Hip Hop

Russ Opens Up About Making Music in The Pandemic & Staying Positive

2020 has been hard on all of us, Russ included.

Government-mandated lockdowns and forced quarantines have not been easy to deal with, but the Atlanta rapper is trying to make the best of a difficult situation, as he shared with B. Dot. No one could have predicted that a pandemic would take over the entire world, limiting where citizens go and how many perform their work. Several artists have been hard-hit due to canceling concerts and not being able to tour, but Russ says he has found a way to be — in his own words — ‘pandemic proof.’

“I’m fortunate because I’ve set up my career to be pandemic proof,” Russ said during the two-hour interview. “Not that when I was setting up my career I was like ‘in case a pandemic happens…’ But it’s pandemic proof via mailbox money, you know, and via ownership and owning my masters and things like that, so. TuneCore checks didn’t stop, like, if anything I’ve made more money on TuneCore this year than I did last year because I was able to record more, which means I was able to put out more, and I went fully independent.”

And that is exactly what the “Best on Earth” rapper done. In the last calendar year, Russ released his 14th studio album, completed his deal with Columbia Records, and dropped an EP featuring Busta Rhymes and Benny the Butcher.

With vaccines hopefully signaling an end to the worldwide pandemic, it is exciting to think about what Russ will achieve when things return to normal.

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