There was a time when rapper, singer, and songwriter Larry Gashi, known as Gashi, was living what he thought was his music and the American Dream. He landed a major label, relocated to Los Angeles, had a big love, and was living it up before he realized it wasn’t the reality he wanted.
“I didn’t want it,” Gashi tells American Songwriter. “It was not what I signed up for. I needed to focus on the music and stop trying to be famous.” Within the next few years, Gashi, who was born in Tripoli, Libya to parents from Kosovo, before moving to and being raised in Brooklyn, New York at the age of 10, left his relationship, label, packed his things, and drove out of Los Angeles to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where some of his heroes before him once recorded, to start working on his next album.
Within this period, Gashi also started his own label, ORCA Sound Records, and came full circle, back to Brooklyn and a genre he had neglected up until now, country, on his sixth album Brooklyn Cowboy.
The 18-track album traces the past four years, from the revelatory “Dirty City,” Gashi’s new raison d’être and why he left LA—I wish I was a cowboy / Go out riding on a range / Take off from the city / I might stop going insane. On “Better,” Gashi’s sole collaboration on Brooklyn Cowboy, Wiz Khalifa joins for another anthemic drive to reclaim the life you want to the consummation of love on “Heaven”—Love is all we need / It feels like lightning striking on a summer night when you give yourself to me—and the more country-pop of “Comes to Light” and indie rock-bent “Incinerate.”
Gashi is retelling two love stories throughout Brooklyn Cowboy—person-to-person with recollections of love on wistful “Midnight Sun,” and fired-up singles “Cold,” “Broken Sign,” and “LOML (Love of My Life),” and one within, of finding himself again.
“The ‘Brooklyn Cowboy’ album unfolds the story of a boy from Brooklyn, chasing the American Dream all the way to Hollywood—only to realize it had been waiting for him back home,” said Gashi in a previous statement. “In the glitter and heartbreak, he loses love, watches his dreams unravel, but finds himself in the ashes, rebuilding his world and shaping his destiny where love was both his undoing and his rebirth.”
Transitioning from hip-hop or the new wave slant of his 2020 album 1984 to country didn’t come out of thin air for Gashi, who already had a deep devotion to John Wayne Westerns he’d watched as a kid, the music of Johnny Cash, and an admiration for Chris Stapleton—an artist he said inspired him to pursued music.
Now, with three albums in the works, and a U.S. headlining tour in 2025, Gashi spoke to American Songwriter about leaving Los Angeles, making Brooklyn Cowboy his way, and following his American Dream.
American Songwriter: Brooklyn Cowboy didn’t come easy for you. It resulted from leaving your label, uprooting your life, returning home to New York, and venturing into an entirely new genre. Is it a relief to finally release these 18 songs?
Gashi: At this moment, it feels like I’m giving birth. I had to fight tooth and nail to own it. It was a serious battle between me and the label I was signed to and trying to break free and own it. I finally got out of my record deal, started my label, and held on to it [Brooklyn Cowboy] for a while. I recorded some of these songs in 2020, and it felt like a lot of artists went through the same thing because they were planning on dropping music and had to hold it back. I’m relieved to finally birth this thing. I can finally put it out to the world and move on.
AS: The album is sort of a documentary of your life these past four years since you started working on it in 2020.
G: It truly feels like musical labor without the Epi (EpiPen). It was so painful, but now I can finally move on as a creative because one thing I don’t like is looking like I’m riding waves. I started this album in 2020—the same with my 1984 album. I started it in 2015, and I put it out in 2020 and then everybody started doing ‘80s music, so you look like you’re following a wave. That’s what sucked about being signed to a major. You have to go through so many processes in order to release a song. You had to wait six months to release one song for it to come out and not do anything. You could have just uploaded it. I don’t know why they made me wait so long. Now, I’m looking forward to dropping music whenever I feel like it.
AS: How difficult was it to break from your former label?
G: It cost me a lot of money. It was millions of dollars, and I had to get out and restart. It’s weird because just as I got out, everyone else was getting out. It’s an independent world. It feels like the labels are an old thing now. It’s pretty crazy to see because I love the labels. I love music. I love Hollywood. I love the magic that made me do this and want to get into it. It’s sad watching all these artists get dropped and all these employees [let go]. It’s perfect timing to flip the camera around and turn it on you. That’s where we’re headed. You have your channel, and you can create this world and let people join if they like it.
AS: But it’s for some hard not to romanticize that vision of getting signed to a major and making it big.
G: Just keep doing what you’re doing. If you go to a label they would tell you the same thing. They’d say, “Go on TikTok.” Why would you take an advance? It’s like having student loans—and worse, you have to owe it back triple. Why would you put yourself in that position when you could just go on TikTok and do what they’re going to tell you to do anyway without owing money? All you need is an iPhone and that’s sad because I do want the labels for the process. I always feel like it’s a sport. What I do is a sport. I go out there and I perform and people pay for tickets to see me perform. It’s not easy. I have to show up for work, and I don’t like that there’s no process.
In order to get into the NBA or NFL, I have to go to high school, play, and then go to college, and play. Hopefully, I play well enough to get into the leagues, but it’s a process. Now you have all these bedroom artists thinking they can get lucky off a song on TikTok and get into the industry, but they’re not stars. We have bedroom artists who don’t know how to perform for the world or are prepared for the big stage. You need a process to be prepared for the big stage. Try to write the greatest song in the world. We need the greatest lyrics. We need that for music to survive. We can’t just put these bedroom artists who are so shy of the camera in front of the world because they’re going to crumble.
AS: Brooklyn Cowboy was essentially being made while 1984 came out. How did this album ultimately piece together for you?
G: When 1984 was recorded in 2015, I was originally supposed to give that album to The Weeknd, because I was signed to his management. Then I decided that I didn’t want to be a part of it and I didn’t want to give it to them and put it out myself. Then they did the ’80s album [After Hours] and reached out to the same photographer to shoot his cover. Then Dua Lipa did the same thing, and Miley [Cyrus]. It was like a whole wave of ‘80s music, and I was like, “Okay, I need to find a new wave now,” so then I jumped on to the country thing in 2020.
AS: You’ve mentioned that Chris Stapleton has been a huge influence, and country music was never anything new to you but how did you become a Brooklyn Cowboy?
G: I did a Johnny Cash cover (Cash’s 2002 cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”) and his family posted it on his Instagram and reached out and said they loved my voice. So I felt like maybe this could be a thing, and that’s how the Brooklyn Cowboy was born. His [Cash’s] son came to one of my shows. If you come from that family and you’re used to hearing a guy like Cash singing, to even post about me, or say anything, it’s very inspiring and I wanted to see if I could do it. It was a dangerous, bold move, but I always went with my own f–king wave. I always went with the beat to my own drum. That’s one of the reasons why I had a disconnect with my label because they thought country music was silly. Four years later, it’s the hottest genre in the world.
AS: Country has crossed over immensely throughout the decades, especially since the more mainstream, pop of the ’90s.
G: I think the difference between the ‘90s and now is that it feels like a wave would last longer then. Now, it’s like a wave comes and it goes away so fast. We move on. It’s like we jumped on the baggy jean era, then we’re leaving the baggy jean era fast. We’re moving to more fitted jeans now.
AS: What made you start recording down in Muscle Shoals?
G: I watched this documentary (Muscle Shoals, 2013) and it blew my mind to realize that nearly every song I’ve ever adored was recorded in this place called Muscle Shoals. There was a time when legends like the Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, and Paul Simon, would flock there but now it was super quiet out there. No one was really going there, because everybody was going to Nashville, so I naturally thought, “Why not go out there and make some noise of my own?” I went out there and started recording some of this album. When I arrived, to my surprise, I saw Lana Del Rey there, and she was doing the same thing.
AS: Since you’ve had a few years with most of these songs, has your connection with them shifted at all from writing to recording to Brooklyn Cowboy?
G: These songs are special because a lot of these songs were recorded in different places in my life. These songs tell a story about my personal life, things that I never really spoke about. From 2019 to 2021, I dated one of the biggest stars in the world, and I saw a life that I had experienced ever in my life. It felt like God, the universe wanted to show me something, and I felt like they brought this magical person into my life. It was such a powerful moment for me to get a chance to experience that. It was like a time machine of me going to the future of what my life would be, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t want it.
AS: Was that when you realized that that music dream was not for you?
G: It was not what I signed up for. I needed to focus on the music and stop trying to be famous, so I wrote these songs. I wrote great songs. A lot of these songs were for her, “Good Old Days” was written for her, and she never took the song, so I ended up using it for my album. When I left that relationship, I had to go and figure myself out. And while figuring myself out, I made these songs, and I talked about a lot of the things that were going on in my head and how I felt. The first song [“Dirty City”] starts out saying I wish I was a cowboy, and then I end up being the “Brooklyn Cowboy” by the third song. I don’t need to go to Nashville. I don’t need to go to like a Southern place. I can be the Brooklyn cowboy. I could be my own person and still be me. Ralph Lauren was from the Bronx [New York], and he was a cowboy. Why can’t I be the Brooklyn cowboy?
AS: “Dirty City” is basically the beginning of that unraveling of the romanticized picture of the American Dream.
G: I’m leaving LA. I literally packed my s–t up and left. I got on a road, drove to Muscle Shoals, and drove back to Brooklyn after I finished the album. It [Los Angeles] was f–king terrible. It was a f–king nightmare. I felt like I was living in The Terminator movie because LA is a time warp. You’re literally sitting in a filter from the ‘90s. It never changes. It’s the only place in the world that’s so f–king strange because it never changes. In New York, you can walk around, and you know you’re in 2024. It changes with time. LA doesn’t do that. When you’re driving in the Valley, it’s like you’re stuck in the time warp, which is like a very, very sad thing for me.
I made 1984 because I’m a sad individual who needs to experience that, to feel like a child. And for the first time in my life, I stopped living in the past, and I stopped living in the future. I lived in the present, and that’s how this album was able to be made.
AS: What was “sad” about Los Angeles?
G: When you’re driving and you see all these homeless people who lost their jobs during the pandemic. I could not drive to my place anymore seeing this. I’m an empath, and I can feel pain, and I was watching the world crumble in LA. I had to get out of there. It was depressing—people asking for jobs, people who were so successful and couldn’t feed their families. It was just so sad. I had to go find peace somewhere else, and the only way to do that was to drive back to Brooklyn.
In the end, I finished with the song “Normal Never Came,” which I recorded on my iPhone. I used a message from one of the most important people in my life who sent me a voice note saying they love my album. That was my peace of mind, where I was happy and normal never came. I was never going to be normal. No matter how hard I tried, normal never came. So I realized, that even when I came back to Brooklyn, no matter where I go, I’m going to feel how I feel. The only thing that’s going to make me feel different is the people around me, so that’s what this whole project is about.
AS: Was there some healing for you in getting these songs out?
G: A bit, but I also don’t think my sadness will ever truly leave me. I pray it does, but it’s always lingering. I feel like I am the prince of melancholy. I use my humor to survive, and I confuse people sometimes. I have a happy personality but a soul that’s soaked in such a weird, confused sadness. I feel like it’s the way I was raised and I just don’t think that will ever leave me. I also feel like I had to get away from chasing this dream in LA. It’s a new world. I don’t need to be there to make my dreams come true anymore. My dreams are in my hand on an Apple iPhone. There’s no need for me to fly across the country. For what? I’m going to do the same in New York.
I just need to continue to do me, and I strive for growth. I’m always pushing to be better, but I also sabotage myself in ways that I can’t explain. It’s a weird paradox. I’m trying to find peace, and the only way to get it out is my music. It just feels like we’re living in a time of the main character. It’s like a competition. Who has bigger problems? I just want to be around my happy place. I love being an uncle, and I’m still wandering through this world, searching for love, to be honest. And I want to write about love, and hopefully, I find love. I’m praying that I stumble upon it. We all crave it, and we all crave to be understood. The happiest moments are when I’m surrounded by people who truly know me, and it’s not someone more interested in my following and all that bulls–t.
AS: There’s more of a detached, desensitized state.
G: I fantasize about having a regular job. Sometimes I wish I had never gotten into this thing. There are nights when I pray I could slip under the radar make enough cash and banish like a ghost like Patrick Swayze, drifting through life without care. Keeping up with the world today feels like running a marathon in stilettos. Everyone’s famous. Everyone’s “too cool for school.” I just want to toss my phone into the void and curl up with someone and just forget that I’m an artist and be a messy human underneath everything. I’m literally in Times Square, staring at my billboard, and I look around and everyone’s doing TikTok. You gotta be kidding me. It feels like a matrix. I’m like “What am I doing here? What has the world come to?”
I truly believe that these kids are moving into a time where having too many followers is not cool anymore, and following too many people is not cool anymore. I’m very old school. If you come to my shows and you look at my list, there are no celebrities on my list. It’s the lady from the bakery, the guy from the pizza shop, my barber—those people that matter.
AS: When you think of your 2014 release 4Play, Stairs (2016), and earlier work, are you the same songwriter now that you were then?
G: When I started Stairs and dropped it in 2016, I met this kid named Post Malone, and I was trying to find a way to get him a record deal and help him. One of us was going to be successful. I was working on this album. I did the cover in Central Park. It’s just me leaving my job wearing the clothes that I wore at my job as a busboy on the Upper West Side. I had one of my friends, Levi, take the picture, and it was the stairs where I always said to myself “When I get to America, I’m going to go see those stairs.” It’s the same stairs that Kevin runs down on Home Alone when Joe Pesci is chasing him. So I took the picture on those stairs, and I was writing these songs, and I found these melodies, and I found a new way of doing music. I met this guy named [songwriter] Louis Bell (Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber), and we worked on Stairs together.
Once Stairs dropped, everyone used that sound. It birthed a sound that we hear now from people like Post Malone. You have the people that will never praise it publicly, but privately, they say “You have so many artists mimicking that sound till today.” So it’s a sound that we birthed. It was a very big moment in music. I tend to change the sound up every time they catch on. I tend to move when I should stick to it sometimes, but I just feel like every album I drop is a departure from the next one.
AS: You collaborate on this album sparingly with only Wiz Khalifa. Are there some other artists you would jump at the chance to collaborate with at some point?
G: I hate collaborations unless I love the artists. It’s a rare thing, but the artist that I want to collaborate with is Lana Del Rey. The reason why collaborations suck nowadays is because we email songs to each other when we should be in a room together. There’s nothing better than being in a room and sharing energy with someone and sharing thoughts and ideas and working on it together. That’s what makes a song a beautiful piece of art. You can make a baby by yourself, but it still takes somebody else to help you make it right. So the best babies are made when you collaborate together.
AS: What’s next for you?
G: I’m a genre-less artist. My voice is the genre. I’m going to continue to make art, and hopefully, I get to a point in my life where I don’t depend on my art to get paid. I can make it exactly how I want to make it. We need to get back to writing songs and surprising the fan base and stop making the same song 100 times. The only person who’s still doing that is Lady Gaga, Kanye [West] used to do that. Gaga just dropped a Frank Sinatra-inspired album (Harlequin, 2024), which is so f–king fire and people hated the new movie (Joker: Folie à Deux) because it’s a musical. It requires taste. If you don’t have taste, get a f–king passport.
AS: I’m not sure if this stands for Gaga’s latest album, but sometimes the music that people disliked at first can somehow become a classic decades later.
G: The stuff that you don’t like right away ends up being the s–t. I’m not the biggest musical guy, but I love when people take risks. I love people that are fearless. I live for that s–t. We need to have artists who are fearless and need to stop making music for TikTok and start making music for your friends again, for yourselves, and make the world move again. Having a number-one song is a moment. Being cool is forever.
Main Photo: Garfield Larmond Jr.
