{"id":6231,"date":"2025-07-02T16:08:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T21:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=6231"},"modified":"2025-11-09T19:22:03","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T00:22:03","slug":"russ-exploring-the-wilderness-of-self-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=6231","title":{"rendered":"Russ \u2014 Exploring The \u201cWilderness\u201d Of Self-Discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Russ, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, author, and actor. After eleven self-released albums, Vitale signed with Columbia Records to release his twelfth studio album and major label debut, There&#8217;s Really a Wolf (2017). Met with critical and commercial success, the album received platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and spawned his first Billboard Hot 100 entries\u2014&#8221;What They Want&#8221; and &#8220;Losin Control.&#8221; His thirteenth and fourteenth albums, Zoo (2018) and Shake the Snow Globe (2020), both peaked at number four on the Billboard 200; the latter spawned his highest-charting single, &#8220;Best on Earth&#8221; (featuring Bia). Outside of his solo career, he is a member of the Atlanta-based hip hop collective Diemon. He made his acting debut in the 2024 thriller Trap. In 2019 he published his first book, It&#8217;s All In Your Head.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_6232\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6232\" style=\"width: 700px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Music\/?p=5966\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6232\" src=\"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/WLD-Russ.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"700\" srcset=\"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/WLD-Russ.jpg 700w, http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/WLD-Russ-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/WLD-Russ-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/WLD-Russ-375x375.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-6232\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #800000;\" href=\"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Music\/?p=5966\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Stream W!LD &#8211; Russ.<\/a><\/strong><\/span> Image Courtesy Of Apple Services.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Wolves tend to pop up regularly on Russ\u2019 album art, but the creature on the cover of W!LD is something more ambiguous\u2014perhaps a kind of wolf-horse hybrid, looking wistfully over its shoulder. Breaking down the image and title of what he bills as his sixth album (though technically you could consider it his 17th) on social media, the 32-year-old rapper explained that after spending years single-mindedly focused on external success, he\u2019d grown more interested in exploring the \u201cwilderness\u201d of self-discovery.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Five years after completing his deal with Columbia Records and going fully independent, the rapper who was once known as a lightning rod for controversy seems to have chilled significantly, meditating on success, love, and his own unexpected trajectory over soulful self-produced beats. (\u201cHow\u2019d I beat the game without looking at the user guide?\u201d he marvels on the intro.) He has yet to chill on punny entendres that oscillate between cringe and brilliant, like the one he drops on \u201cGo Up\u201d: \u201cBrooks Garth\/This country\u2019s backwards.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Every product\/service is selected by editors. Products\/Services you buy through these links may earn &#8220;SMG&#8221; a commission or revenue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russ, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, author, and actor. After eleven self-released albums, Vitale signed with Columbia Records to release his twelfth studio album and major label debut, There&#8217;s Really a Wolf (2017). Met with critical and commercial success, the album received platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6233,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6234,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6231\/revisions\/6234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}