I wasn’t patient. Every mixtape and every album, I was trying every angle I could think of to craft that hit, especially on Bobby Tarantino, a trap album that was wall-to-wall with bangers. But no matter what I did, it never worked. The albums sold well, but none of my singles ever took off. By the time I got to Everybody I’d given up. If you listen to that album, it doesn’t have any hits on it. Because I didn’t make the album to have a hit. I made the album to say something. I wasn’t in a place where I wanted to quit entirely, but I was done with the rat race of trying to score a hit single. I was like, “Man, fuck it. I’m done with it.”
Then Zarou called me up one day out of the blue while I was in the middle of the Everybody tour and said, “Yo, MTV wants you to perform at the Video Music Awards.”
My immediate response was to say no. I was exhausted. I would have to cancel a show in Toronto, fly out to L.A., then fly back to the tour, then make up the Toronto show later on—it was too much. Plus awards shows were already becoming a joke. Even the Grammys now, people don’t watch. Nobody cares anymore. But Zarou insisted.
“You gotta do this, bro. VMAs, bro. This is huge.”
“Dude, I don’t care.”
“I’m telling you.”
I finally relented and agreed to do it and Chris flew out to meet me on tour and we went to dinner to go over the details. The song I wanted to do was “America,” because that was my song with Chuck D that was all “Fuck Trump,” and with everything that was going on in the country I had this chip on my shoulder like, “Now I’m gonna stand up for the people!”
Chris said, “Fuck that noise. It’s ‘1-800.’ I’m telling you.” “Aww, man. I don’t know.”
When he said that, I had to pause, because me and him and 6ix and Lenny, we’d all had “Trust me” moments over the years, about tours and songs and samples for albums, and those are the moments when you’re really putting your balls on the table because you’re asking everyone to put their lives in your hands based on nothing more than your gut intuition.
“1-800-273-8255” was the first track I came up with for Everybody, and it was the last track I recorded for Everybody. The inspiration for the song had come from fans coming up to me on the road and telling me how inspirational my music was to them, how it had carried them through dark times in their lives, how much my message of peace, love, and positivity had resonated with them. The thing about it, though, is that I never made my music to inspire anyone but myself. I made my music to pull myself out of a dark place. Every lyric I ever wrote, I was always talking to an audience of one. If I was going through something difficult or hard, I could say, “Yo, Bobby, it’s going to be okay. Don’t worry, if you’re going through hard times, you can make it.” I didn’t give a fuck who was listening, and for a long time nobody else was listening. It was just me rapping into my dinosaur computer monitor in my bedroom. I was the only one there.
As a result, organically and from the heart, other people like me heard my message and were like, “Fuck yeah! I feel that way, too.” So I was always helping people indirectly by helping myself, and the deepest it ever got was when people would say to me that they were thinking of killing themselves but my music had helped them hold on and stay alive. When I heard that, I started to think, “Shit, I’m helping all these people and I’m not even trying. So what would happen if I did? What kind of positive impact could I make if I really set out to do it?” And the idea for “1-800-273-8255” was born, a track titled with the number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to help people struggling with mental health.
So I wrote it, but I couldn’t record it. I kept putting it off and putting it off. Because when I sing from another person’s point of view, it’s like acting. I’m not reeling off those lyrics as myself. If I’m rapping from my brother’s point of view as a gangster being scared of getting shot in the streets, or from my sister’s point of view as woman who’s been raped, I’m feeling that. I’m becoming that person the same way Daniel Day-Lewis does. It’s emotionally taxing. As dark as my life had been at times, I’d never seriously considered or tried to commit suicide; the closest I’d ever gotten was being terrified that I’d snap and be in some deranged mental state where I might try to kill myself. But to sing that song and sing it well, I had to put myself in the same dark place as someone who did want to kill himself. Even though the song ultimately comes to a hopeful place of redemption and joy, it is dark and depressing and draining. Every day I showed up to the studio like, “Ugh, I don’t wanna do this shit.” So I made all the other records and procrastinated until I couldn’t put it off any longer. Then I finally did it. I reached out to Alessia Cara and Khalid, who came in and laid down the guest vocals and fucking killed it. Then we had an orchestra come in to do the strings and I got to conduct them, which was super-cool. But the process of laying it down was so depressing, I was like, “FUCK!”
When we dropped “1-800” as a single that spring, it didn’t feel like it was going to be anything different from any single we’d put out before. It wasn’t popping off in terms of sales or anything like that. Nobody was jumping on a record about suicide to be the song of summer that year. So it was out there and I was proud of it and it was doing okay, but to me it was just another song in the catalog.
Zarou was always bullish on it, though. He had a hunch about it. I hadn’t written a song about suicide to be a massive crossover hit; I’d have to have been crazy to think that it would be. But Chris had seen what happened when we played “1-800” at the Barclays Center, how it resonated, how the entire arena had their phones out and lights up as they sang along. He saw that something had been simmering in the culture that year. There was the trauma and the aftermath of Trump’s election. There was 13 Reasons Why debuting on Netflix and driving a big conversation about teens and suicide. Chester Bennington from Linkin Park took his own life that summer. So did Chris Cornell from Soundgarden. There was something about mental health and pain and suffering in that moment that demanded to be recognized, and when Zarou lobbied for me to do it at the VMAs I wanted to argue the point, but ultimately I had to concede that it was the right play. He didn’t always see every angle better than me, but that time he did.
He laid out his whole idea of how it would work with all these everyday people onstage, survivors and people struggling with mental health and people who’d lost family members to suicide, all of them wearing matching shirts and creating this beautiful moment driving home the song’s message. Which was an insane thing to try to pull off given that we only had a few days and we were talking about wrangling dozens of nonprofessional everyday people and working them seamlessly into an awards show performance. It was a lot of moving parts and a lot that could go wrong on live national television. But I said, “Okay. Let’s do it.”
Zarou flew off to L.A. to get with Harrison and plan the performance while I played my next couple shows and got ready, which was when I realized that if I was going to do the show I couldn’t just perform the song. I needed to say something. Because any asshole could get up on TV and use survivors to look good and not mean it. I knew that if I could speak, everyone would know that I meant every word I was saying, that who I am and what I stand for is built upon honesty and respect and kindness and empathy. It was important to me. I had to say it.
So forty-eight hours before the broadcast, I called Zarou and I was like, “Bro, I need you to get me another minute. I need to say something.” I read him what I wanted to say and he loved it and said he’d see what he could do. I knew I was asking for a lot. In TV time, a minute is like an hour. But I knew if anybody could get the producers of the show to give it up, it was Zarou, and he fought and fought and fought and he got the minute.
The day of the performance I was the most nervous I’d ever been in my life. I’d never performed at an awards show. I’d never performed for a TV audience this big. Plus I wasn’t going to be rapping. I’d mostly be singing, and I wasn’t that good at singing yet. Then there was the speech. I’d spent the past two days obsessively going over the speech in my head, in the car, in the shower, memorizing every word, because I knew I wouldn’t have it in my ear or on a teleprompter to read and I had to hit it perfectly because I wouldn’t have a spare second to make a mistake.
I was backstage and everyone was running around. Chance the Rapper was there. Cardi B was there. Ellen DeGeneres was there with her wife, Portia de Rossi, and I was talking to them and I was like, “This is crazy as fuck. How did I get here?” Then it was time for me to go on and I took my position at the rear of the stage inside this house of mirrors thing they’d built and everywhere I looked there were dozens of reflections of me looking back at me, reflecting all of the different emotions I was having at that moment. I looked over here and I was smiling and grinning ear to ear like, “You’ve fuckin’ made it.” Then I looked over there and I was pissing my pants, terrified. Then another where I was having a panic attack, another where I was just in the moment, and another where I was contemplating and reflecting and saying to myself, “This is karma. This is everything you’ve ever worked for. Every time you were on Spoken vs. Written, every time you were writing raps in Mary Jo’s attic. It wasn’t about the songs. It was about becoming the person who could do this, here, delivering this message and bringing people together and helping them heal.” Then I heard the opening chords, “Dum . . . dum-dum . . .” and I stepped out onstage in front of twenty thousand people and I killed it.
It was the craziest thing I’ve ever done but also the easiest. Once I went out there, everything flowed and I didn’t miss a step and Alessia came out and sang her part beautifully and then Khalid came out and nailed his part and then it was time for the speech and I just did it. One word came out after another after another and I don’t know how but I did it.
“I just want to take a moment to thank you for giving me a platform to talk about something that mainstream media doesn’t want to talk about: mental health, anxiety, suicide, depression, and so much more that I talk about on this album. From racism, discrimination, sexism, domestic violence, sexual assault, and so much more; I don’t give a damn if you are black, white, or any color in between. I don’t care if you’re Christian, you’re Muslim, you’re gay, you’re straight, I am here to fight for your equality because I believe that we are all born equal, but we are not treated equally and that is why we must fight. We must fight for the equality of every man, woman, and child regardless of race, religion, color, creed, and sexual orientation. So I say here and now if you believe in this message of peace, love, positivity, and equality for all, then I demand that you rise to your feet and applaud not only for yourselves but for the foundation we are laying for our children.”
The moment I finished, the whole arena erupted, and that doesn’t happen at awards shows. People were crying and cheering. It was like something broke open, and I became a rock star in that moment. I could feel it. I could feel my life changing, and I was like, “Oh, shit, nigga. We made it. I’m about to be really famous.”
The song and I were both trending on Twitter the entire night and the entire next day. Within hours the video was getting millions of views on YouTube. Everyone was talking about it on every entertainment show, every celebrity gossip blog, everywhere. It was a life-changing moment. Ellen even invited me on Ellen, and I’d wanted to go on fucking Ellen for years. I got all the press I’d ever dreamed of. I got a hit song bigger than any hit song I’d ever even imagined I would have. I can remember visiting record companies before I signed a record deal and being at Britney Spears’s label and seeing a diamond plaque for “. . . Baby One More Time” and thinking, “I will never do that. There is no fuckin’ way I will ever do that.”
But I essentially have. “1-800” hit #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, and since then it’s passed a billion streams and it’s seven times platinum and on its way to going diamond for sure.
But more than the sales or the money was the feeling that I’d had an impact on the culture. Calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline spiked by something like 50 percent. I wanted to bring these issues of mental health and suicide to the forefront of people’s minds and make them stop and look and pay attention, and I did. Which is almost impossible to do nowadays, but I did it, and if it sounds like I’m bragging a bit and patting myself on the back when I say it, I am, because in that moment I needed to pat myself on the back. I was like, “Good job, bro. You had millions of people clowning you for talking about anxiety and depression. You had millions of people shitting on you and telling you that your music’s not good enough and that you’re not good enough, but you proved tonight that your music is good enough and, more importantly, you are good enough.”
It felt good to feel good enough. It lasted at least a good twenty- four hours or so, and that’s when I got hit with a wave of hate unlike anything I’d ever experienced in my life.
The blowback and abuse I’d experienced in the wake of the VMAs was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Everything I’d seen up to that point was mild in comparison. It was a tsunami of hate, and I couldn’t turn it off.
Or, more accurately, I couldn’t not turn it on. Nobody was making me check my phone except me, but I couldn’t put it down. It was like the fucking thing was glued in my hand. I’d wake up and check it first thing. I’d eat my morning cereal looking at it. I’d take my morning shit looking at it. Lenny would drive me to the studio and I’d be looking at it. I’d go in to record, come out for a smoke break, and look at it. It was every day, because this thing in my hand was like my home. It was where I lived, in this world of the RattPack and all my friends online. I didn’t know how not to be there. Only my home had gone from the place where I was loved to the place where I was hated. The love was all still there, of course, but I was so accustomed to it that for the most part it faded into the background. All I could see was the hate.
That was also the moment some of my own fans started turning against me, because I didn’t belong to them anymore. The same fans who had heard “1-800” and been like, “This is amazing. This is so special. This is needed,” now were the ones going, “This sucks” and “He’s too mainstream.” The most popular thing I’d ever done, the song that was going seven times platinum, suddenly became “the worst song Logic ever made.”
And I thought I was a strong guy, given everything that I’ve come through, but at the end of the day, I’m a human being and if your mindset going into public life is “I need people’s love. I need people’s acceptance,” then you’re going to be fucked. Which is exactly where I was. All I’d ever wanted since the day I stepped in front of a microphone was to blow up and get famous and sell records and have the whole world know my name and then it happened and all I wanted to do was crawl in a hole and do nothing and not be around anybody. I was riddled with anxiety, more than ever. I headed back out on tour, and the tour was amazing and arenas were packed and the fans were incredible—in-fucking-credible—but I couldn’t appreciate it. I wasn’t happy, and I wasn’t prepared for what came next. Because then, on top of the abuse, came the pain.
I’d put off recording “1-800” for months because I had to go to such a dark place in order to do it. Now I was singing it every single night, night after night after night, with twenty thousand people singing it back to me. I was singing about suicide every night and talking about suicide every day, all day, every interview, every radio show, every television show. I’d become the Suicide Guy. I’d been the FaZe Clan Guy and the Space Nerd Guy and the Biracial Guy, and now I was the Suicide Guy. At every backstage meet-and-greet everyone was coming to me with their saddest and most gruesome stories, family members who’d committed suicide, family members who’d been institutionalized with depression. It wasn’t just the fans, either. It was everyone I’d meet in a day. It was the hotel people at check-in and the arena staff at the show and the producer in the greenroom. Everybody who had a traumatic or depressing story wanted a minute to share it with me and thank me for the song. And I couldn’t say no, because it wasn’t like someone asking for a selfie. How can you be rude to someone when they’re sharing the story of their best friend’s suicide with you?
And what I encountered in person was the tip of the iceberg compared to what was incoming online. Social media was a constant stream of anguish and trauma and grief and “my mother killed her- self” and “my father killed himself” and “my brother killed himself” and “my sister killed herself” and “I tried to kill myself once” and “I’ve tried to kill myself twice” and “I’ve tried to kill myself three times” and “I cut myself because I’m too scared to kill myself” and “I wish my son had had a chance to hear your song before he killed himself last year.” As if I could have saved all those people somehow.
It was thousands of incoming messages a day. It was all these people with all this pain bottled up and they needed somewhere to let it out so they gave it to me. How was I supposed to even begin to process that or take that on? Even the healthiest, most stable person on earth would buckle under that kind of emotional weight, and I was not the healthiest or most stable person on earth. I was working and working and doing this and traveling here and going there and doing four shows in a row with one day off but the one day off was eighteen hours in a tour bus to the next location to go sit in greenrooms with radio personalities who didn’t give a shit about me, they just wanted me in and out of their shit because I was a hot topic. Everywhere I went it was suicide, suicide, suicide, suicide and killing yourself, killing yourself, killing yourself and “Do the suicide song, man!” and at the same time as all this my marriage was coming apart so I had that to deal with, too, and any time I wanted to rest I had people telling me, “Yo, you have obligations. People have paid money. The fans are expecting you. You can’t take a break.”
Now, after all the years of my mom’s abuse and my dad’s addiction and never once thinking about suicide, I finally was thinking about suicide. It was almost like Inception, like the idea had been planted so deeply in my mind that I couldn’t escape it. Not that I was actually going to kill myself, but I found myself thinking, “Well, if I killed myself, at least I’d get to take a break from all this, forever.” But then just as quickly I’d think, “Oh, fuck. If I kill myself, it’ll just become a meme about how the Suicide Guy killed himself. Shit. Now I have to stay alive so I don’t turn into another meme.”
A month after the VMAs I was headlining a music festival outside Pittsburgh, and I don’t remember too much about it but I do know that it was the worst moment of my life. Going all the way back to and including everything my mother had ever done, Pittsburgh was the lowest I’ve ever been, because that was the moment when it felt like it could all come apart. I was headlining a music festival for tens of thousands of people, and I just didn’t care. I didn’t give a fuck. Which is sad. I was finally the rap star I’d always dreamed of becoming and I was too depressed to enjoy it.
I was puking backstage that night before I went out to perform. Then I went out and the venue was terrible because it was one of those shows where the spotlight is coming from out in the crowd instead of up over the stage, so I couldn’t see anything because I was being blinded by a giant laser beam in my face. I was supposed to do an hour and a half and I made it about forty minutes in and I turned and told DJ Rhetorik to do something to fill time so I could run off and puke some more. Then I went back out and I tried to perform and I couldn’t. I felt like I was going to faint. Up to that point in my life, I’d never not finished a show. Even performing with a 102-degree fever, I’d never not finished a show. But that night I just couldn’t do it. So I stopped the music. I was sweating and pacing back and forth, and everybody got their iPhones out to capture whatever was about to happen next so they could post it online. I didn’t know what to say, so I spoke the truth.
“This is all I ever wanted,” I said, “and as I’m here it’s everything I ever thought it would be. I just thought I’d get a little more me time to rest. I’m tired. I’m sick. I feel like shit and I’ve been pushing myself too hard. And I was just about to leave because I feel like I’m going to faint. I feel like if I continue to perform I’m going to have to go to the hospital. I just need you to understand that if I’m not jumping in the crowd and not going crazy it’s because I’m literally doing my best not to pass out. And I’m going to do my best to continue to perform anyway. I love you all so much. And I appreciate you and I’m tired but I’m going to keep going and I’m going to continue to persevere. Even in this hard time. So I hope that you continue to persevere as well. Because you deserve everything this world has to offer. In my weakest state I’ve ever been in as an artist on this stage speaking to you, it’s to tell you that you’re special and you’re amazing and that I will give every last ounce of myself to tell you how incredible you are.”
As I said it, I kept fighting back the tears and fighting back the tears. Then finally the tears came. I broke down onstage and started crying.
And people on the Internet made fun of me.