GloRilla’s Fast and Furious New World

In April, Memphis rapper GloRilla dropped the song that would change her life: “F.N.F. (Let’s Go),” a single ladies anthem that went viral, leading to a record deal with Yo Gott’s CMG. Step inside her new world as she preps her debut album.

GloRilla’s meteoric rise began with a beat originally dreamed up for Megan Thee Stallion. Not hearing back from Meg quick enough, standout Memphis producer Hitkidd reached out to Glo, who was on the way to get her lashes done, saying he needed a summer anthem — and fast. The artist had been on his radar since he saw her perform at a local showcase last year. She arrived at his studio straight from the appointment, stepped outside to hit a blunt before getting in the booth, and came back with the hook that changed the trajectory of her life: “I’m F-R-E-E, fuck nigga free / That mean I ain’t gotta worry ’bout no fuck nigga cheating / And I’m S-I-N-G-L-E again / Outside hanging out the window with my ratchet-ass friends.”

Eager to share, Glo uploaded part of the hook to Triller (the short-video app that predates TikTok), playing over a video of her, blunt in hand, swaying from side to side, before the song was even finished. It was savvy; posting song snippets across socials prerelease has become a new way for artists at all levels to try to guarantee a hit. The clip initially went viral in her home region. A week and a half later, Hitkidd brought her back to the studio to record a new first verse, titled the song “F.N.F. (Let’s Go),” and told her to return with all her friends later that day to shoot the video. The next day, it was uploaded at 9:01 p.m. (a nod to Memphis’s area code) and began to spread across the internet. It sits at 34 million views today.

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“Literally, it was so crazy. My car got repo’d, like, less than a week before I dropped this song,” says the 23-year-old. “A week before!” It’s an exceptionally hot day in Greater Los Angeles, and GloRilla is in an all-pink velour short set and white forces, sprawled on the bed of her non-air-conditioned artist trailer with the back of one hand delicately placed on her forehead while the other holds a purple mini-fan directly over her face. We’re on Cal Poly’s Pomona campus, where she’s shooting a video for an unreleased song, “Nut Quick,” about a sneaky link whose company she genuinely enjoys but whom she sees no future with, for reasons the title implies. It’s a classic fuckboy dismissal in the vein of her breakout hit.

“F.N.F.” thrives on the satisfaction that a day of unbridled debauchery with the girls will always beat being stressed over a man who refuses to act right. The video feels like a day-in-the-life vlog, with unsteady camera movements following Glo & Co. around an empty parking lot in the middle of the day. There are shots of Henny being poured down girls’ throats; one of her friends is drinking a 40; her pregnant homegirl is on the hood of a car twerking; a baby runs into the frame for a quick second; Glo delivers a funny attempt at Memphis’s jookin’ dance form. It’s a setup so DIY it’s no wonder people have been tripping over themselves trying to re-create it with videos of their own from the moment Glo’s day ones knowingly posted a scene on Twitter. (“Twitter for bougie people,” she laughs. “People from the hood use Facebook.”) The song’s ubiquity pushed Memphis rap legend and executive Yo Gotti to sign her to his increasingly stacked label, CMG, in early July. She’ll drop an album before the end of the year, going from zero to 100 within eight months.

Raised in the Frayser area of North Memphis, Glo — born Gloria Woods — and her older brother weren’t allowed to listen to rap for the majority of their upbringing. Her mother, a woman of God, kept the radio tuned to Memphis’s 95.7 Hallelujah FM; any non-radio rap that GloRilla heard was away from home until she got her own phone in her late teens. By the time she entered MLK Prep in the tenth grade, it had strict uniform codes and longer hours than other schools in the city. “I hated it,” she recalls saltily. “I used to get suspended on purpose by being defiant and talking back to the teachers.”

Photo: Gabriel S. Lopez

After leaving her trailer on the set, I board a shuttle that takes me to another end of Cal Poly Pomona and wind up in a big house that’s probably been the site of a Project X party. A handful of the ratchet-ass friends that Glo was hanging out the window with in the “F.N.F.” video are present, smiling while watching her through a monitor. There’s a rumor that JT from City Girls is here. Glo, in a separate room that’s fashioned like a bedroom, is fully done up, her hair bleached blonde with swirled edges and a waving side ponytail. It’s even hotter than the trailer because air-conditioner noise is a disturbance to filming. Yo Gotti is walking around looking like a concerned dad, quasi-directing.

In the scene, Glo is sitting at the foot of a bed, on the phone, while some guy lies next to her, passed out after another apparent case of premature ejaculation. A different scene will put them in couples therapy. With her newfound access to a bigger budget and more resources, it’s clear we’re about to experience the full world of GloRilla. Those lyrics about lame dudes from her past who won’t go away? Now they’ll have whole productions supporting the story, videos that weren’t conceived on the fly — a rare homegrown glo up unfolding in real time.

Debut album coming before the end of the year.

Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism. If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the August 29, 2022, issue of New York Magazine.

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