The Reintroduction of Smino
After two years without releasing new music—and four without a full body of new material—a more mature, focused version of the St. Louis rapper is ready to step back into the spotlight, beginning with a main-stage slot at London's Jazz Café Festival next month.
Smino in 2026. Image property of NOS.
It's been a while since we've really heard from Smino. The dexterous St. Louis emcee made a name for himself on the independent hip-hop scene nearly a decade ago and has been a constant since—putting his nose to the grindstone and establishing himself as a genre-nudging, album-centric artist while also being an enthusiastic and willing collaborator.
From collective moments like Ghetto Sage with Noname and Saba, to Zoink Gang, to Zero Fatigue, to more recent collaborations with Doechii and J. Cole, there's an effortless versatility in what Smino brings to a track, an ease of listening that is simultaneously mellifluous and vulgar, smooth on the inside while jagged around the edges. The Nelly and André 3000 comparisons are warranted, but that framing doesn't fully encompass his artistic paradigm.
Even still, his journey has been far from linear. Smino has been supporting Wale's Everything is a Lot Tour while honing his own creative output, as he prepares to drop some of his first new music in over four years. Although Smino released Maybe in Nirvana in 2024, he sees it as a collection of songs made during the COVID-19 pandemic rather than a true follow-up to Luv 4 Rent—"something light for the real fans," as he told us. Now, all these years later, he's ready to reintroduce himself.
The Culture Crypt caught up with Smino on a scalding hot Sunday in Washington, D.C.—the last day of Juneteenth Weekend, and just a few weeks before his trip to London to headline the Jazz Café Festival. We posted up just outside the Thompson Hotel on the Wharf to discuss old habits, new tricks, Black art and evolution.
The Culture Crypt: When I was getting ready for this interview, I thought "Damn, it's been like almost 10 years to the date that I heard my first Smino song—'Shadow Man'", off Noname's telephone album. Where were you at in life then?
Smino: "I was living in Chicago, bro, and I was learning a lot rapidly from a lot of people that are very, very radical people—like extremely radical people. If you ever hung out with Noname, she challenged everything that you would probably say, ways that people think. I was learning a whole lot.
I came from St. Louis, so I was just always focused on survival and shit like that, where I'm from, you know what I'm saying? I never thought about life after survival—so I think Chicago kind of just put a different perspective in me, to where I wasn't really so caught up on survival. I was more so thinking about like, 'damn, what would it actually look like to be thriving in this bitch?'
So 2017 I was in a discovery mode. And a lot of my music sounds like I was discovering myself, the world, and all these different things for the first time, because that's what I was doing."
How much did your time at Columbia College play a role in that?
"Columbia? I ain't go. That shit was a cover-up so I could get to Chicago. I ain't never go to class, my momma was mad.
I mean, it was an art school, I went to that shit. But I never liked no type of school. So when I was at Columbia, I would just be smoking weed and waiting on my big brother Chris to get out of class, so he could drive me up north, and I ride with him up north, so I wouldn't have to take the blue line all the way out to fucking Irvin Park, which is, if you know Chicago, that shit is at the end of the blue line."
Smino in 2026. Image property of Chris Leach.
So where were you getting your reps in in Chicago, what were your proving grounds?
"At Classic Studios, at Leaders, Fat Tiger, Joe Fresh Goods—I just seen a lot of people do they shit, and it inspired me to do my shit. Seeing Chance the Rapper in the studio, when I was just broke, I'm like, this nigga finna go crazy, right? And he did."
Your grandfather played bass for Muddy Waters…
"He's in the Blues Hall of Fame in St. Louis."
Can you talk about your upbringing and how it's impacted your music?
"Just like any other good old Black baby—I was in church. I'm a drummer, so I grew up, prolly at age six, seven years old I was playing a service as the sole drummer. My pops play keys, momma sings, one of my sisters, she was a dancer.
It wasn't a requirement at the crib but it was one of those things that they knew how to keep us on track with. But in my house it was just super musical. Like if they sing "Happy Birthday" to you, they 'gon harmonise at the end. Literally, it's the best happy birthday."
So you pretty much always knew you'd be around music in some way?
"Hell yeah. I knew what I was gonna do at the very beginning of my life. My big cousin was a rapper. I recorded my first song I was like nine years old. My big cousin recorded me, he had me outside on the block, he got the car door open, and he playing it. My first rap was about how my big cousin Chucky had got murdered—like, jealous girlfriend situation. And that was like the first thing I ever rapped about."
Talk to me about your writing process. How involved is it?
"I'm constantly writing. I'm thinking about writing right now. I'm observational with how I write. When I do go sit down and write, shit just kinda flows. I try not to second guess what my thoughts are, because I feel like that's being dishonest. I just be as honest as I can, and clever. The clever part comes with the practice. I'm always writing, that's why I'm clever."
“I’m constantly writing. I’m thinking about writing right now. I’m observational with how I write. When I do go sit down and write, shit just kinda flows.”
What other media do you take in that impacts your music?
"Any Black classic shit, any Will Ferrell shit. I love, like, dry white humour. I used to love to read a lot. But I like nigga shit bro. My podcast taste is brainrot, I ain't 'gon lie. I be watching Pop the Balloon."
We're here on a beautiful day in D.C. As you get ready to kick off the tour, how are you feeling?
"It's cool… it's definitely like a real new type of crowd for me, you know what I’m saying? It's a lot of real mainstream type energy. I'm fucking with it, though. I feel like I'm making my way on it.
I've been gaining a lot of new, interesting type of love. But it's still beautiful, Black, same type of crowd that I got. It's been a long time since I supported the tour, right? A long ass time since I supported the tour."
What do you think sparked that new interest?
"I mean, honestly, I'm on tour with Wale—it kinda trickles down from that. A lotta his fans might not have heard me, or are discovering me for the first time, shit like that… and they might not be like, into the more eclectic artist type that I am. But they've been fucking with it, and it was surprising."
How do you feel about the public perception of Smino, people casting you as a modern neo-soul artist?
"I hate that word. I just learned from Raphael Saadiq that they call shit 'neo-soul' when they don't know what to do with it, how to categorise it. That's what the label say when they don't want to give budget to it.
So they call it neo-soul, because they thought artists like Jill Scott, artists like Erykah Badu, artists like D'Angelo, wouldn't be around forever. Even them niggas understand that that shit, they only none of them niggas call themselves neo soul, like no artist has ever called themselves 'neo', so I don't think, and really fucked with it."
What does Black art mean to you in that context?
"On some regular surface level shit, I'm just a Black dude, so I can't help that shit. Imagine being an artist being like 'I'm aware that I'm Black, so lemme write some Black shit.' It's just natural. The nigga in me is always on. I'm never being politically correct or trying to code switch for something."
How do you keep the music shit fun?
"It's fun when it's like you know your process, like when you know your way through somewhere. You know how they always feel like it take long to get somewhere you don't know where you going? It don't take me long to get to my destination when I'm at music. Smoke some weed, eat some food, come back, listen to that shit—still hard? Bet. Maybe it make the album, maybe it don't.
I had got to this point where I was like, too precious with my music. I would overthink a lot, and I hated that shit. It made me feel like my output… I think people think that I don't make music a lot. like how much I wanted to release music, like people think I think people think I don't make music.
So I think overthinking that shit takes the fun out of it, makes it hard to just have a rhythm, and a cadence to the way that I'm putting out music. So this the new era of me: I wanna put out a whole lot of albums in a little bit of time."
What part of your process has evolved the most in these 10 years?
"What's changed? I think I just got better aim. Back then it was rolling with the punches, going with the flow. Now I know how to make exactly what I want to make."
Stream Smino's collaboration with Sango "DUET" below: