From USC freshman to Spotify-topping star
Rapper 24kGoldn builds career with success of ‘Mood’
There’s an argument to be made— and 24kGoldn and his team will eagerly make it— that this 19-yearold rapper’s “Mood” is the biggest song on the planet right now.
A yelping, guitar-driven number about playing “games of love to avoid the depression,” “Mood” doesn’t sit atop Billboard’s industry-standardHot 100, where it trails Cardi B’s “WAP,” BTS’ “Dynamite” and the international pileup “Savage Love (Laxed— Siren Beat)” by Jason Derulo, BTS andNew Zealand’s Jawsh 685. But since late September, the tune has led Spotify’s Global Top 50 chart— a coveted perch at a moment when streaming largely drives the pop music conversation.
When “Mood” came out in July, 24kGoldn said, “I thought, if this gets 300 million streams in the span of a year, I’m happy.” He grinned. “In three months, it’s gottenmore than 300 million on Spotify alone.” Tens of millions more have come fromYouTube and AppleMusic.
What makes “Mood’s” success especially remarkable is that a year and a half ago, 24kGoldn (whose real name is Golden Landis von Jones) was finishing his freshman year atUSC on a full-ride scholarship to study business. Back then he’d already built the beginnings of an audience for his music, which he started posting online as a high school student in his native San Francisco.
But 24kGoldn enjoyed the college life, so he stayed enrolled, returning to his room at theMcCarthy
Honors Residential College after playing increasingly crowded gigs around Los Angeles.
“I ate for free at the dorm, whichwas a big plus,” he pointed out with a laugh— less of a concern nowthat “Mood” is pulling in more than $100,000 a week in revenue, according to the trade journalHits.
“Collegewas like the perfect transition from being a random SoundCloud rapper to having the No. 1 song in theworld,” said the artist, whomoved to LA’s ritzierWestside after putting his studies on hold last fall to focus on music. “I needed a little something in between.”
In a sense, 24kGoldn’s rapid ascent with “Mood,” which features another young up-and-comer in Iann Dior, is emblematic of the industry’s current fixation on viral quick-fix smashes. Like scores of recent hits, including Arizona Zervas’s “Roxanne” and StaySolidRocky’s “Party Girl,” “Mood” took off on the video-sharing app TikTok before it migrated to streaming services and radio.
Yet 24kGoldn insists he’s different fromthe acts who’ve struggled to lay the foundation for something longer lasting.
“Me and LilNasX”— the social-media phenom behind 2019’s country-trap “Old Town Road”—“we’re like the only two artists that have built a career off this,” he said froma sofa at a Hollywood rehearsal studio where hewas preparing for several upcoming television performances.
“And in the case ofNas, he had the traditional blowup story that’s kind of the blueprint now,” he added, meaning that LilNasXwas snapped up quickly amid a major-label biddingwar after “Old Town Road” went viral. “People don’t knowIwas signed for almost a year before anything blew up.”
Indeed, BarryWeiss, the veteran label executive who signed 24kGoldn to his SonyMusic imprint Records in 2018, said courting the rapperwasn’t “the typical boogie where a guy’s got a hot record on TikTok.” Weiss had been hipped by one of his A&R reps to an earlier 24kGoldn song, the equally catchy “Valentino,” and heard in it thework of a gifted songwriter and charismatic vocalist.
“Thiswas an old-fashioned, organic signing based on talent, not on metrics,” saidWeiss, who as president of Jive Records in the late ’90s shepherded the likes of Britney Spears and ’N Sync to pop superstardom. “TikTok is just the vehicle, no different than ‘TRL’ used to be. If thiswas 60 years ago, this kidwould be writing doo-wop hits.”
In 2020, what 24kGoldn’s flexibility means is that he’s creating music that blurs the line between emo and hip-hop. Among the other charts that “Mood” has topped is Billboard’sHot Rock& Alternative Songs, a home these days to acts like Post Malone and the late Juice Wrld who blend rapping and singing over tracks that fuse fuzzy guitars to throbbing beats.
Mike Kaplan, program director at LA’sKROQ-FM, called “Mood” “one of those first-listen records” and said it embodies the naturally diverse tastes of “millennials and Zoomers who are more multicultural than any previous generation.”
As a biracial person, 24kGoldn said, “Who better to bring those two worlds together than somebody whose entire life is a juxtaposition? My dad is Black and Catholic; my
momis white and Jewish,” he said of his parents, who bothworked as fashion models. “And I’m fromone of the richest cities in the world but grew up in one of San Francisco’s last hoods,” he said, referring to Oceanview.
And yet there’s a kind of market awareness to 24kGoldn’s approach that goes beyond his adolescent love of both A$AP Rocky and Lego Rock Band; you can hear him actively trying to expand the breadth of his appeal on last year’s eclectic “Dropped Outta College” EP and in collaborations he has released since with the rapper Blackbear and the pop
EDMgroup Clean Bandit.
24kGoldn acted in commercials when hewas a kid and says he still finds himself fighting the impulse to please everybody in a room. “That’s howI’d experienced success in the entertainment field before— by getting in front of the camera and smiling,” he said. “But nobody’s really bubbly all the time. I’m learning to be moremyself.”
During the pandemic, he has beenworking on his debut album, which he plans to call “El Dorado” and which he hopes to put out early next year. Weiss says they’re prepping two singles for release in December: “a straight pop
record and a rhythmic rap recordwe’re getting a big feature on.”
“Can I sit here and predict that both songs are gonna be as big as ‘Mood’?” the executive said. “Of course not. Butwe’re very confident.”
Asked whether he’s splurged on anything since those streaming checks started rolling in, 24kGoldn twirled one of his braids in his fingers as he thought.
“I bought a chain— a Quetzalcoatl dragon with opals in the eyes,” he said. Then he added that hewas looking into leasing a car.
“I’ve been Uber-ing since I came to LA two years ago.”