GoldLink is a self-professed product of his environment. In this episode of HYPEBEAST Radio, hosts Madrell Stinney and Ben Roazen sat down with the DMV rapper to discuss the inspirations and influences behind his latest album, At What Cost. Simply put, the album is “a narrative of D.C. It’s not just House of Cards and the President, things like that… It’s the murder capital. We got hit by the Crack Era the hardest.” The artist, soft-spoken as ever, says that he refracted these myriad socio-economic factors through the DMV’s era’s native music: go-go.

“I leak the DMV out of me,” says the 23-year-old artist born D’Anthony Carlos. But as with the capital’s culture, GoldLink insists that there is “waaaay more to DC style than just Foamposites.” Speaking with HYPEBEAST Radio, the rapper opens up about what he admires about Sade (“We used to date back in the day,” he jokes), and clues people into the fact that super-producer Rick Rubin has “really nice feet, the smoothest feet, better than a lot of women’s feet.”