Armani White on Performing With Billie Eilish, Biggest Hip-Hop Influences & More | R&B Hip-Hop Power Players Live 2023

Armani White opens up about performing with Billie Eilish, his biggest hip-hop influences and more!

Armani White:
Yo, that’s fire. This is great, this pillow love me too.

It was so loud when I met Billie Eilish — it was fire though. I was, like, jumping around and I messed up my little signature spin mive. But it was dope. It was dope, though, and you know, like, yeah, I can’t even. I got so many thoughts at once that like it was like I was telling Nicole, my tour manager, I was like, “I’m not really going to understand what’s about to happen until after it happens.” So we ran out there, I did it. I still get chills watching the video like here. “That’s me on that stage right there.”

I told Billie, I was like, “Yo, we’re gonna be the same festival we should play Uno together.” And she was like, “Yo, or crazy idea: You should come out on my set,” and like, yeah! Yeah, it just it literally just happened like that — same day. Like it was like, you know, it wasn’t like a pre-planned thing. We just did it on the fly.

I grew up listening to a lot of Eminem. He was just like the anti whatever rap said you was supposed to be. Missy Elliott the same, Busta Rhymes the same, Ludacris the same. Even when I grew up, it was like the Tyler, the Creators, B.O.Bs, the Childish Gambinos — it was just all of the things that did not make sense to whatever the definition of hip-hop was at the time. That’s what I always gravitated towards.

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Stefanie Tanaka

Billboard