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In an interview with Eric Skelton for Complex, 24-year-old singer-songwriter Tommy Richman explained how frustration helped birth his viral hit, "Million Dollar Baby."
The huge track, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, turned Richman into an overnight success, but he's been making music since at least 2016. After signing to Brent Faiyaz's label ISO Supremacy in 2023, he dropped his EP The Rush, which he hoped would be his big break. "When we made ‘Last Nite,’ bro, I thought that was the one," Richman admitted. "And then it came out, and you know."
His fanbase loved the EP, but "Last Nite" wasn't the breakout hit he hoped it would be. "I had a chip on my shoulder, man," he shared. "Supposedly, that EP was supposed to be my ‘viral moment’ or something, but it wasn't viral. Then I put out another two songs and according to my label, they didn't do well."
Frustrated by the lack of attention his music was getting, he decided to go into the studio with virality in mind. "We were literally having a conversation in the studio," he said, adding that he realized it wasn't something he could force. Instead, he went to record music on "a very normal night," and smoked some weed for the first time in a while.
"I had quit weed before, and I just got back into it," he said. "That night, I smoked too much. I greened out." Then, out of nowhere, the hook for "Million Dollar Baby" came to him.
"I felt like I was still the underdog,” he said. “I wanted to make it so badly and I was literally saying, like, ‘I'm a million dollar baby.’ Like, people need to stop playing with me. That was really it." He made the song back to back with "Devil is a Lie," which he thought would be the more successful of the two. "I remember playing ‘Million Dollar Baby’ for the label and they're like, ‘Oh, this is cool.’ And none of us thought it was a hit. None of us," he said. "But when we made ‘Devil Is A Lie,’ we were like, ‘Oh nah, this is the one.’ I remember when we made that shit, bro, we ran it back like five times. It was crazy."
The craziest part about the success of "Million Dollar Baby" is that it started to go viral—thanks to a TikTok of Richman and friends listening to the song in the studio—before it was even finished. "When the snippet came out, the song wasn't done. So we got a bunch of people in the studio, finished it, and just turned up," he shared.
While Richman had spoken with his team about trying to figure out how to go viral, he scored a hit without relying on a gimmick. "I never thought we would go viral off a song just being hard," he added.
Since the release of "Million Dollar Baby," Richman has released his debut album Coyote and announced a tour for 2025.
Read the full interview with Tommy Richman here.
English (US) ·