Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Rich The Mack. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Rich, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

A big risk I had to take during my adolescence was dropping everything to pursue music. Back in 2017 I was fresh off of playing sports at my school and fresh off of an injury- two things that don’t combine well at all. I spent most of my time training or practicing to get better at football, track, etc however things didn’t play out the way I expected them to. While my love for sports was at an all time high- so was my brand new love for writing & listening music. Because of this, I was very conflicted between the two and this created an internal conflict inside of me on wondering what to do with my life. Either Plan A: get a scholarship from playing sports, go to college and live out the rest of my life as an accountant, or Plan B: begin to harness all of my energy into music and try to make a living off of that. Well, without even getting a chance to consider, a career-ending injury made that decision for me. After breaking my shoulder and tearing my rotator cuff during football practice, all my plans of getting a scholarship from sports went right down the drain. I was forced to quit the team and started investing all of my time into writing and studying music, hoping that it would take me somewhere in due time.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Incase you haven’t heard of me before, or you haven’t seen the title already, I go by the name of Rich The Mack. I wasn’t always named that, though. It took a lot of trial and error before I found my true calling and the origin of my name actually dates back to the very beginning of my music career. The stage name ‘Rich The Mack’ is actually a nod to one of my favorite rappers/musicians ever, Biggie Smalls. It’s something I created to pay tribute to him because he’s the one who inspired me to begin writing and creating music. When I began to start diving into the music industry, I realized I needed an internet alias to go by to sound “cool” (at least in my mind.) Searching to and fro for inspiration & ideas, I eventually ended up going by “@TheMackTheDon” because it was a reference to a Biggie Smalls song titled ‘Macs and Dons.’ Now, at the time, I had no clue what a “Don” was. Until I looked it up, I thought it was just another way of calling somebody a player (which is far beyond what it actually means.) When I finally realized what it meant, I took the “Don” out of the @ handle and was stuck with just “@TheMack.” Obviously, I realized how plain the name was. So all I did was just add “Rich” and the beginning and “@RichTheMack” was born!

From there, I took a lot of time out to study music and figure out where I belonged. I didn’t want to step into territory where I knew I wasn’t allowed and I also didn’t want to jump blindly into something I just wasn’t good at. I spent a few years practicing my craft, and when I was finally ready, I began working on my debut mixtape titled ‘Underdog.’ I ended up spending 2 years working on the project with producer/engineer Marcus Hill and it featured local artists Lil Douzy, Tedy Andreas, Grace Sorensen, Billboard Baba and Stylxst. Before it released I did a whole marketing campaign for it and I even filmed a mini-documentary with one of my close friends Eric Hernandez of Essentially RIcch! Needless to say, it all paid off. 60,000 streams later and I’m still super proud of how much I’ve accomplished in so little time. Putting Austin, Texas on the map is one of my lifelong goals and I know the more the city expands, the more it’s going to need a voice for the people living there. I want to be the voice of the next generation and I know although it’ll take a lot of time and effort, I’ll get there eventually. On May 1st I released my first ever music video with ‘Out the Way’ and was met with some amazing feedback (Shoutout to Dan2TheL for making it possible!) This ended up inspiring me and I wrote & recorded my debut single ‘Save Your Soul’ right after the video for ‘Out the Way’ released. I dropped the song on July 7th and released the music video for it right after on July 10th. People were absolutely amazed by how cinematic it was and how different the approach to the song was (compared to everything else on my last project.) I’ve taken a lot of time out to perfect my craft since ‘Underdog (Deluxe)’ released and all I’m gonna say is the approach on my next album is going to be phenomenal.. just wait on it.

How did you build your audience on social media?

My advice to anyone trying to build an audience, fanbase, etc is to just be you! People appreciate authenticity, people appreciate someone who keeps it real. If you spend your whole life trying to chase and live out a lifestyle that isn’t you, then people are going to find out eventually one way or another. Just be the greatest version of you that you can be! The reason that I know that is because I was once the same way. I used to portray a life that obviously didn’t fit me and people didn’t appreciate it at all. Once I learned to become vulnerable with my audience and show who I truly was. people started to resonate with me. All it takes is that one small connection for you to build up off of and you have a whole group of people waiting to discover somebody like you.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My long-term goal doesn’t really exist right now, but I would like to be the voice of a generation. All my life I’ve spent most of my time bottling up emotions and feelings.. that hindered so much of my creative journey without even knowing. Comprehending and realizing that I CAN be the voice of reason for people who feel lost and stuck in life like how I once was, drives me to create content to help them relate to my journey. I make music for people to resonate with and discover who they truly are.     

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/richthemack/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/richthemack
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@richthemack1
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/624iwtdvXl8ffNEjAn5pyC?si=r_tAdrJCRUmHcIPhQkrS6w
• Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/rich-the-mack/1664658205