The acclaimed manga One-Punch Man is the story of Saitama, a superhero who trains relentlessly and, by age 25, has acquired the power to defeat any opponent with a single blow. He’s at the mountaintop—but he’s listless and depressed without a gratifying challenge. It’s one of producer Metro Boomin’s favorites of the superhero genre, and he openly acknowledges the parallels in his own life: He had a number-one hit by age 23 (Migos’ “Bad and Boujee”) and a platinum solo album by 25 (Not All Heroes Wear Capes), and became the oft-imitated architect of contemporary rap’s cavernous, macabre sound, which spread from Atlanta to define hip-hop (and pop music) at large.
“There was a monologue I resonated so strong with,” says Metro, now 29, “where [One Punch Man] was complaining, moping about how he’s looking for real combat, how it just gets boring doing the hero thing. Another hero, King, was telling him how his thinking is kinda selfish. What you’re doing, it’s still a service and you’re still helping and saving people, it’s not all about you looking for the fight of your life. You were blessed with a certain ability for a reason.”
We’re in Metro’s studio on a chilly mid-November night in Atlanta. The place smells incredible, with candles and incense dotting the building, and framed pictures of Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie on display. Metro is wearing a brownish mohair sweater, jeans, and a pair of the Travis Scott reverse-swoosh Nikes. Around his neck, hanging from an elegant gold chain, is a photograph of his mother, the kind you’d usually see a smaller version of encased in a heart-shaped locket. We’re here to listen to Heroes and Villains, his long-awaited second solo album, and the middle entry in a planned trilogy that began with 2019’s Not All Heroes Wear Capes.
This new body of work arrives after what could qualify as a light stretch for Metro, who’s been relatively quiet by his usual uber-productive standards. Aside from producing a couple of tracks for rappers like Don Toliver, Thug, and Gunna through the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022, Metro’s only major effort since Capes was a sequel to his and 21 Savage’s seminal Savage Mode tape in 2020. (For comparison, in 2017 alone he produced “Mask Off” for Future, most of 21 Savage’s major label debut, and his masterful horror movie ode Without Warning, a collaboration with Offset and Savage.) Metro admits that he felt some creative malaise in 2017, and that the negative reaction to his joint album with Big Sean, Double of Nothing, rattled him a bit. His music had always been met with critical acclaim, but that project fell on indifferent, even hostile ears. (In its review of Double or Nothing, Pitchfork dubbed Big Sean “the Nickelback of rap,” a reference to his commercial success despite indifference and derision from many serious rap heads.)
“I still do like the album and I’m not gonna get into how people try to do Big Sean or treat him online, which I know played a big part of it,” Metro says. “I know a lot of those songs or a lot of the shit that he said, if another huge rapper or rappers similar to him said it, they would just let it slide.”
In the past, he’s felt frustrated by the reductive ways people talk about him as a “trap producer.” After conquering not just southern hip-hop but the pop world, Metro was everywhere and extremely in-demand, but felt like he was being brought in to do one specific thing, not to show off the breadth of his skill set and encyclopedic musical knowledge. “I love R&B music, I love making this, love making that, but they were like, ‘Jumpman,’” [referencing the smash hit he produced for Drake and Future] “Why would I wanna do something that I did?”
Not All Heroes Wear Capes came out of that period of frustration, and the album cemented Metro as not just a great collaborator, but a standalone auteur. He accentuated his best qualities–eerie synth melodies, dynamic contrasts, and seamless transitions–and allowed himself space to experiment, including a pair of songs with Wizkid and a feature from J. Balvin. The LP spawned a few sleeper hits, but those big songs felt like a byproduct of Metro proving himself as a complete musician, a collateral effect of making a project that was just that good.
Heroes and Villains is the result of Metro challenging himself to push his music even further. The project is full of intriguing little sonic experiments: Metro plays with faster tempos, putting Travis Scott atop what sounds like Jersey club four-on-the-floor, or enlisting The Weeknd and 21 Savage for a crowd-pleasing, slightly campy remake of Mario Winans’ aughts classic “I Don’t Wanna Know.” (Metro considers Winans “one of my mentors,” and says he contributed new vocals to the song.) It’s even tighter and more cohesive than Capes, with a crew of collaborators—Scott, Future, Savage, Young Thug—that Metro views more like a film cast than traditional features. Instead of dropping by for a single box-checking guest verse, artists weave in and out of the LP like characters in a screenplay. (And unlike most producer-led albums, Metro keeps his cast to a curated baker’s dozen, versus flexing his rolodex for an unwieldy number of collaborators.)
Winans met Metro about a decade ago when the two were summoned to Diddy’s Miami home to work on music. He laughs as he recalls Diddy hosting the pair on his boat one Sunday morning, and the perturbed look they shared as the bombastic music mogul whipped the vehicle through the water “as fast as he could possibly drive.” But Winans’ main takeaway from that initial experience was a deep respect for Metro’s well-rounded musicianship. The two men co-produced Toliver’s standout 2021 track “Swangin’ on Westheimer” together, and convinced Mario to trust Metro and The Weekend to reimagine his signature solo hit.
“I’ve been around a lot of geniuses, but he’s definitely one of them,” says Winans. “It was instant when I saw it.”
Work on Heroes and Villains began in earnest in early 2021, although Metro always conceived of his first three solo albums as a connected trilogy. This second record focuses on perspective; how heroes to some are not heroes to all. It’s a poignant theme at a time when rappers are being vilified, and public discourse is so polarized that even the most nakedly benevolent of actions can be ascribed sinister motives. It’s summed up best by a Jay-Z sample Metro uses early in the album: “Dark Knight feeling, die and be a hero. Or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.” Plenty of on-the-nose moments across the project hammer home the theme, from a rabble-rousing A$AP Rocky intro to interludes from two-time Metro project narrator Morgan Freeman. And then there is the accompanying short film, which posits Metro as a reluctant, absent hero returning to save his city to battle a Joker-esque anarchist played by Lakeith Stanfield. The savior concept is personal to Metro. He was a key part of the sound that shaped a specific era in rap, and a turning point for Atlanta’s place in the culture; now the city is the unanimous capital of hip-hop. Where does it go next? With Heroes and Villains, Metro throws down the gauntlet while putting back on his uniform. Music didn’t need a new savior, the old one just had to return.
Metro’s origin story has been well documented, but here’s the abridged version: Growing up in St. Louis, a teenaged Metro fell in love with music and began to hone his talents as a producer and songwriter. He first caught the ear of Atlanta mavericks Gucci Mane and OJ Da Juiceman, who invited him to studio sessions that required his mom to drive him nine hours. He eventually enrolled at the prestigious Morehouse College, but dropped out once it became clear that musical success would not wait for him to finish his degree. With peers like Sonny Digital and Southside, Metro built the skeleton of a new southern hip-hop sound, giving Atlanta’s most talented rappers backdrops that turned them into chilling John Carpenter villains and extravagant millionaires, while preserving the soulfulness that has always made great music connect.
Metro says he and his peers talk about the shift going on in Atlanta, with the rising prominence of young artists such as Ken Carson and Destroy Loney and burgeoning producers like Lil 88. Many of them have now been in Metro’s orbit for years, and he’s always made a point of spending time with them in and out of the studio, like what OJ, Gucci, and Future did for him as an upstart producer. To Metro, it’s a mutually beneficial situation. They get to pick his brain, and he stays on the front lines of his adopted hometown’s next wave, something producers who reach his level of success often struggle with after a couple of years on the A-list.
“The ones that get left behind are the ones that are ignorant to that or might just be stuck in their ways like, ‘Nah, we’re the 2015 crew. We’re the superior musicheads,’” Metro says. ”Things are always gonna grow and change, so you’ve got to grow and change with it.”
In online rap discourse, there’s a palpable nostalgia for the mid-2010s Atlanta mixtape era, when artists like Future, Gucci, and Thug were releasing bold, often experimental music at a breakneck pace. Much of their best–and strangest–stuff was produced by Metro, like Future’s guttural “Radical” or Thug’s shapeshifting “Hercules.” Metro says that was the era when he went from a beatmaker to a full-fledged producer, and credits the artists he was around every day with being receptive to his ideas and criticisms. He used to even stand in the vocal booth with Gucci as he rapped. Metro’s circumstances have changed, but he still stresses the importance of working with fresh voices and the power of horizontal networking in a cultural moment where so many are looking to skip developmental steps.
“I feel like as a producer, you’ve always got to be open and receptive, looking for what’s new and what’s next and up-and-coming on the ground vs. you being a producer coming on like, ‘Yo, I gotta make a beat for Drake,’” he explains. “They’re gonna be who they’re gonna be regardless, so that don’t really prove nothing you’re doing as a producer. You can still make great songs with them, but as a producer, it’s like, what are you bringing? You’ve got to break artists, you’ve got to bring new artists. That’s a big part of your duty.”
Metro says that Heroes and Villains is his 2001, referencing Dr. Dre’s long-awaited second solo album that saw a major shift in sound, scope, and collaborators for the already legendary producer-rapper. He even thought of some of the vocalists on the record in terms of their 2001 counterparts. “I told [Don Toliver], ‘Like 2001, you’ve got the Nate Dogg role. That’s you,’” he remembers. Heroes and Villains is brimming with familiar voices (21, Future, Travis) and the new additions to the company stand out. The record opens with a soaring John Legend number, where the R&B singer acts as Metro’s proxy, proclaiming, “Know you waited a while, but I’m on time.” Canadian vocalist Mustafa the Poet shows up, and it’s the culmination of a musical relationship forged when he and Metro met through James Blake. Mustafa, who appears on the standout track, “Walk Em Down (Don’t Kill Civilians),” says he wasn’t sure what to expect when he connected with Metro in his studio, based on his experiences with other superstar producers, but Mustafa was impressed by his open-mindedness and belief in the singular talents of each artist.
“I had this prejudgment that he would be the way I met other producers where they have a presence and this idea that’s immovable, [but] he was very light. Some people go in with this fixed ego and desire to produce a song.” he says. “I think for Metro, the energy I received from him immediately was that we were going to produce whatever it is that came to us that day. It’s almost like he was a yogi.”
Besides his creative elasticity, Mustafa shares a striking story that he says “defined the beauty of Metro” for him. During one session, Mustafa brought his younger brother, an aspiring photographer, with him. He asked Metro if he could take some shots of the producer in the studio, which the producer graciously agreed to, with one stipulation: He couldn’t post any shots of Metro smoking. He knew his mother wouldn’t want him to promote something like that.
“When my little brother heard that, he was so shocked at Metro’s awareness and loyalty and care for the way his mother perceives him,” Mustafa says. “Then on my way home, he was like, ‘I just went through Metro’s [Instagram] page and there’s not a single photo or video of him smoking.’ He really has maintained that for his mother. I was like, ‘Isn’t that a beautiful thing?’”
His mother’s passing is just one of the somber elements that permeates Heroes and Villains. “There’s so many reasons why [this album is] bittersweet,” Metro says solemnly.
There are three names on the list of featured collaborators who aren’t here to celebrate its release. Young Thug and Gunna are, of course, currently incarcerated, facing a looming RICO trial alongside the rest of their YSL collective. Thug’s “Metro” tag is heard throughout the record, and his outro on the track “Metro Spider” comes off eerily prescient given his current predicament: “Bigger than the president, now my whole life a scandal,” he raps, later adding, “If anything happens, my kids got Ms so everything’s alright.” He and Gunna appear together on the album’s bonus track, “All the Money,” a palatial anthem that reminds listeners what hip-hop has been missing this year with the pair in jail.
And the final new voice on the project is easily the most poignant. Migos member Takeoff, who was killed two weeks before our interview, had been slated for a starring role on Metro’s sophomore album. Though Metro is known for his work with the group, especially Offset, he deliberately didn’t put the other two Migos members on the record, wanting to give the often underrated Takeoff a solo spotlight. He says the late rapper was originally set to appear on three songs, but after his death that had to be cut to one, the triumphant closer, “Feel The Fiyaaaah.”
With Heroes and Villains, Metro felt a sense of duty to these three, as well as his mother, who he calls “my biggest supporter and fan of my music.” (Metro was incredibly close with his mother, who died in June.) Metro says that after her death he took some time off, but was inspired by a conversation he had with his aunt. “[She] was just like, ‘Everything you’re feeling right now, you could channel that. That’s when a lot of the most impactful art and music has ever been made.’” That conversation flipped the switch for him, and Metro pushed through to finish Heroes and Villains as a testament to his loved ones.
“I was already gonna make sure anything with anybody on here is crazy, but it became more of a responsibility, like, ‘I gotta make sure I do my boys justice, even beyond music,’” he says. “These are my real brothers. I love Thug, I love Gunna, I love Take. I’ve known Take for so long, ten years, from when we were both 18. We took our first trip to L.A. together, me, Sonny Digital, Migos.”
His interest in heroes also led Metro to a heroic act of his own this summer, when the musician paid for the mortgage of the family of Aaron Salter, Jr., a Buffalo security guard who lost his life confronting a gunman during a supermarket mass shooting. Metro tried not to turn the benevolent moment into a PR opportunity (“Shit like that disgusts me”), but felt a connection to those who were grieving.
“This is while I was working on Heroes and Villains, towards the end, and seeing about the grandmas, they could’ve been my aunties, it could’ve been my mother. It’s just people in a grocery store, and then people who look like me on top of that,” he said. “Even though I look at it like he’s a hero and he’s immortal now, it still broke my heart that he left behind a son and a family.”
Metro has a myriad of projects in the works, and says he has an interest in scoring a film at some point in the future. For now, he’s judging Heroes and Villains on whether it gets the kind of alchemical response he’s felt from some of his favorite LPs. Metro has hit every goal a music producer could reasonably expect to before turning 30, and after going through his One Punch Man malaise, he’s emerged with a focus on stewardship.
“I thought about how much I love ‘70s and ‘80s music, and when people talk about the ‘70s, the ‘80s, the ‘90s, the early 2000s, they talk about the producers and people that represent all that stuff,” Metro says, adding that he doesn’t want people to look back on his era and say, “‘What was going on around 2015, 2020?, Who was the guy? Metro Boomin? Oh yeah, shit was kinda trash around then.’”
Metro isn’t talking about his own inimitable discography, which only grows deeper with the release of Heroes and Villains. Superheroes–the good ones, anyways–aren’t in it for themselves, it’s about saving the day. “As the ambassador-representative of what’s going on, I look at it like a real responsibility.”
PRODUCTION CREDITS:
Photographs by Christian Cody
Styled by Fatima B
Grooming by Kenny Williams
Hair by Priscilla Williams
Makeup by Chelsea Cotton
Tailoring by Dana Jones
Line Production by West of Ivy