“My granddad died, my grandma died, my uncle died, all in the same year,” he says.
Then came a series of tragic dominos falling. Rylo jokes that he never needed a job, let alone an ID, because his grandfather would take care of him, along with his mother, two brothers, and sister. Of all the people who helped shape his early life, he speaks most fondly of his grandfather, a veteran who worked at a country club. Rylo’s music is grounded in the Mobile he grew up in, from its working-class inhabitants to the justice system that preys on them.
On YouTube, he’s a prince, racking up 2 million to 9 million views on his most popular videos, even if those same songs can rarely crossover to platforms like Spotify or Apple Music for copyright reasons. “It’s fun growing up in the projects.” In less than a year, he’s become Alabama’s mush-mouthed bard of sampling, creating new works out of R&B and pop songs from artists like Tamia and Leon Bridges. “I wouldn’t want to be from nowhere else,” he says. This kind of clever pop recontextualization comes naturally to Rylo, real name Ryan Adams, who’s proud to have grown up in Mobile’s Roger Williams Housing Projects. I don’t hear too many people doing stuff like that.” “Back in the day, you’d watch 106 & Park and shit, that’s the kind of songs they used to play on that motherfucker.
“I was going through old beats from back in the day,” Rylo says over the phone. “But they don’t feel me, ’cause I’m just a project baby.” “Catch a DUI, these bills driving us crazy,” he sings in place of Carey’s classic chorus. When Mariah Carey sang about everlasting love on 1996’s “Always Be My Baby,” she probably couldn’t have envisioned its rebirth as “Project Baby,” a story of squalor and perseverance by 24-year-old Mobile, Alabama, rapper Rylo Rodriguez.