{"id":2191774,"date":"2025-12-09T00:35:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T00:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2191774"},"modified":"2025-12-09T00:35:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T00:35:06","slug":"ferg-on-new-album-lex-luger-and-his-new-life-as-a-visual-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/ferg-on-new-album-lex-luger-and-his-new-life-as-a-visual-artist\/","title":{"rendered":"Ferg on New Album, Lex Luger, and His New Life as a Visual Artist"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\t\t<\/span>hen he logged into our Zoom call earlier this week, Ferg<\/a> was sure to offer a view from his sunny Miami hotel room. He was in town for Art Basel<\/a>, where he was celebrating his burgeoning art career as well as the release of his seventh studio album, Flip Phone Shorty,<\/em> which dropped on Black Friday. \u201cThe reception is going crazy,\u201d Ferg says of the album. \u201cIt\u2019s liberating because my last album was so heavy. It was so personal that it just felt fun to just have fun again with music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn last year\u2019s Darold,<\/em> named after his late father, Ferg went deep on introspection, excavating his own emotions and traumas to uncover a clearer picture of himself. Sonically, the album leaned into gospel chords and orchestral arrangements, landing on a register that was decidedly more serious. So much so that Ferg initially wrestled with the decision to go lighter after releasing such weighty material. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Is it okay for me to just do some fun trap shit?’\u201d He says. \u201cAnd I just stopped being in my head about it, and I just went with my gut.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt didn\u2019t hurt that legendary trap producer Lex Luger had been sending Ferg beats the whole time he was working on Darold<\/em>. By the time Ferg was ready to start on his next project, he had a wellspring of material to work with. \u201cHe was sending me beats for, I feel like a year, two years, just straight sending me beats,\u201d Ferg recalls. \u201cI thank him for doing that, too. He sent me so many. It was so many good ones, and it just made me excited.\u201d By Ferg\u2019s estimate, Luger produced about 95 percent of his new album. He compares the producer\u2019s tenacity to DJ Mustard\u2019s famous approach with Kendrick Lamar\u2014sending beats daily, whether he got a response or not. \u201cThat\u2019s kind of how Lex Luger was. He was just sending me mad beats.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFerg recalls being at a show in Detroit for the raucous experimental crew HiTech<\/a> and seeing the DJ open with classic Jeezy records produced by Lex Luger. \u201cThe crowd was going nuts,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Yo, we need to bring these type of beats and this energy back.\u2019 That shit was jumping.\u201d That experience sent him digging through the archive of beats Lex sent him. He approached the producer with a question: \u201cWhat was the mentality or the mindset you was in when you created \u2018Ham,\u2019 or when you did \u2018BMF\u2019 for Rick Ross, all of these anthems and all those Waka Flocka beats?\u201d Together, they built a sonic world that honors that era while pushing it forward.<\/p>\n

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\n\tWhich brings us to the album\u2019s title. Flip Phone Shorty, <\/em>of course, hearkens to those devices of yesteryear that defined the Y2k aesthetic, which has recently been all the rage. For Ferg, he was careful not to simply mine nostalgia, but to create something that felt true to him. The titular Flip Phone Shorty is a version of Ferg\u2019s younger self, who came of age in the aughts. \u201cThis person is really the 16-year-old me,\u201d he explains. \u201c14, 16-year-old me that was wearing the Girbaud jeans, the Pelle Pelle jackets, size eight fitteds. I\u2019m just basically taking a trip down memory lane.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe points to his current styling choices \u2014 the oversize tees are designer pieces from Yohji Yamamoto or Telfar, modified with functional elements \u2014 as a metaphor for how he reimagined the past for the present day. \u201cIt\u2019s like putting a 5X T-shirt on a wall in a Gagosian,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s what I did with Flip Phone Shorty<\/em> the album.\u201d While the foundation is classic Lex Luger trap, co-producer Taavi added what Ferg calls \u201cLeft of center sounds\u201d \u2014 electronic textures that update the familiar sound without abandoning it. \u201cIt\u2019s some super trap shit that you remember and love, but at the same time, you hear new sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe album\u2019s guest list includes Gucci Mane<\/a> \u2014 who Ferg famously had an online spat with in 2013 over the title of his mixtape Trap Lord \u2014 <\/em>and Lil B<\/a>, whom Ferg credits as \u201cone of the leaders of our school.\u201d For Ferg, Lil B represented something crucial during the blog era<\/a> that launched both of their careers: the fusion of disparate worlds. \u201cHe was fucking with the hipsters and the gangsters, and that spoke to me. Because it was art.\u201d That era remains foundational to how Ferg sees himself. \u201cThat whole time was special because it was a big boom of creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tAs Ferg has matured, he\u2019s expanded beyond music into visual art, drawing on his formal training in school and taking inspiration from his father, the late Darold Ferguson Sr., who ran a boutique called Ferg Apparel on 145th Street in Harlem, designing logos for everyone from Diddy to Andre Harrell. \u201cI watched my dad do art my whole life,\u201d Ferg says. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s just really standing on the shoulders of a giant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFerg has, in recent years, taken to painting, famously creating the artwork for his last two album covers and hosting his first solo show, CHOSEN<\/a>, <\/em>in New York this past spring. He also partnered with UGG earlier this year to transform a three-story Manhattan building into a free, interactive pop-up for a week, incorporating his own artwork. He describes how lately he\u2019s been meeting architects, agency owners, and collectors as his creative community expands beyond music. \u201cWhen I did my first art show, I had families coming to my art show, and I never had families coming to my rap show. So to see a stroller and a baby at my art show, or see people from Harlem Studio Museum pull up \u2014 it hits different,\u201d he says. He even sold a few pieces in Miami, as the city was crawling with art collectors. \u201cI sold a painting last night, literally,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m dropping paintings off to people\u2019s cribs. The conversation is different.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tLooking back on nearly 15 years since A$AP Mob first emerged, Ferg expresses wonder at his career\u2019s many twists and turns. \u201cWhen I look back on it, I\u2019m like, I worked with more than half the industry, older and younger. I think that\u2019s the accomplishment because I never even knew that I would be a rapper.\u201d He clarifies: \u201cI didn\u2019t know I would be doing it as a profession. I always rapped and I am a rapper just being a rapper because I just loved the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, there was a moment, he admits, when he considered walking away. \u201cI was ready to be like, \u2018Man, I\u2019m done with this shit.’\u201d But then came a realization: \u201cGod is putting something in me that people can\u2019t get anywhere else. People can\u2019t get Ferg energy anywhere else. I\u2019m the only me.\u201d He says he wants to bring back the club energy of the 2000s, to remind people what it feels like to move. \u201cWe ain\u2019t been in the clubbing in a long time,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Yo, where\u2019s the turn up?\u2019 It\u2019s an energy that I wasn\u2019t getting in music that I want to bring back.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.rollingstone.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

W hen he logged into our Zoom call earlier this week, Ferg was sure to offer a view from his sunny Miami hotel room. He was in town for Art Basel, where he was celebrating his burgeoning art career as well as the release of his seventh studio album, Flip Phone Shorty, which dropped on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2191775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[370994,423087,417297,360521,362928],"class_list":["post-2191774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-art-basel","tag-blog-era","tag-ferg","tag-gucci-mane","tag-lil-b"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Ferg-on-New-Album-Lex-Luger-and-His-New-Life.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2191774"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2191776,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191774\/revisions\/2191776"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2191775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2191774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2191774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2191774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}