* * *

Makonnen always had an ease with words. “Growing up, I remember having this karaoke machine,” he says, back in the car. “It was this plastic guy, and he has this little mic attached to him, and it records shit. I remember just holding it, you know? I didn’t have any friends really young, and I remember being at my dad’s girlfriend’s house, and the other kids were playing basketball, and I was just outside with my little recorder, talking into it about whatever came to mind. I always made myself have a friend in myself. I’d be laughing at my own jokes, like, ‘This is funny. Who can I share this with? Oh: myself.’”

He was born in Los Angeles, in what was then called South Central. His parents divorced soon after. Makonnen was raised mostly by his father, a first-generation immigrant from Belize, in a family house on West 21st Street with his aunt and a half-dozen older cousins. “That was the street Marvin Gaye was living on when he got killed by his dad,” Makonnen says. “The area was kinda famous for that.” He absorbed his cousins’ music collections—“Top 40 and techno, fucking Cher, blink-182, goddamn Ice Cube”—and the rest of their lives. “The oldest would be in charge,” Makonnen remembers. “But they’d be like, ‘Whatever, I’m going to play my video game in the room.’ Here I am, the youngest one, in a group of four or five of us getting into trouble: the sex channel, everything. The first time I had a cigarette was at 8 years old; I started smoking weed at 10.” He bounced from one grade school to the next, which offered unfamiliar worlds. “My best friend would be a black kid in one school, and then a Vietnamese kid in the next school, then the next one a white kid, then a Mexican kid, etc. I’d go from the hood in LA to school in Orange County, and they’re living a whole different lifestyle. Everybody’s chill, going to the beach, fucking skateboarding. I’m so thankful for that. That’s what the world is when you grow up: everybody isn’t the same as the kids

in your neighborhood.”

In seventh grade, Makonnen skipped school for a month and a half straight. After an afternoon spent horsing around, he’d put on his uniform and walk home. One day, his aunt tried to pick him up early and learned of his string of absences. “I was like, ‘Shit, don’t tell my dad, don’t tell my dad,’” he says. “I knew he was going to beat my ass. She’s like, ‘It’s too late, I already called him.’ That was horrible. I remember getting that whipping— it was one of the worst in my life. It was beyond whipping.” His mom had moved to Atlanta, and he flew there to visit and get his bearings. “She was the first person to show interest in my music,” he says, and that grounded him. She bought Makonnen a keyboard, and he started to produce five-track beats for her to sing over. “We made three albums together,” he says. “We co-wrote the songs and recorded them in our house. That’s where I got my first experience putting vocals on a track. My mom was the first artist that I ever produced.” When it was finally time to return to LA, Makonnen begged her not to send him. A custody battle ensued, and he remembers his father telling him, “I’m never going to hang out with you like this again.” Makonnen moved to Atlanta.