Ever since the dawn of hip-hop, the topic of white rappers has been a particularly contentious one. When 19 year old Matthew Peter DeLuca, aka Lil Mabu, started gaining traction in 2022 for his DD Osama assisted drill track “Throw,” discourse around cultural appropriation was inevitable—especially after the New York Post outed him as a student at Collegiate, a $60,000-a-year Upper West Side prep school.

Mabu now attends Emory University in Atlanta—but says he’s still devoted to the music. “This hip-hop shit is everything to me,” he told GQ from his Emory dorm room. “I eat it, I sleep it, I live it. The artists I rock with are actually my friends. I get why people have this misconception that I’m here to profit and run, but that’s wrong.” He credits

growing up in NYC and his familial roots in Brooklyn (Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge), for his admiration of hip-hop. “If this shit didn’t mean anything to me, I could have cashed out after my first single and left it there, but I’ll be here for a very long time.”