The Mind of Marco Plus

One of the best new rappers from underground talks about his journey in music: from dropping out of high school, to repping Atlanta, to taking inspiration from Nas.

Oct 02, 2025

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The fact that someone is always watching SORCERER on Letterboxd gives Will Schube faith in humanity.

The only constant in Marco Plus’ turbulent childhood was rap music. He’s fairly certain — call it a vibes-based estimation — that No Limit was bumping on the speakers when he was being driven home from the hospital as a newborn. He wasn’t introduced to music so much as he was immersed in it, assuming life was always accompanied by a Beats by the Pound or Mannie Fresh beat. “In Black households, people don’t really have to introduce you to music,” he explains. “It's just the soundtrack of life.”

Plus was born in Atlanta and grew up on Weezy and Hot Boys songs. He felt a call to pursue rap as a career and by the tenth grade, he dropped out of high school to chase his dreams. After his mother moved to Florida, Marco stayed with his grandmother in Georgia, trying to figure out how to survive on rap music. In 2015, he dropped a mixtape on SoundCloud, My Friends Understand, before getting kicked out of his grandma’s spot and moving down to Florida to live with his dad. Floundering, he got his GED, though nothing came from the degree but dead-end jobs and hopelessness, a feeling aggravated by being stuck in what he called the “Trump town” of Pensacola, Florida. He was too dejected to work, too broke to leave.

Marco eventually clawed his way back to Atlanta and started to find a groove with his music. The recording output grew prolific as the 2020s hit. The first record he dropped that actually moved the needle for his career was 2021’s Cold Soul. This record marked the first time Marco Plus opened up about his emotions through the hardest years of his life. The project didn’t achieve the big numbers he was hoping for, but the vulnerability brought in a score of new fans and proved to Marco that people wanted to know him in addition to being dazzled by his bars.

This lesson drives his most recent LP, MARCO PLUS Vs. tha Underworld. The record is his strongest and most vulnerable, and it skirts around the idea that being honest in your music has to mean being really, really sad on the mic. On this album, Marco opens about his wins and the knife’s edge of his career in equal measure. It’s a potent blend of desperation and confidence. On the one hand, Marco knows he’s making the best music of his life, and on the other? He’s pissed off he’s not hugely successful; he’s tired of his projects doing smaller numbers than he thinks they deserve. Despite that, he keeps pushing, like a running back bursting through the first layer of defense and making his way to open space.

Second track “parlay” thoroughly fleshes out Marco’ origin story. His flow helixes from the same DNA as Andre 3000, sticky and staccato, and occasionally revving up into double and triple time rhyme schemes. He marries technical precision with an approachability, hiding the seams of his technique just long enough to convince us there wasn’t any stitching involved.

Across the record, Marco prioritizes hope over resignation. It’s a gift he gets to pursue this dream, even when the streams don’t rack up quite like they should or tickets are still available at the door. Rap careers require patience and constant practice, a fact that is almost directly at odds with the real world pressures Plus faces while trying to “make it.”

POW caught up with Marco Plus to talk about his latest LP, growing up with a Mannie Fresh soundtrack, keeping his head up as he grows in hip-hop, and more.

https://open.spotify.com/album/6CRsycLmp5msVvtPxPKqHH

I wanna go back to SOLACE from last year. That album felt different, with bigger stakes.

Marco Plus: It's a lot more personal. It's a lot more introspective. I'm really hoping to be heard and recognized for my story as much as my ability as a rapper.

What made you comfortable getting more vulnerable?

Marco Plus: I feel like I had to take a bigger step so my audience could feel connected to what I do. You could be a good rapper all day all the time forever, but what resonates with the most people is the stuff that’s personal.

Do you remember the first time you fell in love with rap music?

Marco Plus: I do not. I've been in love with this shit since I can remember. I was listening to Hot Boyz and Lil Wayne before I could really even speak a full sentence. It's just in me, man. I never really thought about doing nothing else. All I really cared about was rap. That’s how I talk, that’s how I get my point across. It’s just everything to me.

Who introduced you to music?

Marco Plus: In Black households, you don’t really get introduced to music. It was just the soundtrack of life. For all I know, Lil Wayne could have come on while I was on the way home from the hospital. It’s just something that’s embedded in me.

At what point were you like, ‘Not only do I love this, but I’m really good at it, too.’

Marco Plus: I knew I wanted to be a rapper when I was five years old.

Since rap is your whole life, are you able to separate the art from the business? It can be tricky.

Marco Plus: It's kinda hard. I can't lie. We’re overly sensitive about our art, so anybody can say something, we're always trying to defend it. Another part of it is me wanting to drop new music all the time. I always want to put out music, but I don't always have the proper resources to make sure that the music goes as far as I need it to go, because I put my heart into this. It's pretty difficult, still, at this point, but it's getting easier because I have a team that helps me put the music in the proper position for everybody to hear. That's really all I can ask for.

Are you always working on new music?

Marco Plus: Before I was making SOLACE, I was making an album called Sparko's Revenge. I’m always working on music. I was making that from January to March of 2024. It was only trap music, but I had to take a step back from that to dig a little deeper into things that I haven't discussed in my musical career. I just wanted to make something that people could feel. The trap project probably came too close on the heels of joints that were already in that style. I just had to make some shit that people could relate to. I really had to dig deep to make SOLACE. Even though I made it fairly quickly, I had to dig very deep because there were things I wasn’t comfortable talking about. It ended up being about me getting everything off my chest. I couldn't get it out when I was making Joints because that was a concept project, but so much had happened to me between Tha Soufside Villain and SOLACE.

Let's go back a little bit to your teenage years. Were you a good student?

Marco Plus: I used to suck in high school, dude. My grades were horrible. By 9th grade I was skipping all the time and by 10th grade I didn't go to class at all. That was the year I dropped out. By 10th grade, I fully understood that I wanted to be a rapper.

How did that make your family feel?

Marco Plus: My mama always knew being a rapper was the only thing I wanted to be. She was kind of disappointed, but she also knew that I could achieve anything that I set out to achieve. She allowed me to do what I had to do. She just wanted me to be able to live correctly and not have financial issues or life issues and all that stuff. Of course, I ran into that on the way, but my mother still trusted that I was on the right route.

When you leave high school, what are you doing?

Marco Plus: I dropped out and then I put a mixtape out on SoundCloud, it was called My Friends Understand. That was 2015. I was staying with my grandmother at the time because my mother had just moved to Florida. Worst came to worst and then I got kicked out of my grandmother's house and I had to move to Florida. I wasn't staying with my mother at the time, I was staying with my father when I moved back to Florida. A bunch of stuff went on. I got my GED and I got a job in early 2016. I was just living life, going through the motions. I was born in a retirement town called Pensacola, Florida. There's not much to do. Everbody young there is angry.

It's a Trump town as well. I got nothing against Republicans, but of course I'm not going to vibe with those guys like that. It's just not regular. I had to get out of there quick. I went through hell with depression down there. I went through depression before, like in high school and middle school and stuff, but I got really the worst of it in Florida.

And what were those few years like music wise?

Marco Plus: It was SoundCloud stuff. I got my first couple of fans from SoundCloud. By the time I moved back to Atlanta, it was 2018. I had a girlfriend, had a baby, all types of stuff like that. Broke up with the girl, the classic stuff. I just started dropping mixtapes and EPs in the middle of 2019, the first two were called NEVA COLD and NEVA COLD 2. Then I dropped Cold Soul. That was the first tape to really have people tapping in. It featured a lot more introspection. But nothing really happened at that point. I learned about UnitedMasters. I heard about DistroKid and all that stuff, but I was broke as hell and you needed money for all of those.

Steve Stoute came out with UnitedMasters and it changed my life because it lit a fire under me. I dropped my first official song called “No Sleep” in January of 2020. My friends and I were making videos, gearing up to drop more music. Then I went through the worst heartbreak of my life and that slowed me down a little bit. One thing I'm noticing is that me being slowed down is not the same as when other people get slowed down. A lot of people who went through what I went through probably wouldn't have been able to eat for a month, probably wouldn't have made music for a year.

Did you channel the breakup into working harder?

Marco Plus: Yeah, I ran into some money and met my partner Trvp Shawn. He’s been on most of my projects. I just started recording a lot. I made enough songs to where I made a tape, but then I went through a terrible depression at the end of 2020. It was the worst depression ever, but I think you need that. I think sometimes you need to be about to see the other side and lock in because after I got through that with the help of certain friends, I just said, ‘You know what? Forget it. I got a bunch of songs. Let me craft a mixtape real quick.’ It was called Plus 2 and I uploaded it to UnitedMasters. The day after, my first ever managers hit me up and they wanted to interview me because they were running some type of publication then. We did the interview the next day. It went great. They asked if I had a manager, I was like, ‘No, y'all manage me.’ I remember it like it was yesterday.

What was your relationship with your daughter when you were going through those struggles?

Marco Plus: It was all right. It was good. Then it was bad. Then it was terrible. Then it got all right. Then it got good, then it got bad.

How has being in a good place with her influenced your music or changed your approach to music?

Marco Plus: Last year, my girlfriend asked me if my biggest muse was my daughter. I said no at the time, but I really think she is. She’s the reason I go this hard. If I didn't have a daughter, who knows how serious I’d be taking this. If I didn’t have anything to prove, would I be doing this right now?

What helped you get out of your depression?

Marco Plus: I got a real crazy homegirl named Mother Mage. She told me, like, ‘It's only going to change if you make it change.’ Everything is going to shift if I make it shift. Things seem hard, but once you get over the hump, it's like, fuck all of that. It's like nothing matters anymore. All some people ever wanted was just to get over the hump, whether that's music, whether that's just life, whether that's anything, people just want to get over the hump. Once I got my mind right, I got better pretty quickly. I had been experiencing depression for probably nine years. I just had to shut up. I just had to be quiet, dude. I just had to eat everything that was coming at me, all that crazy shit that I was going through, and just make the best music I can make. I tried to manifest the way out and work hard. It took a lot, but we did it.

Do you think being from Atlanta shaped the way you write music?

Marco Plus: My lyrical capability would be the same no matter what, but I don't think I'd be the same n***a without trap shit, like being raised in it. I'm really from it. I come from that real Atlanta energy, artists like T. I., Gucci Mane, Jeezy, Shawty Lo, stuff like that. It radiates in my music. I don't feel like I’d be the same motherfucker if I was from Virginia or California or New York. I don't feel like it would hit the same. Atlanta has soul.

Do you have any specific goals? Things other than just being as big as possible?

Marco Plus: I want 16 Grammys and very nice houses. I don’t want no type of allegations against me. To be honest, I see myself being the goal. It’s undeniable right now. If I can keep going at this pace and just keep skyrocketing – I know it comes with ups and downs — I’m gonna get it done.

Fast forwarding to the present, what makes Marco Plus Vs. Tha Underworld different within your discography?

Marco Plus: Every time I make an album, I have to relearn how to make music. I have to approach it differently because I need my rapping ability to take a step forward instead of staying stagnant. That doesn’t mean rapping more words, it just means being more precise in the way I get my point across. I always love my albums, but when I revisit them I'm always trying to figure out where I can get better at. Each album starts from learning how to make music again.

Where does that drive to never be satisfied come from?

Marco Plus: You are only supposed to evolve. My whole thing is evolution. I don't feel like I'm going to be the best I am until I fully figure out where I want to go or what I want to do. That’s an everlasting journey because I'm going to be an artist until I die.

That's the exciting part about it, too.

Marco Plus: It's crazy. Sometimes I could be like, ‘Oh man, what am I doing?’ But then sometimes, it’s like, ‘I got it.’

You balance confidence with never being satisfied.

Marco Plus: Exactly. The cheat code is that once you figure out what you do primarily, you already got it. You just have to figure out the secondary pattern. It’s like basketball. There's not one basketball player that just does one thing. Music has to be the same, you have to bring multiple things to the table. I can see where I have to evolve a lot of times after I make a project.

What’s your standout trait?

Marco Plus: I think I'm the best rhymer. I been thinking I'm the best rhymer on the planet, and a lot of people think that as well.I know how to get my point across. I am very good at not making filler rap. If I'm saying something, I'm not really trying to waste a bar. I'm trying to make sure that everything makes sense and goes into the next bar correctly. A lot of people can overuse the metaphor and then it just turns out to be kind of bad. I'd rather speak from a realistic standpoint, whether it be from my standpoint or from anyone else around me. That’s not to say that I'm not a great punchline rapper as well, because I am. But I have substance. I'm also really good at switching my flow. I'm getting a lot better at making hooks, especially with this new album. I'm like an all around shooting guard who can take the ball off the bounce.

Did you want to be as vulnerable here as you were on Solace?

Marco Plus: I feel with this album I'm doing better with finding a balance between being vulnerable and not being too depressing. That was a weird thing I had to go through as well. The music was good and I was making what I wanted to make, but sometimes it could feel a little sad. I like to make music that sounds like it's for the nighttime, too. To balance the two, I had to figure out how to be able to say what I have to say without sounding too introspective. A lot of times, that can lie in the beats that you pick and the delivery you rap with. I'm doing a better job at rapping in a lower vocal tone. I usually rap kind of higher, and I still do it on this album, but I found a better way to balance rapping calmly and rapping loudly.

Are you still leaning on your own life for lyrical inspiration as heavily as on earlier releases? Or are you mixing in more fiction, more storytelling?

Marco Plus: I can't help but do that. Right now, though, I kind of feel like Nas. Nas kind of rapped from the perspective of everything around him. Nas was like the universe, you know what I mean? The streets. He was everything. That’s how I like to push my narrative out because I've seen a lot in my life. I've seen a lot and I've seen a lot of people do things, even if I haven't done them. I've done a lot as well, but not nearly as much as some of the people I've known throughout my walks\ of life. Just growing up, how I grew up, and where I grew up at. Somebody has to relay both messages. A lot of motherfuckers can't do that. A lot of people only see things from their perspective, but I know when I was doing bad things, I thought about the other side of it. I thought about the repercussions of like, ‘Oh, what if we robbed this guy? What if we took this guy's gun?’ I always had that thought process, but a lot of people don’t.

Do you still view yourself as indebted to Atlanta in terms of who you are as a person?

Marco Plus: That's a funny question because I always rep Atlanta, and I always feel like I am Atlanta and I'm kind of the voice for two different sides of it, but I'm noticing that my music is a lot more universal than that. I don't mean that in just terms of what it sounds like, but who it speaks to. It's people who are not from Atlanta who are not even from the same type of community I'm from, who can relate to what I'm saying, because I speak from a place of humanism outside of environmentalism. I also speak from my environment, but it’s more so being aware of my environment. A lot of people don't even know I'm from Atlanta, which is weird, because I reference it a lot.

Where's the most surprising place you have fans?

Marco Plus: Probably some foreign country. Germany or India, I guess. I rap, but sometimes I see myself as the regular old me. It’s kind of bewildering to think about a person who’s an18 hour flight away listening to me when they wake up and stuff.

There aren’t a lot of features on the new record. What went into that choice?

Marco Plus: I feel like I am a feature. I've learned how to do hooks so well and use my voice so well where I don't need a lot of people. The only project I really had a lot of people on was JOINTS, if I'm not mistaken. I think that comes from it being my first time getting signed. I had to perform a certain way. That's not usually how I like to make music, to be honest. I was thinking in the mindset of an industry musician. I feel like I shouldn't have thought like that.I learned that from LUCKI. He was one of those guys who never really had a lot of features on his projects and he excelled every time he got up and waited until he was super big to really get a notable feature, which I think was Lil Yachty on “Greed.” Sometimes, it's about the slow burn. My music is good enough to stand without a big name.

Can’t it be frustrating to stay patient when you know your talent outweighs your popularity?

Marco Plus: Definitely. It's the most frustrating thing in the world. But I also think you can do so much good for your career by taking your own route. I've had pretty cool features before, but I don't feel like I have to press for it because my talent speaks for itself. My favorite artists grind their way to their position. Not to sound like a snob, but I think I'm above looking for a big feature just for the sake of having one.

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