I’m standing in the drop-off area of a huge residential building in Fort Lee, New Jersey, on the final day of July of last year when a group of young men file out of the building’s lobby in white t-shirts. The tallest of the group is Jersey’s most prized export of the decade, Willie Maxwell II, better known as Fetty Wap; I’m here to get an idea of what the Paterson native has been doing since dominating the hip-hop airwaves in 2015. But before any of that happens, me and Fetty’s publicist have to follow his car down Interstate 80 so he can have the doors to his black Jeep Wrangler reattached, in anticipation of the forecasted rain later in the day.

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After trailing Fetty and friends for a half hour, we pull into Paterson as he slows down a side street and puts the car in park. His friend Fuzz — whose leg and black ankle sock were hanging out of the Wrangler for our entire drive — walks over to switch cars with our photographer so Fetty can be captured from the passenger side of his jeep while we cruise the city. Rocking a red-topped fade, Fuzz mentions that it’s his birthday as he gets into our car; “I’m lit already,” he excitedly asserts, syncing his phone with the car’s bluetooth system and playing his just-released mixtape. “I’m hittin’ them from left field with this one,” he says with a smile on his face before bopping his head like it’s the first time he ever heard it. “They ain’t know I rap!”

Our ensuing ride through Paterson’s 4th ward (where Fuzz says he and Fetty hail from) feels like an around-the-way version of big-time political figures arriving to a city’s center, only with a much warmer embrace from the people. From our trailing view, Fetty’s sandy brown locs flutter in the humid wind, a rainbow of colorful vinyl siding accentuating the ride; he’s blasting his own music, and every few blocks someone on the street notices him and yells out, with Fetty saluting in kind. When our car finally catches up to him at a red light, Fetty’s grinning so wide that his eyes are almost closed completely. There’s a sense that, for him, showing off his home turf is a source of supreme joy.