Che has gone goth.

Alright, alright. Maybe not entirely, but when VMAN meets up with the buzzed-about Gen Z rapper in a midtown Manhattan studio a few  weeks before today’s (July 18^th) release of his much anticipated second album Rest In Bass, his look is a long way from the color-popping figure that fans flocked to in his level-up year of 2024. Via bright, cartoonishly off and occasionally unsettling images and graphics in videos like “Miley Cyrus,” “Cut Off Your Hands,” “I Rot, Rot” and the irresistible “Pizza Time,” Che staked out ground as a singularly try-anything non-conformist in a world where it’s easy to fall into a trap of musical and visual sameness, but where staying in one place and repeating oneself can be fatal. So, for 2025, Che’s changed it up.

On this summer night, he’s in all black: a billowing shirt, his long signature locs, which have gone through past electric blue and auburn phases, are black, as are his nails, and thanks to a photo shoot earlier in the day, the Pierrot-style diamond makeup around his eyes. The studio is dark, with orange mood lighting, and to top off the Halloween-in-June vibe, the shock horror flick Terrifier 2, starring gleefully  murderous Art the Clown, is playing on the video screen. Ghoulishness was always on the periphery of Che’s aesthetics (a blood-soaked Crueger mixtape cover in 2023 and a collab with horror-rap provocateur Sematary last year) but never quite like this.

Che was barely discernible in a shadowy album announcement video posted in late June, and a week before Rest In Bass, a red-filtered and black-eyed image of the rapper went up, a look reddit fans labeled “demonic” – think a nü rap Nosferatu. One fan offered that Che was waiting to reach 666 thousand Spotify monthlies before dropping the LP, and sure enough, he recently reached that beastly mark – and passed it.

Chase-feratu was born Chase Shaun Mitchell in Atlanta, in 2006. The artist will turn 19  next month, and proudly shares a birthday with Michael Jackson, though the late King of Pop died less than three years after Che was born. He began making music – like an entire young cohort of musicians in hip-hop and beyond – during the isolated times of COVID, taught himself production on BandLab, and eventually graduated to the go-to DAW FL Studio. Under the alias murkio! he self-posted his first single, “noogie!” a little wack-job rap over  – wait for it – “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.” Ears perked up around his 2021 remix of Yeat’s “Off the Lot,” then – at the time calling himself cheRomani+ — he scored big with the bleepy little charmer, “agenda.” That viral hit, at 57 million Spotify streams to date, set things in motion, though success didn’t come overnight.

Unlike some underground artists who blew up on one TikTok-fueled hit that threatened to overshadow everything else, Che’s come-up was more gradual. 2023’s mixtape closed captions and single “blac chyna” were early triumphs. But in 2024, he erupted  onto a new level of visibility and creativity, with songs that were freewheeling, packed with fuck-it-why-not drops and non-sequiturs, on standalone singles “Pizza Time” and “Miley Cyrus,” then on his quirkily fresh debut album Sayso Says. He had bugs on his face and a cake was used as an ashtray in the video for “I Rot, I Rot,” a bright red face opened the “Cut Off Your Hands” visualizer, and on one of the great album covers of the year, introduced Sayso, a giant bunny who has a penchant for firearms, with a blunt in hand and draped in both a Vetements coat and a female, from behind. There hadn’t been a  rapper more willing to play with aesthetic norms since Trippie Redd and Lil Uzi Vert.

He’s a swag-setter who knows his terrain. Call it underground, Zoomer experimental, pluggnb meets rage meets hyperpop and digicore – if you know the world you know it, and you also know it is crowded and mercurial. Attention spans (and in turn, songs) are short, patience for album drops is limited and opinions are loud. Fans are quick to pronounce an artist as having “fallen off” and equally ready to anoint a new one with a  six-month-old career the new king. Evolution is key. Che gets that, and for the Rest In Bass era, he’s leaned into rock.

While his most-cited influences include Young Thug, Future and Chief Keef, he’s also an avowed fan of bands from Paramore to Suicidal Tendencies. He led off 2025 joined by go-to producer CXO on the track “KISS,” a nod to the glam rock legends; in May dropped a new fan favorite, “Green Day;” and on Rest In Bass, which opens with the tracks “Slam Punk” and “Rolling Stone” (after the band), he says he took inspiration from two nü metal vets who favor a spooky vibe, Korn and Rob Zombie. So how does all that square with Che’s squirrely, digicore-adjacent, woozily horny sounds of the past?  

Pretty well, actually. Turns out the reputed rock orientation of Che’s new LP is more spiritual and stylistic than sonic. The mad bunny may have given way to something even more sinister, but he hasn’t done a 180 musically, and worked again with many of the producers from Sayso Says, none more so than his longtime collaborator CXO.  Since its release, Che fans aren’t hearing a radical departure, but a decidedly bolder, fuller and – Che’s word – “heavier” sound than ever.

That much was evident when Che, accompanied by his managers Lamaar and Will and a good friend, the Miami artist Mig, previewed four tracks for VMAN: the turnt “MDMA” which he debuted live in March at Rolling Loud California; “Hellraiser” an upbeat collaboration with fellow young hip-hop essential OsamaSon – the pair recently dropped an eerie video for the track, involving masks, a junkyard and gaffer’s tape; “Lemon Glow,” another crowd-pleaser that premiered, appropriately, at Lyrical Lemonade’s Summer Smash in June; and the one that had me jumping out of my seat, the irresistible “Mannequin,” on which Che teams with New York’s affable young dean of the new wave, Xaviersobased.

Rest In Bass took a longer road to get here than originally planned, thanks to a situation known all too well to young rappers – leaks. In early May, approximately forty of Che’s tracks, some of which may have been included on the new LP, hit the internet before their time. But rather than getting him down, he says the thievery only emboldened him to get serious about making new songs for his strongest record yet, one that reinforces Che’s place as a compelling young shapeshifter.

VMAN: Che! Congratulations on Rest In Bass being almost at the finish line. How would you characterize how you feel right now, after all of the drama that happened with the leaks, and it taking a little longer to get this record done. Will it be a relief to finally get it out?

Che: I’m really just more excited than anything! I don’t know I feel like we were saying before he was saying it’s like a gift to them, to fans, and in the same way it’s a gift to me, when they hear it. I don’t think there’s any stress behind it or anything.

VMAN: I wondered if you were feeling pressure. From 2021 up until 2024, it was like a gradual thing of people discovering you, “agenda” and “euphoria,” “blac chyna,” closed captions [2023 mixtape]. Then last year, in terms of peoples’ awareness of you but also creatively, it was like a next level, musically and visually, So now it seems you might feel like, “Well now I have to equal or surpass what I did with Sayso Says.”

Che: That makes sense, but I feel like if you’re not thinking like that, as an artist, then maybe this is not the job for you. I mean, every time I do something it’s got to be better than the last. I’m a perfectionist like that. And it’s the little things – if there’s a song that I made, and there’s just one little thing that I don’t like about it, the whole song is bad to me, then.

VMAN: It could be the smallest thing? Musically, lyrically?

Che: Yeah, both. Either way. It could be the way I said something, or the thing I did say If I don’t like it then the song is just not good to me. But it’s like, the evolution – I don’t know, I’m always trying to better myself.

VMAN: So after last year you do feel like there’s more eyes on you? And do you think that raises people’s expectations?

Che: It definitely does, but that just goes along with how hard you work. And in the end it pays off!

VMAN: How much of a setback were the leaks, and how much did the record change as  a result of them? Were those songs you had had for months, or longer?

Che: Probably even longer. I mean – yeah it was a little bit of a setback, but I wouldn’t really say it was a loss, or anything. It really just put me in a different mindset. It started me into the next, what you were saying earlier, like evolving the style, and even the music. It definitely was a time for me to be like, “Okay, I need to figure this out, because if they are hearing what I have that wasn’t even supposed to be shown yet, then I have to give them something completely new.”

VMAN: You never even considered including some of those leaked songs?

Che: Nah

VMAN: Did it feel like they were ruined because people had heard them?

Che: I feel a little bit of that, and um, I think when you do start recording new music, you just get in such a head space, it’s like adrenaline, and you just start making more and more songs, and it’s just like, “Okay, all of the old stuff that I had, it’s out the window. This is the new. This is what we’re on.”

VMAN: Rest In Bass the title was announced back in February. How and when did that name come about?

Che: That was my partner right here. [friend and fellow artist Mig, formerly of the meme-driven collective 4ersona]. We were both in Miami, in his nice penthouse. We were just up, it was real late.

Mig: It was like 5 o’clock in the morning

Che: Five in the morning, and we just sitting there creating a list of names for my next project, and I knew – all the names I came up with were all in the same dimension, same category. But this one stuck with me the most. It was just really – it’s like a statement, to me.

VMAN: I guess you could say it has a  slightly religious thing in that it reminds you of “rest in peace.” Your PR Isaac had told me that rock artists like Korn and Rob Zombie had been influential on you.

Che: Yeah.

VMAN: And I think it might have been with [Plaqueboy] Max last year that you said you had been listening to Suicidal Tendencies, you told Pitchfork a while back that you loved Paramore’s Riot! So it sounds like you’re kind of a rock fan. I know you grew up a fan of Sosa and Thug, but I haven’t really seen you talk too much before about rock bands.

Che:  Yeah crazy enough. It’s like some of the songs on here are just more heavy-inspired, just louder.

VMAN: But no straight-up rock songs? Because what you played me still sounded…like che.

Che: Oh no, but it is really rock-inspired, honestly. It’s more like the sounds that they use, I’ll take that and use it for my own, and even the way they dress! Everything about heavy metal and punk was, to me, it’s just really interesting.

VMAN: Earlier in the year you dropped a song called “KISS” which referenced that band. More recently there was “Green Day,” with the line “Rock out the show just like it’s Green Day,” and that’s a band I’ve known for a long time. Are you a fan of theirs too?

Che: A little bit, I’m not too heavy on Green Day, but it was more just something in the moment. But yeah, I appreciate Green Day, hell yeah.

VMAN:  2024 was kind of anything goes for you, the meme-type, wacky stuff, from the Sayso Says bunny with the gun in “Cut Off Your Hands” to obviously the trippy videos for “Pizza Time” and “Miley Cyrus” and “I Rot, I Rot.” I felt like you guys were willing to do all kinds of twisted, experimental things, and it was all super colorful. And people would say things like, “che is the oddball of young hip-hop,” and it was all really cool. But I don’t know, did you grow tired of all that almost psycho-cartoon kind of thing?

Che: Hell yeah, I got tired of it. And I don’t know, I just look at it as me growing up a little bit. I was just younger. And my fans, they grow with me, you know, they’re a young audience. But all the colors, and the pop? It was just different at the time. And I feel like people appreciated it, everybody loved it for what it was.

VMAN: It does feel like you wanted to make a move away from everything that kind of defined you in 2024. By the end of last year, were you just like, “I need to do something different?”

Che: For sure. Yeah basically. it was like a rebrand, obviously.

VMAN: Did you feel like it just got a little too wacky, too crazy, with the looks and the videos?

Che: Yeah, a little bit, too wacky.

VMAN: But in a way it set you apart, though.

Che: But then I feel like a lot of people started to do it, also.

VMAN: Oh, copying you?

Che: Yeah, the swag,

VMAN: Right

Che: Once you copy the swag, it’s not the swag no more! [laughs]

VMAN: I just want to make sure I have all the producers that were on the record, some of whom are well known to your fans. It’s: Warren Hunter, CXO, gyro, Legion, Azur, Rok on the track, and skai. Any others?

Che: Yeah. Ginseng, do you know Ginseng? [Christian Baello, of the duo Dream, Ivory]

VMAN: Oh yeah,  I didn’t know he was on there.

Che: Yeah and one other, his name is Lucid.

Mig: He’s crazy! That’s my main producer. We’re like a little duo! We’re both from Miami.

VMAN: So were any of those producers was it your first time working with them?

Che: Some of them, yeah it was, I actually grew a lot of relationships for this album. I went to different countries, met some new producers, and we made stuff in person. It was fun!

VMAN: Tell me a little about the evolution of your style, because I look at you now and it’s not the way I pictured you from a year ago. Was there an artist as a kid when you were growing up that you looked up to in terms of swag or style?

Che: As far as a long time ago, years ago, it was lowkey like Tyler the Creator? His colors and stuff.

VMAN: For sure, when I think of Tyler I think of lots of bright colors. Golf Wang is pretty much known for color!

Che: Yeah, it’s fire! [laughs]

VMAN: But it feels like some time in the last six months, you thought “I want to do a darker vibe for this.”

Che: For sure.

VMAN: Do you have a full-time stylist? Is there someone you bounce ideas off of in terms of looks and style and stuff?

Che: Um, I don’t know you know, try too hard to look like anybody. But I’m inspired by, you know, Marilyn Manson. Musically, and just the way he presents himself.

VMAN: For sure.

Che: And with others, it was more so just about the way they carried themselves. Being from Atlanta, down South, I was introduced to Wayne from an early age. But like Wayne never really wore the craziest stuff….

VMAN: No he didn’t.

Che: It would be like a wife beater with a big chain, and some big pants. It was really more the way he carried himself that – and that’s something I’ve figured out just recently. It’s more about the person that’s in the clothes rather than what you’re wearing.

VMAN: Because if you’re not comfortable in what you’re wearing, if it’s like a costume, people are gonna be able to tell that. You know what I mean?

Che: [laughs] For sure!

VMAN: There have been people over the years, talking about someone like Uzi, who’s never shy about trying out things style-wise, and maybe is even braver now than ever. I guess you could have gotten even crazier this time, but this is super cool in a different way. No orange hair or anything.  

Che: It’s not as loud!

VMAN: I did make notes of some of the designer shout outs you have in different songs. There’s Balenciaga in “black chyna,” Celine in “Green Day,” Hermès in “Miley Cyrus,” Moncler in “Sayso,” Saint Laurent in “Bae,” and then two Rick Owens mentions, in “frank ocean” and “Cut Off Your Hands.” So – is Rick a favorite of yours? Or do you have a favorite designer?

Che: Yeah it would be Rick Owens and HBA, Hood By Air. Definitely Hood By Air. I like both of those brands a lot, they’re in my main rotation.

VMAN: And last year you gave Vetements some publicity with the Sayso Says album cover, Your bunny is wearing a Vetements coat, right?

Che: Yeah it was, that was fire! A raincoat! [laughs]

VMAN: And the new album has a track, “Dior Leopard?”

Che: Yeah! Yeah, I’ve got a lot of shoes, and I got this pair of Dior shoes that look like leopard print. So I just talk about it in the song. That’s a Miami song.

VMAN: So to wind up on the style front, is your own personal style something that evolves naturally as you go on? Do you have to put a lot of thought into it?

Che: Nah, it’s crazy I just think it genuinely evolves, as you grow up. Like the way that it’s like “These shoes don’t play no more, I’ve got to get new shoes!” It’s like, swag is just, forever, it’s evolution. Like, two years ago? I didn’t think about what I would be wearing now. I didn’t think I would be painting my nails, and in all black – nah, not at all. So, in a couple years, who knows what I’ll be wearing. It’s crazy, and beautiful, really.

VMAN: You’re about to shoot the “Hellraiser” video with OsamaSon. I know you can’t talk specifically about it, but would  you say the videos are gonna have, like your look, a darker quality to them compared to what came out last year?

Che: I probably wouldn’t say a darker quality or approach, but more just a different approach. I mean I know I don’t want them to be anything like the videos that I already have out. Like – I don’t feel like new music videos are like movies anymore, stuff like that, and I want to bring those to life.

VMAN: So does that mean you have ideas for other videos you want to do on this? Or would you like to do a small film maybe?

Che: Honestly, he [his co-manager Will] is the genius, not gon’ lie, when it comes to what gets shot and stuff.

VMAN: Will can you say, do you have a bunch of ideas?

Will: Yeah we have a couple loaded up, it’s kind of just like finalizing the music first. We’re really moving on, creatively somewhere else, you know what I mean? So with the video, if you were to like kind of go through the album, and be like, “Oh this song has a video,” go watch the video and then come back. And it all feels like the same world. The world-building is all cohesive.

VMAN: Would you say the videos will somehow likely, if not be connected then at least complement each other?

Will: Yeah, the underlying values will complement one another.

VMAN: Finally che, as we know, leaks happen to a lot of artists, especially in your world. When I talked to O earlier in the year about his 2024 phone hacking when something like 300 songs were stolen, he said it got him pretty down for a while. But in your case, it seems like you kind of picked yourself up and just like, got right to work on this record and it didn’t really bum you out or anything.

Che: Nah, it didn’t bum me out at all. It’s kind of crazy, I didn’t ever think about that. You just now made me think about it. I didn’t really get sad or anything. I kind of just was like, “Okay, let’s get to it! These songs aren’t gonna make themselves!” You know what I’m saying? Kept my head up.

VMAN: If you were to sum up Rest In Bass as “the most ______ che project to date,” how would you complete that?  

Che: I would say, Rest In Bass is the hardest che album to come out, ever. Of all time! In every category. And if people don’t love it, it’s totally – that’s what I’m expecting. Cause that’s what true art is. It’s love and hate, it’s not supposed to be…

VMAN: To get somereaction? And not have people just go, “eh”?

Che: Yeah, I’m not mad. You know, I can’t please everybody. But eventually, like, it’s happened before, people come around.

Che’s Rest In Bass is out now.