Rylo Rodriguez

An Alabama rapper with a knack for flipping sweet R&B samples

when mariah Carey sang about everlasting love on 1996’s “Always Be My Baby,” she probably couldn’t have envisioned its rebirth as “Project Baby,” a story of squalor and perseverance by 24-year-old Mobile, Alabama, rapper Rylo Rodriguez. “Catch a DUI, these bills driving us crazy,” he sings in place of Carey’s chorus. “But they don’t feel me, ’cause I’m just a project baby.”

That kind of clever pop recontextualization comes naturally to Rodriguez, real name Ryan Adams, who’s proud to have grown up in Mobile’s Roger Williams Housing Projects. “I wouldn’t want to be from nowhere else,” he says. “It’s fun growing up in the projects.” In less than a year, he’s become Alabama’s mush-mouthed bard of sampling, creating new works out of R&B and pop songs by artists like Tamia and Leon Bridges. On YouTube, he’s a prince, racking up 2 million to 8 million views on his most popular videos, even if those same songs can rarely cross over to platforms like Spotify or Apple Music for copyright reasons.

On his 2019 song “Court Dates,” Rodriguez sang over a simple guitar riff about his friends’ entanglement with the criminal-justice system. Not long after, he himself spent time behind bars in another state, for what he describes as “a gun and some pills.” “I jinxed myself,” he says. “Stupid-ass shit.”

His life has turned around lately, especially since he signed to Four Pockets Full, the imprint run by Lil Baby, one of the biggest names in Atlanta rap. Rodriguez is working on his first album — and he says he’s trying to get away from the sample-based music that’s made him famous (“The Mariah Carey [song], I won’t get paid for that”).

The thing he’s happiest about is his ability to take care of his mother and siblings, the way his late grandfather once did. “That shit crazy, because I used to be the one asking for money,” Rodriguez says. “My momma told me, ‘You’re Granddad now.’ That gotdamn made me smile.” CHARLES HOLMES

HOMETOWN

Mobile, Alabama

SOUNDS LIKE

A Nineties

R&B singer in the body of a Southern rapper