The Houston rapper Maxo Kream had every reason to be in a triumphant mood last month. Sitting on the roof of a yet-to-open Williamsburg restaurant, his own music was blaring from the house speakers as he passed around mini lobster rolls. He and some friends were basking in the sun and a new record deal. A critical favorite and buzzing underground star, Maxo had slipped the development into a new song, “Still,” in May: “Still making deals, just signed me a deal, signed to RCA, $1.5 mil.”
“I’m not Superman or nothing [now], I’m not leaping off no building,” Maxo said in an interview that day.
On Friday, Maxo will release his major-label debut Brandon Banks—as promised, on RCA Records. At 29 years old, the arrangement should bring to his talent a new level of resources and attention (if also some red tape). If nothing else, it’s a kind of recognition, and a check.
The theme of “Still,” though, is right in the title. The line that follows the RCA mention is: “still selling dope, label like I need to chill.” Maxo’s strongest reaction to this new phase of his career has been his insistence that it wouldn’t change anything about him or his work. “Man, just everything I do is authentic,” he said. “I want [listeners] to know I’m still going to be me, I’m still going to be Maxo Kream. I might grow, and develop, and mature, but I’m not switching up.”
As a rapper, Maxo’s intricate syllabic barrages lean on images and metaphors, and he speaks in them too. “You know Grand Theft Auto V?” he asked, continuing his discussion of the impact of his record deal. “All right, you know how you beat the story mode...and then you go online and there are more missions, more to unlock? I’m just online now. It’s just another chapter.”
Starting in 2012 and culminating with his celebrated 2018 release, Punken, Maxo has developed a reputation for consistency and sturdiness. He’s a supple and silky storyteller, with a thick, booming voice that he nimbly contorts into entrancing internal rhymes. Even his hooks sound like verses. He looks to his hometown, his family, and the trauma they’ve endured for his lyrics. “From the streets to the block, she done been through a lot” is the opening description of one song’s title character “Brenda,” and Maxo spends the rest of the track bouncing off the sound of her name in order to detail the circumstances that have shaped and limited her life.
Brandon Banks is named after Maxo’s father and sometimes functions as a letter to him; his words of support and advice to his son are spliced throughout the album. But his father’s birth name is Emekwanem Ogugua Biosah (Maxo’s too). When Biosah immigrated to the U.S. from Nigeria, he found little in the way of job opportunities. Banks is the alias he adopted in pursuing other forms of income—Maxo described his father as a “scammer,” and a great parent, when the album was announced—and the name used in the federal fraud case that eventually kept him imprisoned while his son was growing up.
The album opens with a solemn statement on “Meet Again,” a song that documents the cruelties of the criminal justice system: “I’d rather be carried by 6 before I’m judged by 12.” “I know this rap shit look real sweet,” Maxo raps, “but my real life it ain’t no fun.” His unhurried voice belies the tragedy of the situation he’s describing: “let me tell you ‘bout your daughter, yesterday she tried to walk,” he tells an incarcerated friend.
“'Meet Again'?” Maxo said as we waited for more food, grinning in a Supreme basketball jersey. “I did the whole second verse freestyle. And like half of the first verse.” At the level of wordplay and cadence, he enjoys telling these stories, and the album emphatically captures glee as well as pain. Along with “Meet Again” is “She Live,” a kinetic collaboration with this summer’s leading motivational speaker and fellow Houston native Megan Thee Stallion.
“It’s called the Maxo movement, cause I’m in my own lane,” Maxo said about where he sits in the contemporary music landscape. “I don’t chase fads. Even a producer, he could be old, outdated, whatever, I rap on the beats that make sense to me.” Even if generational and stylistic divides in hip-hop make it into his songs (on “Roaches” last year, he rapped, “remember back when music had content and metaphors, way before the mumble nonsense and poppin' handlebars”), in conversation he was more concerned about being true to himself and his tastes than any broader debate. A line in “Drizzy Draco” namedrops Allen Iverson, Rajon Rondo, and Manu Ginobili, all retired or fading NBA players. His manager has pushed him to update his reference points, but Maxo shrugged off the suggestion. “All my basketball references come from old-school throwback shit,” he said.
Maxo had more appointments to get to that day. Later on, he headed to Manhattan to sign a management deal with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation. But his refrain about all of these developments remained consistent, as if it were a reminder to himself as much as anyone else. “I’ve been doing this since I was a dang kid,” Maxo said of interviews like this one. The only difference to his mind was that a larger team was now setting them up. “I’ve been doing the same shit.”
“It was, when I first signed,” Maxo said when asked if, at a minimum, his new situation was exciting. “But now, I’m the kind of guy who...I’m ready to work. All this is getting old, you know what I’m saying? You signed a deal, woo, you got money. Come on, let’s see what this do.”
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