Lambo Lawson Is Getting His Moment as an Artist

6-10: Lambo Lawson

Sounds like: The last 15 years of rap boiled into a hyperconcentrated tincture.

As a young man growing up in South Jersey near Philadelphia, Lambo Lawson worked with labels like Def Jam and Philadelphia International as a songwriter and commuted across the Delaware River to collaborate with some of Philly’s most prominent rappers.

Yet recognition eluded him for his own work. “Every label always wanted to sign me as a writer or a producer,” says the 32-year-old, who’s lived in Portland since 2019. “It wasn’t until I got here that I was really valued as an artist.”

Lawson doesn’t sound like a lot of other artists in Portland, but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what he does sound like. On last year’s Final Trap Fantasy, you can hear traces of the melodic sing-rap that took hold of the charts in the 2010s, the rap-rock revival that ensued, and the new wave of gothic “rage rap” pioneered by Playboi Carti and affiliates.

“I have songs in every genre,” he says. “I would do punk rock songs mixed with rap songs, and this was before 6ix9ine, Travis Scott, all that. We were raging at shows and crowd-surfing at little events that were way too packed over capacity.”

Lawson was immersed in music during his childhood. His grandfather was a singer and saxophonist who owned a record store, and Lawson picked up the baritone horn as a kid to follow in his footsteps. Yet once the grueling demands of performing in a marching band made themselves clear, he began to apply his skills elsewhere.

“I wrote poetry a lot, so I was a good writer,” he says. “I wrote research papers in school for people for money. Just kind of putting two and two together, being a good writer and being a good musician at the same time, that’s kinda where rap came from for me.”

Lawson started putting out music in his late teens, but success as a solo artist was slim in comparison to the enviable number of gigs as a behind-the-scenes songwriter and hooksmith he picked up. He’s not at liberty to disclose the identities of many of his clients, but they include more than a few household names and generational talents.

“To me, I feel like I’m just as big,” he says of his clients. “I just kind of took an underground route for a long time, and now is when I’m emerging as the star.”

Lawson moved to Portland in 2019 to more easily commute to L.A. for a modeling gig, and while the city’s hardly known as a hip-hop hub, he finds the slower pace more satisfying than the busy schedule of mostly behind-the-scenes work he did back home.

“In Philadelphia, there’s a lot of major artists,” he says. “You guys [in Portland] don’t have enough artists to have to write for anybody but yourselves. I’m trying to let people know that that’s a good thing.”