He’d spend all day recording on his laptop at McDonald’s or at friends’ houses and released a torrent of captivating, lo-fi material under the alias Yung Bruh. “The shit we did, shit we talked about, I feel like that’s what really made me who I am.” It was during this period that music became Tracy’s primary motivation. Tracy’s homelessness was a time of rebellion that would make Bam Margera proud, and one he remembers with fondness. “I literally would go into the fountain just to get the money and go to McDonald’s.” “There was this fountain in downtown where people would throw change,” he says. His infinite free time was matched only by his total lack of funds. Instead, he explains his self-inflicted homelessness during his teenage years at age 16, tired of fighting with his mom, Tracy ran away from home, stole a tent, and moved into a nearby forest with three friends. In another world, he could narrate a nature documentary. He speaks in a soft register without obvious regional signifiers: there’s a touch of Mid-Atlantic drawl, and notes of SoCal skater nonchalance. The winter sun sets beyond the Venetian blinds of his bedroom window, framing his face in horizontal bars of golden light. Tracy tells me all of this while sprawled out on his mattress, which is obviously on the floor. The song’s cover art - a heart with a band-aid listening to an iPod - reflects his belief that “music is what’s gonna help me get better.” It’s a tribute to a year he barely survived. He wrote the project’s gorgeous single “Heart” last summer, shortly after experiencing a near-fatal heart attack. The EP is a significant return to the emo-influenced style that helped propel him, alongside Lil Peep and the Gothboiclique crew, to cult hero status in 2016. The musician recorded his most recent project - the Sinner EP, released in November 2018 - in the same bedroom room we’re sitting in. Tracy’s varied body of work reflects his renegade lifestyle, motivated by an insatiable desire for freedom - whatever the cost. During that time he’s released music under multiple aliases including Souljahwitch, Yung Bruh, Eblis The Persian Dolphin, and Yunng Karma. Tracy spent his youth in Virginia Beach, where he ran away from home as a teenager and slept in a tent in the forest (more on that later) before moving to Los Angeles, where he bounced between friends’ living rooms and cars. I spy a cowboy hat embroidered with skulls, a Chanel pearl necklace, several cute stuffed animals, a ghoulish white mask, and a pile of boxes of high-end clothes and jewelry with a value Tracy estimates at $15,000. There’s nothing on the walls of Tracy’s bedroom, but the floor is a map of his mind. He was black, but really pale, and really evil.” “I made a character with a cheat where if they killed you, you would fly into the sky,” he says. Tracy’s showing me his favorite video game: Saints Row 2, a deranged Grand Theft Auto clone from 2008 that promised on its release to “bring open world thug-driven action to the PS3.” As a teen, Tracy spent many hours creating different avatars in the game. Their living room contains a couch, a TV, a PS4, and not much else. The pink-haired rapper and I are sitting on the floor in the spacious Bushwick apartment he shares with his cousin, the rapper Buku Bandz. “I probably shouldn’t have been playing this shit as a kid,” the 23-year-old says, grinning.
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