Marlo

One of Quality Control’s busiest associates, Marlo—also known as Lil Marlo—surfaced from Atlanta in 2017 through a series of joint recordings with his close friend and labelmate Lil Baby. Three solo mixtapes followed, among them The Real1 in 2019, along with appearances on both installments of the label’s Control the Streets series. Born Rudolph Johnson, the lifelong Atlantean had never contemplated a music career until several acquaintances urged him to start rapping; drawing on his street background, he progressed rapidly. During the second half of 2017 he contributed to numerous Quality Control projects, among them the Lil Baby track “Ride or Die” from Harder Than Hard, the full-length collaboration 2 the Hard Way with Lil Baby, and his own debut mixtape The Wire. He also secured two placements on Control the Streets, Vol. 1, which reached number five on the Billboard 200, joining Lil Baby and Gucci Mane on “The Load” and closing the set with the solo cut “Live Like Dis.” In the first half of 2018 alone he delivered two additional solo projects, 9th Ward God and The Real1. The following year he added a guest verse to Yella Beezy’s “Big Shit” and teamed with City Girls and Offset on “Soakin Wet,” an early preview of Control the Streets, Vol. 2. Marlo died at age 30 in a car accident in Atlanta on July 11, 2020.