- Hio-hop singer, guitarist and songwriter born Austin Post in 1995 in Syracuse New York.
- Post’s father was a DJ when he was young, and he exposed Post to many types of music as a child. After moving to Texas at the age of nine, he became interested in the guitar by playing Guitar Hero. By his mid-teens, he had chosen his stage name, moving his last name to his first name, and using a “rap name generator” to get Malone. He auditioned for a metal band at 15 years old, but was rejected because he broke a guitar string during the audition. The following year, he made his first mixtape. After high school, he moved to Los Angeles. He formed a band named BLCKVRD, and met some rap music producers who helped him record a song he wrote called White Iverson. He uploaded the song to his SoundCloud account in February 2015, and within a month the song had a million views. Record companies became interested, and in August 2015 he was signed to a recording contract. His rap music had evolved to a form that incorporated lots of pop elements, particularly with electronic beats.
- His song White Iverson was immediately released by the record company, and it reached #14 on the Hot 100 chart. Within a couple of months, he was working with major rap acts including 50 Cent and Kanye West. He also began a friendship with pop star Justin Bieber, and Malone was booked as the open act for Bieber’s 2016 world tour. In May that year, he released a mixtape titled August 26th, which was the date that his debut studio album was scheduled to be released. However, the album was delayed, and finally it was released in December 2016.
- Titled Stoney, Malone felt that it was “mediocre,” but it was very successful, peaking at #4 on the Billboard 200 album chart and topping the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Eventually, it was certified 5x platinum. In addition to White Iverson, it included Congratulations, a single that featured rapper Quavo that reached #8 on the Hot 100 chart and #5 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. Bieber was the featured vocalist on the single Deja Vu, which reached #75 and #25 respectively on the charts. Another single, I Fall Apart, reached #16 on the Hot 100.
- In 2018, Malone released his second studio album, Beerbongs & Bentleys. The first single from the album was Rockstar – it was a huge hit, topping the Hot 100 for eight weeks. It propelled the album to the top of the Billboard 200 album chart as well as the top of eleven international album charts, and it was certified 5x platinum. It ended the 10s decade as the #5 album for the entire decade. Two other singles from the album charted in the top 5 of the Hot 100 chart – Psycho (featuring Ty Dolla Sign) topped the chart, and Better Now peaked at #3.
- In August 2018, Malone’s Stoney album had been on the Top R&B Albums chart for 77 weeks. This broke Michael Jackson’s 34-year old record for the most weeks on the chart – Thriller was on the chart for 76 weeks. Later that year, Malone contributed the song Sunflower to the film Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse. It became his third single to top the Hot 100 chart.
- Malone released his Hollywood’s Bleeding album in 2019. The 4x platinum album had five top 10 songs on it. In addition to Sunflower, the single Circles topped the Hot 100, while Wow, Goodbyes and Take What You Want reached #2, #3 and #8 respectively. The album continued to be predominantly hip-hop, with even more influences from other genres like pop, EDM and heavy metal. Critics even called it “catchy.”
- He became popular as a featured artist on songs by many other artists. In 2022, he released his fourth studio album, Twelve Carat Toothache. It debuted at #2 on the album chart, and popular singles included One Right Now (with The Weeknd – #6 on the Hot 100) and I Like You (A Happier Song) (featuring Doja Cat – #3 on the Hot 100 and #1 on the Mainstream Top 40 chart).
- As a white man performing hip-hop, Malone has faced some criticism for being a “culture vulture” and “appropriating African-American culture.” I wish music (and many other things) didn’t need to become racialized….Oh well, here’s the video to Rockstar. It’s in the “Billion Views” club on YouTube.