Phora

Marco Archer records and performs as Phora. Raised in Anaheim after being born in Corona, California, the rapper specializes in storytelling verses whose emotional weight gains accessibility through his engaging delivery, a trait that might elude less accomplished MCs addressing listeners outside their immediate worldview. Archer’s path includes surviving one stabbing and two shootings. He began issuing music in 2011 and first attracted widespread notice with his fourth mixtape, Angels with Broken Wings, released in 2015. After 2016’s With Love expanded his audience, he joined Warner Bros. and delivered his official debut album, Yours Truly Forever, in 2017. He maintained a yearly album pace before returning to independence in 2019; the R&B-leaning Lucky Me appeared in 2023.

As a teenager Archer faced legal issues stemming from graffiti, yet his parallel work as a tattoo artist generated steady income that helped finance his early recordings. By age twenty he had already put out four independent projects under the Phora name: Still a Kid, One Life to Live, Sincerely Yours, and the Nights Like These EP, the last of which benefited from substantial fan-funding support. Angels with Broken Wings became his first release to appear on Billboard’s rap chart while also reaching number two on the Heatseekers chart. Precisely twelve months afterward he issued With Love, his fifth album and first to top the rap chart. The 2017 major-label debut Yours Truly Forever, his initial studio album proper, entered the Billboard 200 in August and peaked inside the top fifty. Several standalone singles preceded the October 2018 arrival of Love Is Hell, which landed in the upper half of the Billboard 200.

Following his departure from Warner Bros., Phora launched Bury Me with Dead Roses in July 2019 through his own Yours Truly Records imprint. The next year he released With Love 2, a sequel to the 2016 mixtape that featured Jhené Aiko, Ty Dolla $ign, Kehlani, DaniLeigh, and Toosii and again charted on the Billboard 200. Heartbreak Hotel, a concise and introspective set, surfaced in 2021. In 2022 he issued the EP For Those Who Feel Nothing and the full-length The Butterfly Effect. Three-song collection Growing Pains and Lucky Me, billed as his first dedicated R&B project, both arrived in 2023.