“””””PLACE YOUR ORDERS WITHOUT ANY HESITATIONS”””””

21 Savage Is Finally Free to See the World. We Came Along for the Ride

He became your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper while overcoming all manner of turbulence. We join Savage as he heads to Europe and starts a new chapter in one of hip-hop’s most unique stories

BY MANKAPRR CONTEH

Smack in the center of Paris’ Trocadéro esplanade stands 21 Savage, face-to-face with the Eiffel Tower for the first time. It glows in the distance, across the Seine river, as a light rain falls and dusk settles around us. He’s flanked by four security guards, all dressed in black like Savage, whose eyes peer out of a slick ski mask and North Face hood.

Savage’s team giddily snaps pictures while he looks on, surrounded by a bustle of tourists. A salesman sets down the light-up Eiffel Tower toys he was peddling and volunteers to take group photos of Savage’s entourage, which includes Buwop (née Kenya), Savage’s right-hand woman and friend of nearly a decade, and Meezy, his manager. When Buwop wants a solo shot, the salesman gives her tips on how to pose in front of the tower like she’s pinching it from above. “Oh, he know what he doing!” Meezy says.

At some point, as his friends enjoy the scene, Savage slips away, back into the luxury black SUV that took us here. He’s taking it in quietly, but this visit to Paris is a pivotal new chapter in one of hip-hop’s most unique stories. Savage is back to Europe for the first time since he was child; until very recently, this was impossible.

Born Shéyaa Bin Abraham-Joseph in London, and raised in Atlanta from the age of seven, Savage, 31, is American by all standards but paperwork. He lived much of his life as an undocumented immigrant; for a while, he couldn’t even drive or fly for lack of a government ID. As he made a name for himself as a street rapper with real gangster bona fides and menacing wit, he had to take cheap buses up the coast to label meetings in New York.

But lack of papers didn’t keep him from becoming one of the biggest names in rap. The markedly Southern, deadpan, solidly intimidating croak of 21 Savage’s voice is unmistakable. Savage used to rap in that same vein-popping squall popular in mid-2010s Atlanta hip-hop. By 2015’s Slaughter King, though, it cooled into the drawl we know today, while maintaining the kind of flippant audacity you hear on hits like Drake’s “Jimmy Cooks” (where Savage starts his verse with “Spin a block twice like it ain’t nowhere to park”). “I meant that shit more back then,” he says, laughing at his old animation.

Constantly called on by hip-hop’s finest — J. Cole, Young Thug, Future, Cardi B — Savage comes off as your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper. Drake has been a fan going back to 2016, when he crowned Savage “a young October king with all the juice right now” in an Instagram post. Thanks in part to Her Loss, his and Drake’s 2022 collaborative album, Savage was the sixth most popular artist in the country on Spotify in 2023. He’s given back, too, implementing so many community-service initiatives in Atlanta through his Leading by Example foundation that he was honored with his own day in Georgia: Dec. 21. The Young Democrats of Atlanta recently honored him with their Carry The Torch Award, recognizing “significant contributions to music, social activism, philanthropy, youth empowerment, and cultural influence.”

But his ascent was marred by shocking turbulence: Early on the morning of Super Bowl Sunday 2019, after performing at a Nike party in Atlanta, Savage was driving Meezy’s Challenger when he saw flashing blue lights and guns drawn. He was apprehended on an alleged visa violation in a targeted operation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “‘We got Savage,’” he recalled hearing. Savage’s lawyers contended he was singled out for his star power, as the Trump administration waged a war on immigrants of color.

Savage was jailed for nine days at what one expert called “one of the worst immigration detention centers in the U.S.” As he was arrested, he had been preparing to fly from Atlanta to Los Angeles to celebrate the sixth birthday of Kamari, the eldest of his three children. The kids were already there, waiting on him. His mom, Heather Joseph, let them know he wouldn’t be making it. Savage thinks he’ll explain the whole situation when they’re older: “When I was growing up, I didn’t know my mama problems and shit,” he says. He was jailed during the 2019 Grammys, where he was up for his first two awards — Record of the Year and Best Rap/Sung Performance for work on Post Malone’s “Rockstar,” which they had been set to perform together. He watched the awards in his room at the detention center.

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