Hit-Boy says challenges elevate 'Software Update'

[Hit-Boy, from E1]

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THE ARTIST has a forthcoming album.

his father’s roller-coaster ride through the criminal justice system.

Let's start with the record contract. In 2007, Hit-Boy signed a co-publishing deal with Universal Music Group and the producer Polow Da Don. He found out four years later, after the success of his production on Jay-Z and Kanye West's single “... In Paris,” that the money he assumed he'd make from his work wasn’t coming due to the deal’s constraints.

Maybe even more importantly, after digging into the details, Hit-Boy realized that his contract had no end date and existed perpetually for the rest of his life. It then took him 10 years of continued success before he could renegotiate. In 2021 with the help of Jay-Z and Desiree Perez at Roc Nation, his managers at the time, he was finally able to set a release date from the deal in 2025. Hit-Boy is now an independent artist for the first time since he was 19 years old.

Yet nearly coinciding with his release from that contract, Hit-Boy’s father, Chauncey Hollis Sr., a.k.a. Big Hit, was reincarcerated in October 2024. Big Hit’s history with the criminal justice system before this included serving 15 years in prison for possession of 10 kilos of cocaine, 10 guns and $300,000 in cash. Then, after six years of release, he served 12 years for a hit-and-run incident.

In 2023, Big Hit came home and went on a musical run as a rapper with his now hyper-successful son. The duo made a collaborative album with legacy L.A. producer the Alchemist in “Black & Whites”; an album with L.A. rapper the Game in “Paisley Dreams”; and a project with just the two of them, “Surf or Drown, Vol. 2,” in a single year. But, the whole time, Hit-Boy was aware of the potential impending doom to come.