via the artist
“I fuck with corny stuff,” Showjoe says at The FADER offices a week ahead of the release of his latest album Yuni. With his multi-color hair and plush gorilla Jeremy Scott Adidas, the Reston, Virginia-raised rapper-producer commands attention from head to toe. “What I like about those people is that they accept that they’re a certain type of way,” he continues. “It’s more so about being proud of who you are. I think that’s the thing right now: people don't like who they are.”
Showjoe doesn’t have that problem. Though you might not know his name, you’ve likely been exposed to his handiwork: a key collaborator and manager for Molly Santana, he executive produced her 2025 album Molly & Her Week of Wonders. Santana, of course, recently notched new chart peaks thanks to a casual collaboration with Drake and Future on “Ran To Atlanta” off ICEMAN, and Showjoe has been producing most of her recent snippets, including an electrifying flip of “Gotta Have It” by Kanye and JAY Z that’s earned North West’s stamp of approval (she's a big fan of both artists).
Showjoe’s been happy to play in the background, but more recently he’s been stepping into the limelight. Last summer he released Woke Up Neon; and on May 17 he dropped Yuni, a technicolor nu-digicore album with self-production that reminds me of Cashmere Cat and Slayr at their most sugary. On the record, his flow is clearly indebted to Lil Uzi Vert, but his melodic choices, instrumental flourishes, and uplifting, motivational raps form a refreshingly distinct blend.
Can an album of club-focused bangers solve a generational self-esteem crisis? Probably not, but that’s the goal for Showjoe, whose two brothers are seven and 10 years younger than him. For an older sibling, the algorithmic war on our individuality and attention is deeply personal. As much as he infuses style and flash into his EDM-meets-hip-hop jams like “2012 Neon” and “Silly Bandz,” he also takes the time to elaborate on his philosophies about life. “You so young in this world, don’t let the time pass you by / If you keep wasting / all your days online / you gon wake up one day, forget your whole life,” he raps on “Living 2 Die.”
“What if I could make a song that's telling a kid like what to do or what not to do? This would be a song I play for them,” Showjoe says of writing the track. “It's actually funny cause that's North [West]'s favorite song from when I sent her a bunch of songs. She probably don't even know that I made it with her and my brother in mind because they're the same age.”
If Showjoe sounds like he’s preaching, it’s because he knows that nobody chooses to be shy or unsure of themselves. From his estimation, it’s the world that we live in that pushes people into feeling stuck. “That's kind of what the whole brainrot era is about – you're not supposed to know what's going on.”
Showjoe grew up outside of the nation’s capital, the eldest son of a Liberian father and a white mother. Born Joseph Dagbe, he describes the suburban area of Reston, VA, he grew up in as “copy-paste,” where everyone follows a very simple blueprint: get good grades and play sports, then find a white collar job. Deviating from that playbook meant, “you’re really, really an outcast,” he says.
Well-liked by his teachers and classmates alike, Showjoe got good grades and excelled at sports, starting varsity in both basketball and football for most of his high school career. Checking off the “blueprint” gave him the confidence to briefly explore theater in the ninth grade, then to dip into music around his junior year of high school. A beatpack from none other than Supah Mario led to his first taste of viral success: he made and uploaded “Batman & Robin” in 2021, which set labels calling and proved to Showjoe that his passion for music could be more than a personal hobby.
Showjoe’s stellar athletic performance in high school earned him a Division 1 scholarship to Long Island University, where he maintained a grueling workout schedule while recording music in his spare time. It was around this time he met KhanKlips, a videographer who went from filming Showjoe’s highlight reels in college to a full-fledged creative partner and manager. Khan now manages his career in addition to helping with creative work for Molly Santana, though the trio work more like friends.
When they stopped by The FADER offices the week after the release of ICEMAN, Showjoe told me that three songs for YUNI were still unfinished even though it was set to drop in seven days: they’d been so focused on maximizing Santana’s moment with “Ran to Atlanta,” he hadn’t yet found time to get in the studio and fine-tune the mixes.
“This is the album I produced the most for myself. Usually it’d be hard for me to produce my own stuff because I’ll just keep tweaking it and tweaking it,” he says. “There’s a lot of people who will say, ‘I’m so OD about my craft,’ but it’s not even about that. I just enjoy making songs so much, I never want to stop working on it, because I enjoy making the song more than whatever comes from the process.”
I believe him wholeheartedly. One of those unfinished “songs” he declined to play for us at The FADER offices was actually a 19-minute mix. Taken alongside the indulgent nine-minute sprawl of “Liberian Boy,” it could seem as though Showjoe lacks restraint or an editor, but these gestures are an intentional part of a larger artistic ethos, rough around the edges but authentic and raw.
“Sometimes my act looks like it’s falling apart,” he admits, comparing his occasionally chaotic public image to a unicycle with the wheel about to fall off. But right now, it’s looking kinda nice. He just got a photo with Drake, and is on a roll producing for Santana; from the outside looking in, it seems Showjoe is on the upswing. “It's all about what you present,” he says. “You have to do everything. And you have to do everything a 100,000%, every time.”
