The heart and the tongue of Bear1Boss

When I hop on a Zoom call with Bear1Boss, he immediately notices the embarrassing amount of wrestling action figures displayed on the bedroom wall behind me. Like wrestling fans tend to do when they meet a fellow member of the tribe, we start debating our personal GOATs. Turns out we have the same favorite wrestler: CM Punk, the scrappy underdog from Chicago who swaggers to the ring to the massive riffs of Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality” and never backs down from a fight. As you might expect from someone with the word “Punk” in their name, he’s known for constantly polarizing fans by speaking his truth, even when it’s unpopular. “CM Punk is probably a big reason my confidence is the way it is,” Bear confides.

The colorfully cosmic rapper might be the furthest thing from a middle-aged straight-edge punk, but I can see why he’s drawn to a personality who is such a model of being unapologetically yourself. Bear1Boss is just the latest in a long tradition of artists from Atlanta who proudly wear their weirdness on their sleeves. His kaleidoscopic sound updates Datpiff-era Southern rap for the age of hyperpop, blending snap music and Rich Kidz mixtapes and Young Thug leaks into an acid-soaked smoothie that leaves you with a brain freeze. On his hyperactive new album SUPER BOSS!, Bear exists in a futuristic dimension all his own, but his roots are undeniably Atlanta. His songs are filled with DJ drops from regular collaborators like Popstar Benny, but you also frequently hear classic mixtape tags — “Real trap shit,” “Damn son, where’d you find this?” — that can trigger a warm nostalgia.

Even though he’ll always proudly put on for Atlanta, Bear1Boss has a bigger vision for himself: “I want to be a worldwide pop sensation,” he says. “I’m trying to break barriers and create history.” As he looks to expand his universe, we caught up with Bear1Boss about the power of manifestation, the magic of Atlanta, and what rapping shares with pro wrestling.

The FADER: Recently I saw a tweet from Popstar Benny where he said your life is “randomly mystically magically.” How do you feel about that description?

My whole life has definitely been like that. I think my imagination was just too big as a kid and it took over. It was some unfinished business, and it was like, we’re not going to stop until these dreams you keep seeing come to life. From a toddler to now, God has always showed me like, “It’s still the same dream and it’s still happening and you’re living in it.” It seems so mystical because like, why would it be happening to me? But I know it’s the manifestation, because that’s what I wanted to do when I was little.

You shout out a lot of those Atlanta mixtape-era artists as big influences, like Rich Kidz and Future. What do you think makes Atlanta music so special?

It’s that magic. Atlanta artists just know how to package their shit and make you feel how they feel. To be honest, I think it’s on some longitude, latitude shit. I think it’s just something about where Georgia and Atlanta specifically is in this whole universe. It’s got some goddamn crazy energy that don’t got nothing to do with none of us. Everybody around the world knows about this one spot. People in Germany that never been in Atlanta are looking at Atlanta like it’s the whole United States.

Who are some people from Atlanta you think don't get enough credit?

Skooly [of Rich Kidz]. Peewee Longway. Jose Guapo. And myself [laughs].

Everybody knows “Swag Surfin’,” but I feel like Fast Life Yungstaz are a little underrated.

You’re just making me think about something. Mook, he’s like the leader of F.L.Y., that’s like one of my older brothers. Bro used to date my sister and bring me toys and shit when I was little. See? There it goes right there, the little mystical shit I don’t even be thinking about. I don’t even talk about that but I was purely next to [F.L.Y.] and that’s a part of the music. That’s crazy. Nobody else knows that. This is exclusive FADER information. *laughs* No cap. I need to call this man Mook, shout out to F.L.Y.

I feel like F.L.Y. brought the pop-punk influence in rap before anyone else was really doing that.

It’s the hyperpop shit. All the futuristic swag, like J. Money and Yung L.A. That shit was hyperpop. I don’t know what hyperpop means to other people but to me it’s that futuristic swag.

What’s the difference for you between being a pop star and being a rapper?

It’s more fun on this side. I feel like it’s so dangerous to be a rapper now, because of the government and the police, how they doing people like Thug, and really every rapper to be honest. Gucci Mane, Boosie, Lil Wayne. I don’t know why they be trying to target rap culture or rappers just for being themselves. I feel like being a pop star is more just like being myself. I could actually be a musician and have fun and make different cadences, and I can rap when I choose to, because I’m a pop star. There’s a lot that comes with being a rapper, and I’d rather have fun.

Do you ever feel like you’re playing a character in your music?

It’s like wrestling. I tell all the new artists who may be asking me for advice, “Bro, you got to separate the personal life from the entertainment.” You’ve got to realize you want to be a rapper, but that rapping’s a part of entertainment, and it don’t have nothing to do with your personal life. You can make yourself whatever you want to be, you can make a whole character, make an LLC out of it, trademark it. That’s your entity. But you have to separate it.

Like, Drake is an entertainer. He’s an artist but he’s a great actor. But what if Drake is just playing Drake? The whole time he could have just been playing a rapper. He knew what type of rapper he wanted to be and he made that for himself. For me, I made myself one of the people that I like. I put all my favorite artists and mixed them all together and I made myself that. The world keeps saying “Bear got his own flow,” but it’s really just a bunch of my favorite rappers’ flows in one. How I dress, what I do, how I eat, how I move, how I record, how I run my team. It’s all my inspirations in one.

What makes you gravitate toward a beat?

You know how in school we used to be on the lunch table with pencils and shit? I like that kick. That cadence, I could forever make thousands of raps on that cadence. You could build anything around that good ole snare-kick-clap combo mixed together in perfect symphony. You could put a whistle, a horn, whatever, as long as you got that core, you could do anything. You could make an R&B song, a pop song, a rap song, a reggae song. I’ve been on my Bob Marley shit lately.

Where do you feel like a song starts for you?

I usually hear the beat. Boom. I hear a cadence in my head. Once I do the cadence, I hear the words that match the cadence, and then I start to insert the words. That’s when the magic comes and I don’t know how I’ll be doing this shit. After I put the cadence down, it’s like, “Where the fuck are these words coming from?” I’m just only trying to rhyme, to be honest, and as I’m just trying to rhyme, somehow I’m able to actually make a crazy vision or storyline. You got to catch the moment. That's why I was like, "Damn, It's a God-given talent." This ain't even something up to me.

For sure, it’s just instinct.

Yeah, it’s just like a capability. It’s an attribute.

How do you keep your sense of positivity and fun, even if things go wrong in life?

Actually, at this point, I don’t know how. I honestly don't know how I'll be so happy in the worst times too. It might be a disability. It might be like the Joker or something [laughs].

It sounds like you manifested it though, like you kept believing in being positive until you're just positive all the time.

You get what you asked for. You got to be in the right state of mind or you might get the wrong thing. If you have great intentions, you get exactly whatever you want. But if you have ill intentions and are negative about it and try to manifest, it still works. So you might as well just be positive all the time, because you never know what you might be saying out loud. And me, I know I think out loud a lot. So I might say the wrong thing and the universe might hear it and then boom, there it comes. So it's best for me to be just positive and just keep shooting my shot.

I guess that’s karma.

The tongue is very powerful, and the heart is very powerful.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.