To the world, Memphis Depay, who has long preferred to be known simply as Memphis, is one of football’s great forwards. He’s a player who has spent nearly 15 years at the very top of the game, scoring on the biggest pitches, for clubs that carry the historical, commercial, and cultural weight of global expectation every single week.

But ask people in the Netherlands, the country where he grew up, and you get a more layered answer. With 55 goals in 109 appearances, Memphis is the all-time top scorer of the national team, surpassing legends like Robin van Persie, and moving beyond names like Johan Cruyff and Arjen Robben. That record alone should place him beyond question. And yet the conversation never quite settles. Is he fit enough? Committed enough? Can we trust him when it matters most? He is the kind of figure a nation simultaneously claims and critiques, celebrates and second-guesses in the same breath, and through it all, he is never quite allowed to just be great.

My version of Memphis starts in Eindhoven. Less than 20 miles from where I grew up, PSV Eindhoven was the local team you rooted for. In those same years, a young Memphis, just five months my senior, was quietly entering that storied club’s youth system at 12.

From there, I watched Memphis become PSV’s breakout star before moving to Manchester United at 21 in a transfer reportedly worth around €34 million, where he inherited the iconic number seven shirt previously worn by club legends including David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo. For the press, the combination of that shirt and his larger-than-life personality proved irresistible. His Premier League struggles became a national obsession with the Memphis away from the pitch proving just as vivid.

He was heavily tattooed, released rap music, wrote a book, designed clothes, and was vocal about his right to wear them. When Manchester teammate Wayne Rooney took him aside and asked him to tone it down, he turned up to a game shortly after in a cowboy hat and leather jacket. And when the party-boy headlines ran, he hit back in the Dutch press, insisting the image had nothing to do with who he was. He has never shied away from confronting critics, managers, and tabloids alike.

What followed was a career that made the noise look foolish. He rebuilt himself at Lyon, becoming one of Ligue’s most productive attacking players over five prolific seasons between 2017 and 2021. Barcelona came calling, then Atlético Madrid. Then, in a move that raised eyebrows in Europe, he signed for Corinthians in São Paulo in 2024, throwing himself into one of football’s most intense fan cultures inside the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A league. There, Memphis helped the club win trophies including the Campeonato Paulista and the Copa do Brasil, both in 2025. Through all of it, the criticism never fully stopped. Too flashy. Too distracted. Too much. Not enough.

It would be a mistake to look at Memphis and see only a footballer. His forays into music, fashion, and charity were pursued openly at a time when doing so invited only more criticism. The thinking then was as old as sport itself, that an athlete exists purely as a physical proposition, their value beginning and ending on the pitch, and that anything beyond the white lines was to be viewed as a distraction.

What that thinking conveniently ignores is the most basic human reality. A professional footballer trains for roughly four hours a day. The remaining twenty belong to them. Memphis has always had more interior life, more to process and express, than that time could ever contain. In 2017 he released freestyle track “LA Vibes,” accompanied by a music video filmed in California, and by 2020 had put out a full debut album, Heavy Stepper. In Brazil he went further, recording Falando com as Favelas with MC Hariel, an EP that said as much about how seriously he takes the music as any chart position could. That same year he launched MDC, his own clothing label, its “Blind and Deaf to the World” concept eventually becoming a proper Puma collaboration.

Today, the notion that athletes should stay in their lane is visibly crumbling. Brands want athletes and fashion wants sports. NBA players have turned the tunnel walk into a runway, arriving in custom Marni and Bottega Veneta before a ball has been touched. Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka step onto the world’s biggest tennis stages in Gucci. Formula 1 drivers front campaigns for the storied European luxury houses. A global sports sponsorship industry worth tens of billions (and still growing) has dissolved the boundaries between worlds that once kept a careful distance. What was once held against Memphis is now considered table stakes. Perhaps he was simply early.

Now 32, he arrives at what is possibly his final World Cup. The Netherlands national team qualified unbeaten for the world’s biggest football stage, winning six and drawing two of their eight qualifiers, with Memphis scoring eight of the 27 goals. Built around the defensive authority of Virgil van Dijk and the midfield intelligence of Frenkie de Jong, this is a Dutch side with genuine tournament pedigree. Memphis, as ever, is both the question mark and the answer. He has a record of raising his game for the national team on the biggest stages — a place where he has always been most himself. For this month’s digital cover, we sat down with him at a moment in his career when the weight of his nation’s expectations has never felt more palpable.

Hypebeast: What were your early years like, growing up in a small town?

Memphis: It was a great time growing up in Moordrecht. I mean, it’s a place close to the big city. My father’s Ghanaian, and there’s a big Ghanaian community in Amsterdam. So you go from a small place to spending weekends in Amsterdam where I have a lot of family in the Bijlmer area. My older brother would take me on adventures very young.

Was football always there?

I started playing around the age of four. At nine, I went to Sparta Rotterdam which is where it became serious. It was mixing school and football. You get picked up earlier from school, have certain privileges, and you play against better kids, so it becomes very serious. At the age of 12, I moved to Eindhoven for PSV. That was a big step for me. First, traveling from Rotterdam to Eindhoven early in the morning around 5:30AM, coming back late at night around 9PM. My body couldn’t take it so I moved in with a foster family in Eindhoven because of my family situation and things that were going on. It was great moving there, man. It was more calm, I would say. And PSV was the perfect club for me to develop my talent.

I’m actually from near Eindhoven, where I would visit PSV matches with my dad growing up. I heard then that they had a good youth program. Did you feel that way?

Yes. They gave the talent a lot of freedom, whereas in Ajax for example, I would say they’re more strict in the way they develop the talents. They’re quicker to send kids away if you make a mistake. I wasn’t an easy kid to deal with. I had a lot of traumas going on, so I always [required] some extra care from a club. Most clubs don’t specialize in taking care of a kid that’s struggling. They just look at the football and your parents need to figure out how they deal with it. But I didn’t have my parents with me, so I was dealing with a bunch of stuff that I didn’t know how to express. On the field, everything would come out in a positive way. I was hungry. Stronger, faster than the other kids. But then in school and outside of football, I was struggling. PSV provided me with a mental [health] coach at the age of 12 that I worked with until I was 20. They gave me more chances when I made mistakes, which every kid makes. For that, I’m very grateful.

Looking at those early days of growing up in The Netherlands, being half-Ghanaian, later traveling all over the world, playing for clubs in the UK, France, Spain, and now in Brazil, what remains stable? What is the sense of home?

Home is definitely within myself. You can be anywhere and feel a sense of home. I’ve now lived in Brazil for the last two years, and it feels like home. Madrid feels like home, too. As we speak, I’m in the Netherlands where I report for the national team a bunch of times a year. And when I come back, of course, that feels like home even though I’m not here too often and don’t see myself living here after my career. Then I would say Ghana is also home where I’ve been going back to since I was 23. That’s where my roots are from, where I spend a lot of time, and where I have family, friends, a business. Its spirit is great. People are happy. The culture is rich.

I remember seeing you recording some scenes there for videos accompanying your first EP. Tell me a bit about how you expanded your career into the music industry. That felt unexpected to many.

Nah, I’ve always been on my music. Listening to Dutch artists like Kempi. But also Jay-Z, Tupac, and Kanye West. My mom brought me to training every day and I would always be singing or rapping on the way. Then when I was 15, my friend had a studio and I would go in and fuck around. Later, I started recording with friends in Rotterdam. Over the years, it became a therapy. What started as fun became something more serious where I understood that I have things on my chest that, as an athlete, you can’t always speak about during interviews without shooting yourself in the foot. Music became a way out to express myself and to take care of my mental health. These past few years, it’s really helped me. I spend so many hours in the studio, put my own money into sessions and music videos, so it’s become serious. I have about three albums worth of unreleased songs. It’s something that I’m excited about.

What did you want to say with your Falando com as Favelas EP?

MC Hariel and I met in the studio in São Paulo where Hariel is from. We smashed three songs in one night and then the connection was big because he’s also a Corinthians fan. Back then my Portuguese wasn’t that good, but I started using some lyrics in the song just to connect more to the Brazilian audience. I came up with the idea that we needed to shoot this in Hariel’s favela and also film material in Ghana to connect those roots because Brazil and Ghana are actually very connected in culture and history. We ended up getting a gold plaque for that.

Who’s someone you’re listening to now?

My favorite is Drake. I’m a big fan of his work. We have some friends in common but I’ve never met him. Also just this whole story of how he released three albums at once to get out of his record deal. He outsmarted the game, and then also broke all the records at the same time. You cannot hate on him. A lot of his recent music is relatable in my life. It’s what I’m living through.

Back to your own music. Did you feel that there was a bit of scrutiny at the time from the outside world? I know athletes are always judged by so many for pursuing interests outside of the sport itself.

My life off the field has been interesting. I signed my first contract when I was 16, but at the same time I was around people in the street that were focusing on music. I remember I recorded a song and did a music video for it and my coach was getting questioned in a press conference like, ‘What do you think about Memphis dropping a new song?’ and him saying, ‘Ah, well, I don’t think he can perform on the weekend while he’s playing, so he should pick one.’ But we have plenty of free time. Some people stay with their families or at home. They just want to control you, but for me it’s just really a therapy and a way to express myself in a way that I can’t do inside of the football industry. Because my name is bigger than football in what I live, what I do, and what I represent. To just play football, that’s not for me. And obviously they’re trying to make you scared in the beginning or shut you up, but for me personally, I’ve always been a standup guy that speaks on what I think. Nowadays it’s more acceptable but ten years ago, no way. There was only backlash.

Yeah, because now I feel the relationship between the sport and industries like music or fashion are becoming more intertwined. Do you feel that as a player, as well?

Even though football is the biggest sport in the world, some athletes just like to play. They don’t really talk about what’s going on. I do have those conversations but mostly with people outside of the football industry. This football thing is shifting. I tell CEOs they have to take it to the next level. FIFA does this with the World Cup but I tell them, ‘As a club, you can equally create this energy, giving benefit to fans and make it more fun.’ The old school media wants to make it so serious. I think it’s a good idea to make [the fan experiences] even more attractive to the fans.

What parallels do you see among football, fashion, and music?

First of all, you have to be very dedicated. It doesn’t matter if you’re an athlete or artist or a fashion designer, it’s very competitive and a mental and creative game, as well. They have a lot of parallels, and that’s why I think they’re connecting more than ever now with each other because athletes love to wear fashion, and the fashion designers love to work with us. We represent each other because there’s no bigger thing than an athlete or artist wearing your brand.

With that said, what role does fashion then play in your life?

It’s been in my life forever and it’s a creative habit that comes naturally. The colors, the fabrics. Obviously back when I was younger, I was more into the big brand names to just feel like you made it. But now it’s more about what you want to represent. It goes back to my Ghanaian roots, too. In Ghana, in the Ashanti region, the King (who is one of the most intelligent men that I know and he and his son are like family) and my grandfather were best friends. He told me that my grandfather was the first one that he saw with a bow tie. Even as a kid, I would check if my mom had jackets in her closet that I could wear. You couldn’t tell it was men’s or women’s, I would just wear it as she had a great sense of fashion. So it comes from those mixes. I’m not scared to pop outside with anything that people think is crazy. I just do it for me. Not to look different, just because I think it’s beautiful.

Is there a milestone outside of football you would still like to reach?

Maybe to become a creative director one day. Or maybe just find more people that connect with my sound and story. If I catch that, that will be a milestone.

At this stage in your career, does World Cup 2026 feel different from ones you’ve played in before?

Yeah. The first one in Brazil, I was 20 years old. Now I’m 32, the all-time top scorer of my nation, so I’m coming in with a different experience, however with the same excitement. I’ve had great challenges already this year and we’re not even halfway into the year. I do think that’s something that will push me forward.

There is, of course, scrutiny. Are there any misconceptions you think people have about you?

Plenty. All the time. But you know, I don’t need to prove anything to anyone because at this point of time, I accept that everyone’s going to have an opinion. Now more than ever, social media, fake news, it’s all part of it. We all know it. So it’s whatever. I feel like my mindset is in a good place in life. I have amazing people around me. I meet a lot of new people that inspire me to be even more myself. Just know that when you meet me, it’s real energy and whatever your intentions are, good or bad, that’s also how you’re also going to look at me. I look at myself in the mirror every day and go outside trying to better the world.

With that said, in 10 to 20 years from now when we talk about your chapter in football, what do you hope people say?

I hope they’ll say I changed the game and saw things in a wider perspective. Obviously being the all-time top scorer, there will eventually be someone that will break my record. But until that time, I hope they say that there’s this guy who played for the Netherlands who was always against the odds, did what he did, came in with his own style, self-made, no hand-outs, and still dominated. Stayed true to himself and never sold out.