18 | Rolling Stone | August 2019
L
ATE LAST YEAR, when A Boogie Wit
Da Hoodie released his album, Hood-
ie SZN, it sold just 823 physical cop-
ies. But in a sign of how radically the indus-
try has changed, that low total didn’t stop it
from soon becoming Number One, thanks
to wild streaming numbers. Since then, the
LP has been streamed a staggering 1.7 bil-
lion times, according to Buzz Angle. That’s
enough to earn A Boogie the third-most-
streamed album of the year, trailing only re-
leases from Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish.
WOODSTOCK 1969 HAS BECOME so legendary, it’s easy to forget how
doomed it seemed at the time. The new 50th-anniversary coffee-
table book Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music details the harrow-
ing planning process, like how Michael Lang and his team lost their
festival site just four weeks out, before Lang drove by a 600-acre
farm in Bethel, New York, and persuaded the owner on the spot to
let them use the site. The team scraped by, enlisting police to work
under the table and the Merry Pranksters to help teach kids how
to build tents. Lang’s book compiles Henry Diltz’s historic photos
and papers, going inside the booking plans (the Plastic Ono Band at one point offered
to play). “We wanted more personal stuff that wasn’t just about the artists but about the
experience,” says Lang. The book is a wonderful reminder of a time when you could still
carry on a historic event while facing such setbacks. PATRICK DOYLE
So how does the rapper feel about his
surprise smash? “The creative process of
Hoodie SZN was... not my best,” he says with
a sigh on a recent afternoon. “I don’t know
what to tell you.” He elaborates by saying the
album is too dark — dwelling too much on is-
sues like infidelity and his conflicted feelings
about success. “It’s a fast life, being famous,”
he says. “My next album is going to be two,
three, four times better.”
This sort of bleakness is what fans have
come to love about A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie,
23, who raps in vivid detail about navigat-
ing the poverty, drugs, and violence of the
Highbridge area of the Bronx in New York(the same neighborhood where Cardi B grew
up), all in a melodic flow that has already
earned plenty of imitators. (“I don’t think
they’re taking my style, because I have a
really, really, really, really unique style,” he
says of the competition. “Nobody can really
copy that.”) A Boogie is appearing at several
major summer festivals alongside fellow
hitmakers such as Childish Gambino, Migos,
2 Chainz, and Cardi B, who just announced
she has a collaboration with A Boogie on the
way “very soon.”
A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie’s real name is
Artist Julius Dubose — his dad worked with
a company that sold high-end artwork;FAST FACTS
NAME GAME
He almost took his
name “Artist” as
a stage name, but
it sounded “R&B.”
THANK ME LATER
His 2016 mixtape
got the attention
of Cardo, his
producer, who
had worked with
Kendrick Lamar
and Drake.The Making of
Woodstock ’
IT’S ALL ON
THE LINE
Lang with his
assistant Ticia
Bernuth. “Pay
phones were
very popular
that weekend,”
says Lang, who
details in his
book how “for
nine months or
so, we all lived
and breathed
Woodstock.”
They built the
festival site in
28 days, and it
rained for 18 of
them: “When
people started
arriving 10 days
before the
festival, we put
some of them
to work.”VOODOO CHILD
Sally Mann Romano,
who was profiled in
RS’s 1969 story “The
Groupies and Other
Girls.” She later married
Jefferson Airplane’s
Spencer Dryden.CANNED BEATS
Canned Heat’s Adolfo
de la Parra (who is still
in the group). The band’s
“Goin’ Up the Country”
became an anthem of the
Woodstock generation.
A BOOGIEThe Mix