Tony Shhnow may only be 27 but he’s a rap veteran at heart.

The Cobb County, Georgia native takes much of his early hip-hop inspiration from his family’s West Coast roots – citing Tupac and DJ Quik as mainstays in his headphones. But he also credits East Coast greats like DMX, Jadakiss and Jay-Z with a lot of his bar structure.

And then there’s the south, where he’s from.

Over the past few years, Shhnow has dropped 15 projects at a rate few even in Atlanta can keep up with. Luminaries like Lil Wayne, Master P and Young Dolph, he claims, showed him the way when it comes to consistently releasing music, but also, how to build his own structure and hustle in the current Mecca of hip-hop’s major label scene.

For Shhnow, remaining independent is big for him as it currently stands, and he says right now is a crucial time in his career, as the freedom he has allows him to try out new sounds and concepts without a major breathing down his neck about record sales or altering his creative process.

This Friday (April 28), Tony is set to release his latest album Love Streak, a project he says is all about bringing more love into this world, but also, authenticity, as exemplified in his recently-released single/visual “Real Rare” where he raps about being proud of being yourself and not rocking bootleg goods.

BET recently spoke with Tony Shhnow about his newest project, linking with singer Brent Faiyaz for the remix to his track “Don’t Look At Numbers,” his Atlanta come-up, and much more. Read below.

BET: You’re releasing your new album Love Streak this Friday. Got a chance to hear it and I think it’s a good balance between the classic Tony we’ve been getting over the past few years and more wide-ranging and versatile at the same time. Do you feel that’s the case?

Tony Shhnow: I definitely wanted to set myself apart from a lot of people I kept being compared to. I really wanted to just do something different in that period. I felt like the narrative and hip-hop were a certain path, like it was certain topics that just kept getting hammered down on, kept getting talked about and I feel like nobody is talking about this right now. Nobody is too invested in love right now. Everybody's on some use use use, pull pull pull, take take take, guns,  drugs. It’s like using the next person but not like experiencing the next person. So I tried to just give a different space in essence – just as far as rap in general. And then like I said, I was trying to set myself apart from who would be my peers type s**t.

BET: Yeah and being in Atlanta, you are around sort of the mainstays of business in hip-hop, definitely at least the southern element. But you don’t really conform to the industry – both musically and being an independent artist who does things differently. How do you feel you separate yourself from that?

Tony Shhnow: Coming up, I felt like I was never fully accepted. So, with that being said, I also like to analyze the playing field. I watched the battlefield and it was like, Okay, I may not have that, but I can still overcome, I can still win. I guess that's a testament to like careers like Tyler, The Creator and careers like [Young Dolph]. They inspire me to where I can create my own stadium. I can create my own table, I don't need to go sit at your table. But with that being said, although I can create my own table and my own platform, I still want to be coming to your house on the weekend type-s**t. I want y’all to come and sit in my house. So I do things to impress the industry, but I don't too much have that on my mind.

BET: Right, and I can really tell through your music and past interviews you’ve done that you just really love rapping for the sport of it. Like it goes back to the lunch tables…

Tony Shhnow: It's about rap music. It’s about hip-hop, which is very important and I'm a student of the game. My mom's from the West Coast but the dudes I grew up with in the streets were from New York. My mom introduced me to Tupac, the Outlawz, WC, and DJ Quik and all that, so I'm respecting that side of hip-hop. And then I get to the streets and they start telling me about Jadakiss, Jay-Z, Big L, DMX, Roc-A-Fella. I'm aware of southern hip-hop, but I'm super invested in like the 90s and 2000s hip-hop because of what I already grew up on. I don’t feel like I ran into southern music – don't get me wrong, I’m from the south, so I've always consciously been paying attention to southern music until I was like 21 – but I became an adult by the time I was invested in southern music. I already lived and breathed hip-hop music from the beginning, was just a fan of lyricism, I'm always a fan of storytelling. I didn't get into swag rap until I got a little older.

BET: Lil Wayne and Gucci Mane are big influences of yours but who do you think is underrated that has crazy bars that made or make you want to rap crazy?

Tony Shhnow: Ghostface Killah, MF Doom, Gudda Gudda from Young Money, Benny The Butcher, that whole clique [Griselda], [DJ] Quick really never got the credit he deserves, Domo Genesis…

BET: So how big was Odd Future for you then because it seems they gave you the inspiration to be who you wanna be/are?

Tony Shhnow: I'm not gonna say they were the first influences. I don’t even want to say influences, I want to say first internet influence – the first one was Lil B and then I got introduced to Odd Future and I was like damn, it was bad b*****s that like Odd Future, you like this style of music? It pushed me to not have to be the quote-unquote cool rapper like the quote-unquote standard street guy.

BET: You released the video for “Real Rare” [earlier this month]. That song is tough on its own. How did it come together and sort of some of the messaging behind it?

Tony Shhnow: While I'm recording it I just started thinking about just me because I'm a very genuine person. If I like you, I will make sure you know that. If I don't like you, you'll know I don't like you, type-s**t. I'm just very genuine about how I go about things. And then my girlfriend at the time her body was real, so I just wanted to compliment her, and let her know being real is cool. This industry, or even the world right now with social media, being fake is supposed to be the s**t. Like being fake is cool, fake jewelry, nobody's gonna say too much to you. You can have fake shoes… People like fake s**t right now.

I feel like I'm at a real pivotal moment in my career where I can kind of decide what's cool and what's not because I'm still up and coming. So I purposely have been wearing jewelry, I have purposely been rapping about certain topics, like, Hey bro, I don’t know what y’all think is cool, but this s**t is what's cool. This is what is really actually cool.

BET: I really like your past few projects, particularly Kill Streak 2 and Plug Motivation. They’re quite different from each other, which I think is dope because it shows you can navigate any beat with your flow. How have you kind of grown from those to now with Love Streak?

Tony Shhnow: I normally stick with the same producers, they're all in house. Normally they are the homies. If I work with outside producers it doesn't normally be a full project. One, I try to choose people that are genuine – like I said, that's how I move. Two, [they’re] most likely to homie. Three, I really want it to be fire so if it's a song, for example, how I made the Dis Should Hold U Over series was I saw how well me and [Cash Cache] work together, so I was like, Let me just elaborate on that. With the Kill Streak projects, that was literally me trying some shit. Sometimes I do projects for brain teasers, like I don't do it for the benefit of the listeners. Sometimes it’s to literally challenge myself. Am I capable of building this world and being successful?

BET: I really enjoy how you select R&B beats for a lot of your tracks and you’re a fan of the genre. Also, for “Don’t Look At Numbers” you got Brent Faiyaz on the remix. I know you were trying to link with him for a while and it finally happened. Talk about how that track came to be…

Tony Shhnow: I know his cameraman, his name Loki Zoo, that's been the homie for a long time. When he first met me he was instantly like, “Bro, Tony, you got it.” So he had been putting them on my music and Brent was playing it… We got each other's number and we had talked for like a little second [about collaborating] but we weren't like talking too heavy. We kind of just kept it just he's a fan of my music thing and I'm a fan of what he does type-thing.

He had a pop-up shop in Atlanta and he invited me and he's so fucking cool, like it was so many girls and it was a pandemonium. I've never seen a store like this bro. The line was all the way down the block, like all the way bro. I was like, Damn! Bro really a superstar. It's just me and Zoo and a couple of homies. I've never experienced this my whole life. I imagine this is what Drake lives with every single day.

Then somebody comes from the top of the roof and with a megaphone like, “Brent’s here!” So I’m still like, Where's Brent at? They on the megaphone talking about he's here whatever. And it's some guy, he grabs my shoulder and pulls me to the side like, “Aye bro, follow me.” So I follow him upstairs to the top of the roof and there's Brent. It's just him in an all denim suit with the hair s**t. Like this n***a cool as f**k – all these bad b*****s downstairs and this n***a not even talking to none of them. Then he was like, “Bro, I'm f*****g with you, bro. Let me hop on the remix [of “Don’t Look At Numbers”].” I was like, Sure. No b**ls**t, I thought he was lying. First of all, I didn't like “Don't Look At Numbers” like that. You got to keep in mind I sent him like 50 songs before and he didn't say nothing to them. And then when I see him now, he talking ‘bout he want to hop on my remix so I'm thinking this is cap.

He's like, “Nah, for real, I’m trying to hop on the song. Send it to me.” I sent him the record, and then two days later he said, “I'm going to London, I'm recording the record.” I'm still thinking this is cap and saying that so he can be cool with me because I'm probably lit at the time. I go to my lady friend house, we do the deed, and I look at my phone the record is there.

BET: And then that’s amazing to show her afterward…

Tony Shhnow: On god! [laughs].

BET: Also, in general, what is your creative process like? When you hit the studio, how does that play out when you record?

Tony Shhnow: Well I live in the studio. I own a studio, it's in my kitchen. So I normally just wake up and go rap. There are very few songs where I've thought of the idea before the beat play. Normally, I let the beat take me to wherever I'm going, like I will only let the beat play for like three seconds and then I put it in this thing and start letting it take me wherever it's going. I don't try to like be predetermined where I'm going.

I'm fairly hands on with all of my endeavors. I'm very hands-on when I record myself. I make sure I pick the samples normally. I don't let A&R give me beats. I pick the beats. I handpick the producers I want to work with, came up with the art design for the album. If I don't, I try to throw my two cents in. I try to work with the best people in the world though.

Preeminent Visual:

Latest Release:

Tony Shhnow’s latest album Love Streak hits streaming platforms Friday (April 28).