Larry June is re-energising the rap game

Larry June’s health-giving blend of aspirational bars and lifestyle hacks have turned him into something of a life coach for hip-hop heads

Bathed in rays of natural light glimmering through the floor-to-ceiling windows of his San Francisco apartment, Larry June wants to show me something. Over Zoom, he flips his phone camera so I can see from his perspective. I watch his tattooed hand as it points directly at an object that has taken on an outsized significance within his fanbase. June is showing me his touchscreen toaster. Previously referenced to great curiosity during the outro for 2021’s Gas Station Run, June keeps one in each of his homes.

Of course, aspirational rhymes are nothing new in the world of rap. Conspicuous consumption has been a significant thread in the tapestry of the genre for decades. But with June, it truly feels as if he’s only rapping about this stuff to enlighten us about the possibilities of an organised life – what things could be like if we just follow his example. “Start a corporation and bet on yourself every time/ Put ‘em on payroll, make sure your taxes right,” he raps on Turkish Cotton, a track with the Alchemist. He shows the steps instead of merely skipping to the payoff.

In a mellifluous baritone that is at once unhurried, languid and determined, June raps and sings about deals, real estate, passive income, fine art and exotic cars over sumptuous soul beats and head-knocking Mobb Music. He can rap about spending a thousand dollars on candles with enough authority to make it sound like a decent investment. The enticing specificity of his weirdly relatable boasts has turned him into something of a life coach for hip-hop heads. In the words of one X user: “My man be making the smoothest and/or hardest songs about personal responsibility, health and running errands.”

“It was literally organic. There was no media plan behind it,” June says. Before our conversation, he had spent the day participating in a Golden State Warriors media day, playing games and posing for photos with Steph Curry. Such are the perks of being arguably the hottest rapper in the Bay Area. He’s still rocking an NBA-branded game towel around his neck for the duration of our video call. “It wasn’t a team of people saying, ‘Hey, you need to talk about this.’ It literally was just in my brain, and just things that I was into.” The line between Larry June the rapper and Larry June the person is razor-thin. He punctuates his sentences with “Tee-hee!” or “Sock it to me!” – his normal speech mirroring his rap style. 

“I heard Curren$y in an interview a long time ago,” he says, reflecting on his easygoing openness. “He was rapping about this and that, and when he sat back and just really did him, that’s when it went up. And I kind of took that motto a little bit like, ‘Man, let me sit back and [ask]: What do June be doing?’” A day in the life of Larry June is perfectly outlined on Cleaning My Spot (Interlude) from his latest album, Doing It for Me. June picks out rims for his coupe, loads his gun, walks through his garden, cleans his house, consumes no fewer than two hot beverages, takes a nap, counts his money, chops up some fruit, and considers booking a flight to Malaysia. Written as a list, it sounds mundane, but there’s a meditative quality to hearing June rap it out loud over a smooth jazz instrumental with chirping seagulls in the distance.

Initially signing with Warner Bros Records for a couple of EPs in the early 2010s, June and the label parted ways after years of him being stuck on the shelf. Since then, June’s productivity has built him a dependable fanbase who resonate with his strand of authentic motivational music. He’s dropped no fewer than 13 releases since 2020, including last year’s instant-classic collaboration with the Alchemist, The Great Escape, and 2024’s Doing It for Me. Like Roc Marciano and Freddie Gibbs before him, the independent hustle has brought June incredible success and total creative freedom. “When you know that you can do whatever the fuck you want to do, and you comfortable in your own space without having to run about labels and have all these group meetings, you just feel comfortable on the mic,” June says. “Who gives a fuck if it don’t do numbers? Who cares? I’m just making some music that I would like to make.”

Larry June’s music – like his healthy lifestyle – feels distinctly Californian, blending the nonchalance of Dom Kennedy and the determination of Nipsey Hussle with the directness of Too Short. He’s previously cited loquacious Bay Area legends Mac Dre and E-40 as influences. His father was a part-time rapper himself, a super-smooth hustler with a muscle car collection. June and his family lived in Bayview-Hunters Point, a prominently African-American neighbourhood. After spending almost a decade of his childhood in Atlanta, he moved back to San Francisco at the age of 14, before dropping out of high school and splitting his time between street hustling and recording. The ceaseless work ethic he has displayed in his release schedule was there from the start, back when he would be selling CDs and handing out flyers in the mall as a child, and teaching himself how to record and make beats. He’d sell orange juice, albums and merch out of the trunk of his car at his shows. The hard work started to pay off. “I did music for years, like 15 years, and didn’t make a dime,” June says. “So when you start seeing that’s actually working, I’m making money off something that I love. That’s why one of my songs, I said, ‘You got to treat it like a job if you want to make some money with this.’”

Nowadays, moral hand-wringing about rap music’s negative influence on listeners feels like a dead-end argument. Still, it’s hard not to notice when a rapper is so pathologically focused on wellness and positivity. “I started going to Whole Foods at a young age, everything was kind of healthy there and shit,” June says. “And my pops was into the health shit too, and then diabetes runs in my family as well.” Arguably the most well-hydrated rapper in the game, you could easily stock an Erewhon with the beverages mentioned in June’s songs, from oolong tea to sea moss juice. He even has his own bubble tea shop called Honeybear Boba in San Francisco. In his music, alcohol is rare and lean isn’t on the menu. “I feel like I’m not putting that bullshit in my body. I probably have, like, five juices a day.” What’s he sipping on these days? Pristine water that comes from “a private spring. The water got no kind of chemicals. They only touch the glass.” 

The only rapper who has a chain with his name in the same font as the Whole Foods logo, June ends all of his Instagram captions with an orange emoji. This citrus fruit has become a recurring symbol for June, featuring prominently in his music, visual iconography and clothing label, Midnight Organic. The online store for his brand even features an incense holder in the form of an anthropomorphic orange with shades and sneakers on. “As I got older, I just wanted to incorporate my own life, like my real, real life, into the music. I mix it with the street too, but I toss some orange juice in there, you know what I’m saying? I always thought my life was cool, so it’s just me, just rapping about my day-to-day.”

Relatability has been a bugaboo for rappers since time immemorial. In previous decades, hip-hop fans longed for larger-than-life street tales that were as far removed from their own lives as possible, grasping at occasional strands of familiarity to keep them connected. Gangsta rap in the 1990s was homologous to gangster movies and rooting for the villain became a pastime. But now, in the solipsistic social media age, more listeners want to see themselves in the art they listen to and Larry June has become their smoothie-drinking avatar. Peruse through the social media replies on a post about Larry June and you’ll encounter folks who have started putting cucumbers in their water and seriously considered buying a touchscreen toaster after luxuriating in his soundworld. June has even made cycling look cool, unafraid to suit up in full mountain biking attire (helmet included) on his Instagram.

“I think a lot of people are not happy with themselves or comfortable with themselves to talk about the things that they actually do. I don’t give a fuck if people say it’s corny, or I just farted on an Instagram Story – I don’t give a fuck, n*ggas fart every day, B. I give no fucks,” June exclaims. “I wake up in the morning and do what the fuck I want to do, like period. And that’s one thing about me. You can look at me how you want to look at me. You can say what you want to say. It’s only one me, it’s only one you, and that’s the only thing that makes us cool. What else makes us stand out? We all human.”