By the end of Don Toliver and Malcolm Todd’s Musicians on Musicians conversation, Todd is drenched. “I’m just sweating under this red cashmere,” he says. Toliver is hot too. Only after the cameras cut does Todd turn around and notice the fireplace burning
behind them on an unusually sweltering L.A. day.
Appropriate enough, since the two have just spent nearly an hour discussing energy — namely, the source of their own inner motivations to create. By now, the two are budding friends. Toliver first noticed Todd’s music online, hearing snippets of the then-22-year-old L.A. singer’s tracks on social media and finding himself drawn to what felt like a sound suspended in time. Toliver would end up sampling Todd’s “Chest Pain (I Love)” for his Top 20 hit “E85” before they had ever formally met.
Todd started making music in his L.A. bedroom a few years earlier, during the pandemic, finding an audience for songs that fit somewhere between indie pop and R&B. “Art House” and “Roommates” began to catch on online in 2023, and he was on the road with Omar Apollo the following year. Todd and Apollo went on to collaborate on the song “Bleed,” which made its way onto Todd’s self-titled debut album, released in 2025. This year’s follow-up, Do That Again, finds him sorting through what it means to have a higher public profile. (His older sister, Audrey Hobert, has spent the past year having her own breakthrough as a pop singer-songwriter, making this an unusually busy moment for the family.)
Todd makes the kind of patiently vulnerable songs that stick with you. Take “Earrings,” from his earlier mixtape, Sweet Boy, which has seen a second life online in recent months: The song turns a piece of jewelry into a reminder of a relationship, using a small, familiar detail to give listeners an easy way into his hurt. In conversation, he talks about the anxiety of figuring out what comes next. “I’m confident, but I’m also sensitive,” he says. For now, he’s keeping his Do That Again tour rolling through the coming months with dates in Asia, Europe, and Australia.
Toliver, meanwhile, grew up in Houston and reached a national audience through his appearance on his fellow Houstonian Travis Scott’s 2018 album, Astroworld. He’s been a star for years, but in 2026 he’s rocketed to even higher levels. Toliver is indeed gifted at constructing moods. His voice moves between rapping and singing, carrying the woozy feel of Houston rap into songs built for much bigger rooms. His first mixtape, 2018’s Donny Womack, took its name from the soul singer Bobby Womack, a musician with an iconic voice. Toliver remembers fifth-grade choir, and the other kids who would get together after class to make beats and rap. “That’s what kind of got me more in tune with just being an artist,” he says.
On “E85,” you can hear the pair’s connection: Todd’s sample gives Toliver something intimate to build around, expanding the song’s emotional palette with grand, soaring production courtesy of Scott, Ariana Grande collaborator Aaron Paris, and others. In their conversation, the experience repeats itself. They keep returning to small decisions inside songs, trying to explain how a few seconds can change the feeling of everything around them. Now, with “E85” serving as the opening track on Toliver’s charttopping album, Octane, and Todd’s “Earrings” continuing its ascent, the pair are something like colleagues, though Todd spends much of their conversation soaking up game from Toliver. There’s talk of the future, what makes a great bridge, and more — but first, they revisit the sample that started it all.
Watch the video interview below
Toliver: I really love that song [“Chest Pain”]. Every time I used to hear fragments of it on the internet, I’d be like, “Bro, this is hard.” It just had a vibe to it that I always gravitated towards. The song made me feel like something that I’ve heard before, but [also something] I never heard before, in a sense. It had this energy.
Todd: My manager had sent me just a bounce of [“E85”]. There’s a voice going over it every 10 seconds: “This is not to be shared.” But I heard an early version of it and I was like, “Holy shit, this is so good. I know he’s probably making so many songs. I don’t know what’s going to happen to this, but even if it doesn’t come out, this is cool just to have for myself.” I would just play it in the car driving on the highway by myself. And then right before the album came out, they were like, “Yeah, it’s track one.” And then I saw the video, and you guys made it so cinematic and so big. I got to see the transformation of it. Like, I got chills.
Toliver: That whole process with that song is crazy. Even from the beginning of it and how we built it. But it was just one of those things where it was like, “Yo, this is going on my album.”
Todd: How many songs did you make to get Octane?
Toliver: Man, a whole year of recording. Hundreds and hundreds of songs.
Todd: How do you whittle that down?
Toliver: Whatever feels the most authentic to me. I’ve been making music for a little while now. I kind of know what my fans react to and what I react to, so I try to stay in that world.
Todd: That’s interesting for me right now, with where I’m at in my career. I’ve been doing it for a little less of a minute. But as you grow with your fanbase and there’s more and more people, sometimes I can’t tell when I should be thinking about them and when I should just be thinking about what I think. Because it’s not the same thing every time.
Toliver: Bro, it’s tricky. I try to cater to what I feel like people love about me, but everything I’m doing is pulling from things I love. Little artifacts and fragments. A certain way I said something or sung something may have been an idea I got from hearing Billy Idol. It’ll be little things where I’m like, “Yo, just having this on my album makes me feel crazy because I said this a certain way.”
Todd: Yeah. I’ve been thinking about how it’s not even like you’re pulling inspiration from the entire song a lot of the time. It’s like one moment in the bridge. Honestly, some songs I think aren’t that good, but the bridge is insane, and I build a whole song around the fact that I love the bridge.
Toliver: That’s the magic of songwriting. The whole song could take you on a ride, but at that minute-and-26 marker, it might be one thing you say that changes the whole way you view the song. Just that bridge. I’ve been there so many times where a part comes on and I’m like, “Damn, I like that.”
Todd: Like, “I want to go in the studio right now.”
Toliver: That one song you got on your last album, that’s my favorite. “Break my heart again …”
Todd: “Difficult Love.”
“Sometimes I don’t have the motivation. Then I think about my kid: ‘I got to be lit for the next 20 years. I’m going to go nuts.’”
Don Toliver
Toliver: When that hook comes back around, it’s like you go into this whole story. What are you saying? You say one thing before you say the B word.
Todd: “You could rip my heart out just like you did last time.”
Toliver: This is exactly what we talking about, bro. You get all the way to this point. And it’s like when you get to that, it’s like, “Damn, I feel it.” I feel it. But you told a story before you even got there.
Todd: That’s what I like about your music. You love those little outros where you break it down and build it up. Even if you bring the hook back, it’ll be no drums and it’ll be synth parts instead of guitar. And even though you’re saying the same thing you said earlier in the song, I’m listening to it a different way. Boom, boom, boom. And then it’s the next song.
Toliver: The live aspect has to be exciting, bro. Sometimes you might want to play the whole song and the outro, but sometimes you got to cut that shit in half and jump into something else.
Todd: You’re pretty involved in how your set list goes?
Toliver: Honestly, bro, I’m such a last-minute person. This whole tour, I didn’t really look at the set list probably until I had to go on for the tour. Probably like an hour before I was like, “What is it?”
Todd: So you got the set list on the stage somewhere, yeah?
Toliver: They usually remind me what song is going on. But this was the first year I never looked at the paper. Every other year, every other show before this year, bro, I stare at the paper.
Todd: The amount of times I fucked up.… Sometimes I’d read the paper wrong and just start playing a song that wasn’t next, and my band would be like, “What the fuck is going on?” And, yeah, I’m like you in the same way where I’m last-minuting my tour right now.
Toliver: That’s what keeps the energy fresh, bro.
Todd: How do you keep your show exciting? You’re on tour pretty much all year round.
Toliver: Motivation. Every night I find something or think of something. Sometimes I’ll be up there and I haven’t thought of the motivation, but then I think about my kid, like, “No, I got to be lit for the next 20 years. I’m going to go nuts.”
Todd: Your show fired me up when I saw you. I’d never seen you live. [My appearance onstage] was the last song, so I had the whole concert to get charged up. Every song I was like, “Damn, I’m going to be up there in a little bit.” And then it was getting closer. I was like, “Shit, I’m about to go up there.” You’re pretty fluid, the way you move onstage.
“Some people have inconveniences and it ruins their day. We put it into something”
Malcolm Todd
Toliver: I just be having fun, bro. I be loving that music. It’s me loving the music, the fans loving the music, and me feeling like it’s always what I wanted to do. You don’t get comfortable.
Todd: What’s your bus vibe on tour?
Toliver: My bus vibe is very boring. Sometimes I have bolts of energy and I want to listen to music. It depends on what I got going on, but it’s really kind of boring. I’m just smoking on the bus. I’m napping, too, because I be tired, low-key. I be feeling completely away. I might not answer the phone just because I feel like I’m away, bro.
Todd: You have an excuse to be away.
Toliver: It’s like, I got to breathe. Sometimes it gets very disconnected. Everybody’s in your business in a sense, because I got the security. I got my assistants. When I get there, it’s like everybody who’s probably on the other buses wanting to see whatever I got going on. Sometimes I just want to shut down, but then it kind of seems like I’m being a jerk or something. You got to weigh it out. That’s been my only thing on tour. I be wanting to be by myself a lot. Sometimes people just get used to just coming in my dressing room like, “Hey, what are you doing?” I don’t really want to talk.
Todd: This is my first tour where I have the option to have my two homies on my bus or be very alone. I feel like I’m going to get FOMO if all my boys are on the other bus. But I’m worried it’s going to be one weekend and I’m going to be like, “I don’t want to talk to anyone at all.”
Toliver: It’s great to keep your homies around. It’s an opportunity for everybody. But everybody needs to understand that you are the reason all this shit is [the way] it is. You need your time, bro.
Todd: It gets interesting because when your homies are around, you’re like a boss and a friend at the same time.
Toliver: Think about it like you got responsibilities and people count on you. Think about it more like that than you’re the boss. We all family. I love all my brothers to death, but we all got to be working toward something.… What did I learn when my music started taking off? Just don’t stop. Just try. And don’t even think about it like, “Oh, I got to do what I just did,” or some shit like that. Nah, just keep creating, bro. Because you never know. Every song that you create is an asset for yourself. Every single song you create. Whether it’s a voice note, whether it’s a one-minute song, a five-minute song, that’s an asset, bro. That’s the whole thing about success. You just got to keep going. None of this is promised for us.
Todd: I feel like people get really cozy at a certain level. Then they get too in their head and try to perfect stuff, and it’s four years, five years, six years. Some people would’ve crushed it if they just put out the first thing they made.
Toliver: I think the thing to combat that is, when you’re making that music, think about that pain. That stuff that really moves you. It might’ve been one thing somebody said and you kept your day going, but the shit is still on your brain.
Todd: It’s a song.
Toliver: It’s a song, bro.
Todd: We’re so lucky to be able to have inconveniences make us art. Some people have inconveniences and it just ruins their day, but we get to put it into something.
Toliver: And actually make something out of it. Especially when you perform it, because people pick up that energy without knowing your situation. As you keep making music and get more clever, you’ll see it in the fans. They really understand this shit.
Todd: Pain is pain.
Toliver: Pain is pain. Or even locking in on somebody else’s pain. How could you capture somebody’s situation and explain it to the world for people who might not have seen that shit before?
Todd: Do you ever feel pressure to release by a certain time?
Toliver: No. I always put myself on my own timer. If I don’t, it just doesn’t seem like I got my shit together.
Todd: That’s how it went with me [with] this last album. I kind of accepted that, and it was beautiful because I was like, “I know whatever I do by this time is what’s supposed to come out.” So I’m looking at another album, and it’s so far away from me. Not time-wise — there’s nothing has come of it [yet]. Obviously I want to make great music and I want to evolve, but I don’t know what it means. I feel like I know I’m going to do it. I just have no idea how.
“When you’re making music, think about that pain. The stuff that moves you.”
Don Toliver
Toliver: As soon as I’m done with my album, the first thing I think about is, “What’s going to be my creative? Who am I going to be? Who’s going to tell the story?” After I dropped Octane, probably a week later, I was like, “Damn, so what am I going to do next?” I think about who I’m going to be first. When people connect the music and me as a person together, who am I? Then I think about the environment.
Todd: That’s crazy. I think of all of that last.
Toliver: If you think about the creative and who you’re going to be first, it kind of tells the story for you. If you say, “Next album, I want to go to Switzerland and make the whole album there,” you already started with Switzerland, trees, nature, the geography.
Todd: Did you have the white outfit picked out before you started making the music?
Toliver: This album, I was kind of all over the place. I was like, “NASCAR jumpsuit.” Then, “Nah, I don’t really jack that. Maybe mad scientist.” Then I put on this all-white fit one day and I was like, “Yo, this Octane.” And I just never stopped. All-white until it’s over.
Todd: Till it’s over.
Toliver: That’s what’s so good about committing to something. I’m matching that with the music. It helps me connect the music to something. Because if you’re just making the music, it’s cool, but after I make all this music, what am I doing? Who am I, for real?
Todd: How much are you showing people while you’re doing it? Sometimes I’ll make half a song and want to show someone before it’s finished. But I get worried. I don’t want too many opinions while I’m doing it because I don’t want to get fucked up.
Toliver: I definitely like to play my music for people. I’m confident in my music, but I do ask what people think. Take criticism with a grain of salt. Definitely listen. But you got to love it.
Todd: You got to play it for the right people.
Toliver: I’m trying to give you the best word right now, bro, because I feel like I went through the same thing, but I always felt overly confident in playing my music for people. I always wanted to play my music for people. I love to see people’s reaction to my music most of the time.
Todd: Sometimes I feel so confident in my idea that I’m like, “I shouldn’t even allow anyone to hear it in case they’re going to put their spin on it.” But then that’s not sustainable. I’ll show it to one person and it’ll be the only person who’s ever heard it, and they have their one opinion. So I think that’s the general opinion. But it’s like the next person might be like, “That’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard.” Or, like, “I love this part.” So you can’t judge it off of one person.
Toliver: I like to play my music for my peers or other artists, but these days I definitely hold certain stuff. Don’t be afraid to hold it, bro.… Anybody can make it. If you get a song, if you do what you need to do, if you know the recipe for however you want to market that song on the internet, you can make it. You can drop a song right now, and you might get a million listeners in 12 minutes.
Todd: And I think it’s interesting because as fast as people can get a million listeners in 12 minutes, they can lose a million listeners in the next 12 minutes. It’s crazy how quick people can get shit. And then it’s like, “OK, cool. Congrats. Can you keep it up?” Because people just be dropping people at every second. It’s pretty crazy.
Toliver: You can make a song and all that can happen, but it’s definitely what you do afterwards. Because after that song or whatever happens, there’s a whirlwind of other type of things you could possibly be doing. You got to make all those right decisions.
Todd: And you got to make more good music. What’s your take on the new generation of music coming in?
“I want to evolve. I feel like I know I’m going to do it. But I have no idea how.”
Malcolm Todd
Toliver: I don’t really got a take on it. I don’t know what is the leading music, the leading force of this culture. I can’t say hip-hop is leading. I can’t say rock is leading it. I don’t know who’s leading it.
Todd: I’m confused too. It really is just energy. It’s funny, because we were talking about movies and we’re like, “What type of movies? What type of music?” It’s all energy.
Toliver: Yeah, it’s all energy. The hyper, the sad, the emo, the hip-hop, the R&B. It’s all forms of energy in 2026 that we might have seen before or may have never seen before.
Todd: We’re just in a circle of inspiring each other. You can’t be the most original thing of all time that no one’s ever heard. It doesn’t exist. Every note has been played. You just got to get the energy right. You got to have the pain. If you don’t have the pain, I’m probably not buying it.
Toliver: Right. It’s literally the pain and the technique to make you feel like, “This is relatable, and I believe this guy.”
Todd: The pain and the technique.
Toliver: That’s the two joints, bro.
Todd: As a singer, you ever took a voice lesson before?
Toliver: Nah, but when I was young, bro, what got me into singing more was fifth-grade choir. I tried to see what they were talking about as far as music. I was never into writing music or learning how to read music. It was the things we would do after the class. All the other kids who made music would go into a room, and we would make a beat or fucking rap all day. That’s what kind of got me more in tune with just being an artist, being around other people that just liked the music, because I loved music growing up.
Todd: How do you find crazy, obscure music? Are you just surfing Apple Music?
Toliver: I don’t really go out there to search too much anymore, but where I find the craziest music is Instagram. Stories, Reels, photos. I’m like, “Damn, thanks. Give me that.” I’ll take it from wherever it comes. If I hear it, I need it.
Todd: Some of these girls on Instagram are so good at crafting a post that they need to find the perfect song. Their dedication to finding the perfect song for their post is honestly a crazy pipeline. They nail it. Then it’s like, now you know Donna Summer.
Toliver: Now you know Donna Summer or you know whoever, bro. This girl is jamming one Madonna song, bro. Need that.
Todd: They’re just surfing for the best vibe. They’re finding the song for the post.
Toliver: I love these Instagram pages that dedicate to retro music videos or retro songs. Sometimes it just hits my feed. I’m like, “Yo, dang, I forgot about that.”
Todd: You can’t be put in a box. You never know which way you’re going to go, and I think that’s a product of confidence.
Toliver: And listening to a lot of music. I like the old, the new, house, drum-and-bass. I love all of that in some way. It helps with blending genres together.
Todd: Comfortability is the killer for people. They get comfortable in something and don’t let themselves break out of it because they’re afraid.
Toliver: Sometimes it’s the people around you, too. Some people are happy with whatever you’re doing because it’s good for the moment. You always want people who are going to push you to the next level. The stuff that’s polarizing, stuff that sounds like you haven’t heard it, different ways of going about the melody, those things are always going to stick out.
Todd: Everyone has an opinion, and everything’s on the internet. How much did you stay in and out of that? I’ve learned to disconnect from it, but reading shit about yourself is the most unhealthy thing.
Toliver: I disconnected. When I got to a point in my career, bro, I just hated everything. I hated whatever somebody said. I just disconnected. I stopped getting on those apps. All I got is Instagram, literally. I like to post on it. Just let my fans and people know like, “Hey, I’m here, and we’re doing shit.” And that’s it, bro. But honestly, the internet, you just got to really limit it. Having five or six apps and all of this shit to me, it’s overstimulating, bro.
Todd: I’ve been off it, and it’s been a blessing. You’re like, “Oh, wow, life is so sick when you’re not all the way on this.”
Toliver: Because you live in real life and you’re really Malcolm. We’re so blessed to do this type of shit. These cameras are just running. It’s a blessing. I know my fanbase was like, [in a tone of disbelief] “Malcolm Todd.” His fanbase is like, “Don Toliver.” That’s dope, though. That’s the type of shit that needs to happen more, honestly, bro. As an artist, you got to want to just lock in and dibble and dabble with things that you don’t do on a norm. I feel like that’s what makes the music interesting, bro. This guy is talented as hell, he play guitar, he be singing, swagging. Why not? We make a movie. I think more people got to think about it like that than just being so stuck on whatever they feel like is working for them. I hate that concept.
Todd: He said it perfectly.
Toliver: I hate that concept, bro. Oh, I’m going to do it because it works. I thought about that with rage music. I get the crowd going crazy. That’s a no-brainer, right? It works, but it don’t in a sense — because we got so much to say past that just being an energy thing.
Todd: There’s one song on my album, “I Saw Your Face,” that I think I made four different ways. It was probably two or three months going back and forth. I thought if a song took that long, it wasn’t meant to be, but I’m learning there’s something beautiful about trying a bunch of shit over.
Toliver: Bro, songs, I’d be taking literally like 30 minutes. “Body” to me was like a no-brainer thing. You hear the sample. What I’m saying is hot. I’m embodying this energy for all the girls around the world who love their body. It’s kind of open. When I say open, it don’t have a lot of drums in it. And I was like, “I don’t know if this is enough, but it definitely is polarizing for somebody to just be feeling themselves.” I put music into it. I put drums into it. Sometimes being simple is more flattering than having everything on the table.
Todd: Sometimes you got to try everything to realize that simple is the best.
Toliver: I think you got to do that with everything in life, bro. You got to try everything. If you don’t like it, fuck it. Let it go. It’s OK if it doesn’t work.
Todd: Yeah.
Toliver: Let it go.
Production and Clothing Credits
Todd: Styling by LANDON EBELING. Grooming by LEELA VEERAVALLI for KALPANA. Shirt by DRIES VAN NOTEN. Pants by BALENCIAGA.
Tolliver: Styling by BAILEY ROSE QUINONES. Hair by YAZMIN ADAMS. Barber MARCUS HATCH. Grooming by COURTNEY HOUSNER. Custom jacket and pants. Shirt by MAISON MARTIN MARGIELA. Vintage italian leather shoes.
Production by ZACH CRAWFORD and SUZETTE KEALEN for CRAWFORD PRODUCTIONS. Photographic assistance: SAM RIVERA, JACK SHELTON, JAI CROCKER, LUIS JARAMILLO. Digital Technician: BLAKE MOHR. Todd styling assistance: NOAH DELFINER. Toliver styling assistance: SAM SANTOS, BLAIR QUINONES and AILEEN KIM. Photographed at BIKE SHED MOTORCYCLE COMPANY, LA.
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