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Ricardo Valdez Valentine Jr. was born on June 24, 1992, in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to Atlanta, Georgia, with his parents in 1997.[9] He attended Stone Mountain High School and Newton High School.[10] He is the eldest of three siblings. Valentine's first recording experience was at 4 years of age, at his father's studio.[11] He began rapping in middle school as a battle rapper and was involved in many freestyle battles in his youth including against rapper Young Thug.[12]
6lack signed a record deal with Flo Rida's International Music Group and Strong Arm Records in July 2011. He left Valdosta State University once he signed, and spent the next few years learning about the industry. 6lack spent five years with the label, putting music out on his SoundCloud account. 6lack had little financial security and spent most of his time sleeping in the studio or outside on the street after moving to Miami, Florida to work on music with the record label.[12] 6lack eventually left his label due to issues over artistic and creative license and management.[13] In 2015, 6lack announced that he had joined the musical collective Spillage Village after living with the members of EarthGang, and appeared on four tracks of Spillage Village EP called Bears Like This Too in 2015.[14]
Once he left the label, he signed with Love Renaissance and Interscope Records.[15] In November 2016, Rolling Stone included 6lack in their list of "10 New Artists You Need to Know".[4] He then went on to release his debut studio album, Free 6lack, which peaked at number 34 on the Billboard 200 chart.[16] The album's single "Prblms" peaked at number 73 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and became his first platinum record.[17] In April 2017, he joined Canadian singer The Weeknd as opening act for his Legend of the Fall tour in North America.
In April 2018, he released the single "OTW" with Khalid and Ty Dolla Sign, which has reached at number 57 on the Billboard Hot 100.[18] "OTW" became 6lack's highest peaking song on the Hot 100.[18] The first single for his sophomore album, "Switch", was released on June 22, 2018, with a music video released on July 16.[19] "Nonchalant" was released as the album's second single on August 17, with its accompanying music video.[20][21] On September 14, 2018, 6lack released his second studio album, East Atlanta Love Letter, featuring guest appearances from Future, J. Cole, Offset, and Khalid. The album's release was preceded by the singles "Switch" and "Nonchalant."[22] In October 2018, 6lack started a tour for the promotion of the album, with opening acts THEY., Tierra Whack, Boogie, Deante' Hitchcock, Summer Walker, and Ari Lennox.[23][24] 6lack later featured on several other songs, such as "Waves" by Normani.[25] and "Crowded Room" by Selena Gomez, in 2019 and early 2020, respectively.[26] In May 2020, 6lack released the track "ATL Freestyle". A few weeks later, on June 24, 2020, 6lack celebrated his birthday with the release of the single "Float". He also announced his EP 6pc Hot, which was released on June 26 and included the Lil Baby-assisted single, "Know My Rights". He also launched his own hot sauce brand 600 Degrees Original.[27]6lack appeared on two tracks from Spillage Village's Spilligion album, released in September 2020.[28] During 2020, he collaborated with British virtual band Gorillaz and singer-songwriter Elton John on the track "The Pink Phantom", for the band's seventh studio album, Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez.[citation needed]
In 2021, he released "Calling My Phone" with Bronx rapper Lil Tjay.[29] In 2022, he was featured on Canadian singer-songwriter Jessie Reyez's album Yessie, in her song "Forever", and its accompanying music video.[30]
On March 24, 2023, 6lack released his album Since I Have a Lover. The 19-track album featured the artists QUIN, Wale, and Don Toliver. The album was nominated for best progressive R&B album at the Grammys. In an interview with Complex, 6lack stated that the title responds to questions such as "Where have you been? What have you been doing? What's the inspiration?" that people asked him.[31] On March 22, 2024, 6lack released his acoustic project No More Lonely Nights. It featured 6 songs off his album Since I Have a Lover.
6lack's music focuses or is based on personal and business relationships frequently, especially the topic of heartbreak.[32] 6lack has said that his songwriting is influenced mainly by his personal experiences and failed relationships.[33] Billboard magazine has described 6lack's music as "moody hip hop" that "spotlights vulnerability and honesty in a way the emoji generation can understand."[13] 6lack has cited Sade, T-Pain, The-Dream, and Usher as his influences.[34]
Since then, he's put out new music with Jhen Aiko, been seen in the studio with fellow Atlanta musician Gucci Mane, and was named as an opening act on The Weeknd's upcoming world tour alongside Rae Sremmurd. Oh, and he since had the daughter we talk about toward the end of the interview (and named her Syx, another allusion to the number he says has followed him forever). Not a bad stretch for a 24-year-old who's just starting to blow up.
How did you get into battle rap? [Here's a video of a younger 6lack rapping in front of Young Thug.]
Middle school is when I got super obsessed with battle rapping. Cassidy was my favorite battle rapper ever. All day in school, if I wasn't doing my work, I would be battling in the cafeteria, on the track outside the gym, in the hallways. Somebody would always be tapping me, like, "Yo, somebody think they can freestyle better than you." And I'd be like, "Cool, well, let's go figure it out." I changed schools a lot, but no matter what school I went to, I would always bring that with me, and that would always kind of be a new thing for people to be excited about in school. Because, obviously, when you're a kid in school, the last thing you want to do is just be there and do school shit all day.
Were you always confident, or did you grow into your confidence?
Honestly, I forgot about the process leading up to it. All I remember is being comfortable and knowing how to do it. It's probably because I was always making sure I knew how to rap, regardless. So when it came down to competition, it was just like, well, I know I can rap and you're asking me to prove it. So regardless of who it is, I can do that.
How'd that end?
You know, busted lips and bloodshed. [laughs] And I'm not even like a super aggressive or angry kind of person. But that's how passionate I was about feeling like somebody actually beat me for once.
Do you miss battle rap?
I don't think I miss it. I feel like I used it for what I needed it for. It took me through a lot of different stages of my life, and when I felt like I got all I could get from it, I wanted to learn how to actually make songs instead.
Did you have a sense that "PRBLMS" was going to blow up the way it did?
I hate to say I knew it from the jump, but honestly, the night I recorded the song, I had a feeling about it. I was recording in the kitchen, and I had got out maybe three lines of the first verse. And I instantly got the text from the girl I was dealing with at the time, and that shit literally said, "I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you." Somebody was like, "Put that in the song! Make that a line." And I just kept going that night, and by the time I was done with it, it just felt like something different than everything else that I did. It wasn't melodically the sing-iest song, or it wasn't lyrically the most advanced song, but it just felt like something.
What was the car accident?
This was leaving some show in Florida. It wasn't even my show. I was tagging along with the homies, and we were deciding on if we wanted to stay in the city we were in or drive late at night to the next city. And we chose to drive. The person who was driving fell asleep behind the wheel and from there, it was like a lot of spins. I woke up in the middle of the accident. I woke up while we were spinning. And I knew what was coming. As fast and as hard as we were spinning, I just braced myself, like, "We're about to flip." So we spun and then we started flipping. We flipped off the road and into this ditch. I woke up upside down and crawled out of there. I was unscratched.
Besides the normal back pains and shit later on, nobody broke anything, nothing traumatic happened. That was pretty much it. I remember waking up in the middle of it, like right before we started flipping, and I was saying to myself, "Not yet. I still have shit to do." I remember walking myself through it and talking to myself, saying, "All right. I know I'm about to flip. I know this is about to be a bad accident. But I honestly have stuff to do. So I know I'm not about to die. All I need to do is hold on." And walking out of that put things in perspective, because I've been in a lot of near-death experiences and I've been around a lot of near-death experiences or death in general. It's always like another kick for me to make sure I get what I need to get done, because you honestly never know.
On the last track on your album, "Alone," there's a recording of you expressing concern about the type of music people are trying to force you to make. You say if you make a specific type of record, "You become a fucking song, instead of a person."
That was an argument with the old label. That was some shit I wasn't supposed to be recording.
Are you still in contact with them?
Actually, I just got a call the other day. The head of the label, manager, he called me. He was just saying congrats and shit. No hard feelings or anything. But I just never wanted to sugarcoat or not tell the truth just to make someone else look good. I have to tell it how it's supposed to be told.