Mike Posner

Vocalist, songwriter, and producer Mike Posner blends melodic, soul-tinged pop-rap with beats designed for clubs. His signature light rasp first reached national and international listeners through the 2010 debut single “Cooler Than Me,” which appeared on the album 31 Minutes to Takeoff. The largely acoustic track “I Took a Pill in Ibiza,” taken from the 2016 sophomore release At Night, Alone., earned a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year, while SeeB’s dance remix climbed into the Top Ten across more than two dozen nations. Posner also forms one half of the duo Mansionz alongside hip-hop artist Blackbear; the pair issued their debut album in 2017. He opened the following decade with his fourth studio set, Operation: Wake Up, in 2020, then issued the singles “Home” in 2022 and “Howling at the Moon,” featuring Salem Ilese, in 2023.

Born in Detroit and raised in suburban Southfield, Posner began building his career while attending Duke University, where he pursued undergraduate degrees in sociology and business alongside his music. Sharing the campus with fellow student Asher Roth, Posner crafted pop-rap material aimed at college audiences and laced it with references to fraternity life, dorm experiences, and early adulthood. He assembled multiple mixtapes, one of which, A Matter of Time, reached the top of the digital charts in summer 2009. After signing to J Records, he completed his degree and delivered his first full-length project, 31 Minutes to Takeoff, during summer 2010; the album contained the worldwide smash “Cooler Than Me” and entered the Top Ten on the U.S. chart.

Following the dissolution of J Records, Posner transferred to its parent company RCA after a period of legal negotiations that inspired the title of his 2011 mixtape The Layover. His official RCA tenure opened in December of that year with the single “Looks Like Sex.” Additional 2013 releases “The Way It Used to Be” and “Top of the World,” the latter featuring Big Sean, preceded his second official album, Pages. The 2015 EP The Truth introduced the international hit “I Took a Pill in Ibiza,” which later surfaced on the 2016 album At Night, Alone., again featuring Big Sean. In 2017 Posner joined forces with Florida-based rap/R&B artist Blackbear on the hip-hop- and spoken-word-leaning Mansionz project; their self-titled debut arrived that March and entered the Top 100 of the Billboard 200. Later in 2018 he released the poetry collection titled I was born in detroit on a very very very very very very very cold day.

Posner resurfaced in 2018 with “Song About You,” the first single from his third full-length effort, A Real Good Kid. Issued at the beginning of 2019, the album also contained “Stuck in the Middle” and “Move On.” To support the project, he embarked on a cross-country walk that began in New Jersey, continued through Pennsylvania, and proceeded into the Midwest, where he performed spontaneous shows and welcomed fans to accompany him. During the journey he shared the collaborative tracks “Look What I’ve Become” with Ty Dolla $ign and “Prince Akeem” with Wiz Khalifa. Roughly four months in, a rattlesnake bite in Colorado forced a temporary halt while he recovered. He finished the trek in August 2019 and commemorated the experience that October with the mixtape Keep Going. December 2020 brought the full-length Operation: Wake Up. Throughout the next year he issued joint singles such as “Momma Always Told Me” with Stanaj and Yung Bae and “Jealousy” featuring Blackbear. He began 2022 with the solo release “Home” and reunited with Salem Ilese for 2023’s “Howling at the Moon.”