A year and a half after he signed with Warner, fans finally get the chance to hear Ricky Hil’s debut album, Support Your Local Drug Dealer, which drops today. We spoke with Ricky in the summer of 2011, right after he had recorded some records with the Weekend. And apparently, the Abel connect landed Ricky his deal. “Warner was talking to the singer The Weeknd and they asked him, ‘Who do you want to work with; who’s your favorite artist; we can probably make it happen.’ And he said ‘Rich Hil,’” the rapper told XXL, “so automatically they called me to the offices in L.A. and started talking about a deal, and we did it and everything worked out.”
As Hil told us in our video interview:
That surprised me. I didn’t know who The Weeknd was, to be honest, but I’m a huge fan of him. That’s my brother, the whole XO team, those my homies. We did mad songs. I went up to Toronto the day after I signed my deal, and I recorded five songs with the Weeknd. I don’t have none of ‘em, they’re all for his shit, for his EP. He approched me at first like, “Yo, I fuck with your music, I wanna work with you,” you know, and it worked off like that, and after, immediately after I did the songs, I came back to New York — like I was only there for a day, we did like 5 songs in Toronto — and then i came back to New York, and then started going to some stores and talking to some people, people playing him everywhere, so I was like “Oh, shit!, Yo, that’s hot. Because i’m not really in touch with music; I listen to old shit. I listen to old Beans mixtapes, or some old Doors or Rolling Stones shit. I go on the blogs, but just selfishly.
Below, check out the cover, shot by Terry Richardson, as well as the album’s tracklist. “Nomads” features the Weeknd and is produced by Illangelo.
And check out our video interview with Rich:
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