up for the years of relative quiet. “It feels kind of exciting and nerve-wracking,” she says over Zoom. “It feels relieving too, because I couldn’t drop for so long. Now, that I finally can, I don’t really know how to feel. I feel so many ways.”
A New Beginning After Concrete Boys
Despite this technically being her debut, Karrahbooo is arguably one of the more recognizable new faces in Atlanta music. The MC, who got her start as Lil Yachty’s personal assistant, made waves with 2022’s “Money Counter.” Her flow, reminiscent of artists like Veeze or Lucki, manages to feel both laid-back and intricately rhythmic, an enchanting combination made more potent by her dance-leaning sense of melody.
Following her On the Radar freestyle, which introduced her clever and menacing cadence to the masses, her career trajectory seemed set. She toured with Latto, Mariah the Scientist, and Key Glock, and played major festivals like Coachella and Rolling Loud. Then, it all stopped.
“I only dropped four songs before that whole thing happened,” she says. “Then I couldn’t drop at all for two years. So I just feel like people don’t know what to think of me.”
That “whole thing,” of course, refers to her falling out with Yachty and the Concrete Boys in 2024. A personal dispute between the longtime friends quickly became internet-gossip fodder. To hear Karrahbooo tell it now, one of the most lasting misconceptions is that she had simply run out of ideas.
“For some reason, a lot of people don’t know I was in a deal with Yachty. We got into it, and I was just stuck in the deal for a very long time and I couldn’t release music. People just thought I wasn’t dropping because I couldn’t do it without him. But I was already doing it without him before he even got in the picture.”
Karrahbooo confirms she is now fully out of that deal and signed to Mercury Records. Her recent releases have appeared through her own NotTheTwo LLC, in partnership with Mercury Records/Republic. “He’s just my friend,” she says of Yachty now. “He’s just there to support me. He’s not my boss anymore.”
Looking Toward the Future
The reconciliation has even made its way onto Not Da 2, where Yachty appears on a song appropriately titled “Patched It Up.” Karrahbooo admits she didn’t handle the public fallout perfectly, noting, “I just feel like you shouldn’t beef with anybody online. You have each other’s number. I feel like you could talk it out. I feel like I should put business over emotions.”
About 90 percent of Not Da 2 was recorded during the two years she was unable to release music. Much of it captures a version of Karrahbooo who was watching her career sit still while the conversation around her continued without her. “I was just angry and hurt a lot of the times,” she says. “So I kind of sound angry. But I’m nice. I’m not that angry.”
As she looks ahead to her eventual debut album, she is eager to expand her sound beyond the alternative music and trap influences that have defined her early work. “My mixtape, OK, it’s good,” she says. “But I want my album to be great.”
For all the drama attached to the last chapter of her career, Karrahbooo doesn’t sound interested in turning Not Da 2 into a referendum on her merit as a rapper. What she’s really interested in is finally getting enough music out for listeners to have an opinion about her that is based on her actual output. “I hope people see that I don’t need anybody,” she says. “I could do it myself, and I did.”
