Lexa Gates

You know you’re making it as a hip-hop artist when you type your name into YouTube and the top suggested search result is “[Your Name] Type Beat.” All the (formerly) underground hip-hop artists who generated significant buzz with a distinct style have ended up with this kind of search result attached to their artist names.

“Lil Peep Type Beat.” “Playboi Carti Type Beat.” Heck, even “Post Malone Type Beat” was a thing. Just click on any beatmaker’s YouTube channel and scroll through their uploads, and you’ll get a pretty good sense of who’s about to pop off.

So what happens when you type “Lexa Gates” into the YouTube search bar? You guessed it.

So, what makes her music so unique that YouTubers everywhere are trying to emulate it? Take one listen to “I Just Can’t Be Alone” by Lexa Gates and Billy Lemos and you’ll understand. Lexa has this wonderful knack for sampling smooth, vintage soul classics and twisting them into something hyper-real and postmodern. It’s meta music in the most lush sense: timeless melodies and horn sections croon and wail under most of her tracks as she performs over the top of them.

Widely praised for her introspective and genuine songwriting approach, Lexa effortlessly slips in and out of sung sections and rapped sections, dropping smooth Gen Z existential dread on her listeners in a way that leaves you hurting for more. It’s the kind of existentialism that will make you question your faith in institutions and hate that you worked hard for the American Dream only to be paid in American Reality. You can feel this deeply on “Provider.” Her lackadaisical lines grapple with dreams of financial freedom and the horrors of Zoom Call, Group Text, Skibidi Brain Rot in equal measure.

When I asked Lexa about her curation and the method behind choosing samples for her unique sound, she was drinking a chai latte from a local coffee house after a morning workout and some classes. “I just know what I like, I guess,” she said casually, rejecting the idea of any sort of formal method. “I don't really put too much thought into it like that. Everybody's always asking me about what inspires me, but I just gravitate towards certain sounds more than others.”

Lexa may be laid back and lackadaisical in her delivery when she performs, but she’s a lightning bolt in a conversation. She doesn’t mince words, and she’s not afraid to tell you how she feels. Her rejection of a formal strategy for choosing samples has less to do with taste and much more to do with wide-eyed wonder. With everything that Lexa has experienced in her life, part of her doesn’t want to lose the mystery of music.

“I’ve always felt like the more you understand something that's beautiful, the more it ruins it,” she said.

Lexa loves beautiful things, which may seem strange to new fans looking at her off-kilter, candid photos for the first time. These make up the bulk of her album art. Most of them don’t square with traditional perceptions of beauty. Often, the attitude of her aesthetic reminds me of Sum 41, whose album art for their landmark 2001 album All Killer, No Filler was just a bunch of awful photos of them shaking their faces.

Sum 41 Album Art

But there’s beauty in the ugly of that Sum 41 cover. As ugly as their faces are, you know the day they took those photos was an absolute blast. And the shakeface photos tell you everything you need to know about what they were like in their youth and how obnoxious and fun they were. It’s so human, and so honest.

Lexa’s art is just as in-your-face, just as honest, but in a more somber way. She finds hope in the mundane beauty of an open fridge and tragedy in the drab, gray hopelessness of corporate office life.

Delirium Album Art

Hungry Album Art

Order of Events Album Art

Provider Album Art

Scum of the Earth Album Art

Universe Wrapped in Flesh Album Art

Her ability to discern drama and beauty around the grungy, mundane corners of life extends well beyond her visual art and deep into her sonic creations. The song “Selfish” opens her 2022 album Universe Wrapped In Flesh. Lexa fittingly begins her song with some scene-setting ambiance. Only instead of crashing waves or rain sounds (which is so trendy rn), she does this really punk thing where the ambiance sounds like people in a stoner’s basement bickering and having coughing fits. On first listen, it caught me off guard and made me smile. After talking to Lexa about that segment, though, I found this vignette had a much deeper meaning.

You see, her musical journey began when her mom introduced her to music theory and composition when she was 9. Her mother bought a keyboard, and together they took vocal lessons and performed at local cafes. Gates dropped out of school at 15 and faced an extremely challenging period before coming full circle and finding solace in recording music.

“Me and my mom had this relationship where we were always like a tornado with each other. I was this crazy kid doing mad drugs and fucking with messed up people,” she told me. In the beginning of “Selfish” you can hear a conversation between future Lexa and past Lexa, asking if she needs help. Asking if she’s good. “That's me just choking up and smoking too much and dying.”

The scene is meant to represent the pivotal moment in her life when she decided to leave everything behind and start again.

“It sounds like it’s cool, but no. I hit rock bottom and it was my 21st birthday,” she said. “I think there were glimmers of hope. I don't even know. I thought I was just gonna die. I was very destructive from 14 to 21. I would party all the time. I wouldn't even see the sun. I'd just wake up at like 5 PM and just go get fucked up. And I guess I thought I was social climbing or like, learning? In a way I was. But at one point I realized that, you know, the people around me in that frame of time were just going out and partying until it was like their late 20s, early 30s. And they're like in a party with 17 year olds, popping percs in a corner and passing out.”

Lexa wanted to change her life and leave everything behind. “I got what I wanted,” she said. “I just wanted to be stable and respected and be able to take care of myself and really apply myself.”

Throwing herself into her music and cleaning up her life has produced incredible results. Gates went viral in 2023 when her song “Angel” was shared by an influential user on TikTok. It instantly gained traction, racking up 1.6 million streams on Spotify alone. Within the year she landed an appearance with On The Radar, performed at Great Escape Festival in the UK, and sold out shows in London, Brooklyn, and Los Angeles.

She learned a ton about herself in the process: what it means to be successful, what it means to believe in yourself, and how to navigate relationships while you’re pursuing your dreams. “People can only meet you as far as they’ve met themselves,” she told me when we discussed how to handle people who try to hold you back. “It’s all projection.”

There was a time – just after Lexa started really seeing success – that she was holding herself back. “I moved out and I got everything I wanted. WHATEVER.” She punctuated that WHATEVER with so much disdain.

She told me how she was working back-to-back studio sessions in LA. She was working so much that she didn’t have anything to eat. One of her friends gave her some pita chips – Stacy’s is the brand – and she wolfed them down desperately.

“I don’t even like Stacy’s Chips!’ Lexa laughed. Her friend still didn’t know her well, and had no idea she hated the chips. “We were all still developing our relationships together. But I was just trying to get shit done.”

She said the ability to double down and work until the job is done – and done well – is a skill she’s proud to have. But it comes at a cost. “I don't really like saying negative stuff. But it is a reality of success and fruition: sometimes it's just fucking irritating.”

It was apparent that her disdainful WHATEVER wasn’t directed at the fruit of her labors. Lexa is excited for the future. She’s grateful for everything that’s come her way. What she despises is her own naïvety.

“I thought everybody would be worshiping the ground I walk on, and I was going to float through the air and explode with joy. No. I’m just a human still.”

Learning to believe in herself despite past mistakes, naive assumptions, and developing relationships has been a spiritual journey for her. Slowing her speech, she began to tread lightly when delving deep into her own personal philosophy. “In my life, I feel like I am God,” she said. She quickly qualified that statement. “I’m the higher version of myself. I have to follow my intuition because that’s what leads me to the best possible outcome. I think this is all the power of the tongue. So what I say will be. It’ll be what it is in my own life.”

Since a lot of Lexa’s music is spoken instead of sung, she’s been able to see the power and danger of repeated statements. “I totally feel like the things that I've written have been mantras, and music is very repetitive,” she explained. “And like, so is life. You're just like a creature of routine as a human being. So it's kind of like a glitch in the system: you can hack your own brain by making a mantra or saying something really positive, and then hearing it in your head over and over and over and letting it push out anything that would give you doubt.”

When I asked her which of her songs functions as a personal mantra, she immediately jumped to “Days” from her 2021 album Hungry.

“It literally is a mantra,” she said excitedly. She let out a nervous laugh. “I feel cringe doing this, but I probably should.” She then recited her favorite lines from the song. This wasn’t Lexa Gates rapping. It was Lexa Gates reciting poetry. I love the original song, but the way she recited this hit different:

“I said that multiple times in different songs that are just on SoundCloud and aren't really that serious,” she said. “But I really think that. I live in the present and don’t let some limiting belief hold me back.”

Her willingness to leap before she looks and dive headlong into whatever she deems expedient is admirable. This boldness has led Lexa successfully into music, fashion, video editing, and more.

She may be inexperienced in some areas (she still cuts her music videos in iMovie) but she’s the furthest thing from afraid. That being said, she’s not arrogant. She knows her limits. “I don’t want to edit,” she laughed.

Lexa Gates, together with a team of the right people, announced her highly anticipated debut album, Elite Vessel, today. The album is a profound reflection of her personal journey and ambitions. She called it “a manifestation of everything I’m striving to become.” Alongside the album release on October 18, Lexa will embark on her first North American headlining tour kicking off November 4 in Chicago and spanning major cities like Austin, San Francisco, and DC before concluding in New York.

Tour tickets go on presale September 17 at 10 AM local time, with general sales starting September 20 at 10 AM local time. For tickets and full tour dates, click HERE.

When asked what she wants fans to know about this record and upcoming tour, Lexa cut right to the chase:

“I'm not fucking around. I’m a professional.”