If this is your first time hearing of the white rapper named Post Malone then it probably wasn’t how he would have planned it, with a video of him saying “nigga” discovered by a message board and then posted on YouTube for the world to see.
Malone’s big song—functionally his only song—is an impressionistic ballad called “White Iverson,” and, despite mostly being a rip-off of an old Chief Keef song, it has begun to convert viral momentum into real world attention. Across two YouTube videos, the song has amassed something like 8 million plays, and Malone has begun to pop up on the radio and on lists of rappers who might end up with lasting careers.
Those plans might be complicated, somewhat, by the sycophant message board Kanye To The finding what was an old Vine and putting it online even after Malone deleted it (as reported by Noisey’s Craig Jenkins). But the music industry has always had a long leash for anyone with enough talent to make the suits a buck. Whether Malone can fulfill that end of the bargain will take precedent over whatever ugliness may be in his past, though to that end if I were him I would be trying to milk “White Iverson” for whatever it’s worth.
Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.