lil2posh is reviving Chicago bop music

The first thing you notice about lil2posh are his moves. The 21-year-old Chicago rapper is lankily built and predisposed to skinny jeans and tight tees, rendering every outstretched limb and Kodak-moment pose as crisp and vivid as a classic iPod ad. Although he’s rocking eyebrow and lip piercings and wearing all black from head to toe, a stack of brightly colored bracelets (“YOU GOT THIS;” “I 3 Boobies;” a Hello Kitty watch) and his megawatt smile make posh approachable, rather than imposing.

“People are tired of all that serious, mysterious shit. We outside,” lil2posh tells me as we sit in a white SUV in Chicago’s Wicker Park. “We dancing with smiles on our faces bro, you feel me?”

A little earlier that evening, posh took the stage — sort of. Alongside friend/collaborator Thirteendegrees and burgeoning Chicago rapper kels!, posh is outside the storefront for local streetwear brand Half Evil for an ad-hoc popup performance. The trio take turns perching atop the vehicle and lipsyncing along to their hits played off a portable speaker to the thronged teenagers and 20-somethings on the sidewalk.

It’s not quite a show — when Thirteen attempts to initiate a mosh pit to his bombastic hit “Chinchilla,” a space is cleared, but nobody seems comfortable enough to throw their bodies against each other — but everyone’s excited to see the hometown up-and-comers in the flesh, eagerly asking for selfies and signatures. While he’s performing, I watch posh scoop up various fans’ iPhones (and one Nintendo 3DS), taking video after video for other people’s Instagrams and Snapchats; afterwards, he signs t-shirts and an XBox controller as his dad/manager introduces me to the artist’s mom and two younger sisters, all of whom are wearing Impact font “WE LOVE YOU POSH” merch.

But you don’t need to see lil2posh swagging out in person to understand his music’s imperative: whether guiding women around Neiman Marcus (“shopping spree”) or blitzing through an exorbitant wishlist (“want it all …”), his Autotune-soaked flows and 2013-indebted instrumentals clearly want you to cut loose and have fun.

“It’s really very Chicago-inspired, like Sicko Mobb and shit,” posh says of his throwback instrumentals. “ That whole thing was like fiestas, fefes on the block bopping and shit, dancing. I really just love that era of Chicago.”

These songs aren’t particularly serious, but occasionally reveal surprising depth of feeling. Consider March’s “I’ll be there …,” where posh tenderly reassures his bros that he has their back (“I’ll be there for my homie / cuz that’s my homie / I love you homie”), or how the plush ambient haze of “show …” tilts his delivery into a gentler register, imbuing Balmain tees and Lamborghinis with soft pathos.

“When I’m punching in, I’m thinking the first thing that comes to my head,” posh explains. “Maybe I’m sad while I’m recording, I’m going to just say exactly how I’m feeling.”

posh’s breakout April mixtape Fiesta Boy shines with that emotional clarity. The release sports a bundle of glamorous missives to fans in Norway and Brazil that range from invincible victory anthems (“supastar…”) and cheery hometown theme songs (“chicago …”) to lusher moodsetters like “show …” and “100 dollar autograph …” Throughout, posh’s melodic delivery pivots from legato to staccato at the drop of a hat; even when he’s rapping over classic beats by Ca$h Out or Chief Keef, he sounds inspired rather than insipid.

“The Fiesta Boy that I dropped was like the third version,” posh tells me. “I’m glad I did that because it allowed for Fiesta Boy to have that sound. I feel like it’s a timeless project.”

When I ask him what’s next for posh in 2025, he tells me, “I got a lot of shit coming […] I’m gonna get some singles going and then I’m gonna do an EP called Designer Boy. And then the tape I’m gonna release closer to the end of the summer — it’s gonna be called Beezy Spears.”

The FADER caught up with lil2posh to talk about modeling before rap, getting inspired by Sicko Mobb, collaborating with Thirteendegrees, and his breakout mixtape Fiesta Boy.

The FADER: You were a model before you were a rapper — what sort of modeling were you doing?

Lil2posh: At first [it] was just for little Instagram brands that I know personally. I wanted to get on some professional modelling. I had digitals and everything and I was trying out for casting calls. But then once I got my piercings they wasn’t fucking with that, so I was like, ‘fuck that shit.’

Did you have dream runway shows you wanted to do?

Yeah, I wanted to walk for Celine and Gucci, Tom Ford. I still want to do that, really.

Your first song was “Cap Flow” last summer — can you tell me a little about how that song came together?

That was a year ago. At the time I was living in this apartment in Atlanta with my roommate, he’s a producer and rapper himself [named] mac2tact. He was producing on FL [and] he started rapping, then he was like, ‘Bro you should try this shit.’ And I’m like, ‘Iunno man, Iunno know.’

So “Cap Flow” is literally me just trying some shit. I listen to a lot of old Capo from that 2012 to 2015 era, so I’m like, ‘I’m gonna come like him on this song and just pay homage, pay tribute.’ I didn’t know it was gonna receive attention like that, because I was really just doing it for fun. I posted it on Twitter, next day that shit had like 100,000 views, bro.

How do you feel your style or process have evolved the most?

Confidence for sure, because when I first started I definitely didn’t have what I needed to really do this. I feel like I have it now and like I’ve improved on my lyrical content.

And I improved on my consistency, because at first when I dropped “Cap Flow,” I didn’t drop another song after that for three, four, five months, but ever since that I’ve just been dropping. I’ve been trying to internalize, truly internalize, being an artist.

What does being an artist mean to you?

A real artist is someone who know how to take inspo. And you don’t get inspo from just other music, other people. You get inspo from just life in general. I feel like just going through life and gaining experiences, meeting new people, that helps me make my music and become my own true artist. Every time I record, I just talk about my day.

How do you feel about the memes, because I’ve seen your music posted on Reddit —

I’m not gonna lie, it was getting to me at first, cause I didn’t understand. I realized with haters though, they’re actually fans, but it’s just that they’re gonna show it in that way. But it doesn’t get to me no more because I know I like my music. I know I got hella people that like my shit. And I feel like I put too much time into my shit for people to not like it, because I mix all my own shit, record all my own shit, I do it all on my own.

Fiesta Boy is one of The FADER’s best albums of 2025 so far —

Thank y’all for that, forreal.

— I wanted to hear a little bit about the recording process and how that came together.

So it’s actually crazy, I’ve been teasing Fiesta Boy since like fucking November, bruh [laughs]. Like, I was teasing Fiesta when I had one single out.

Why was Fiesta Boy the right title?

It’s really very Chicago-inspired, like Sicko Mobb and shit. That whole thing was like fiestas, fefes on the block bopping and shit, dancing. I really just love that era of Chicago, so I was like ‘I’m just gonna call myself Fiesta Boy, and that’s gonna be the name of my album.’

I love high pitched fast rapping, I love happy melodic beats and just that sound from that era. That sound is just so good to me and I know it’s time to be brought back because I believe — another thing about art that I believe is that good art is always brought back, right? It’s just you have to do it right and you have to do it at the right time.