It's not always easy to tell when a 16-year-old is fucking with you. Though when I first met Austin Butts bka Asspizza, the Queens-born artist/designer/high schooler with a preternaturally strong command of social media, I was pretty sure he was. He kept his eyes down on his scrawled-on Supreme Air Forces, and muttered clipped, petulant answers into my recorder at the 2 Bros where I'd bought us dollar slices in an effort to be cute. But he wasn't, he was just being himself—the self that thousands of followers are obsessed with, in a kind of unconditional adoration that recalls the early days of Lil B.

Asspizza has aspirations and an allure that transcend his age, but at heart he's still a teenager: "Fuck school," he'll tweet, and get hundreds of likes. His drawings are gestural and childish and he doesn't care if they're done in sharpie or ketchup. "Anything that leaves a mark," he says. Somehow, Asspizza's network is stretching beyond his young-but-influential inner circle, which includes Luka Sabbat, Mike The Ruler, and Gianni Mora. It all started online—but with a growing fan base that includes artists like ILoveMakonnen, Lorde, and Theophilus London—his name is rising IRL, and fast. We decided we wanted to hear what he was all about. World, meet Asspizza.



