How prettifun locked in for Pretti Loves U 2

“Sometimes I'm trying to make the perfect shit, and there's n***as out here blowing up bigger than me because they just keep dropping,” says prettifun. “Even if you can't perfect how it sounds sonically, you can perfect the moment in which it came out.”

That isn’t to say the 21-year-old from North Carolina has gotten any less meticulous about his music. When the post-rage rapper stopped by The FADER offices in mid-June, he’d just released “Nobody,” the delirious second offering from his fifth album Pretti Loves U 2, complete with an outro that flowed neatly into lead single “Moon and the Stars.” Barely two months later, he’d reuploaded both songs with new transitions in preparation for the album’s final release, pushed back from August 1 (his birthday) to August 21 because it was, “just not good enough.”

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prettifun’s fastidious attention to detail can be frustrating for his fans, but the long wait between drops likely doesn’t come as a surprise considering the wait for his preceding full length. Last year’s Funhouse Deluxe was similarly worth the wait, ranking in The FADER’s Top 5 albums of 2025 thanks to prettifun’s extra-melodic spin on rage rap and his nuanced introspection. Soon after its release, pretti began teasing a new mixtape titled You Can Die Laughing, but says his music wasn’t living up to the lofty themes he envisioned for the project. That eventually led him to postpone the record, though he assures me it’ll come out one day (close friend and collaborator ezcodylee is helping executive produce).

Pretti Loves U 2 presents a natural sequel to Funhouse Deluxe, a chipper blend of influences from Pi’erre Bourne and Lil Uzi Vert to Gorillaz and Daft Punk. But prettifun’s self-produced latest refines the nu-digicore vision of its predecessor, beats and bars honed until they hit just right. So prettifun enthusiastically bounces off an elastic topline on mid-album cut “Jus Me” and weaves through the glitchy grooves and stunlocking bass of “wtf idk” without breaking a sweat. Meanwhile early standout “Steps” features an undeniably catchy four-on-the-floor beat, but prettifun’s verses are anything but breezy: “I don’t wanna clique with these rappers, these n***as pedos and weird / I opened up a new chapter, going back my only fear.”

The FADER sat down with prettifun to talk about feeling stuck with rage music, postponing You Can Die Laughing, and finding his creative spark again with Pretti Loves U 2.

The FADER: When you think about what was lacking with YCDL, what was the thing that was like, "Actually, even though I've put out these singles, even though I've said I want to put out this tape, it's not going to come out right?"

prettifun: You gotta be able to recognize when it's a mindset thing. My mindset and how I was thinking about music at that time wouldn't have allowed me to complete You Could Die Laughing in a way that would have been a cohesive project. I still had done a bunch of concepts for You Could Die Laughing, and a bunch of storyboarding, since it's based around Dante's Inferno.

But I felt like the music was lacking in comparison to the artistic vision that I had for it. My original idea and thought with You Could Die Laughing was I wanted to make a darker version of Astroworld with my own twist and influences, with the rage shit dumped into it. But at that point, I had gotten tired of just making rage. Hopping on those type of beats, it started to kind of numb my brain. And that's not even a diss to the sound itself – it was really 'cause I burned myself out on it.

I stuck myself in that sound for too long, and that’s why I had to just scrap that shit and go straight to pretti loves you 2, 'cause I needed a change! That's really what I mean by You Could Die Laughing would have been ass. The artistic vision was too grand at the time for what my brain could have really handled. I’ll even say that was the one time that I'd ever felt like the visual artists were outworking me! [laughs] And I'm like, "Damn, y'all really putting this shit together, I got to catch up!" And that's why I was like, "You know what? If you're not really locked in on this shit right now... postpone it."

I wish I had kind of explained it better when I did cancel You Could Die Laughing, because it's not fully, "Oh yeah, never coming out, fuck y'all.” But it was really just something that I wanted to come back to, and I know that I'd be able to do it better this year, especially with all of the shit that I've learned even in that short-ass amount of time between October to now... I've learned so much, bro. I feel like I'm a new person literally like every other week.

I appreciate your artistic journey, but I will say the YCDL singles were really good. at least for me personally, you were really saying some shit that felt so true, I was like, "Wait, this is really hitting for me personally."

That's what I'm proud of with You Could Die Laughing, is that for the subject matter that it was based off of, that Dante's Inferno concept… Basically, the moral of You Could Die Laughing was: "Don't get too caught up in the indulgent things / positive aspects in life. At any moment, you can literally die laughing and be taken by surprise by the aspects in life that ignore and creep up on you." Bro, the whole title itself even, like, “n***a... stop being ignorant to all of the things that are around you,” type shit. And it was really me talking to myself at the time.

Bro, I was so jaded! I'd wake up angry about some new shit every day. Every day! And then every time, it got even to the point to where like... I was talking to [my manager] Alex, and the only conversations we were having was when I was mad about some shit. [laughs] And it's like, bro, that's not good.

And that was another reason why I was like, "Okay, yeah... your brain isn't ready for You Could Die Laughing yet.” Like, you're making an album about a n***a that you are right now. And that's not to say that you can't do that, you feel me? You have albums like Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers and all of that shit. But you're trying to talk to this person like a therapist, and the person is literally you.

One thing in there that I'm curious about is talking about this cycle of negativity where you're just in the crib getting mad at shit, whether on social media or watching what people are saying about you online. When we talked last summer about the period between Funhouse and Funhouse Deluxe, it was like, "Yeah, I was fucked off, doing jack all." It seems like you maybe had a similar experience again after the release of Funhouse Deluxe.

After Funhouse Deluxe? Pffft. I lost my mind. [laughs] That's the best way I can put it. Cuz before that album dropped, me and Ego [egobreak], we had went through it about some bullshit. Of course, we're back to being cool as fuck now – damn near talk every day. But yeah, there was a point where we went through it last year, and that came before Funhouse Deluxe dropped.

And then even the way that I felt about Funhouse Deluxe: me not really putting it together the way that I wanted to, and [not] taking my time with that shit and trying to make something that was better, or at least could compare up to what I was already doing before. But I realized when I dropped Funhouse Deluxe, it wasn't even a deluxe for Funhouse at that point. It was just damn near a different album.

Past that,it was just a bunch of shit with life. I'm sitting up in the house getting angry as shit every day [and] that was really the thing that was making it worse, just how I had felt about the album. I put so much importance into my music and I'm like, "Damn, I dropped some bullshit." Aside from songs like "My Name," and I'll say "Fuck w Ya,” "Unfazed" too. It's not like I don't even like that album, but I just have standards so high for myself that even for as much n***as like Funhouse Deluxe... [laughs] I can listen to it, but it's some bullshit, bro!

You're frying the fuck out of me 'cuz you know that's the number one rap album on our 2025 year-end list. Like, we put you over Clipse [laughs] But that's 'cause I like this shit. I think it's that good. But I respect, too, that your opinion on it is different, and that it's different when you make it.

That's another beautiful thing about music that I've realized. Like, not even to say all that, 'cause Funhouse isn't even fucking touching my worst music at all. But my songs that I hate, I loathe them with all of my soul, people love them shits. And then there's songs that I absolutely love— bro, when I had originally dropped Pretti, and “honeybun” was on there, the fucking producer hates that song. I think it's the least-streamed song on the album, and that's my favorite song on Pretti! And I didn't even produce it!

That's a good thing about music, though. I'm glad that at least like, shit, somebody could resonate with Funhouse Deluxe. 'cause again, I got to give credit to certain things, Funhouse Deluxe was, pre- what I was doing with You Could Die Laughing, my most personal shit ever. That was the album where I locked in and was like, "Let me just talk about real life." Every single song that I made was me talking about some shit that I was going through in real life, damn near same day. Some bullshit had happened, I'd go and record about the bullshit that just happened. It don't matter what it is, – n***a, I could've stubbed my toe. Those songs were so random back then. That's why I feel so weirdly about that era, but it wasn't horrible.

You mentioned that you took the fall/winter off of music and didn’t come back to it for real until maybe halfway through Q2. Could you talk to us about what broke you out of that slump and got you back into recording music? Obviously you’ve been on a crazy loosies run this spring.

I woke up one day and I realized that basically from the time that I dropped Funhouse Deluxe until the time where I dropped "ULTRA INSTINCT P" on SoundCloud... I had basically, I'm not going to say psychosis really, but it was so many months where I just wasn't feeling like myself, literally depressed every single day.

I'm waking up with the mindset that I'm going to have a horrible day today, every single day. N***as ask me, "How you doing?" "Oh, I'm decent, bro." Even if I'm having a good day, I'm lying about it, then I'll be real later, and then n***as like, "Oh, why you ain't say nothing about it?"

You could be real about your emotions, but at a certain point, you got to really want better for yourself. And it was one day, I was in a hotel room like December in New York. And that was the prelude to my real lock-in, but I was in that hotel room for like five days doing nothing. Deadass just taking showers all day, every day, just working out, damn near losing my mind. And I was like, "Damn, you got to want better for yourself at a certain point." And I don't know, I think everybody can relate to the feeling of literally just waking up one day and being like, "I've been in a daze, like, n***a, I need to lock in."

And that's what happened. I just had to lock in. I had to want better for myself. I had to actually become the person that I always saw myself being and the person that I thought that I was. But I was really just living off of my past achievements and just feeling hype. Seeing "Moon and the Stars" do what it did and even it being my number one song right now... That shit means something to me, bro! [laughs] It’'s like that picture of the fucking Lightning McQueen poster, like, "This old car still got it." And I'm not even old!

That's how I'm feeling – I feel rejuvenated. Even being around slayr, Lucy [Bedroque], getting back connected with Ego… I would even go as far as to say that was the whole reason I'm even back making music the way that I am now. 'Cause I was about to retire.