NLE Choppa Shares Best Advice He Got From Stevie Wonder

NLE Choppa only started making music a year ago, and he's already garnered over 60 million views on YouTube with his breakout single, "Shotta Flow." At just 16 years old, the East Memphis rapper has a career that's blowing up, and despite pulling an all-nighter in the studio the night before, he came through to sit down for XXL's latest episode of Who Am I?.

During the conversation, NLE Choppa, who has more than 3 million monthly listeners on Spotify, gives some insight into his name and brand. "NLE stands for No Love Entertainment," Choppa explains to XXL when asked to break down his name. "It's pretty much a brand. I want to make it into a label." The crew consists of several other rappers that helped Choppa with its launch.

His ambitions are big for his young age, but it makes sense when you find out who he looks to as a role model. "Lil Wayne was a big inspiration," he shares. "Started listening to him like 6 years old. His lyrics are crazy, his wordplay and how different he was stood out." Now Choppa is looking to top the Billboard charts just like Weezy has done.

Though he's fresh in the game with a year of experience, NLE Choppa is focused on the end result: being a respected artist. "I wanted to be a rapper a year ago, and ever since then, I started taking it serious," Choppa reveals. "I was recording stuff but it wasn't really that good. Now it's something that people actually want to hear. I really started taking it serious after I figured out I could actually do good with it."

Thanks to the viral success of his first single, "No Love Anthem," Choppa's music started popping up on Instagram left and right. He tells the story of how famous Instagram personalities were taking to the song, and helped push the success of the track even further. When he followed up with "Shotta Flow," Choppa was out the gate running. The song took on a life of its own, and now he's kind of over it. "The process of making it and doing the video was lit, but I don't even like the song anymore," Choppa says of "Shotta Flow." "I don't like to listen to it." Considering the song currently has 52 million streams on Spotify and 65 million views on YouTube, it looks like he'll be fine without listening to it on his own.

And in one of the more interesting admissions of his conversation, NLE Choppa remembers the advice he received from legendary singer Stevie Wonder at a Grammy Awards party earlier this year. "Stevie Wonder, he was in a party," he recalls of the moment. "They introduced me to him. I didn't know that he had like a accent... or that is just how he talks. He was real cool. Kinda chopped it up... It was cool, good experience... Stevie Wonder, he gave me some good advice. Tell me to keep working."

Watch NLE Choppa discuss his Memphis roots, the one thing that frustrates him about the music business, his goals for the future and more in his Who Am I? interview above.

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