LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2020E3
POP & HISS
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$20, 5 p.m. and 8 p.m.
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OUT
A curated calendar of live
music not to be missedArizona Zervas sprawled on a
sofa at Columbia Records’ offices
in Culver City, the sun slowly sink-
ing into the ocean through the pic-
ture window behind him. Dressed
in black jeans, a black T-shirt and a
black trucker hat, the 24-year-old
rapper and singer responsible for
the viral smash “Roxanne” lifted
his cap and grinned, cat-that-got-
the-cream-style, as he considered
a question about his ability to de-
liver on his promise.
Zervas grew up poor-ish in
Maryland; “riffraff ” was the word
he used to describe himself before
he was kicked out of middle school
for making trouble. But last year,
“Roxanne” — a bubbly yet laid-
back ode to a young woman ob-
sessed with “cocaine and Whole
Foods” — made him the object of
an intense major-label bidding war
that Columbia won when it struck
a deal said to be worth as much as
$12 million.
Now the record company, eager
to match its success with an earlier
viral hit in Lil Nas X’s chart-domi-
nating “Old Town Road,” is looking
for a return on its considerable in-
vestment. So does Zervas, whose
song has racked up more than half
a billion plays on Spotify (and mil-
lions more on YouTube, Apple Mu-
sic and SoundCloud), have any
more like “Roxanne” up his sleeve?
He lowered his hat back onto his
head.
“I mean, I couldn’t put a num-
ber on it,” he said in his first ex-
tended interview. “But yeah — I got
a bunch.”
In fact, Columbia may be OK
with just the one. You can look at
Zervas’ signing as proof of the la-
bel’s long-term belief in an artist
who’s been releasing songs —
slickly melodic tracks that, like
“Roxanne,” blur the edges between
pop and hip-hop — on the internet
for years. But Columbia’s payout
also reflects the economics of
the new streaming business, in
which a label makes money each
time a monster hit is played (in
contrast with the days of down-
loads and physical product, when
the monetizable transaction was
the one-time purchase of a CD or
MP3).
And make no mistake — “Rox-
anne” is a monster. After an “in-
credible” reaction to the song’s ap-
pearance on an up-and-comer’s
playlist, said Spotify co-head of
music Jeremy Erlich, the platform
quickly put “Roxanne” on its
closely followed “Today’s Top Hits”
playlist, where the song remains
nearly five months after it came
out. On Billboard’s Hot 100, which
incorporates radio and video play,
“Roxanne” has been lodged inside
the top 10 for nearly as long.
As Lenny Beer, editor in chief of
the music-industry trade journal
Hits, put it: “Hits are worth more
now than they’ve ever been worth
before. And they continue to
earn forever.” Which means that
Columbia Chairman and CEO Ron
Perry — an expert at milking a
song’s value, as “Old Town Road”
and its many remixes demon-
strated — probably isn’t losing any
sleep about having overspent on
Zervas.
“From the moment I met him,”
Perry said, “it was obvious that
his vision is precise, his art is
uncompromising and his song-
writing is among the best I’ve ever
seen.”First of many
Zervas, of course, would prefer
to think that “Roxanne” — which
initially took off, like other recent
viral tracks including Roddy Ric-
ch’s “The Box,” on the video-shar-
ing app TikTok — is merely the first
of many big songs to come. Since he
and producer 94skrt recorded the
tune last summer, he said with a
shrug, “I’ve had way more special
feelings making songs than I did
that day.”
Born in Providence, R.I., Zervas
bounced around the East Coast
with his family — mother, father,
brother, sister — before ending up
in Maryland, where he said playing
sports took him out of his early
troublemaking ways. He started
making music in high school, writ-
ing rap verses over existing songs
or beats he’d find for free online;
positive feedback from friends
drove him to keep at it, while artistslike Mac Miller, from nearby Pitts-
burgh, convinced him he could
build an audience through social
media.
Not long after high school, he
said, he was bringing in $1,000 a
month from YouTube ads on his
music, thanks in part to the atten-
tion he received from a widely
shared video he posted during the
2016 Super Bowl in which he used
the name of every NFL team in a
rap that recalled Eminem.
This was around the time Zer-
vas moved to Los Angeles to pro-
fessionalize his operation; he
hooked up with a manager,
Quentin Gatto, and began putting
his songs on Spotify, with its mil-
lions of users predisposed to any-
thing that sounds vaguely like
Drake or Post Malone (to name
two of Zervas’ clear predecessors).
Though he insists he’s not the most
outgoing person, he also startedmaking the scene here: “Roxanne,”
he explained, was inspired by some
of the women he’s met at the cozy
bar atop the Roxy in West Holly-
wood.
“Oh, wait,” he added, seeming
to think better of exposing his fa-
vorite spot. “I hope you don’t put
that in the article.”Striking a chord
As soon as he wrote it, Zervas
had a sense that “Roxanne” —
which he wanted to strike an up-
beat tone at a moment when hip-
hop is heavy on gloom — would
connect with listeners. “I knew it
was an actionable song that people
could dance to,” he said — one indi-
cation of a businessman’s instinct
he said he inherited from his dad,
who ran a diner and was “always
hustling.”
Indeed, as the song blew up —
and eventually sparked the labelfrenzy that he said fulfilled all
the classic record-biz clichés —
Zervas dialed back his presence
online, determined to “let the song
speak for itself,” he said. He posted
only occasionally; he expressed
zero interest in rolling out new ver-
sions of “Roxanne” à la “Old Town
Road.” (He did allow one remix,
featuring Swae Lee of Rae Srem-
murd, which came out last month.)
Zervas said he’d only agreed to this
interview because “if I don’t tell
people what I’m about then they’ll
kind of make up their own story
about me” — including, one pre-
sumes, the detailed conspiracy
theories floating around YouTube
that depict Zervas as an industry
creation.
What’s he spent Columbia’s
money on? “I bought, like, a new
microphone, bro,” he said, adding
that fancy cars don’t do much for
him. He’s also paid some of hismom’s bills.
Looking to the future, he’s ex-
cited to release more singles —
“soon,” he said, declining to elabo-
rate — that show off what else he
can do; an old-fashioned album, he
added, doesn’t feel especially im-
portant in light of the interest he
managed to drum up with just one
song.
But he also wants to develop his
live act, and to enjoy the spoils of
his success so far. Last month he
played his first L.A. concert at the
Echo: a rowdy, sold-out affair in
which a crowd of several hundred
kids cheered as a friend of Zervas’
bounded onstage and downed a
beer in seconds flat.
“That was my boy Steve,” he
said with a laugh a couple of days
after the show. “I was looking for a
beer to ‘cheers’ somebody in the
crowd, and he just happened to
have two in his hands.”THE POPULARITY of “Roxanne” sparked a bidding war for Arizona Zervas, who says he has “a bunch” more songs under his cap.Christina HouseLos Angeles TimesThe one-hit thunder
Rapper Arizona Zervas’ viral smash ‘Roxanne’ is a sign of the streaming times
MIKAEL WOOD
POP MUSIC CRITIC