ROUX'S DEBUT SINGLE "WOAH" HITS 1K STREAMS
Written by Andrew Mason
November 15th, 2024
New Los Angeles' artist Roux released his first official single — "Woah" — this past October, reaching 1,000 streams on Spotify in less than two weeks. Roux is a rebranded singer/rapper that evolved from the same creative team behind UNDRGRND Magazine Issue 10 artist, Maliek Miller.
With Maliek Miller on indefinite music hiatus, Roux is off and running. Your first official drop is your first message to the game. Your introduction to the space of hip-hop, and to the community you hope to one day build behind you.
"'Woah' shows the whole complexity of what Roux is," Roux says. "It has that saucy lyricism, mixed with a sort of slurry RnB/rap flavor."
The debut track was produced by K Lotto, a friend Roux met while attending Harris Institute in Toronto, Canada. The two had collabed previously, most notably on "3:45AM Freestyle" during the Maliek Miller era.
"'3:45AM Freestyle' was my Toronto anthem," Roux says. "It was one of the songs I released while living out there.”
The visual elements behind the track are all on point. The cover art — a silhouetted Roux looking out over the Los Angeles night — was designed by Andrew Mason of UNDRGRND Magazine.
Most impressive is the music video, shot by Thurgood Hines of WeTheCollective at CasLA/WTC Studios in Los Angeles. The video purposefully hides Roux's face for the majority of the time, only to expose his identity towards the end of the video — a vision Roux wanted as a visual introduction of this new character.
"The music video was a 'tester shot' for the concept of Roux," he says. "It's simple. I'm in the hat, the hood, but the little bit that you see of me, people start smiling. It took them so long to catch a glimpse of who it really is. That's the draw."
Even at UNDRGRND Magazine, it's rare for us to document an artist from literally his or her first release. We've known Roux since late 2023, and now it's clear that he's prepared to share his music and messages with an audience — new image and all.
Roux tells us his next drop will be titled "Anything Goes" a "sweet and sincere" song that was written out of a difficult situation. The song is set to drop on November 25th, 2024.
Photos by Brian Ticas
