Isaiah Rashad

Chattanooga first, Los Angeles second

Isaiah Rashad Joel McClain was born on 16 May 1991 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He grew up on Too $hort and OutKast, settled on rapping seriously in tenth grade, and enrolled at Middle Tennessee State University before dropping out to record. Before any label involvement he was a founding member of TheHouse, the Chattanooga collective he built with YGTUT, Michael Da Vinci, Chris P and Brian Brown — a detail that still shapes his stage design a decade and a half later.

Industry attention arrived through the 2012 Smoker's Club Tour, where he shared bills with Juicy J, Joey Bada$$ and Smoke DZA. Top Dawg Entertainment signed him in March 2013, though the label did not announce it until 20 September that year. He then moved to Los Angeles and lived and recorded at TDE's Red Room studio, the same building that produced the label's run of mid-decade albums.

Cilvia Demo, The Sun's Tirade, and a near-dismissal

Cilvia Demo landed in January 2014 and entered the Billboard 200 at number 40 — unusual for a release billed as a demo — and put him in XXL's 2014 Freshman Class. It remains the record long-time listeners quote back at him, and its songs still anchor the back half of his sets.

The Sun's Tirade followed on 2 September 2016 through Top Dawg. It opened at number 17 on the Billboard 200 on 19,000 copies, reached number four on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and number three on Independent Albums, and scored 80 on Metacritic. Kendrick Lamar, SZA, Jay Rock and Syd appeared on it; Mike Will Made It, Cam O'bi, Steve Lacy and Dave Free worked on the production. Lead single "Free Lunch" arrived on 4 August 2016. Rashad has said he came close to being dropped three times while making it, and the album was cut through a period of substance misuse and depression. The Kendrick Lamar collaboration "Wat's Wrong" went on to be certified platinum, with "4r Da Squaw" also certified.

The House Is Burning arrived in 2021, released through a joint venture with Warner, and gave him his highest chart placing to that point at number seven on the Billboard 200. Pitchfork rated it 7.6. Then he went quiet.

The five years in between

In February 2022 a private sexual video of Rashad was leaked. He subsequently described himself as sexually fluid, and at Coachella later that year told the crowd their support had carried him through the months after the leak. In 2026 he stated plainly that he identifies as bisexual.

Speaking to The Breakfast Club on 5 May 2026, he framed the difficulty as one of precedent rather than concealment: they do not make a manual, he said, for being a bisexual Black man, and his reluctance had been about "not knowing how to not be ostracized". He also said he was, on balance, grateful for how things unfolded, because it forced him to "re-examine what I was doing" — while acknowledging he had put himself in a position where others could control his narrative. In a separate conversation with Dominic Fike for Pigeons and Planes he tied the gap to sobriety and to what he called the deconstruction of his masculinity.

It's Been Awful was recorded across that whole stretch, between 2022 and 2026.

It's Been Awful

The third studio album was released on 1 May 2026 through Top Dawg Entertainment and Warner Records: 16 tracks, 54 minutes and 17 seconds. "Same Shit" preceded it on 10 April, followed by "Boy in Red" with SZA on 30 April. Dominic Fike appears on "Cameras" and Julian Sintonia on "Do I Look High?"; Sintonia, Kal Banx and Hollywood Cole are among the producers.

It opened at number 18 on the Billboard 200 and number seven on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, and also charted in Australia at 87 and Portugal at 135. Critically it is the strongest of his three albums, sitting at 83 on Metacritic: AllMusic gave it 4.5 out of five, Clash 8/10, NME four stars, Pitchfork 7.8.

NME's review on 7 May reached for Prince and OutKast as reference points and described a "sun-damaged feel that envelopes the darker material without washing it out", a mix of laidback Southern rap, neo-soul and jazz built on trumpet and sedated piano. The same review noted his unflinching account of what addiction did to his body and of inherited family pain, and singled out a moment where he turns the joke on himself about rapping circles around his peers and then not releasing anything. Clash, writing on 5 May, called it the most TDE-sounding TDE project since DAMN.

Where things stand in September 2026

The tour was announced on 16 June 2026 as Lil Sunny's Awful Road Trip: 29 North American dates with Alemeda opening, artist presale on 18 June and general sale on 22 June. It opened on 13 August at the Coca-Cola Roxy in Atlanta, took in the Infosys Theater at Madison Square Garden on 22 August, and was routed to finish at the Rialto Theatre in Tucson on 28 September.

On 25 August he made his Tiny Desk debut at NPR, moving through 13 songs in roughly 24 minutes with a full band — guitar, keys, bass and drums, plus alto saxophone and trumpet, with Norelle and Moriah Wenzel on backing vocals. Reviews of it fixed on the same quality: loose without being sloppy, close-up without shrinking.

Then on 8 September the run was extended rather than wound down. Another 34 appearances were added through March 2027, on general sale from 11 September, hung on the tenth anniversary of The Sun's Tirade. A second North American leg opens on 4 November in Portland and takes in Seattle, Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego, San Antonio and Birmingham, with a Camp Flog Gnaw appearance in Los Angeles on 15 November, before closing at The Signal in Chattanooga on 25 November — the hometown show as the final stop. The UK and Europe follow from 10 January 2027 in Dublin, with Manchester, London, Bristol, Amsterdam, Brussels, Milan, Paris, Zurich, Berlin, Cologne and Warsaw. The Pacific leg starts on 23 February in Honolulu and runs through Wellington, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth to 7 March.

The road trip onstage

The Madison Square Garden theatre show on 22 August ran close to two hours plus an extended encore, and was staged as a literal road trip: a "CHATTANOOGA CITY LIMITS" road sign, lawn chairs, a cooler, plants and a clothesline backdrop, with short-film interstitials between songs threading the new album into the old ones. Material from The House Is Burning was played with the stage on fire. The reviewer described mosh pits during the harder tracks giving way, minutes later, to a room holding up lighters in silence.

Rashad does not stay put. At the Garden he dropped into the photo pit, worked along the front row mid-song, appeared on screen singing with people in the crowd, and ended the night walking the venue to hug attendees and sign merchandise well after the set.

The Chicago show at The Salt Shed on 3 September ran from 8pm to 9.30pm: 19 songs and a three-song encore. It opened with "THE NEW SUBLIME", "M.O.M." and "SCARED 2 LOOK DOWN" before reaching back to "Free Lunch", "Wat U Sed" and "Park", then alternated eras — "Boy in Red" and "SUPAFICIAL" against a snippet of "West Savannah" and "Heavenly Father" — and finished the main set with "Wat's Wrong", "Lay Wit Ya", "SAME SH!T", "Headshots (4r Da Locals)" and "4r Da Squaw". The encore was "Do I Look High", "RIP Young" and a cover of Joe Bataan's "The Prayer".