In this FRONTPAGE story, 4Batz lays out his wild artistic journey to st4rdom.
A lot can change in a year. If life is a grand-old mansion with winding staircases, brilliant chandeliers, powder rooms, and vine-covered terraces, then 12 months ago, Neko Bennett was still very much in the cobweb-infested cellar. “I was working a 12-hour job in a hot-ass warehouse — big-ass steel-toed boots and goddamn long sleeves with stupid glasses on,” he says. For his pains, he collected an $800 check every two weeks. “I thought I was hitting off that,” the 20-year-old tells me in his sleepy Dallas drawl during a recent call. But then, Bennett — now known to most as 4batz — released his first single, caught the ears of a couple of music icons, and became one of the industry’s biggest breakout stars.
It was in May that Bennett released his first mixtape, u made me a st4r. It’s a brisk 23-minute introduction to the Texan’s world. Sonically, it’s a fusion of new and old, with warm harmonics and stuttering snares reminiscent of prime Aaliyah, but infused with a distinctly modern wounded-male persona. It’s Dru Hill if they grew up listening to too much Drake; Jodeci in a Nike ski mask. It’s probably also the only debut project you’ll find that features guest appearances from both the aforementioned Canadian chart-topper (who appears on a remix of one of the album’s hits) and the artist formerly known as Kanye West.
It’s these huge early co-signs that have driven some to be skeptical of Bennett’s quick success. Like every pop artist who, through the eyes of onlookers, seems to have just appeared overnight, he has fielded his fair share of “industry plant” accusations. The music business — laden as it is with a dense web of producers, managers, agents, publicists, A&Rs, assistants, creative directors, and algorithms — is far too complex and cumbersome a beast to simply decide how and when an artist achieves success within it. But like any story of a rapid rise, Bennett’s involves a fair share of hard work, chance, the internet, and good fortune.
Take the occasion for his first-ever trip on an airplane. After a handful of experimentations that he felt were not worthy of being published, Bennett released his first song as 4batz — “act i: stickerz ‘99’” — in July of last year. The song is a soppy appeal to a distant lover. “I might just call and catch a plane / I might just come and see you today,” it begins, providing a fitting introduction to the now-familiar 4batz character: a forlorn romantic caught in someone else’s toxic spell. With an entrancing high-pitched vocal melody and woozy, ’90s R&B production chopped and screwed to a Texas slur, the song feels like its own kind of toxic elixir. It wasn’t long, he says, before he received a DM from a group of creatives in LA. They told him how much they liked the song, offered to fly him out to California, and helped him make a music video for it. The video was released last October and, as of this writing, has just shy of 4.4 million views on YouTube. Again, it was his one and only song on SoundCloud.
Despite bits of serendipity like this, there were moments on his path where other less-convicted people might have been discouraged. Take, for example, the fact that at the outset, when he showed his music to his friends and family, not only did they not like it, they kind’ve hated it. “When I showed my mama ‘stickerz,’ she was just like, ‘What the fuck is this? This you?’” His homies weren’t much kinder. “They was like, ‘Why you sound like that? You sound like a bitch.’”
Raised in rougher sections of South Dallas, Bennett says he grew up admiring the neighborhood “street dudes,” emulating them and childhood heroes like DMX and 2Pac. So when he debuted the tender, pitched-up, lovelorn falsetto laced all across the songs that would end up on his debut project, the people around him were understandably a little confused. “N****s would tell me that ‘it’s not me.’ It’s like, how the fuck you going to tell me what’s not me?” It was the conviction that he was communicating a truly authentic feeling and, he admits, a severe case of the “I don’t give a fuck’s” that pushed him to release the music anyway. “I was at a real fucked-up point in my life where I didn’t care about anything. My pops died. I was in a relationship. My bitch cheated on me.” He couldn’t be hurt more than he already was, right?
The payoff has been immense. On December 15, 2023, Bennett released his second single, “act ii: date @ 8,” a smooth ode to a prospective lover and about as sticky an earworm as you’ll find. “Five hunnid for your fuckin’ hair / Two hunnid for your fuckin’ nails,” Bennett croons to the woman he’s pining after on the now-famous hook. Clocking in at just under two minutes with a chorus that you couldn’t dislodge from your brain with a crowbar, the song was already primed for virality. When the song’s “From the Block Performance” was released five days later, it sent the track to the moon and Bennett hurtling toward stardom.
In the video — which is part of a popular series from content creator 4 Shooters Only that typically features rappers performing their songs on a street corner in their home city — Bennett is posted in front of a dangling microphone at the intersection of Tioga Street and Strawberry Trail in South Dallas. He’s wearing black sweatpants, a black tank top, and a black ski mask, while holding a stack of bills. Behind him, a similarly monochrome posse of friends pass a blunt around. It’s all pretty standard “From the Block” fare. That is, until you hear his dulcet falsetto. Audiences took the bait and were summarily hooked. Who was this kid and why did he look like that, but sound like that? At 13 million views, the video is 4 Shooters Only’s second-most popular upload to date.
And just like that, the warehouse days were over. Timbaland, the music producer legend and the progenitor of many of the iconic sounds that 4batz’s is building upon, recorded his own reaction to the video. “Dallas, y’all got one!” he intoned, bobbing his head to the beat. By January, with just two singles out, Bennett had amassed over 250,000 followers on Instagram (and by Valentine’s Day, Bennett was back in Dallas where he used some of his new earnings to treat a group of local ladies to a nail salon trip and shoe shopping). Suddenly he was traveling the country — going to New York to record an “On the Radar” freestyle and attending his first-ever live concert in San Antonio (Drake’s sold-out date at Frost Bank Center, where he stood in VIP next to Lil Durk, Peso Pluma, and Central Cee). He even received a very unusual phone call from a famous admirer.
“It felt like the whole fucking world was telling me Ye wanted to speak to me,” Bennett says, recalling how the controversial multi-platinum artist tried to track him down. “Like, I’m telling you, he got everybody and their mama to text me and shit.” When the two were finally able to connect, Bennett says the interaction began in typically bizarre fashion. “We hop on the phone call and bro just started ranting about how he bought the first PS3.” Eventually though, Bennett says, he and Ye struck up a bond. “He gave me a lot of advice on that phone call. He was just being cool… I forgot I was talking to Ye after a while.”
Bennett says he’s never really had any music mentors up until now. He does, however, point to a handful of figures who catalyzed his journey. While he was enrolled in a GED program (he dropped out of high school in 10th grade), a teacher named Mr. Murray noticed Bennett’s frequent desk drumming and freestyling and decided to strike a deal with him: If Bennett passed the next test, he’d aid his musical aspirations and buy him a microphone. “Man, I cheated like a motherfucker!” Bennett says laughing. “But, on bro, I passed the test, and when I passed it, he bought me the mic! It was a $90 mic, an Audio-Technica 2020… I used it for ‘date @ 8,’ ‘stickerz,’ and ‘on god?’”
Bennett considers this moment he finds himself in merely the first of many eras of 4batz to come. But even so, he admits that not much has changed. He’s still wearing the same black tank top and ski mask he wore last year. He’s still focused on making music. Even on the cover of Highsnobiety, he tries to stay true to his uniform.
“I’m still me right now, you know what I’m saying? If one of my chips fall on the floor, I’m still going to eat it.” Humble as he is, he’s already set a few new goals. “This next year, I want to go on tour and I’m going to drop some more music.” He pauses for a second. “Yeah, and I’m going to be the biggest artist in the world.”
