The Untold Truth Of Post Malone
Post Malone went from sleeping in a closet in a Los Angeles share house to topping the Hot 100 — and the version of the story fans think they know skips most of the good parts.
Austin Richard Post built his sound out of Guitar Hero, YouTube tutorials, and a laptop copy of Audacity long before anyone at Republic Records knew his name. Nicki Swift’s video breakdown, “The Untold Truth Of Post Malone,” walks through the stretch between his Texas upbringing and his 2018 arrival as one of the biggest names in music, and the gaps between those two points are stranger than the finished product suggests.
- Post uploaded “White Iverson” to SoundCloud in early 2015 after connecting with production duo FKi, and the track crossed a million streams fast enough to land him a deal with Republic Records.
- His 2016 debut album, Stoney, hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and produced the multi-platinum single “Congratulations.”
- His early 2018 follow-up, Beerbongs & Bentleys, delivered chart-topping records in “Rockstar” and “Psycho,” cementing the mainstream run that started with a bedroom mixtape.
A Texas Kid Raised On Everything But One Genre
Post was born on July 4, 1995, in Syracuse, New York, but he grew up in Grapevine, Texas, where his father worked concessions for the Dallas Cowboys. That job put him in earshot of an unusually wide range of music growing up, and instead of sticking to one lane, he absorbed rock, country, and hip-hop side by side. He taught himself guitar the unglamorous way — running through Guitar Hero and pulling technique off YouTube — before playing in a heavy metal group and eventually experimenting with Audacity to piece together his first mixtapes.
Dropping Out And Sleeping In A Closet
Post enrolled at Tarrant County College but lasted only six months before dropping out to chase music full time. He and a group of friends relocated to Los Angeles with no real safety net, and during that stretch he slept in a closet inside a house he shared with gaming streamers. It’s the kind of detail that gets glossed over once the hits start rolling in, but it’s the backdrop against which “White Iverson” actually got made.
White Iverson Changes Everything
Everything shifted once Post linked up with the production duo FKi to write and record “White Iverson,” which he posted to SoundCloud in early 2015. The track blew past a million streams quickly enough to get label executives calling, and Republic Records signed him not long after. By 2016, he was opening for Justin Bieber on the Purpose World Tour, a run that turned into a genuine friendship and ongoing collaborative relationship rather than a one-off support slot.
He went from a shared closet in a stranger’s house to a No. 1 album in under two years.
Stoney To Beerbongs & Bentleys
Stoney, his 2016 debut album, landed at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and featured “Congratulations,” which went on to multi-platinum status. His follow-up, 2018’s Beerbongs & Bentleys, pushed him further into the mainstream with “Rockstar” and “Psycho” both becoming chart-topping records. The jump from SoundCloud upload to back-to-back commercial hits happened fast enough that a lot of the personal history underneath it never made it into the coverage — which is exactly the gap Nicki Swift’s video and similarly detailed profiles like Musicians That Are Nothing Like They Seem try to close.
Chicken Express, Olive Garden, And A Rap Name Generator
Before any of the chart success, Post worked teenage shifts at Chicken Express, and he’s stayed loud about his genuine love for Olive Garden ever since. His industry pressures and performance anxiety in the early days were real enough to shape how he handled the sudden attention. Even his stage name has a weirdly casual origin story — he landed on “Post Malone” using an online rap name generator. These days that same guy collects designer loafers and prominent portrait tattoos, a combination that sums up the contradiction at the center of his whole persona — country-radio friendly and hip-hop credible, broke-kid roots and high-end taste, often in the same sentence. For a deeper look at how other artists’ public images diverge from their real backstories, The Untold Truth Of Lin-Manuel Miranda covers similar ground from a very different corner of the industry.
“Rockstar” spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100, and “Psycho” wasn’t far behind it on the charts — numbers that make the closet in that LA share house feel like a different lifetime entirely.
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