New music from Post Malone is imminent.
The superstar is readying his next album, which officially has a title–twelve carat toothache. In an interview with Billboard, he opened up about the follow-up to 2019’s Hollywood’s Bleeding.
Three years ago, Post moved from Los Angeles to a near-seven-acre house in Utah. While he thought the peace and quiet would be good for his creativity, he hardly made music over the past two years and had to rediscover the spark that was missing.
“There was a switch that flipped, and it felt like I was making Stoney,” he says of his 2016 debut album. “I lost that, and the hardest part is getting it back. It ebbs and flows. It’s figuring out: ‘Just because I’m not inspired to do it at the moment doesn’t mean I’m giving up.'”
twelve carat toothache is his shortest album to date, clocking in at 45 minutes. This time around, he wanted to avoid filler and refused to comprise his artistry over streams.
“Trying to shove 20 to 25 songs, it doesn’t work,” Post said. “Talking to the label [it’s like], ‘Oh, if you have less songs, you’re not going to stream as much,’ but the whole thing is that you don’t want to compromise your art and your gut vibe on anything.”
Earlier this month, his manager Dre London wrote on Instagram that Post’s label Republic was holding up the album, possibly over the album’s length.
“I’ve made a lot of compromises, especially musically, but now I don’t feel like I want to anymore,” Post explained. “I don’t need a No. 1; that doesn’t matter to me no more, and at a point, it did.”
In November, he dropped his single with The Weeknd, “One Right Now,” which peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. He says that the new music will “speak more to how I’m feeling at the moment: the ups and downs and the disarray and the bipolar aspect of being an artist in the mainstream.”