After roughly 15 years of writing, rapping and directing behind some of hip hop’s biggest names, Mez is finally releasing his debut album.
Electric Future Gangster arrives November 20 on Mass Appeal, and the North Carolina artist is entering this new chapter with a shorter name and a long story about why it took so long.
The rapper once known as King Mez has dropped the royal prefix. He said the title is something “people could call me if they decide to on their own,” explaining that it had started to feel like chasing a label rather than earning one. “I’m not a chaser,” he said, adding that he does not “need a title like that.”
The album title carries its own philosophy. Mez said he loved 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’ growing up, but even as a kid he felt the album was “very binary.”
As someone who also skateboarded and saw himself as a designer, he did not fit the archetype it offered. “Electric Future Gangsters is the third option,” he said.
For Mez, the concept means keeping the style and spirit that come from growing up in the struggle while removing the ceiling that often comes with it. “Even the word gangster, I just felt like needed renovation,” he explained.
His new definition is grounded in everyday wins, like locking in a low mortgage rate or installing a handrail in his late grandmother’s bathtub. “What’s more gangster than that?” he said.
The long road to a debut album came down to a deal gone wrong. Mez described landing in “one of them music business situations” after moving from North Carolina to Los Angeles, where his life changed rapidly after signing a publishing deal.
“I just wasn’t prepared I think for the business side of it for real,” he said. The result was years of silence. “Contractually couldn’t put out no music,” he added.
Rather than stall, he picked up a camera. “I learned how to direct,” he recalled, a turn that led to him directing the music video for J. Cole’s “Middle Child.”
That opened the door to commercial work for brands including Nike and Adidas, and he said he hopes to move into TV and film within the next year or two. He described the shift as “almost like a Donald Glover-ish type of lane.”
He eventually got out of the deal and began releasing music again a couple of years ago, without public complaint. “I did it quietly. I did it humbly,” he said.
He chose Mass Appeal with far more caution this time, noting that everybody on the label side “was real real cool and very open-minded.”
One of the album’s standout tracks has an unusual backstory. “Way Too Much,” featuring T.I., began as a T.I. record.
Mez was in a session for the Atlanta rapper’s project when T.I. laid down his verse, and Mez later added his own after writing the hook.
“At one point he was cuffing it,” Mez said, but after some gentle check-ins, T.I. told him, “you could have it.” Mez called the gesture “very solid of him.”
The chorus deals with self-doubt, though Mez said it is not about his ability. “I definitely don’t doubt my talent or my gifts,” he said, describing his years on the sidelines as “an entertainment bid” he had to sit through.
The album also features J. Cole and Anderson .Paak on the same song, a link that dates back to Mez’s early days working with Dr. Dre.
The most personal moment, though, is “Still Loading,” which references the death of his mother when he was 20 and closes with a sample of his late grandmother’s voice.
Reflecting on what his mother would think of who he has become, he said simply, “she would ride with me.”
