In Conversation with Yung Gravy (2024)

If you’re responsible for even a handful of the hundreds of millions of views of Yung Gravy’s videos, you might not realize that the YouTube-famous rapper is actually 6'7"—6'8" if you count the ginger flow that puts the entire 2023 All Hockey Hair Team to shame—until he sits down next to you in the wine cellar of David Fhima’s Maison Margaux and orders the first of many old fashioneds.

“They call me the seven-hit wonder,” 27-year-old Gravy (real name Matt Hauri) jokes about his repeat-offender viral success. Last summer,“Betty (Get Money)” was responsible for almost 40 million YouTube views. This summer, it’s been more guest spots and features. “I’m all over the map,” he says. “Songs that were not big at one point will randomly pop off because of some internet trend.”

Gravy grew up in Rochester, the son of two former Mayo Clinic psychiatrists—his dad, Dr. Peter Hauri, was a famous Swiss sleep researcher before passing away at the age of 79 in 2013.

Gravy’s rap career first took off while he was studying marketing at University of Wisconsin–Madison. After graduating, he kept an apartment in Uptown for a couple years before moving to Los Angeles permanently. Now he plays the part of the raunchy bad-boy party rapper to a T—pairing a scruffy beard with his oversize skater shirt, gold chains, a gold watch, and a splint on his right hand due to a stage dive gone wrong in New Zealand. And after making the gossip rags last summer for taking TikTok star Addison Rae’s mom, Sheri Nicole Easterling, to the MTV Video Music Awards, he says he’s trying to tone it down this year. He was back in the Cities this summer to stand up as best man in his grade school pal’s wedding on Lake Minnetonka andreturned at the end of the summer for his sold-out Grandstand show at the State Fair.

Didn’t you get your MC handle working a summer job at Camp Olson YMCA up by Walker?

Yeah. It was a bunch of stoner kids. There was this other kid, Chase Lee, from Orono—we were known as the two kids that could actually spit [freestyle rap], and they’d make us spit in front of the campfire. I tried to get him to start rapping with me seriously, but he was just too busy with school. That was a potential duo: Yung Gravy and Heavy Creamer.

Would you guys rap about food?

There’s only so many things you can rap about when you’re freestyling over a campfire—you run out of material.

Both your parents were doctors, but you dealt weed in high school. Did you need the money?

My dad was a renowned sleep psychologist, and my mom had a private practice in psychiatry, but we didn’t actually have that much money. Even though they’re both doctors, she didn’t really have the best experience running the business—a lot of people got over on her. And my dad was more on the research side. So, I mean, I’d say middle class.

Your dad was 61 when your parents had you—from all accounts, they doted on you.

He was finally basically retired by the time I was born, so he was ready to really put a lot of effort into it.

Were you rebelling from how nice they were or what?

Not really, honestly. I love my parents, and it was chill and kosher. But they wouldn’t give me an allowance or anything—it was literally just me trying to make some money and try out the business because I was inspired by it.

So, you weren’t getting high on your own supply; you were an entrepreneur.

I smoked weed before that, but when I started dealing, I told myself I wouldn’t smoke anymore.

You were in college when you started rapping on YouTube and SoundCloud. What inspired you to consider rap as a profession?

I guess it was always in my mind that it would be cool to be a rapper, but I never thought it was possible because I didn’t know anyone from Minnesota or Wisconsin that had done it.

‘Meme rap,’ I don’t know.... If you say something funny, everyone’s going to think you’re a meme rapper.”

—Yung Gravy, rapper

Did you listen to Atmosphere or Doomtree?

I thought they were dope. But what really inspired me was when I saw SoundCloud take off with Lil Yachty and Lil Peep—I watched them get this huge amount of success with the internet.

Despite your artistic inclinations, you studied business and marketing at UW–Madison.

I never thought the artist thing was actually going anywhere. I studied business for a few years, and I was like, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with this.” I mean, I was the main branding and marketing guy for this incubator company. It was still art in a moneymaking way—I knew how to make something sellable, I guess.

I suppose it takes imagination and some kind of linguistic skill to market a product.

Students would apply to this program, and they would pair us with companies, usually PhD students that have invented something cool. I think there were 500 applicants, and they’d pick five. EatStreet was one of the ones that I helped—they were the original Uber Eats, basically.

The original ghost kitchen concept?

Ghost kitchen was their initial plan, and then they said, f*ck that, let’s just do basically Uber Eats.

Why do you think you were good at that sort of thing?

I have a knack for knowing what people like. Psychology’s interesting to me, probably because of my parents. All the little things that I would learn in psychology, I tried to apply them to everything. I learned about classical conditioning and how if you hear a certain thing, it’ll bring back memories from the first time you heard it. So, before all my college exams, I would listen to Young Thug music nonstop.

At what point were you like, “Man, I’m good at this”?

I think it was just when I saw Lil Yachty drop the song “One Night,” and it had 60,000 plays. Loved that song, and every time I looked back, it’s got thousands of thousands more plays. Now it’s multiplatinum. I saw that and I thought, You know what, I could do this.

The rappers you were listening to—Outkast, Three 6 Mafia, Young Thug, Lil Yachty—are rapping about their interior and exterior lives, but you’re mostly making ribald jokes about seducing other people’s moms. It’s disrespectful, but in a flirty, middle school playground kind of way.

That started because I knew that I’m a white dude from Minnesota. I don’t have a hood background or anything. I’m not like these other rappers. So, I can’t rap about 90 percent of the sh*t that I’m listening to them rap about, but anyone can rap about [seducing] moms. It really took off three or four years later on TikTok and Instagram and all these social medias, where people are sharing, like, “Oh, Yung Gravy loves a MILF—here’s mine!”

So having sex with other people’s moms was the only part of hip-hop culture that felt authentic to you?

I guess having sex with people’s moms is authentic to every culture. I knew that it would stand out. I think with any brand, there has to be something that you’re remembered for.

Do you ever get Freudian with it and analyze why you’re attracted to mature women with children?

No, it was because of my dentist.

Your dentist?

My dentist was my muse.

Your dentist is the Karen in your song “Karen, Pt. 2,” the first song you ever recorded?

Yeah. I thought I was pretty clever for that.

So, it’s about your dentist in Rochester?

Yeah. I’m not going too in detail, but she’s a beautiful dentist.

Your first huge hit was “Mr. Clean,” which samples “Mr. Sandman” by The Chordettes. It has 70 million views on YouTube.

I mean, close to double platinum, I believe. That was my fifth song ever. The video dropped in October 2017, and I remember it clearly because by July 2018, it started randomly popping off online, and I was like, Holy sh*t, it’s actually happening. I think it got a million views in a week.

Did it feel like a miracle?

You know, what’s funny is that was also the first time that I ever revealed my face. I’d been rapping for a year and a half at that point, but between the song dropping and the video, there were probably another 20 songs that I put out, because I was very prolific at the time.

I remember seeing the term “SoundCloud rapper” for the first time and thinking, OK, we’re describing the medium and the style. But now I see you referred to as a “meme rapper.” Does that feel like a shot?

I proudly identify as a SoundCloud rapper. If it wasn’t for SoundCloud, I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere, and I wouldn’t have had any of the friends I have now—Peep, Ski Mask, X, all them were SoundCloud rappers—and I love that and it inspired a lot of my style. There’s not a lot of rappers that have multiple songs that are under two minutes, but SoundCloud created that, and now I have a ton of them. But “meme rap,” I don’t know if I like that. If you say something funny, everyone’s going to think you’re a meme rapper. I get compared to Lil Dicky all the time. But to me it’s an honor to be compared to Lil Dicky. I think he’s a genius.

Trifecta

Three things about Yung Gravy

1. In 2021, Gravy appeared in a commercial with Martha Stewart to promote a line of her brand’s frozen dinners. “I still talk to Martha,” he says.
2. He performed“Betty (Get Money)” at his friend’s wedding on Lake Minnetonka.
3. His first concert was Wiz Khalifa and Mac Miller at the State Fair.

You sample Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”—the Rickroll song—on your 2022 hit “Betty (Get Money).” Are you making fun of this perception of you being a meme rapper?

No. I actually just really liked the original song. And I thought there was no chance that I’d be able to clear the sample, so I never did it. Otherwise I would’ve done it a long time ago. That chord progression, man.

Didn’t you have to clean up your lyrics to clear the sample with the writers?

Yes, but I shouldn’t give too much detail because there’s a little bit of a lawsuit going with Rick Astley. Ah, you know what, I can say facts. I interpolated Rick Astley’s song—basically what that means is that we recreated it completely. It’s not his voice. If he would’ve written the song, then he would have some claim over it, but he did not.

Sounds like he got talked into a lawsuit by the same lawyers who sued Robin Thicke and Ed Sheeran.

I don’t know the details. But I know that we talked to his wife, who’s his manager, and she was into the idea, and then just things got busy and whatever happened.

So, when you took Addison Rae’s mom to the MTV Video Music Awards, were you trolling the people calling you a meme rapper?

I was playing into that. Well, her husband wanted to fight me, and I felt like the best response was to do that. Guerrilla marketing, man. Honestly, I just wanted it to be a chill, fun time, and I thought maybe a few people would think it would be funny, but we honestly had a great weekend. She’s a sweetheart.

You don’t really rap about your actual personal life—we just see this persona.

That’s a good point. I get sick of the internet and social media. I get more and more private about things because I’m sick of people being in my face all the time.

But you did take Addison Rae’s mom to the VMAs.

It was a little temporary fake whatever.

Are you still doing TikTok every day?

No. But that is one of the main things that I try to force onto my to-do list, because it’s obviously very effective, but I really don’t like doing it. So, when I’m taking a day off, my phone’s on Do Not Disturb, and I’m just kicking it with people that I really care about and enjoy.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.