In late July in downtown New York, Zack Bia pulls up to a table in an empty hotel restaurant and orders an iced tea. With a righteous crown of bedhead and smoky Chrome Hearts sunglasses to cover the sleep in his eyes, he looks like a slightly hungover DJ. Which is, as it so happens, exactly what he is. The night before, he performed for nearly 20,000 people at a sold-out Barclays Center moments before Drake took the stage on his North American tour, an experience Bia describes as “surreal.”
This is not a one-off gig. Bia is on the bill for each one of Drake’s 56-date North American tour stops as the pre-show DJ hype man. He seems fairly unfazed by a task that any other 27-year-old who idolizes Drake would hyperventilate over. “I’m opening for the greatest artist, so everyone in the room is already excited,” he tells me. “My job is to just go out there and be like, can we fill this 20 minutes with a fun time? Can we bring our real life, which is club culture and music, to these people?”
He’s a very popular Google search. A DJ, occasionally. An influencer, certainly. And, apparently, one of Drake’s best buds. Which all still begs the question: Who, exactly, is Zack Bia? And why do so many people care?
Bia’s real life is the subject of much speculation, and an amount of interest that generally feels disproportionate to his actual cultural impact. Three years ago, when I first wrote about Bia for GQ, he was a budding DJ and socialite who had hustled his way into Drake’s inner circle after mastering the art of linking and building in the LA nightlife scene. His overnight ascension from scruffy college kid to celebrity consigliere and rumored Kylie Jenner paramour (denied by both) hooked the very-online public, including an otherwise sane fashion publicist who confided in me at the time that she had a secret Instagram account dedicated to fangirling over him.
“We see that he’s always around these celebrities, and that’s why we’re so fascinated with him. Where did he come from? He’s not a celebrity. We don’t see him on our movie screens or tv screens, we don’t hear him on our radio, so who is he?” says the anonymous woman behind the gossip platform DeuxMoi, which frequently features blind items about Bia and his deep roster of famous friends, which extends beyond Drake into a glitzy network of actors, models, musicians, NBA players, fashion designers, and practically anyone else who likes to party in Los Angeles. “He’s celebrity-adjacent,” says the DeuxMoi doyenne, “which is actually the new celebrity.”
Bia has tried to shed his promoter image. Before the pandemic, he had “already committed to not being the guy that was out and throwing parties every night,” he says. Instead, he’s stepped into a career as a self-made music mogul. In 2020, he launched a record label, Field Trip Recordings, and during the pandemic he honed his DJ craft in buzzy Instagram Live broadcasts featuring guests like Virgil Abloh. He also began making music of his own with friends like Lil Yachty, which culminated in an EP release under Bia’s own name in July.
Ironically, as who Bia is has come into sharper focus, he’s become most famous for his dishy romantic life. The woman behind DeuxMoi calls him the “It Girl King” for his string of relationships, some rumored and some confirmed, with of-the-moment actresses and pop stars Madison Beer, Olivia Rodrigo, and Madelyn Cline. There are, naturally, dozens of TikToks and an episode of a Dave Portnoy podcast analyzing this phenomenon. He was even invited to audition for the role of pop star Jocelyn’s ex-boyfriend in The Idol, Bia told me (he declined). If Zack Bia is the near-celebrity of the moment, it is in part because he is the living embodiment of the social trait of the moment: rizz.
“If you put me on the spot about rizz, then I think it disappears,” Bia tells me when I asked him if he relates to the idea (which, if you don’t know, is basically synonymous with “game”).
It’s this preternatural sense of finesse that seems key to Bia’s rise, to the unlikely trail he’s blazed up clout mountain. The TikTokers have their own theories, of course. Most explanations read like a two-truths-and-a-lie game. They might reveal that he got his start as a college kid-turned-promoter at some clubs in LA. (True.) That he is (obviously) a nepo baby, with a dad who is an executive at Dior. (False—same last name, distant if any relation.) That a big break came from ingratiating himself with Drake at H.Wood Group hotspots like Delilah and The Nice Guy. (True.) That his real big break came from dating Beer. (A matter of interpretation.)
The central theme of these videos is that there’s something about Bia that must be explained. That his come-up must rely on external forces. Which fundamentally misunderstands just how Zack Bia travels in the rarefied circles that he does: by deploying the kind of low-key, party-promoter charm that puts the ultra-famous at ease—a generational talent for schmoozing that the camera simply cannot capture. Rizz, after all, is best employed IRL.
Bia claims that he doesn’t pay much attention to the swirling online discourse. “My life is so offline,” he tells me. He posts sparingly on Instagram, where he has several hundred thousand followers. “There's such an over-stimulus of information and content and whatever. It's just control what you can control. Can I make good music? Can I work with artists that I care about? Can I make time for my mom and my brother? That's kind of where I'm at.”
Bia would rather talk about the work he’s done to make his fame make sense. His tours, first with Post Malone, and now Drake. Signing Yeat to Field Trip, after which the weirdo rapper from Irvine turned into one of the biggest breakout stars of 2022. “By the time I met him, he was already fully formed,” Bia says. “All the ideas are his. I just execute them. I'm like, let's go make these moves.” And then there’s his EP, Learn To Fly, featuring contributions from the likes of Don Toliver and Lil Yachty. “My magic is references and ideas and bringing the actual people together to make the music happen,” is how Bia explains his producing process. He may be buddies with Drake, but DJ Khaled is the real model for his career.
But Bia is still a little too young to have developed the thick skin of someone like his friend and sort-of-boss. “I’ve learned a lot from Drake,” he says. One important piece of wisdom: “Anytime anyone outside of just your direct friend group knows about you, there's going to be haters.”
Bia has tried to push back on the fuckboy caricature before. In a since-deleted TikTok made to promote his EP, Bia steps off a mock-up private jet and strides across a carpet that says “Daddy’s Money.” “You probably think this is what my life is like,” he says, addressing the faceless commenters. The video then cuts to him talking selfies at the club. The reveal at the end is that he’s actually been in the music studio, grinding. It’s a little on-the-nose, but it underscores that Bia is most comfortable when moving between the spotlight and the sidelines rather than being squarely at the center of attention.
Part of Bia’s mystique is how much ground he appears to cover—the array of creative projects he appears to have a hand in at any given time. “He sets up a lot of plays, whether it be music or parties, and he’s in the know, but he’s not out there pushing himself and being in front of everything. He’s very good at keeping a balance of professionalism and creativity,” says Jack Byrne of short-format documentary crew Sidetalk NYC, who threw a party with Bia after one of Drake’s shows. The venue was the street outside MSG, and Bia secured a convertible school bus with a DJ booth in it for the occasion.
Sidetalk co-founder Trent Simonian summed up what Bia brings to a function (besides access to a bus with a DJ rig inside of it): “Anything that Zack Bia is doing, people think is gonna be pretty cool.” In other words, where Bia goes, a crowd follows.
“My path isn't like, let me go be an internet figure and that'll translate to real life,” says Bia. “Mine is the opposite, which is a much slower path, but a much more personally impactful one, because mine is like, let me go DJ parties in real life. Let me go shake hands in real life. Let me go be friends with someone. And then that'll reflect online.”
“I think everyone that knows me personally loves me,” he adds.
After lunch, on a stroll through Dimes Square, a young guy wearing Sambas walks by, before circling back and dapping Bia up. To some people, mostly dudes, Bia—with his relatable physique and neckbeard—is a folk hero of sorts. Still, Bia doesn’t take any of it for granted. “I have to win fans one by one,” he says, after posing, arms crossed, for a photo with the guy.
Recently, the fervent interest in Bia has become more pointed, and his narrative control (or lack thereof) more urgent. This spring, Olivia Rodrigo released “Vampire,” a heartbreak ballad that twists the knife in a manipulative former flame. TikTok Sherlock Holmeses got to work decoding the lyrics. They quickly pointed their fingers at Bia, who dated the 20-year-old pop sensation last year, and put a wooden stake through his heart in countless explainer videos.
On first listen, the lyrics kind of check out. I should've known it was strange / You only come out at night was just one piece of evidence used against Bia.
When I bring up the song, Bia thinks for a second before choosing his words. “I don't think it's really about me,” he says, evenly. “I think the Internet just ran with it.” Which sounds a lot like what Rodrigo’s blood-sucking ex would say. He concedes that he might be one part of a composite character—“Look, I’m in the industry so I know how a song gets made,” he says—but he also denies that their relationship was breakup-track-worthy. “We hung out, we're both busy, and we ended up not furthering our relationship. There was never any drama, you know?”
I put Bia’s wrong-man theory to a source with knowledge of Rodrigo’s songwriting process. “I don’t know if that’s exactly true,” they told me. Rodrigo, who told The Guardian that she “never want[s] to say who any of my songs are about,” was not available to comment.
Whether he’s the subject of the track or not, Bia knows one thing: “Vampire” is an absolute banger. “The song's so big and so awesome,” he says. “Look, a heartbreak song for the summertime, it’s an undefeated formula.”
Bia is also smart enough to know that he’s not going to change any minds online. The narrative that he was the star-fucker in “Vampire” was in fact so powerful that it led to a streaming bump for a track by Madison Beer that is about Bia and their on-again-off-again relationship. (Bia says he and Beer are close friends and that she’s apologized for the blowback. “There’s so much love there. She's someone who's so instrumental in my life and I still treat as family. Like, she and my mom are still cool.”)
“Any time I’ve been speculatively the subject of a song, or the focus of a TikTok trend, whether grounded in reality or not, it’s like, it’s never been up to me to address it because the scale of it is so widespread,” he tells me later. “100 million people have heard this song. The only thing I can address is my own life. I can control what my friends think and the creative output that I have and things like that.”
Bia also thinks of the whole issue from the perspective of a rising music exec: you don’t pour cold water on a hot track. “Look, the momentum of a song is so special,” he says. “I think Olivia is a generational songwriter. I think she's a generational talent. I'm always just proud of her continued accomplishments.”
The following week, I meet Bia outside MSG around dusk. It’s the final night of seven Drake shows in NYC, and Bia’s phone is convulsing with notifications as dozens of friends, acquaintances, and strangers bang his line for a coveted list spot. In fact, there had been a mix-up with the tickets for me and a photographer, and we had no way into the show. But Bia has clearly gotten +2s through tougher doors than MSG. He hands us two credentials, and brings us through a staff entrance. From the bowels of the arena we emerge onto the floor, near where his DJ equipment is set up. Bia laughs. Even he looks proud of himself. “I just snuck you into Madison Square Garden,” he says. He takes the passes off our necks. “These are just for the afterparty.”
He leads us to the DJ riser a stone’s throw from the main stage. He’s sporting Chrome Hearts jeans—“I’ve literally been,” he says, “a Chrome demon on this tour”—and a $98,000 black ceramic Audemars Piguet watch. He's also got fresh dog-themed nail art, a nod to the forthcoming Drake record For All the Dogs. Bia is, of course, one of the dogs.
As he fiddles with some knobs on the equipment, Bia explains that he’s not up there to “prove how good my music taste is. I’m just trying to help everyone have a good time.” He points to two people sitting in a pricey section nearby. He had given a couple of his list spots to his childhood best friend and his friend’s mom.
After a pregame prayer—I want to thank god for the opportunity…make sure the music works so everyone is dancing…and once again I want to say how grateful I am for the opportunity, and to be able to do it with friends—he starts spinning. Lil Yachty bounds up the stairs. Bia’s sets tend to feature mostly top-40 heaters and the occasional surprise sing-along—Natasha Bedingfeld’s “Unwritten” has been a recurring closer. But it’s also a platform for his personal projects. (What's he going to do—not play his new EP for 20,000 people?) That night he’d snuck in the young musician Montell Fish so they could perform a collaborative track. The set is as fun as it’s meant to be, punctuated by Bia’s practiced reminders that he needs the audience to turn up. “Me and Yachty came to have a party, by the way,” he shouts several times. (He also shouts out his friend’s mom.) The arena needs little encouragement: practically the entire audience is on its feet.
By the time Bia drops “Unwritten,” the crowd is eating out of his hand, and screams back every last word.
After the show, I ask Bia about making the jump from the low-key-ish linker to arena DJ. To my surprise, he sounds relieved to finally be able to step into the center of the frame. “I feel like being behind the scenes and someone who has the privilege of being around artists and creative people and being let into the inner sanctum, you never want to expose that,” he says of the start of his once-nebulous career. “You’re there to provide ideas and provide references and provide a vibe and be a part of that. And then the next step of that is when you make music with these people, you show that you’re actually bringing ideas together and bringing ideas to life. And the show tonight is a reflection of how real it is. Who’s on the project? Yachty, Montell Fish. Who’s with me at the Garden? Yachty, Montell Fish.” Bia’s even started posting on TikTok again, braving the comments sections to share triumphant selfie videos of arenas going nuts at his command.
Back at MSG, the spotlight winks off and Bia walks down to the floor. He signs a copy of Drake’s poetry book for a fan. A woman thanked him for putting on “such a fun show” before asking for a photo. The rizz was in full force. “We’re getting fans one by one,” he says as he walks away. “One by one.”
