Offset Hits Reset

Please allow the Migos rapper to formally reintroduce himself as, 10 years into his career, he bets it all on a solo breakout.

- FRAZIER THARPE

A COUPLE OF years ago, when Offset began work on what would become his new solo album, things didn't exactly come easily. It took him almost two months to make a song he felt was even halfway decent.

As far as creative dry spells go, that might sound brief, but to the Atlanta rapper, who pumped out hits as one-third of the rap group Migos alongside Quavo and the late Takeoff for over 10 years, it felt like an eternity. He had just kicked his lean habit and, being done with codeine, instantly bettered his marriage, family life, business relationships. But progress in the studio was a different story. "I had a little creative block," Offset says. "My own mind was telling me the lean was the potion." It's an understandable fear, considering what Offset accomplished while under that particular influence, like writing the hook to "Bad and Boujee," which cemented his group's rise to the stratosphere.

So he prayed on it, realizing that tethering his God-given talent to drugs was just an excuse to indulge. He kept making music until he finally produced tracks worthy of his pedigree. Then he trashed those and went harder.

The result is the recently released Set It Off. It could just as easily have been called Reset. That word, and synonyms like "reinvention" or "from scratch," recurred often during the conversation I shared with Offset on a fall evening in New York. He's inhaling joints and flicking the butts off  a balcony as he tells me that he sees this project as a grand mentally I'm trying to take it all the way there and just show people that I'm an all-around star instead of just a rap star. That's why I'm shooting my own videos. I'm doing my own merch designs, dancing in videos, dancing onstage with choreo and with dancers because I just want to do something that separates me from everybody."