F  L  A  U  N  T

Photographer: Rich Meade at Richmeade.com

Photographer: Rich Meade at Richmeade.com

Migos: They Got Molly, They Got White

The Nature of Being It-Shit: Conversations Across Our Failed Nation

Atlanta’s Migos, readers, made us believe one Monday morning in July that we ought not eat the LSD/cyanide taffy we’d readied that morning in fear of facing another soul-grinding sack punch known as the work week in Hollywood’s gridlocked media district. And now we’re still here. And now they’re in

Flaunt

. All week, they made us nervous, they tickled our fancies, we barked lines from “Chirpin’,” (which dishes, among many things, on the merits of Nextel) through our office intercom system. Oddly, this intercom offered crackling interference, overtones from Faustian crises of yore—to quantify the idea of knowledge, to go missionary on rationalism, or: to expunge the deeper deeds of the imagination and emotional generosity, the vodka and pineapple/cranberry Migos share in the club when, as “Chirpin’” suggests, “your brothers are down.”

So asked that devilish Mephistopheles to Faust, And then you’ll speak of faith and love eternal, of a single, overpowering urge. Will that flow so easily from your heart? To which Migos replied, “Hell yes.” Heart is here, heart is everywhere, now let’s talk about Hannah Montana, the inspiration for a Migos track that should have everyone—from the ketamine-pumped social media manager vomiting in the streets of early AM Dalston, to the upbeat, single web programmer spit swapping in ’Frisco, to the neighbors camped on the front yards of an ATL yard sale—werkin.

Flaunt: What is your idea of power? What does power mean to you? Migos: I don’t really want to control the word power, I mean, like a God.

You’re going to leave power to God?  Oh goodness. So is money power? Nah, that’s just a blessing.  That’s just another blessing that can help you help your family.

If there’s one person out there listening to your songs, who is it? I just hope it’s everybody. I just want everybody to listen to it.  I don’t know who listens to it, but I don’t want one person listening to it, I want everyone listening to it.

[To which Mephistopheles challenged, to which Faust replied, fervidly, “Fortune! Heart! Love! or God! I have no name for it! Feeling is all, the name is sound and smoke, beclouding Heaven’s glow.]

All our music is about our lives. It’s about life and what we did and what we’ve seen, and we’re just trying to change the lives of other young people. We live similar lives that go into the music we make.

And what about the lives you’re living? Outside of the usual, organ functionality and the general impulse to eat and mock or procreate, what is it that they can identify with? Listen, that’s for the fans to determine. I don’t know what type of lives they live. Whoever listens to this album, they got to relate to it someway.

So across from our office is this gray—in spirit and in color—hoagie place that we’ve never seen entered. There are giant posters of meaty hoagies in the window. They’ve wrinkled a little, considering the direct sun. L.A. gets hot. And yet, when that hoagie place wakes up in the morning, it knows it’s gotta keep the faith, make its day as good as possible. Love it all around. So when you wake up in the morning, what’s the first thought in your head about making the Migos experience better? We just live in the studio, so whenever we want to wake up, we just go in with whatever we like. Like what we do: we come, we say we’re going to change that word, or that word, to the way we want, or just put it right on the music. So the way we walk and talk and the music we do is just really all we need.

[And when wagered a cream pie of escapist nirvana by Mephistopholes, an escape from the tired and non-reactive temperament at the core of our varied existence, ol Fausty [read: Migos] had this to say: “If you should ever find lolling on a bed of ease, let me done for on the spot! If you ever lure me with your lying flatteries, and I find satisfaction in myself, if you bamboozle me with pleasure then let this be my final day.” Because your day is not Migos’ day. They don’t even know what boring is.]

What to you is boring, Migos? I don’t know. I think...I don’t know.  That’s a good question, I don’t even know.

Why do you call the police 12? Are they disciples or something? It’s just what we’ve been saying around Atlanta. It’s just the lingo. In Atlanta everybody know that’s the police, so that’s an Atlanta thing.

Maybe not Faust’s thing, but Flauntbelieves in pleasure. And we’re good at pleasure, all kinds of it. We’ll bring the sillies, but behind that bar, what’s in the Migos cocktail? I’m drinking Cîroc and pineapple or Cîroc and cranberry.

That Diddy’s a handful, huh? What a guy! Let’s talk about the evolution from performing artist to brand. We’ll come out with something for our brand.  We might do something like that.

So maybe there will be like a fashion line or something like that? Yeah something like that.

[Ed note: We laugh a lot here, because those are some near-to-stupid questions for Migos, eh readers? So we ask about girls.] So where do the girls come from in your videos? Are they friends of yours?

They come out of the strip clubs.  All of the Atlanta strip clubs. They eat cornbread, they real thick. [Ed note: Migos may have said “they’re homebred” here, but the transcription is a mess!].

Do you prefer working with Southern rappers? Would you rather work with Southern rappers than say, West Coast or East Coast? Oh, it’s no different. Anybody who wants to work with us, we’re linking up. We’re going to try to bring a different aspect to the game, so we can work with everyone in the game—maybe we can change it all and make it different.

Maybe. Now, what song was playing when you first had sex? I don’t want to re-live that night. It was that romantic shit.

And let’s just say you were going to go have sex after this interview, what song would you play? If I had to… “Hannah Montana.”

Has Miley Cyrus said anything about that song? I don’t know, but we would love for her to come twerk in the videos.

Would you rather have Miley Cyrus in doggy style or missionary? I want any position. If she’d be down, I’d want any position. She Miley Cyrus.

Maybe there’s a special position called the Miley? We going to call it “The Hannah.”

And so, we ended there, twirling and elbow popping out onto the streets of ATL, like Faust and his witch on Walpurgis Night, harkening our inner belief that the rational will never manage to trump the deep thump of a good rap tune, that those not enjoying it are too busy not knowing the next step.