Fivio Foreign Interview: ‘King of New York’ Title Doesn’t Matter Anymore

The police aren’t the only ones closely surveying the subgenre. In February, Mayor Eric Adams urged social media companies to ban drill videos after his son, an employee at Roc Nation, showed him local music videos. “I had no idea what drill rapping was, but I called my son and he sent me some videos, and it is alarming,” the mayor said during a February speech. “We are alarmed by the use of social media to really over-proliferate this violence in our communities. This is contributing to the violence that we are seeing all over the country. It is one of the rivers we have to dam.” 

Following his comments, Adams took a meeting with Fivo and other local rappers, including Maino and B-Lovee, to open a dialogue about the subgenre. 

“I knew Eric Adams already because I did a peace walk in New York with him,” Fivio tells me. “So I reached out to everybody, and then Maino was like, ‘Yo, I got you a meeting. He wants to sit down and talk.’ Me and Maino called a couple other people up. Moreso, he was saying he’s not really trying to stop drill rap. He said with the media and internet, it’s making it seem like he wants to stop drill rap. But he was saying he’s not trying to do that. He just don’t want niggas incriminating themselves, making Black culture look like wild animals, making the city look like it’s not safe for people. So what he was saying was, ‘Change the narrative.’” 

Improving the perception of the Brooklyn drill scene was a big motivator for Fivio as he made B.I.B.L.E. “That’s what I’m doing with this album, for sure,” he declares. “That’s where I feel my responsibility is, to take the negativity away from it. To show them the album and be like, ‘Yo, listen, we got a song like this. We got Alicia Keys singing, ‘New York go easy on me.’ That’s more like the opposite of violence. But it’s saying this is drill rap, though.”

Whether you call him “King” or not, Fivio Foreign is undoubtedly one of the most recognizable faces coming out of the city right now, and he’s still based in New York (although he plans on moving at some point). For that reason, he feels immensely indebted to the city that raised him. “[I have a] big responsibility,” he says. “If I’m going to be the artist coming out of New York, I’m going to make New York look like it’s the place to be,” he says. “I’m going to make sure they keep it a good, safe place. I want to make it possible for other new artists to come out of New York.” 

If everything goes according to plan, B.I.B.L.E. will go down as that bright of a moment for both New York and Brooklyn drill, Fivio tells me, as our conversation draws to a close. 

“If I do what I’ve got to do, [Brooklyn drill] is going to stick around,” he says. “People are going to start to realize we can do it all. Once it’s widened up a little bit more, people will get it. Drill rappers are the pop stars.”