Offset Hits Reset

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 reintroduction. He’s palpably amped with excited energy.

For at least a year now, Offset’s public attire has been deeply, unmistakably Michael Jackson–coded: white gloves, sequined coats, varsity jackets with the curls, the works. But it’s deeper than one man’s dedicated homage to his favorite artist. This is Offset willing his own Jackson 5-to-solo-superstar moment. Think of the outfits less as a costume and more of a character. “This character, it’s bold, a little selfish, a little arrogant, very confident, talking shit, and fearless to creativity,” Offset explains. These are all elements the brash rapper—once misconstrued, he says now, as “the rowdy Migo”—contains in earnest, but this is a specific cocktail created to embrace a mindset of pure showmanship. He cites the infamous letter that Michael wrote to himself in the late ’70s that predicts and promises all the career milestones he’d go on to achieve.

“I didn’t do nothing similar,” Offset tells me when I ask if he wrote his own letter to himself, “but 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.”

This act of seizing total control stands in stark contrast to the taciturn, often monosyllabic Offset of the past, who ceded interview point guard duties to Quavo and seemed to approach his music with a light “if it ain’t broke” mentality. The switch up to go Michael mode came via inspiration from a contemporary artist: Tyler, the Creator, one of the last rappers you’d expect to find common ground with a Migo. “It was a year ago, at the Roc Nation Brunch, and I was telling [Tyler] my vision of being a standout artist and a solo artist and reinventing myself. I was glorifying him, telling him, ‘I respect how you stay in character [for each album],’ ” Offset recalls. “He was like, ‘You should do it, too. N-ggas ain’t going to fuck with it at first, but n-ggas never fuck with the good shit first. They always sleep on it, and then you show them throughout the process.’ I really took that shit to head.”

One would be forgiven for assuming the last year or two Offset has had—splitting from the Migos, label issues, suffering the shocking death of Takeoff in 2022—would portend a darker project. Instead, Offset wanted to escape. “It’s way more fun,” he says of Set It Off. “I didn’t want to talk about tragedy and talk about…” He trails off.

Talking about—or around—Takeoff’s death last year is the only time Offset’s light dims. He breaks eye contact and fixes his gaze straight ahead as he forces the words out. “I ain’t ready to talk about that shit yet, first and foremost,” he says before admitting he doesn’t have the answers, yet. “I don’t know how to do it, but I didn’t want to just be making an album about bad shit, and dissing and putting that type of energy on the project, because it was going to make my mind be in a different place mentally.”

He tried to make a song that dealt with the tragedy directly, a tribute. “The world is not ready for it, because [everyone] is so judgmental,” he explains. “They want you to make a song pouring your heart out that’s [also] a hit. There is a song on there that’s kind of expressing that shit, though, which is ‘Upside Down.’ It’s feeling confident I’m going to go up with the music, but I’m down every day. It’s the challenge of trying to be the best at your worst times.”

Earlier in 2023, Offset captioned a picture of himself on social media with the decidedly dark line “I’m cold hearted and unhealed.” Is the album’s outro title, “Healthy,” a sign that things are at least veering toward a better direction? “It’s like me talking to myself, because I ain’t used to doing [this] shit by myself. But it’s [me telling myself] I’m still going to win.” A pronouncement, I point out, that’s not unlike those contained in a certain letter that his idol once wrote. Offset offers a different metaphor, telling me that he’s thinking about his life as a series of chapters in “a long book.” At this stage, we’re still early in the story, but the plot is shifting. “It’s like a reinvention,” he says, before smiling mischievously and making dead-on eye contact. “I can’t wait till you see the finished product.”

Frazier Tharpe is GQ’s senior associate editor.

A version of this story originally appeared in the 2023 Men of the Year issue of GQ with the title “Offset Hits Reset”

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PRODUCTION CREDITS:
Photographs by Julius Frazer
Styled by Mobolaji Dawodu
Hair by Ebony Ladylockz Wright
Grooming by Joshua Meekins using Dior Beauty
Tailoring by Alberto Rivera at Lars Nord Studio

Originally Appeared on GQ