The power to change the world: The oral history of “Look at Wrist”

Atlanta was bubbling over in the summer of 2014. Established legends like Gucci Mane were passing the torch to the next generation of rappers — Future, Young Thug, Migos, Rich Homie Quan — who sounded very little like their predecessors, embracing an infectiously melodic strain of trap. Founded on the beats of ascendant superproducers like Metro Boomin, Mike Will, and Sonny Digital, the sound would soon be imitated ad infinitum across the globe.

Meanwhile, in an unassuming East Atlanta condo complex colloquially dubbed the Barrio, something different was brewing. In a trashed apartment leased by a charismatic figure operating under the name Father, Awful Records — a crew of rappers, producers, and videographers founded at the turn of the 2010s — were making weird songs with minimalist yet irresistible beats and off-kilter, tongue-in-cheek bars.

A few blocks away, deep-voiced MC KEY! and his Two-9 crew were also on the rise, armed with a Mike Will cosign. ILoveMakonnen, a rogue crooner with a Seussical delivery, a popping YouTube channel, and an interview blog called The Newness was exploding onto the scene, floating around the city between the studios of major producers and the all-night barbecues of scrappier crews like Awful and Two-9.

It was at one such Barrio cookout where Father, Makonnen, and KEY! first came together. The Awful crew were filming the video for “Nokia,” a hard-hitting, money-calling, flip-phone-toting Father track that Makonnen had jumped on a couple of weeks earlier, marking their first viral collaboration.

Later that summer, Makonnen and KEY! were sitting in Father’s apartment and unofficial Awful crash pad, rapping over a track he’d laid down a few days prior. The song’s simple premise — the wrist as a vehicle for both jewelry wearing and crack cooking — was laid out simply (“Wrist, wrist, wrist, wrist, wrist, wrist / I want my wrist so cold pneumonia in my fist / Wrist, wrist, wrist, wrist, wrist, wrist / Never had to whip a brick, but I get the gist”) over an even simpler bass-and-drum beat.

As the story goes, the two guests finished their verses, and Awful producer/videographer 019dexter (who lived with Father and happened to be home at the time) started filming; the video was done in one take. It blew up immediately after they posted it later that day, bursting open the doors to a world Makonnen was already starting to experience but his two collaborators had only dreamed of.

“Look at Wrist” contains multitudes. It’s an incredible turnup song, its barest-bones bass-drum structure sharpened like a skeleton key to lock away your nagging prefrontal cortex. That part of the brain is sealed off for just under four minutes, each repetition of the word “wrist” another brick in the wall. Then there’s that laser-beam, doppler-radar, game-over, powering-down synth, a Pavlovian trigger to start jumping around and whipping your wrist in circles.

But “Wrist” isn’t just a party track. Its spontaneity and immediately apparent authenticity, from Makonnen and KEY!’s one-take verses to Dexter’s one-shot video, are codes that the industry, for all its trying, still hasn’t cracked. “Look At Wrist” gave the entire world an unvarnished glimpse into a simmering rap subculture as it began to boil; unless you read the right blogs, such glimpses were rare (and hardly ever went as viral). The song’s organic reach and rapturous reception epitomized hip-hop’s SoundCloud era, where anything seemed possible for a driven artist with a novel vision.

The next two years were a tornado for everyone involved: Makonnen’s rise went galactic after his buzzy club track “Tuesday” got a coveted Drake remix, earning him a deal with OVO. Father and Awful’s ascent also accelerated, taking them across the country and getting them in rooms with big labels. In late October, roughly months after the release of “Look at Wrist,” they performed it as a massive, shouting crew at FADER Fort in Brooklyn. Mary J. Blige played next.

As with most fast fame, though, theirs proved ephemeral. For Father and KEY!, the momentum simply stalled as the blogs moved on to the next hot discovery and years of nonstop partying took its toll. A short-lived Awful-RCA partnership fizzled after only two Father releases, the excellent 2018 LP Awful Swim and its follow-up EP, Hu$band.

Makonnen’s career, which looked the brightest of all, was derailed by a messy breakup with OVO. The following year, he came out as gay, and the rap industry’s endemic homophobia reared its ugly head.

Father, Makonnen, and KEY! have collectively released a dozen-odd albums, mixtapes, and EPs since 2017, some of them great. Each artist has aged gracefully: Father now has two sons, aged four and one, with Ash Romero, his romantic and business partner of more than 10 years. KEY! has been learning about other sides of the music industry, exploring A&R and artist development. Makonnen lives in Portland and has returned to his roots in the visual arts. Last week, he announced he was “retiring ilovemakonnen” and that his latest song, “Heavy in the Streets,” would be his last.

The promise of megastardom that followed the success of “Look at Wrist” and the whirlwind summer of 2014 didn’t pan out for the song’s creators, but the track still hits just as hard now as it did then. In honor of its 10th anniversary, here’s the story of “Look at Wrist,” as told by everyone involved.

Father: It was in the Bouldercrest area, around where Gucci came up. Me and my girl moved over there winter 2013. We were pretty isolated for a good minute, but when it started to get towards spring, everybody started slowly packing in.

Dexter: It was crazy. People were there every day, in and out.

Father: There’s shit I would let slide back then that I’d probably kill somebody for now. If somebody disrespected my home now the way they did back then, I’d stab them. Dumping blunt guts straight on carpet. Somebody gonna clean it up? Who gives a fuck? Whole crib smoked the fuck out. We didn’t have gas for like nine months; no heat, no hot water. They cut it, and I just never bothered to get it back on. We were taking showers with water heated up on a fucking hot plate. It was so bummy.

Dexter: Nobody really had jobs. Everybody was just doing music then.

Father: It goes back to Dexter: He showed us this dude Makonnen when he was just putting shit up on YouTube — on the keys, singing. I used to throw this party called Shade, and we were like, “Man, we should have this guy come.” He was very mysterious, didn’t talk too much. It might not have even been the winter — it might’ve been hot — but had a big furry Russian hat on. We were like, “God, this guy’s kooky as hell. This is so cool.” We didn’t see him again for a year and a half.

Makonnen: I met KEY! at a Two-9 show I was at with [fellow Two-9 rapper] Curtis [Williams]. It was one of my first times out — I was still on probation back then. I wasn’t fully on house arrest, but I still needed to be inside after my curfew. KEY! was so excited and loud, telling everybody about me like I was some big star or something. I hadn’t even linked with any official producers then. It was just weird music, at-home-on-my-keyboard-type shit, dropping every fucking weekend because ain’t nothing else to do. I was just putting it on SoundCloud, back when it was fun to just give people free art.

Father: Next thing you know, we see Makonnen pop up on Twitter with Metro Boomin, Sonny Digital. [When we first heard him], we’d be like, “Man, it’d be so hard if this shit had Atlanta-type drums on it,” so I’m like, “Oh, fuck. That’s exactly what I wanted.” The music was going, and he was so sure of himself. Back then, we all had that feeling: “I know it’s finna happen.” You could feel it in your gut.

Makonnen: In Atlanta hip-hop, it was a lot of crew-ness: “You had to stick to this group or that group, and you can’t fuck with that group or this group.” The group I lived with was myself. I’d visit all these people, network. That’s how you get to see who’s really doing what, who’s making it and who’s faking it. When I’d visit all these other crews, I had to move on different times. Usually it was drug time because that was the most non-questionable place to be. When I got [to the Barrio], of course there was some drugs, but they were doing art. I’m seeing different communities that do drugs: queer people, work people; these people, those people. It was very divergent. I was like, “This the real shit. This is outside.”

Dexter: I could hear the bass from across the hall. Father had these two big-ass speakers in there, four feet tall.

Father: I had the beat and the first couple bars (“She said she didn’t wanna keep it (Ooh, look at God) / Guess that’ll be our little secret”). I was gonna go down that path, like, “Oh, man. Look at this terrible, great shit. Ooh, she didn’t wanna keep the baby!” My girl heard that first line and was like, “Stop right now and do not continue making that song.”

Ash Romero: [It] immediately prompted an argument because WHO didn’t want to keep WHAT? As his girlfriend, I knew I wasn’t the person in question, so I was trying to get down to the bottom of it. He said, “It’s provocative and adds shock value,” which sounded like a lie.

Father: I put the verse and the hook together, and then I got stuck, like, “Where the fuck am I going with this?” That’s when Makonnen came and laid down his bit. And then he was like, “You know how you can finish this? KEY!’s gonna come over.”

KEY!: By the time I got there, it was easy. I did my verse and Makonnen did his verse. That shit probably took like three minutes. I was just feeding off what was around me, and Makonnen wasn’t writing at all.

Father: Makonnen wasn’t writing or punching in. Any time we worked on any music, I’d have to stretch the beat dumbass long because he’d go for like six, seven minutes off top. Words just flowed out, no major pauses or anything. How the fuck do you do that? Same with KEY! There’s no writing, no notes. It’s all a flow of consciousness for both of them.

Makonnen: That’s just how I make music. And [at the Barrio], things just flowed.

Father: I think it was Makonnen who said we should shoot the video right there.

Makonnen: That’s what I was on at that time: “We gotta do it now. No time to wait.” I was on probation, on stop, so it was time to fucking go.

Dexter: It was spontaneous. Richposlim had a treatment for it, but I had a thing with one-shot videos at the time. I told Father, “Let’s start off in your room with you listening to the beat. KEY! and Makonnen are in the living room, so we’ll just walk out there and they’ll do their verses.” That’s just where everyone was sitting at the time. It wasn’t planned at all.

Makonnen: We were just hanging out on the couch. I’m like, “Y’all shooting that shit? Bet. Lemme see the little dollars I got in my pocket.” It’s hot as fuck, so I’m in the tank top.

Ash: One day I came home from work after our initial convo to find him editing a music video. I was thoroughly confused and asked when he had the time to shoot a music video for an unfinished song I just heard. He said, “Oh yeah, Makonnen and KEY! came over earlier and recorded verses, and we shot a video, and they dipped…” I still think it’s funny that no one really knew the words in the video ’cause they filmed it on the spot.

Makonnen: We just us. We authentic. We not lying. People be thinking this shit is all scripted and we be sitting out here writing this shit up, tryna get people to like us. Other artists would rent out a neighborhood to shoot a video. They’re tryna sell that lifestyle of what people would consider hood or poverty, but that was where we really was. Father really lived in the Barrio. KEY! and them really had the sticks on ’em. We was broke and doing us. We did the song, put it out, and had a show two or three days later. We played that song together, and the whole crowd went off. They already knew it.

Makonnen: I would stay [at the Barrio] till two, three in the morning, doing shrooms, making songs, having fun, vibing, just having-no-money-type shit. We literally had the best time ever. You can’t even pay for it. All of a sudden, we in New York, playing FADER Fort. Like, “Look at us. We were just 2 for $5 on the Checker burger. Now they got us up here on the stage, and we rocking this bitch.” We came from the Barrio to the fucking Bowery.

KEY!: “Wrist” opened the doors for a lot. Me and Makonnen went on tour immediately afterwards. It was a catapult, a fucking tornado, a storm full of music we made. It’s gonna be hard to duplicate a time like that.

Father: We all got busier. I was gearing up the crew, and the crew was starting to become Father and the crew. The focus became getting us bigger. By that point, Makonnen was with OVO, so I would see him more for big shows, crossover shit, mostly in New York, but it wasn’t as frequent. It was a really fast and fun summer. By winter, it got insane. There was a lot of drugs. You can look at some of the videos from that time and watch them becoming progressively darker. 2015 was an evil year.

Father: Sometimes the thought pops into my head: “If I could travel back in time, I’d tell myself to do this or that.” Mostly, it’s just, “Make sure you set aside a big, fat bag of money for yourself.” I do wish I’d done more collaborations while we were always together. We had so much opportunity, and things would slip through the cracks.

KEY!: I’ve been the victim of a lot of money going missing and people not doing right by me. Being young and how I was, I wasn’t aware of what was going on. I never got any money for “Wrist” — still, to this day. I could’ve, but I missed that opportunity. I got into the mindset of, “Damn, somebody’s doing me wrong,” but I didn’t know who it was, so I just shot at everybody. To this day, I can’t really tell you what happened. That shit is embarrassing, and I take full responsibility for being ignorant. I love Father and all them.

Father: We’ve been cool for some years now. I feel like the lawyers figured that shit out. We were all just fucking ramped up back then. Any kind of animosity, we immediately drove that shit further. It was just like, “Oh, word? It’s fuck me? Well, fuck you!” Simple shit that you probably could’ve resolved with a quick call became way deeper. lt was just 20-year-olds being mad, trivial as fuck. I’m in my 30s now, and it’s great. It’s like a weight lifts off you: “What was any of that about the past 10 years? Why did all that shit feel so serious?”

KEY!: Right now, it’s a lot of money being made, and I feel like that overshadows the art, so it’s a lot of bullshit-ass music right now. When someone new arrives and takes it to another level again, it’s gonna be hard for the people who are bullshitting to keep up with that.

Makonnen: Awful was always cool. At the end of the day, we made music and art over here. You could be yourself, but none of our relationships, friendships, music-ships were sexualized. The overly sexualized sexuality thing that’s going on wasn’t a thing there. That started when I went into the industry. That’s why I came out [when I did].

Since [then], we’ve seen a lot of things happen in the industry that wouldn’t fly in 2014. Lil Nas X is an industry answer to an authentic person coming out as gay. They prop his image up to make us think that’s what a Black gay person from Atlanta looks like. Lil Nas X in the pink sex suit is gay, so these dudes in the basketball jerseys and braids and shit can’t be gay. It’s manufactured meme shit and direct misdirection: “This is what’s gay. This is what’s good. This is what’s street. This is what’s hard.” Go outside and see what’s really going on.

If I could go back and do it different, I would not let all these people come around and use me and my friends for their own gains. None of them cared about us, really.

“Wrist” was proof that we don’t need the industry: You don’t need a whole bunch of equipment. You don’t need the biggest videographer to come through and film shit. You just need to be authentic, and all the other people who are out there doing that too will gravitate towards it.

The power is when we all sing “Wrist” and everybody puts their fist up. The power to change the world is right here in your wrist.