by Walter Robert, Editor-in-Chief
Photos By: Savanna Ruedy // Makeup: Alana Theus // Stylist: Nzinga Watts-Harper // Photo Assistant & Videography: Bianca Mehnert
There’s a moment in conversation with Duckwrth that doesn’t just echo—it lingers. “I didn’t love myself because I felt like I wasn’t in control of myself,” he says. It lands not as a soundbite, but as a quiet confession—unarmored, unvarnished. Just a man reckoning with a life shaped by instinct, patterns, and inherited pain.
This isn’t a rollout. This isn’t marketing. This is a shedding.
Over two years, Duckwrth built All American F⭐ckBoy—a fever-dream of an album, where memory, apology, and cinema blur. But to understand the album, you have to see the man behind the moniker. The artist who makes music not for entertainment, but for exorcism.
Duckwrth—born Jared—has always been plural. The electrifying performer. The wounded son. The lover tangled in cycles he couldn’t break. The genre-stretcher. The boy who waited by the window for a father who never came. And then there’s Vice—his alter ego, his confession in silhouette.
Vice made his entrance in the music video for “Grey Scale,” a visual where Duckwrth is bound and voiceless, while Vice, cool and detached, slides betrayal under the door of an unsuspecting lover. “I think we should see other people,” reads one letter.
She replies with a Polaroid of herself. On it is a message: Is this not enough?
His answer? I’d love to paint those walls.
Even now, Duckwrth flinches at the memory. Because Vice isn’t fiction—he’s the filterless truth. The impulsive voice draped in charm. But what happens when you can’t tell the difference between performance and person?
“I started seeing my father in me,” he says, eyes steady. “He made promises he didn’t keep. And suddenly, I was doing the same. I didn’t want to be him. That was my fear.”
He doesn’t boast his growth—he wears it. Worn and weary. Because self-awareness doesn’t bloom—it breaks. “I can’t pretend what I do doesn’t have weight,” he says. “When I’m not intentional, people get hurt.”
The album became a mirror. Each track a layer pulled back. “The music poured out first. Then I sat with it like—oh shit. That’s what I’m really saying.”
And what he’s saying—unflinchingly—is that he’s made mistakes. Relationships shadowed by lust and detachment. Moments ruled by impulse, not integrity. But he’s also saying: I know better now.
There’s a quiet bravery in that. In not just apologizing, but mapping the architecture of guilt. Naming the blood flow that floods reason. And then using that realization to create something honest, cinematic, and deeply human.
All American F⭐ckBoy isn’t just music—it’s a world. Built with actors like LaKeith Stanfield, Tia Nomore, Lula Bell. Each visual scored like a scene.
The Production team—Too Fresh and Black Odyssey—refused to let him coast. Creating alongside them wasn’t just about sound; it was about stripping down the armor.
“If something felt too easy, too perfect,” he says, “We’d stop. Tear it down. Sit with it. Even if it took all day to find one word, we’d dig deeper. Because this project demanded that. It demanded truth.”
But perhaps the most honest part of the interview isn’t a quote—it’s the pauses. The mid-thought revisions. A man searching for the most accurate, accountable version of himself. No performance. Just presence.
That honesty lands. “A couple women told me they cried,” he shares. “Not because it was sad. But because they’d never seen that level of accountability from a man who hurt them. Maybe it wasn’t closure. But it was something close.”
Duckwrth didn’t set out to heal. He just stopped lying—to himself, to those he loves, to the boys growing up with absent fathers and unhealed wounds. He holds that responsibility like sacred weight.
“Growth isn’t some epiphany,” he says. “It’s daily. It’s water, sleep, presence. It’s not sliding into DMs. It’s choosing the right thing over the easy thing.”
Strip back the flame, fashion, and genre-bending—and that’s what this is. A man refusing to look away from himself. A man who’s fucked up, and still chooses, every day, to do better.
This isn’t a review. This is a reflection. A reckoning. A mirror cracked open, letting the light pour through.
Because creativity, for Duckwrth, is communal. Ritualistic. Forged in sacred rooms with people who see all of you—and still ask for more. “Being around evolved Black men with emotional depth... that’s success,” he says. “They pushed me deeper. Always.”
That quote isn’t about vibes. It’s about survival. Duckwrth didn’t come from places where vulnerability was safe. “If someone sees your insecurity,” he says, “they’ll see weakness. And you can get jumped. You can get shot. You can get killed.”
In Duckwrth’s world, “real” is sacred. It’s in the music’s pulse. In the tension between pleasure and pain. In the bloodline of his influences—Freddie Mercury, Bad Brains, Musiq Soulchild. Rebels. Shapeshifters. Truth-tellers.
“Freddie was like a mystical dragon,” he says. “Pulling from the depths of the Earth and radiating light. That’s greatness.”
He’s not imitating his heroes. He’s answering the same call—to give soul, spectacle, and self. The cinematic world around this album is intentional. Rearview mirrors. Puppets. Shadows. Every frame carries consequence. “I’m still a baby in cinema,” he says, eyes lit. “But movies... they bring us together. Like live shows do.”
That’s why his visuals feel like chapters. Not promo, but parables. Stories that unsettle, not just entertain. He wants you to stay with them. To feel them. He’s not just talking aesthetics. He’s talking community.
“What am I doing to galvanize people?” he asks. “To help them log out of the matrix and just have human-to-human time?”
The question is less about legacy and more about presence.
“Do you want your story to be chasing women? Or chasing greatness?”
It’s rhetorical—but not unanswerable.
So I ask him, not as a prompt but as a bridge: “What does tomorrow mean to you?”
This time, his voice doesn’t rise. It settles.
“My tomorrow is very specific,” he says. “I had this really crazy dream where I saw a future where humans learn how to live off the earth again, but also work with technology… like a perfect blend. Where technology didn’t just take from the earth, but we gave back.”
He speaks of it like a vision—not just artistic, but ancestral. Not dystopia, but restoration. The possibility of returning to balance. Not just with the world, but with each other.
“I’m focusing more on the psychology side,” he says. “Especially with men. I feel like men are due for an update in evolution.”
And in that one sentence, it all folds together: the emotional transparency, the accountability, the refusal to keep cycling inherited pain. This isn’t just about better music. This is about better men.
Duckwrth is no longer performing clarity. He’s living into it. One conversation at a time. One track. One pause. One mirror held up and not turned away from.
And maybe that’s the true revolution here—not just that he made an album, but that he made space.
For honesty.
For evolution.
For the version of tomorrow that begins today.
All American F⭐ckBoy is now streaming everywhere. You can follow Duckwrth on Instagram here. He also graces the cover of tmrw #51, now available for pre-order.
