He calls his fans and supporters VIPs ("vampires impersonating people"), which is a bit peculiar considering that Miami's constantly radiating sun would, in theory, instantly kill any bloodsuckers, but that doesn't seem to phase Zay.
He's talking to New Times from his hotel room in Denver. He's on the road as part of this year's Grey Day Tour, supporting Denzel Curry, who has been a big part of his career.
"A lot of people always told me, 'Oh, you should write. You got a voice, word?' Then it was like crazy when Denzel said it, 'cause it's just like he wanted. I'm looking at him like, 'You one of the few people that made it out the city.'"
The encouragement from one of Carol City's finest led Zay to drop everything and begin experimenting with music as a career. He started to release music in 2018. However, it was his 2019 project Nocturnal and an appearance on Denzel's Zuu closer "P.A.T." that same year that helped put him on everyone's radar as one of South Florida's rappers to watch.
The pandemic didn't slow Zay down. In December 2020, he released the Girls Love Vampires EP and began the early stages of production for his debut album, VIP.
"The whole inspiration for the project can be traced back to an awful heartbreak. I got my heart broken, and that's where my mind was at," he says. "Then, when I had linked with Kwes Darko in 2020, that's when we started making a tracklist. That was all I could talk about, so it was all natural. We made the album originally in 2020, and then I just been working on it, adding tracks. And you know, like making it to what it is today."
"When I started making music, I wanted to give music that made people give them an extra push," Zay says.
Photo by Aaron Jackson
"When I was in high school, I was big on working out 'cause I played football, so I got accustomed to being in a weight room. And one thing that I loved was when I played good music — like high-energy music. It gave me that extra push when I'm under the bar," he explains. "When I started making music, I wanted to give music that made people give them an extra push, so it's like with those flows."
Zay's rapid-fire, high-octane flows have made him stand out in the increasingly crowded hip-hop space. And thanks to friends like Denzel, Zay has grown his audience, so much so that he gained a fan out of A$AP Rocky, who also happens to be one of the album's big features on the track "Hoodlumz."
For a quick two minutes and nine seconds, Zay, Denzel, and Rocky trade verses on a distorted, Southern hip-hop-inspired beat. The song has become a favorite in the underground, with fans clamoring for longer verses from the trio.
"The craziest part about it was me and Denzel when we first made the song," Zay shares. "I think we had both laid down maybe eight more bars on our verse, but then Rocky just randomly walked into the room while we was making a song. He had heard the song, he was like, 'Yo, this is fire. This song going crazy.' But he was like, 'Bro, I just have one suggestion: shorten your verses.' We shorten our verses because of Rocky; if Rocky would have never said nothing, it would have been a longer song."
Regardless of its length, "Hoodlumz" has only helped build more hype for Zay's debut. While some may believe that hip-hop is dead or full of industry plants, Zay had other thoughts on the state of rap.
"I won't say it's dead because it's definitely not; it's just evolving," he says. "I remember when Instagram first came out, and people were still on Facebook and Myspace. It's entirely like that."
He also notes that music seems to be coming out at a rapid rate these days when, before, audiences had to wait longer in between releases.
"I feel like the current state of music is just a drastic evolution. People are saying fast-food music, you know, because the way how it's presented and the way it's accepted in the culture nowadays, but I just feel like that's just evolution," Lay explains. "We have shorter attention spans nowadays, so that's kind of like the music kind of caters to that."
