Show & Prove: Anycia
Words: Kyle Eustice
Editor’s Note: This story appears in the Winter 2024 issue of XXL Magazine, on newsstands now and available for sale on the XXL website.
Rocking fake beards and delivering quips about Beyoncé farting in Jay-Z’s bed are all part of Southside Atlanta rapper Anycia’s unabashed sense of humor she showcases on social media. Her natural comedic flair has made the rap upstart a recent fan favorite. But the 27-year-old artist’s self-assured bars and smoky voice have kept her name buzzing in hip-hop circles.
Anycia has made a solid amount of noise with her deliciously satisfying singles “Back Outside” featuring Latto, and “Splash Brothers” with Karrahbooo over the last year. Both helped earn Anycia a spot on singer Kehlani’s Crash World Tour in 2024. With laid-back rhymes peppered by her around-the-way attitude, Anycia, the self-proclaimed “Princess Pop That,” is rap’s newest cool girl.
Her first time rapping was during a play in third grade. “I was going to a Christian school,” Anycia recalls. “I wore some shades, a chain, and a bubble coat, and I rapped about Jesus. My first rap was about the Lord!” It would be years before Anycia would take her craft seriously. Raised in a single-parent household, the rookie artist, born Anycia Edwards, was exposed to an eclectic mix of music by her mother: Teena Marie, Luther Vandross, Tupac Shakur, Ciara, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and Dem Franchise Boyz. While attending Ivy Preparatory Academy in East Atlanta, Anycia took an audio engineering class as one of her electives.
“I went to an all-girl preparatory middle school for sixth and seventh grade,” she explains. “I took Mandarin, Robotics, Calculus—all that sh*t. A lot of our projects were making commercials and doing the theme songs. We had to create background music for certain things. The school had gave all of us MacBooks, so I was just using GarageBand all the time. I actually got in trouble one time because me and my friends made a jerking song on the laptop, and it was extremely inappropriate.”
In 2010, Anycia’s mother got a job opportunity in New Orleans, so her family relocated to the Big Easy, where Anycia says she was “robbed” of her innocence. The two years she spent there profoundly changed her views on the world due to the relentless bullying she endured. However, she “always had the heart of a lion.”
By 16, she was back in Atlanta, and her interest in music had exponentially grown. Inspired by the success of Atlanta’s robust rap scene, which included acts like OutKast, Future, Migos and Young Thug, she wrote “Queen of Atlanta.”
“That was the first day I drank sake,” she remembers. “My friend had a recording studio in his house. It was actually a really bad song, but back then, I was like, Yeah! I was emailing it to people. I was like, ‘This is it. This is dope. This is me. I’m a queen.’”
With encouragement from her friends, who had continually begged her to give rapping a real shot, she uploaded a song called “Kimora Lee” to SoundCloud and the UnitedMasters app in 2022 while just trying to be heard. Although Anycia juggled a job at a smoke shop, went to barber school, and was broke, her rap ambitions soon took center stage.
“My friends used to listen to my music, and they were like, ‘Why the f**k won’t you be serious? Like just be serious,’” she says. “But I didn’t have the confidence to put it out.” Years of bullying had taken a toll on her self-esteem, but seeing the positive response to “Kimora Lee” put a battery in her back. In 2023, she released a video of a song she wrote called “So What,” but because it contains a Ciara sample, the track has yet to see an official release. Anycia hopes she’ll be able to meet Ciara in the future and give it the rollout it deserves. “Whenever Ciara can approve it, I don’t care if it’s in 2027, I’ll drop ‘So What,’” she maintains. “It’s my baby.”
Still, “So What” cracked open the door, but she dismissed the song’s virality as a fleeting moment. According to Anycia, her former manager started shopping for label deals, but Anycia wasn’t really impressed by what she was presented with at first: “I had it in my mind that if I just keep going, then my price will increase.”
And she was right. In 2023, she signed a distribution deal with Steve Stoute’s UnitedMasters, a company that owned one of the apps to which she initially uploaded her music. With a bigger machine behind her, Anycia’s career was finally taking shape. Her raspy sound, fun energy and laid-back, nearly lackadaisical delivery quickly set her apart from the vast number of female rappers sprinkling the space. “Once I started realizing that all I had to do was use my actual voice to be different, I was like, OK. I can do this,” Anycia shares.
“Splash Brothers” with Karrahbooo followed last October. The song, which finds the ladies bossin’ up together, got them more traction. A month later, Anycia put out her Extra EP. Then, her anthem for hitting the streets, “Back Outside” featuring Latto, arrived last January. The video has since clocked more than 13 million YouTube views. It also appears on her debut album, Princess Pop That, released last April. Jetsonmade, who coproduced the track, describes working with Anycia as a “roller coaster.”
“Some days the music is lit, and other days it’s laid back,” Jetsonmade says. “Every session is funny, though. Anycia is up now. She’s doing everything 100 percent her way, and everybody loves it and her.”
As Anycia’s star continues to rise, she confirms a new album is on the horizon this year, but a concrete plan for its release has yet to be solidified. Right now, singles like “Girls Gone Wild” and features on Monaleo’s “Don Who Leo” are keeping her busy. There are also more collaborations in the works. “JID, I did a song with him,” she reveals. “I got a song with GloRilla and Karrahbooo all in one song.”
She’s also trying to manifest a collab with Cardi B while ducking any beef. “I’m just chilling, eating carne asada tacos, drinking Cabernet, smoking a little weed like, ‘What’s up?’” Anycia expresses. “I’m just trying to win everybody over and have a good time. I just want to be big. That’s all. My only goal is that everything works out in my favor, and we get to this muthaf**kin’ money.”
Keep splashin’.
Listen to Anycia’s Princess Pop That Album
Anycia photo
The Winter 2024 issue of XXL magazine featuring Anycia’s Show & Prove interview is available for purchase now and is on newsstands. The issue also includes GloRilla and Sexyy Red on the cover, conversations with Ab-Soul, Dej Loaf, Quando Rondo, Ferg, Nav, Kash Doll, Sauce Walka, Baby Kia, BLP Kosher, OsamaSon, Sugarhill Ddot, dancehall artist Skillibeng and producer Ace Charisma. There’s also a look at the new season of the Netflix reality competition show Rhythm + Flow through the eyes of its judges Latto, DJ Khaled and Ludacris, a discussion with high-powered hip-hop attorney Drew Findling, plus 18 hip-hop heavyweights discuss the state of lyricism.
