How Bushy B Went Viral Eight Years Late

As a journalist in a nihilistic 2026 hellscape, trust me when I say this: Abrupt career wakeup calls are usually pretty shitty. So then, I am charmed when Bushy B tells me about the moment his job as a case manager for at-risk youth came to an end. Taking a lunch break as his eight-year-old single "Scared" was going viral, he ran into a transformative First World Problem for emerging musicians. 

"I kept having to go out of town to meet with these people and I ran out of PTO," the Miami-based artist explains. "I had to make a decision." That decision was to make music his full-time gig, and, besides a missed initial flight to NY this past Tuesday, it’s worked out pretty well. After all, we’re sitting in the ultra swanky SoHo House, and it doesn’t seem like he’s tripping about the expensive Uber he just took to get here. "I’m just trying to take it one day at a time," he says. That next step will involve the release of Lifestyle, a new album he’s set to drop this Friday. 

Checking at a tidy 15 songs, the project sees Bushy shift between earnest street reflection and sultry romance with languid ease. For the opener, "Back On My Feet," he cruises a spacy soundscape for a rumination on battles won and others yet to be completed. Meanwhile, on tracks like "Meet Me In The 305," he grafts sweet nothings onto wet strings like waves brushing Miami Beach. His voice is a little more elastic, but there’s a rasp at the edge that sort of reminds me of 6LACK. If he is like 6LACK, he’s the more wholesome, post-therapy person. Kicking it with my writer friend, his publicist and his other homie, he makes time to return a call he missed from his mother during our interview; she wants the rundown on his NY trip. 

Years before she had business trips to check in on, Bushy’s mom, along with his father, would expose him to the sounds of Gregory Isaacs. Soon, he’d be flipping through their CD books and switching discs in and out of his CD player as he soaked up the sounds of Jagged Edge, New Edition, and Michael Jackson. "I was into music at a very early age," he says. Soon, that palette grew to include folks like Lil Wayne, Kodak Black, and Rick Ross. He says his pops used to play with Rozay back in high school. Bushy was into sports too, but the customary accouterments of the streets were usually close by. "My dad took me to my first dice game at four years old," he recalls. "I’ve seen people get killed in front of me for $5." 

Still, the danger only emboldened him. "I’m fearless," he says. "I take my music seriously because I know it’s a way out." And yet his first path to salvation was located within the walls of Florida Memorial University, where he enrolled to study criminal justice. There, he realized he could pursue an actual music career once he teamed with classmates to release a track the whole school was singing. From there, he unloaded his debut mixtape, Cursed By The Gift, in 2016. 

He continued flaunting those bluesy vocals on projects like W241, which houses his belated breakout single, "Scared." Powered by earnest confessionals and an Afrobeat-inflected soundbed the cut did numbers in its day. The thing is, it’s now in its day again. Actually, more now than ever. In a testament to the randomness of the internet, thanks to some young Miami TikTok creators using the track, it ended up going super viral, with the sped-up version eclipsing 6 million Spotify streams. Seeing fans in Africa accentuated the extent of his level-up. It also gave him an epiphany about the nature of sound. 

"I learned that music is a universal language," he says. "It could be whatever learners, but if they like that song, they'll learn the word." These days, a lot more folks are trying to learn his words.

"Success to me is just freedom,” Bushy says. “If I'm free to just create and free to help others.” Even though he’s a musical full-timer now, that whole "help others" thing isn’t cap. To this day, he posts a "quote of the day" to help guide the folks he used to mentor as a case manager. 

"If I miss a day, these same kids are writing to me like, ‘tighten up,’" Bushy explains. "I’m a full time musician," he adds. "My job is to inspire."

COLD AS ICE

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