New Orleans rapper La Reezy is ready to breakout | Music | Gambit Weekly

In mid-October, the Hip Hop Museum threw a benefit gala in a lush building on Wall Street in Lower Manhattan. The black-tie event wasn’t just a fundraiser for the new museum, a prominent endeavor dedicated to the history of hip-hop and expected to open in 2026 in the Bronx. It was a celebration of the genre, the people who have shaped the industry and hip-hop’s influence on pop culture. The event’s location in the country’s financial heart is telling of hip-hop’s mainstream importance.

Rapper Yolanda “Yo-Yo” Whitaker emceed the night, and Nas addressed the room, which included artists like Big Daddy Kane, Doug E. Fresh and Just Blaze, music industry executives, philanthropists and others. Slick Rick was honored for his storytelling abilities, Fat Joe was named “People’s Champ” for his roots in the Bronx, and a slate of other awards recognized the late Uptown Records founder and Motown executive Andre Harrell, scholar Michael Eric Dyson and others.

The Next Up Award, though, given to an up-and-coming artist ready to represent the future of hip-hop, went to a 21-year-old New Orleanian from Uptown: La Reezy.

“I feel it’s a bold move, but I agree,” says La Reezy with a charming grin and a laugh. “For them to make that stamp, that’s a historical stamp to make, so only time will prove it.”

It has been a breakout year for Khayree Salahuddin, the New Orleans native better known as La Reezy. The rapper and producer has released three projects in 2025, including an EP with Grammy-winner PJ Morton, and there’s a fourth release expected on Nov. 28. He’s currently on tour in the U.S. supporting British rapper Little Simz, and he has the attention of Kendrick Lamar, one of today’s most important rappers, and Tyler, The Creator, one of La Reezy’s major influences.

But although the last year has snowballed into a breakout moment for La Reezy, behind it has been years of work, hundreds of songs written, dozens of music videos and a dedicated work ethic — with a cut off at 5 p.m. so he can get on his bike and ride to Audubon Park. All the while pursuing his own mental and personal wellbeing, a topic that comes up often in his music.

“I knew what I was gonna do” in 2025, says La Reezy, sitting in the shade outside of Cafe du Monde in City Park, the gala suit and bowtie swapped for a white T-shirt airbrushed with “La Reezyana Shakedown” and coordinated purple baseball hat and sneakers. He’s a warm, engaging person and full of confidence. La Reezy believes in himself, and it’s hard not to cheer him on.

“But I’m still in my mama’s house. You can’t get this confused. I want this music [career] bad. I want this audience. I want people to know who I am,” he says. “I’m hungry, and I wanted to show that, as a rapper, you have to have your mixtape era. Lil Wayne had to do it. Kendrick Lamar had to do it. It’s part of this journey.”

La Reezy grew up in the 12th Ward, near Napoleon Avenue, but besides a great-great-grandfather — vocalist-drummer Chris Powell who led The Five Blue Flames — there weren’t other professional musicians in his family, he says. Still, he loved to dance and as a young child would pull out some Michael Jackson moves for his family. And at 8 years old, he wrote his first song.

“They had this website called KicksOnFire and you could customize shoes, and I wrote a rap about my kicks being on fire,” Reezy says. “And also, I liked this girl, and I wanted her to be my girlfriend, so I wrote a rap about her.”

When he was 8 or 9 years old, he loved the Disney Channel and would imagine himself as a rapper on one of the shows. As he grew, he began listening to Lil Wayne, Drake, Eminem and the other hip-hop he heard on the radio. He would jump onto the top of his mom’s Chevrolet truck and rap with his headphones in, not caring about the people walking by.

“When I was 14, I just wanted to rap. I was seeing NBA Youngboy, and I was like, I want to do that,” Reezy says. “Then a girl broke up with me. It was just a little puppy love, but I wrote a song about it.”

That breakup song led to more writing, and at first he pulled beats off of YouTube and then learned to produce his own music. Before long, he started to record music videos with his friends and posted those to his YouTube channel. He also started to build a small following among his classmates at the New Orleans Charter Science and Math High School (he graduated in 2022).

Reezy had three years of making music under his belt — and around 30 music videos, he says — when he decided to effectively start from scratch with his album “Reeborn.”

“It was all YouTube beats and uncleared stuff, so I took it all down. I didn’t want to get sued, because I envisioned this would be humongous, and they would come back and get me,” he says.

A lot of those earlier songs, he says, were more inspired by trap music and “surface level” of where he wanted to go. They were different from the soulful Southern hip-hop style he’s developed in the last few years. “Reeborn,” released in 2023, would be his first fully self-produced release.

“I was like, ‘I want this to truly be who I am as an artist today,’” Reezy says. “All the other stuff was trial and error. This is where La Reezy truly starts.”

There’s a small world in each of La Reezy’s releases. He likes to create an arc or a vibe on longer projects, like “Reeborn” or “La Reezyana Shakedown,” his most recent EP.

“‘La Reezyana Shakedown’ is the era of my 2010, dancing at Airline [Skate Center],” he says. It’s “catching party buses with my friends. Being in a car, so what does the music sound like?”

On “Reeborn,” Reezy is not just introducing himself to listeners, he’s also realizing his place in a big world. His music is already warm and sensitive and, although his flow is urgent, his lyrics are self-aware and full of wisdom for other New Orleanians coming of age. There also are nods all over his music to New Orleans and some of the inspirations and the traps that come for young people, especially Black teenagers, growing up here.

As he was developing “Reeborn,” Reezy found a lot of inspiration in idiosyncratic rapper Tyler, the Creator as well as Silk Sonic, the R&B, funk and soul project by Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak. Listeners can hear a soulful, creative and left-of-center sound in “Reeborn.”

“Then it was these two songs, ‘Ain’t it Fun’ by Paramore and ‘I’m Like a Bird’ by Nelly Furtado,” Reezy adds. “Those two songs — the feeling of that is like ‘Reeborn.’”

Reezy followed up “Reeborn” with the EP “Uth,” an acronym for “Utilizing Time Here,” a phrase that has become something of a La Reezy calling card. And he quickly began working on his 2024 release, “We All Need Help.”

Co-produced with New York beatmaker JBoogz, “We All Need Help” found La Reezy refining his style, settling into his flow and reflecting on his mental health. The project came out of the therapy and work he had been doing on himself after graduating high school.

“Once I graduated, I didn’t go to college. I was going to lock in full time on my music,” Reezy says. “With that came a challenge, because I felt like I made the wrong decision and was missing out on this young experience. I see everyone out, having fun, and I’m at home in the room and it’s just me.”

“I had this one night,” he adds, “where I was sitting on the sofa and I cried. I had this reality moment. ‘This is the real world and I have to get up and get it.’ I’m responsible for my success and my career. That was when I was like, I have to kill the old version of myself in order to grow into who I envision I can be. That’s when I started producing.”

Month-by-month he would work through his feelings, write, produce and record what would ultimately become “Reeborn.” Listeners can hear him growing up as the album unwinds. With “We All Need Help,” Reezy decided to pick back up on that journey while also directly commenting on therapy.

“It was a painful process. For ‘Reeborn,’ I remember there were days I would get goofy, negative thoughts. I didn’t know who I was. It was all new to me,” Reezy says. “It was very personal work … And ‘We All Need Help’ was [about] the effect of getting this attention that I’ve been working on for years. It feels so good when I’m online, and then when I’m not, I don’t feel like anything. La Reezy was getting this praise. Khayree isn’t getting anything. So now I’m talking back. Who is Khayree? Why does Khayree feel like this?”

He’s had to ask some tough questions about how La Reezy and Khayree Salahuddin relate to each other. It’s like Superman and Clark Kent, he says — La Reezy is an alter ego that has helped Khayree be more confident and outgoing, to be fearless.

It took some work for him to find the balance and to learn how to show up for himself as Khayree, but it has actually become easier as he’s released more music.

“I’m understanding what I personally enjoy and how to bring that out into life,” he says. “I enjoy Southern, raunchy, murder music. I also enjoy Ravyn Lenae soft music. I can mix both of those now, and I’m not afraid of doing it. It’s getting easier because I know my boundaries as well.”

La Reezy knew he wanted to release four projects in 2025. He tends to work months ahead, and he plotted out a busy year — which has proven bigger than he had expected.

His releases started in April with “Welcome to La Reezyana,” an eight-track project that filters New Orleans, Louisiana and the world through his eyes. There’s a blend of styles, from bounce to Southern hip-hop, as he floats between block party-worthy tracks and more introspective, conscious lyricism delivered over soul samples.

The dust had barely settled, though, when La Reezy and PJ Morton released “Pardon Me, I’m Different.” Produced by Morton, the New Orleans vocalist and pianist, “Pardon Me” is lush and vibrant as Reezy raps about working harder and reaching higher. The track, “Baby,” compares a cherished but turbulent romantic relationship to loving New Orleans. And on “Achoo,” Reezy reflects the gratitude he has for where his life has led.

It was a voice message that connected Reezy with Morton. Reezy had been following the Grammy winner on Instagram but hadn’t connected that Morton was a member of Maroon 5 until he was watching a live performance of the song “Sunday Morning.”

“When I love a song, I go through and listen to all the versions I can. So I was watching these live videos, and it said, ‘PJ Morton on the keys,’ and I was like ‘Oh my God,’” Reezy says. “I sent him this long voice message, [saying] ‘I love that song so much.’ And a few weeks later, he hit me up. He had a project he wanted to do and asked me to be the rapper on it. I was like, ‘Bro! I’m down!’”

Reezy joined Morton at Studio in the Country near Bogalusa in January, and they created the project in a few days. “Pardon Me” has been well-received, and Morton joined La Reezy on stage this summer at the Montreal Jazz Festival to perform a couple of the tracks. Also, a remix of the title track featuring Rapsody was recently released.

Then in September, Reezy dropped “La Reezyana Shakedown,” an energetic, six-track EP that’s purposefully more raw and less polished than previous projects.

“I really was just trying to capture a feeling,” he says. “I wasn’t worrying about the bars, which at least since ‘Reeborn,’ I’ve gotten this attention with my bars, with my rapping. I was like, I just wanted to make songs I could vibe to, that weren’t so subject heavy and were easy to listen to. I made the songs in a week, because I was like ‘my soul needs this out now.’”

From “Reeborn” to “La Reezyana Shakedown,” listeners can hear Reezy quickly sharpening his skills within a couple of years. His flow is less rushed and forceful, and he’s developing a vocal dexterity that can be smooth one second and then gruff the next.

To cap off 2025, Reezy now plans to release “Free.99” on Black Friday, Nov. 28. The EP will include tracks leftover from “Welcome to La Reezyana” and other projects along with some remixes.

“I don’t want them to go to waste, and if I don’t put them out now, I’m never going to put them out,” Reezy says. “And I want to show my appreciation to my supporters.”

If 2025 was about getting the attention, he says, then 2026 is about just one project meant to go deeper with his music.

The number of La Reezy supporters has grown quickly. In the last few years, Reezy has used TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to attract hundreds of thousands of followers. And some big names have taken notice.

Tyler, The Creator was recently asked by Apple Music’s Zane Lowe about up-and-coming artists he likes, and the rapper pumped up La Reezy.

In June, Reezy met Kendrick Lamar at the BET Awards. The two got a photo together, and Reezy posted to Instagram that Lamar said, “ay boy i be seeing yo stuff, you hard, you representing new orleans good, keep it up.”

In late October and early November, Reezy and New Orleans DJ Odd the Artist are out on tour supporting Little Simz. And this year, La Reezy has been featured on albums by LaRussell, John Michel with Anthony James, Oble Reed and others.

Although he’s getting a lot of attention, Reezy says, he’s trying to be careful about who he works with. He’s an independent artist, largely produces his own music — with a handful of trusted artists — and knows the value of maintaining control over his business.

“I’m still learning how to trust people. I have no idea who they are, what their background is, so it’s hard to trust these corporations,” Reezy says. “Owning this is super important. I made ‘Shakedown’ and I said, ‘I want this out at the end of the month. If someone would have told me I couldn’t do that, I would have probably gone through depression.”

Despite the attention, he still likes being home in New Orleans, where he’s able to find inspiration from the people and places he sees while riding his bike. His lyrics are full of local references, and the sound is informed by bounce, R&B, funk and second lines.

“Ultimately, in the grand scheme, it’s seeking reflection and knowledge in this human experience,” Reezy says. “I want listeners to know I’m using my time to understand this human experience, this thing called life. We all have to do it. I just hope my music gives people perspective.”

Find La Reezy on Instagram, @lareezymusic.