DUCKWRTH

Jared Lee grew up in South Central Los Angeles in a Christian household filled with music. Before recording under the name DUCKWRTH, he studied graphic design in college and appeared in freestyle cyphers for the TeamBackpack series on the YouTube channel World Emcee, an early public showcase for his rapping.

His music moves freely between hip-hop, funk, punk-inflected energy and contemporary R&B, often within a single track, and he sings as readily as he raps. A 2015 split project with the Kickdrums, Nowhere, preceded his first full album, I'm Uugly, the following year, and drew early attention for that restlessness.

Songs have travelled beyond his own releases: "Start a Riot," featuring Shaboozey, appeared in the 2018 film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, while "Michuul" turned up in the HBO series Insecure and the CW's All American, carrying his music to audiences well outside hip-hop.

An Xtra Uugly Mixtape, released in 2017, was his first project with Republic Records, followed by the EP The Falling Man in 2019 and his major-label debut album, SuperGood, in 2020. Later EPs, SG8* and Chrome Bull, appeared under his own imprint, SuperGood Creative Studios, before the 2025 album All American F*ckBoy earned a Grammy nomination for Best Immersive Audio Album.

He is known primarily as a live performer, with sets built around movement and audience interaction, and for a visual sensibility of bright colour and thrift-store styling that carries through his artwork and videos, an aesthetic that traces back to his design training.