Where Is Roddy Ricch? Fans Want Answers About the Rapper
Fans are wondering whether Roddy Ricch is still making music or whether he has “caught the yips.”
Published April 30 2024, 1:37 p.m. ET
If you’re wondering what happened to Roddy Ricch, you’re in good company. The Grammy-winning rapper’s fanbase is dying for more music — or at least an update — and theorizing why he has been lying low. After all, Roddy hasn’t released a studio album since December 2021 and hasn’t dropped an extended play or a mixtape since November 2022.
“Roddy Ricch still making music?” @LetMeSpinCoach wrote on Twitter on April 27.
“Y’all done bullied Roddy Ricch into not making music no more,” @_SuccesfulReese claimed two days later.
“I [don’t] know if Roddy Ricch caught the yips or what. But I liked his music,” wrote @TampicoSlim on April 26.
And a day earlier, @Blackqurl posted, “I need Roddy Ricch to personally send me music he hasn’t put out.”
What happened to Roddy Ricch?
Roddy might have been working on new music during his time out of the spotlight. In a November 2022 Twitter post, Roddy wrote, “Mixtape out album next,” suggesting that a studio album was next on his slate after the release of his mixtape “Feed tha Streets III” a day earlier.
Fans on Reddit that the third album will be called “Sorry I’m Not Sorry,” and there’s even an unconfirmed track list for a Roddy Ricch album of that title on Genius. If that track list is to be believed, we have songs titled “Cold as Hell,” “Thugs Cry,” “Pray for Me,” and “Fast Forward” coming our way — as well as featured appearances by Travis Scott, Post Malone, Kehlani, Calboy, Pressa, Sash, Lil Durk, Lil Tjay, Boogie with da Hoodie, Young Thug, and Smokepurpp, and the late PnB Rock.
Roddy Ricch recently beat a copyright suit over “The Box.”
In December 2022, songwriter Greg Perry sued Roddy Ricch, Atlantic Records, and other defendants for copyright infringement in federal court in Manhattan, claiming that Roddy’s 2019 hit “The Box” contained “a complete duplication” of portions of his 1976 song “Come on Down.”
“Comparative analysis of the beat, lyrics, hook, rhythmic structure, metrical placement, and narrative context by a musicology expert demonstrates clearly and convincingly that ‘The Box’ is an unauthorized duplication and infringement of certain elements of ‘Come On Down,’” Perry’s suit alleged, as Rolling Stone reported at the time.
In February 2024, however, U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres dismissed the suit, finding that “no reasonable jury could find that the works are substantially similar,” as Rolling Stone reported in an update on the case.
“The [plaintiff’s] musical composition is a soul song that contains a melodic tune, while ‘The Box’ is a hip-hop song delivered in a monotone rap,” Torres added. “The ‘feel’ of the two songs is also dissimilar,” Judge Torres ruled, saying “Come on Down” is “a sentimental song about ‘love and heartbreak,’ while ‘The Box’ is a braggadocious song about amassing wealth, sleeping with multiple women, and being more skilled than other rappers.”
The judge said that “no average lay observer listening to the songs would regard the aesthetic appeal as the same” and that “plaintiff has failed to demonstrate that defendants copied any protectable portion of the musical composition.”
Translation: Roddy wins!