The new single “Smashin” from R&B trailblazer Apollo Liberace. With its spacious electronic backdrop, steady percussion, and driving bass, “Smashin” plays like the soundtrack to a city-lit escape. Apollo spends the track in flirtatious back and forth with someone across the room – half invitation, half dare – and by the time the “cause an eruption” hook comes back around for the third time you know exactly how the night ends. Smooth, a little sweaty, too restless to be called a slow jam. Late night R&B built for the drive, not the afterparty.
Apollo Liberace came up between Maryland, San Antonio, Japan and Korea, onstage by ten and opening for Lloyd Banks overseas before his teens. He signed to Capitol with Minus Gravity in 2019, went solo, and hasn’t slowed down since: a million plus views on “Paradise,” a main role on MTV and Paramount’s “West Coast Hustle,” a 30 date run with Tyla Yaweh, 20,000 people opening for Lil Wayne, and a seven city Japan tour. “Smashin'” is Top 40 on U.S. R&B radio and lives on forthcoming album Absolute Cinema, executive produced by Rance Dopson of 1500 or Nothin’. Prince, Michael Jackson, Frank Ocean and Liberace are all in his DNA.
Listen to “Smashin”
Apollo Liberace is a cosmic soul unbound by gravity — an artist whose sound, image, and story exist somewhere between soul music, futuristic funk, alternative R&B, hip-hop, and high art.
Born on February 27 in Prince George’s County, Maryland, Apollo’s journey has never followed a conventional path. Raised across different cities, countries, and cultures, his artistic identity was shaped by constant movement. From Maryland to San Antonio, Texas, and later through Japan and South Korea, he grew up absorbing music, fashion, performance, and culture from multiple worlds at once. That global upbringing would eventually become one of the defining characteristics of his artistry: music without borders, genre without restriction, and a visual language that feels both deeply personal and completely otherworldly.
Apollo was first introduced to music through his older sister, who was already performing and producing her own albums. By the age of ten, he was appearing onstage as a young singer, performing songs made famous by artists like The Jackson 5 and James Brown alongside original material created with his sister. Those early experiences gave him a firsthand education in performance, songwriting, touring, and the emotional connection between an artist and an audience.
By twelve, however, Apollo was already beginning to reinvent himself.
He moved away from identifying solely as a singer and began developing himself as a hip-hop artist, a shift that would become the first of many creative transformations throughout his career. Even at a young age, Apollo resisted being confined to a single musical identity. Singing, rapping, songwriting, production, and performance would eventually become different languages within the same artistic universe.
Because of his parents’ military assignments, Apollo later lived in Japan and South Korea, experiences that expanded both his worldview and his ambitions. While living in Korea, he performed in Seoul for American and Korean audiences and continued developing his stage presence in an environment far removed from the traditional American music industry.
During that period, Apollo performed as an opening act during the G-Unit Far East tour featuring Lloyd Banks and Olivia. His performances began drawing industry attention, including interest from Def Jam Far East in Korea, establishing an early indication that Apollo’s presence could translate across cultural and geographic boundaries.
That international chapter would later come full circle.
After returning to the United States, Apollo continued developing his career in San Antonio, Texas, where Minus Gravity originally began as a group of three artists. The group built a reputation around a genre-fluid approach to hip-hop and melodic music before eventually signing with Capitol Records.
In 2019, Apollo entered the major-label system as a member of Minus Gravity, gaining firsthand experience inside one of the world’s most established recording companies. But Apollo’s evolution was never going to end inside the structure of a group.
Over time, Minus Gravity transformed. What began as the identity of the group would eventually become part of Apollo’s independent infrastructure, while Apollo Liberace emerged as the central solo artist.
The transition was not simply a name change. It marked the beginning of an entirely new creative era.
As Apollo Liberace, he began building a world centered around the collision of elegance and chaos, vulnerability and bravado, spirituality and sensuality. His music began moving more freely between falsetto-driven funk, melodic R&B, experimental production, alternative textures, rock energy, and sophisticated hip-hop.
His early solo release “Paradise” became one of the first major signals that the reinvention was working. The record went on to generate more than a million views on YouTube and millions of streams across digital platforms, introducing a wider audience to Apollo outside of the Minus Gravity identity.
From there, the world surrounding Apollo Liberace continued to expand beyond music.
Apollo became a main personality on MTV and Paramount’s “West Coast Hustle” alongside Chanel West Coast, bringing his personality and creative life to television audiences. The series has been made available across major streaming platforms including Paramount+, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, giving audiences a closer look at Apollo beyond the recording studio.
At the same time, his live career continued accelerating.
Apollo completed a 30-date tour alongside frequent collaborator Tyla Yaweh, sharpening the explosive stage presence that has become one of his defining characteristics. He later performed in front of approximately 20,000 people at the Illinois State Fair, opening for Lil Wayne — another milestone in a career increasingly moving from underground ambition toward large-scale stages.
Yet the clearest expression of Apollo Liberace’s current artistic vision is his album Absolute Cinema.
More than simply a collection of songs, Absolute Cinema represents Apollo’s attempt to build an entire cinematic universe through music. The album is executive produced by Rance Dopson of the Grammy Award-winning production collective 1500 or Nothin’, bringing Apollo together with one of modern music’s most accomplished creative institutions.
The title reflects Apollo’s philosophy toward his work. Music, to him, is not simply something to listen to. It should create scenes, characters, emotions, memories, colors, fashion, and mythology. Every record should feel like part of a larger film.
That philosophy is embedded throughout Absolute Cinema.
The album’s first single, “FMR,” featuring Tyla Yaweh, opened the chapter and extended the creative chemistry between the two artists. Following the record’s release, Apollo joined Tyla Yaweh and Tokyo-based artist Vingo for a seven-city tour across Japan, bringing the project into one of the regions that helped shape Apollo’s worldview as a child.
For Apollo, returning to Japan as a fully developed artist carried deeper meaning. A country that had once been part of his upbringing became part of the international expansion of his solo career.
Following “FMR,” Apollo released “Smashin,” a record that became one of the strongest commercial breakthroughs of his solo career. The single climbed into the Top 40 on U.S. R&B radio, marking an important transition from independent momentum into measurable national radio success.
Those records form part of the larger world of Absolute Cinema — an album designed to introduce Apollo Liberace not simply as another recording artist, but as a fully realized creative identity.
His influences reflect that ambition.
Apollo draws inspiration from artists and cultural figures including Prince, Michael Jackson, Jay-Z, Kanye West, James Blake, Frank Ocean, and Liberace — creators known not only for their music but for building entire worlds around themselves.
Like many of those influences, Apollo takes an unusually hands-on role in his own work.
He is a singer, rapper, songwriter, producer, artist, and audio engineer. In the studio, he approaches music from both sides of the glass, moving between performance and technical creation while maintaining control over the emotional and sonic direction of his records.
That independence extends beyond sound.
Apollo’s fashion and visual identity are inseparable from his music. Silk, leather, jewelry, futuristic silhouettes, glam-rock references, celestial imagery, and theatrical styling all become extensions of the songs themselves. The result is an aesthetic that can feel simultaneously luxurious, dangerous, romantic, futuristic, and strangely spiritual.
He exists somewhere between an intergalactic lover and an electric prophet.
That mythology has become increasingly important to the community surrounding him.
Apollo refers to his fans as ‘The Constellation,’ a name that reflects the relationship between the artist and the people who have entered his universe. Rather than positioning himself at the center with everyone simply orbiting around him, the idea suggests something larger: individual stars connected through a shared experience.
That sense of world-building appears throughout Apollo’s creative output — from surreal interview concepts and international visuals to emotionally charged performances and imagery that treats individual songs almost like sacred objects.
Underneath the spectacle, however, is something much simpler.
Apollo Liberace is obsessed with feeling.
His music often exists in the space between confidence and insecurity, romance and recklessness, seduction and confession. Even at its most theatrical, there is a human tension underneath it. The glamour becomes more powerful because vulnerability is always somewhere beneath the surface.
That contradiction is the foundation of Apollo’s identity.
He can be extravagant without becoming distant. Experimental without abandoning melody. Hip-hop without remaining inside traditional hip-hop boundaries. Romantic without becoming sentimental. Spiritual without losing sensuality.
It is precisely those contradictions that have allowed Apollo Liberace to build an artistic language that feels increasingly difficult to categorize.
From childhood performances and military bases overseas, to Seoul stages, Capitol Records, independent reinvention, television, international touring, national radio, and Absolute Cinema, Apollo’s career has been one long exercise in transformation.
Each version has led to the next.
And now, with Absolute Cinema, Apollo Liberace is arriving at the most complete version of himself yet — not simply chasing a place inside the music industry but zconstructing a universe large enough to exist on his own terms.
Apollo Liberace is not here simply to be adored.
He is here to be believed.