First Look Friday: How Armani White Took a N.O.R.E. Classic & turned it Into a TikTok Hit

For April’s First Look Friday, we caught up with Armani White to discuss his TikTok hit "BILLIE EILISH" and the upcoming release of his Casablanco album.

First thing you should know about Armani White is that he’s from Philadelphia. This means he is in lineage with decades of goated rappers from the city, from Black Thought to Freeway to Meek Mill. It also means he’s familiar with the grind and the road for Armani White hasn’t been a smooth one.

Over the last 15 years, he lost his father to cancer, an uncle to gun violence, and multiple family members in a house fire. That trauma would find its way into White’s music in compelling ways: in 2019 he released Keep in Touch, a touching debut to his father. And in 2021 he released Things We Lost In The Fire a gripping five-track EP about the fire that killed four of his family members.

Throughout this time Armani White was working as an indie musician. And then last year the breakout game: he released the addictive "BILLIE EILISH" and the song seemingly took a life of its own, going viral on TikTok and being supported by A-listers like Kim Kardashian, LeBron James, Gabrielle Union-Wade, and more. Part of the record’s appeal is the production: the song samples N.O.R.E’s 2002 hit “Nothin,’” which was produced by the Neptunes. The song not only introduced N.O.R.E. to a new generation, but also set a foundation of impending success for Armani.

Basking in a bunch of new career milestones, Armani — who signed with Def Jam after the song took off — is taking it all in. “I want to have a long withstanding career,” White told Okayplayer during a Zoom conversation last month.

It’s only looking up for White as he prepares for the release of his upcoming Def Jam debut, Casablanc0, which is coming out next month.

For April’s First Look Friday, we caught up with Armani to discuss his breakout success, the upcoming May 5 release of his Casablanco album, passion, and more.

Armani White and N.O.R.E. attend the BET Hip Hop Awards 2022 at The Cobb Theater on September 30, 2022 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Johnny Nunez/Getty Images for BET)

The interview below has been lightly edited and condensed. 

What has your evolution as a rapper been like?

Armani White: I’ve just been trying new things and remaining consistent with that. I guess the main thing was I just became more comfortable with putting myself into my music, my personality, things like that.

I came home and I got really rooted, grounded in just being home, being back in Philly, and identifying how important the culture is for me, how important the culture is, how much it molded me and made me who I am. And I learned how to just put that into the music and not separate it.

You touched on going home and culture and Philly has spawned some of the best lyricists in hip-hop. How much of where you come from impacted you as an artist?

A lot. I think it is cool because right now some of us newer acts are part of that renaissance of Philly and we have a really big spotlight on it right now with me, Tierra Whack, Lil Uzi Vert, and others. Hip-hop was ingrained in how I grew up. Bro, from your mom to your grandma, everybody knows how to rap in Philly.

We just grew up with that mentality that it was like by the time we were in fourth, fifth grade, we were battle-rapping each other at the lunch table. That just instilled me to always have that stay ready so you don't got to get ready mentality, just. And especially when it came to music, it was just always being prepared. You might run into somebody on the street that feels like they're a better rapper than you. You never met them in your life before that.

Has there been any particular challenges that come to mind that had you reconsidering that music wasn’t for you?

Yeah, bro. My life is an open book, man. I lost my aunt, my cousins. A lot of times when things got really rough, I just turned back to the neighborhood. It was just out of comfortability. It was something that I understood, that was something that I knew. I would turn back to the neighborhood and be like, "Yeah, I'm going to just be outside with my homies."

And then it was the idea that nobody can understand me. Nobody can understand what I'm going through. As I got older, I realized that didn't necessarily make sense. When I got really sad really in these dark spots, that was where happy hood music came from. When I got really dark spots.

I lost one of my really good friends growing up. I had a house fire where I lost my aunt and my three cousins. One of those final waking-up moments was when I lost an uncle to gun violence. That was the moment when I realized what was going on in my head mentally was that anytime I got really sad, I just wanted to be happy. Anytime I had that moment where it was just complete and utter darkness, all I could think about was, "Damn, a week ago I was really feeling good. I was happy as hell. What happened? How do I get back to that?"

And so sometimes I would just turn to what was most comfortable for me. You know what I mean? I would go back to the hood. This is what I understand, what I relate to. Over time it was just like I learned to just seek out and get new experiences, just growth. Just learn anything and live in those moments of trauma and pain instead of running away from them.

TikTok served as a launching point for "BILLIE EILISH." to gain popularity. Did you know that record was the “one” when you finished it?

I felt that way the entire time, bro. From the moment we recorded that video in the studio, I was like, "There's something special about this one." Even still, there's something about, well, one of the things I always do is if I play a song that's mine, I don't ever tell people that it's mine. I just get a room for a reaction. If I'm in the car with you and I play one of my songs, it's like either you ask me, 'what song is that?' or you just don't care.

We dropped that snippet in February and maybe November, December, prior to that, I was just playing the beat on my Instagram. Everybody would comment, "Yo, what song is [this]? What beat is this? Who is this?" You know what I'm saying? That was an indicator and had me thinking, “Oh, nah, this is something special." We just went four times platinum in Australia. I didn't know it was going to go how it went so fast, but I knew it was going to go.

With “BILLIE EILISH” being your breakout hit, has there been any pressure to match the record’s success?

I feel more pressure, less about the success of the record, but just more about making sure that that's not the only record that people identify me as. Outside of that, I don't want to be an artist that's only identified by my songs. I don't want to only matter when I put a song out. I don't want to be an artist like that. You know me, bro. We were in a pandemic together. I'm a personality more than anything. I want to make sure that people know me for me. I don't want to pigeonhole myself into some idea of a song.

When I first started growing my hair out, people thought I was earthy. They thought I was holistic and that is so far from who I actually am. But again, if you don't attach any personality to who you are or what you're doing, then it's easy for people to just make assumptions or attach you to an idea of who they think you are. That's really where my pressure really is at, just making sure that I'm not just this one-dimensional figure.

What can we expect from you on your debut album?

The album is called Casablanco. It is the idea that I'm more. It's world-building. I think it's like some of my favorite artists. They've created worlds that their fans live in, like the Odd Future world. You go on one side, it's Tyler, the Creator, it's Frank Ocean, it's Earl Sweatshirt, it's The Internet. There's a world around that. There's a world around Travis Scott and Astroworld. There's a world around Drake and OVO. That world is in Canada though (laughs).

You know what I'm saying? There's worlds around where these artists are building and I think Casablanco is the world that I want to build. It's a home that, as the career progresses, as the career grows and develops, the home gets bigger. Right now, it's a little small, little home because I'm from Philadelphia. But I think a year from now might be a little crib with a yacht in the back. Who knows?

But it's my own personal world that I want to build with the music that I want to make inside of it. Because I know my life, my music, my personality, a lot of this is a juxtaposition to where I'm at. There's not that many colorful, bubbly characters in Philadelphia and hip-hop. There's not that much bright things going on in rap music. The sound of my music is not the same as what is coming out of Philly.

I think of Casablanco like a colorful house on a block that's all black and white. I think that's what this project is and to represent is just to really just be the doormat and the front door to the world that I'm building throughout this career.

What is your favorite part about the creative process?

My favorite part of it all is the rollout. I don’t know if I was a marketing person in my past life. I love making music. I love performing the music. I love everything but it's a certain level of vindication that you get out of doing something from a marketing standpoint and it goes well and it is being received and seeing people reacting in a way that you thought they would've.

Just watching the growth and the fan base materialize and the conversations get started. I'm just a really big fan of it. I love that. I love circulating things. I love circulating content. I love doing the little quirky things that end up becoming stories online. I love saying little fly shit in interviews and that ends up becoming a caption.

Why I started making music was when I was a kid, I felt like I didn't have a voice. I felt as loud as I could scream, nobody will hear me. To see that I can say something, I can do something, I can act in a way that just regards instant gratification, instant reactions, it's just cool to watch. It's a cool concept to me.

2023 marks 50 years of Hip-Hop. What does the genre mean to you?

Hip-Hop is my lifeline. Hip-Hop saved me in a lot of ways to change the course of my future. I mean, that's an obvious statement, but just, it gave me something to do. This became a sport for me. This became my appetite, my hunger, the thing that I wanted to wake up and be good at.

I feel like when I was growing up it was a landing strip for all other people who were weird like me. Because that was the thing I gravitated towards. It gave a voice to those people who I thought didn't exist. When I thought about myself, I thought I was the only person who felt these certain types of ways. I got to understand and watch the rappers like Eminem, Missy Elliot, Busta Rhymes, and Ludacris exist and say, “Oh! There's a place for this. There's a world where these people that are like me live." That was what made me fall in love with the genre.

Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images