Sailorr
As an emerging alt-R&B star with meaningful creative roots in hip-hop, Sailorr is starting to bubble.
Interview: Peter A. Berry
Editor’s Note: This story appears in the Summer 2025 issue of XXL Magazine, on newsstands now and available for sale on the XXL website.
Sailorr may be a rising queen of alt-R&B, but she’s certified rap head as much as anything else. Growing up in Jacksonville, Fla., amid an explosion of regional SoundCloud rap, she remembers soaking up the sounds of Denzel Curry and Robb Banks before she made her first forays into a real professional music career; she can pull out deep cuts like YhapoJJ, too.
That authentic fandom—this understanding of rap mechanics—figures strongly in some of her own music, too, with her debut album, From Florida’s Finest, displaying spurts of jittery flows and playfully self-aware lyricism that define the best spitters. Here, Sailorr dives into some of her biggest hip-hop influences and more.
XXL: Coming up in Florida, were there any area rappers that inspired you at all?
I feel like 454 is definitely up there for me. He’s a newer artist, but I think that all of his beats and his soundscapes are really, really dynamic to me just because it captures that South Florida sped-up type beat. I used to listen to Robb Banks a lot when I was a teenager.
If you could work with any predominantly rap producer, who would it be?
Cardo [Got Wings]. I don’t even know if I could give Cardo the juice. I would just be staring. I would be looking at him in the studio. Don’t necessarily think it would work with me. I’m a fan.
If you were trying to create the ultimate rapper, which attributes from which MCs would you take?
I like Bktherula’s moxie. Her songwriting is really cool to me because it’s so unapologetically her and she’s just so raw. I would say YhapoJJ for his silliness, slash Tisakorean. I like silly things, and I feel like both of them know how to catch a weird-a*s beat and still make it very saucy. Skaiwater for their world-building and their beat selection for sure. And also, their cadence. And Veeze for his cadence. He literally is mumbling, but it feels like his engineer turns that mic all the way f**king up. So, it just makes it feel like Veeze is right in my ear whispering.
Speaking more generally, who were some rappers who you were really into in your formative years?
Probably like Earl Sweatshirt and Tyler, [The Creator]. Of course, I was an Odd Future fan. And then in terms of other rappers, Chief Keef. When I was in middle school, I was more so I was listening to a lot of random sh*t. It would be Lana Del Rey, and then I would listen to The XX then randomly D’Angelo, and just random picks out of every genre.
In the last 15 years, rap and R&B have become more synchronized than ever before, making it hard for someone outside the culture to tell the difference. What do you think led to the symbiotic relationship between the genres?
I think back then, when we’re speaking of those probes of like, Oh, this is R&B. Even then, for example, D’Angelo. I remember reading an interview where he was talking about, “Yeah, I wasn’t trying to make neo soul. We were just in the studio experimenting and making sounds and building a world, and we weren’t trying for anything.”
And I think that because hip-hop and R&B are so closely related, rap is also vulnerable just in the same way that R&B is very lyrical, clever and punching. So, I think there’s a lot of elements from both sides that are very similar to each other. It was only a certain amount of time before R&B artists [became] rappers.
I think that especially because we’re in this modern age, a lot of binaries get to be broken because people are so open-minded and ready to explore different sounds and explore different things.
Listen to Sailorr’s From Florida’s Finest Album
The summer 2025 issue of XXL magazine featuring Sailorr’s interview is available to purchase here. The issue also includes interviews with all 12 members of the 2025 Freshman Class and producer Cardo Got Wings, as well as conversations with Key Glock, Larry June, Aminé, Monaleo, Fredo Bang, Nardo Wick, Molly Santana, Tech N9ne, X-Games snowboarding champion Zeb Powell and more, plus a look back at what the 2024 XXL Freshman Class has been doing and a deep dive into who’s the biggest and best XXL Freshman ever.