Wiardon Drops His MAGNUM OPUS 

Austin’s hip-hop scene continues to struggle against myriad much-discussed roadblocks when it comes to gaining respect. Despite previous coverage from national outlets such as The FADER and Pitchfork and a production résumé few in modern Austin hip-hop can rival, underground rapper/producer Wiardon (pronounced quickly as “Where-den,” as if it’s one syllable) has long felt overlooked by the industry stakeholders in his own backyard – especially for someone with two songs on Spotify counting over 1 million streams. 

The other side of the coin is that both of those songs, “Ginobili” and “Miami,” were released in 2019. Some of that national attention has faded, even as Wiardon continues to improve his overall sound. 

Even though the Eastside artist first garnered some looks from rap blogs as a teenager, not much is known about him besides his youthful start. His lack of interviews isn’t purposeful. 

“You gotta maintain some kind of mysteriousness,” he says. “Not too much though, or it’s just corny. You gotta let the world know who you are, but you can’t show them everything. 

“I have been wanting to do an interview for a little while, a proper interview. I just haven’t really had that many people hit me up.”

The Chronicle hit Wiardon up last month. In a wide-ranging conversation, the 23-year-old shared extensive thoughts on his May release MAGNUM OPUS, his expansive pool of inspirations, and his future ambitions.

Student of the Game

Will Liardon was born in the outskirts of Houston before moving to Austin around the age of 5 or 6. He fondly remembers attending his first concert: The second night of New Orleans’ Voodoo Fest, 2010, featuring Ozzy Osbourne and Drake. The 78702 resident credits that night for influencing his lifelong, comprehensive love of music: he cites Black Sabbath, Sade, and Alice in Chains as some of his all-time favorite artists. 

“I could name artists for days that inspire me or that I listen to,” he says. “From Roc Marciano to the Alchemist to Miles Davis to Sting. I listen to the Police a lot. I hate that their name’s the Police. 

“I love LUCKI. Madlib is for sure my biggest inspiration as a producer. It’s a mix up between him, Alchemist, and MF Doom. That kind of circle.” 

Lauded for producing beats for notable names such as Mach-Hommy, THA GOD FAHIM, and LUCKI before he was old enough to get his driver’s license, Wiardon doesn’t recall an exact moment where everything clicked for him. He probably started making beats on GarageBand around the age of 13 or 14, he reckons, and eventually progressed through various DAWs. Like many inquisitive teenagers, he’d hop on a computer and let his mind wander endlessly.

“There were so many random days that just added up, and I was [eventually] doing it every day,” the Kealing Middle School alum says. “I didn’t even realize that it’d become, ‘I’m making music now.’ At first, I was just fucking with sound, seeing what shit does. And then it’s just every day, it’s practice. Just wanting to learn.” 

How did a teenager from Austin end up working with those respected names? He says he developed the mentality of an A&R, constantly searching SoundCloud for the next breakthrough artist. He’d email rappers, or message them on any platform he could find: Instagram, Twitter, SoundCloud itself. He still reaches out to people – he insists he isn’t an “antisocial, too cool for school ass dude,” but also suggests he’s seen the music industry’s duplicitous nature. 

Fame isn’t his primary goal. “I’m trying to get a billion dollars to take care of everyone that I love in my life,” he declares. “I don’t even care if I have 1000 followers or a million followers.

“I do it for the love of the game at the end of the day.”

He originally produced under “Lill Wiardon” and cut off the “Lill” once he started rapping. He began rhyming over his own beats after the rappers he tried to sell his ideas to ignored his messages. 

“I got the LUCKI’s and shit like that, but there’s 100 other guys that said they were gonna rap on a beat and never did,” he says. “Or rapped on it and never sent it to me. So one day I was like ‘Fuck it, I’m gonna rap on this beat. This beat’s too hard.’”

“Looking up, I know my uncle proud, I do it for Ben”

Wiardon’s most impressive quality is his ability to consistently churn out varied production. He’s released at least one project annually since 2017, and no two tapes of his mirror each other. His earlier work, like 2019’s Probably Somewhere Ducked Off, blends clear inspiration from gangster-themed media like Scarface and The Sopranos with the sounds of Nineties New York. Youthful admiration for frequent Murs collaborator 9th Wonder comes out on his own collaborative EP with the Los Angeles MC, 2023’s speak n spell. The plush, sample-based production he crafted on that record was uncommon for his discography at the time.  A recent run of EPs – 2024’s BERSERK, 2025’s SUNDAYS, and March 2026 release STILL WILL – contain sprinkles of smooth jazz and soul. Over the years he’s subconsciously developed a penchant for penning vivid autobiographical one-liners about the street lifestyle.

In the same vein as most artists, Wiardon naturally says his latest work is his favorite. MAGNUM OPUS certainly feels like his most cohesive effort as a solo act. He claims 300-400 songs were created in the year preceding its release until he whittled down the final tracklist to 14 tracks, of which he produced nine. He’s incredibly selective about who he features, so MAGNUM OPUS accordingly employs only three guest stars: Fort Worth-based right hand man Camo Kynshay, who he collaborated with on last year’s LA COSA NOSTRA; soulful Richmond rapper Fly Anakin, who Wiardon’s sent beats to for a decade; and Canadian rapper/producer Mike Shabb. On the new project, his collaboration with the Mutant Academy member, “RIP OZZY,” features a trumpet-heavy beat that represents a concerted effort from the producer to create more captivating backdrops.

Wiardon’s latest project is MAGNUM OPUS

“I was really trying to make it like an art piece,” he says. “I was very focused on making it as cinematic as possible. Just some shit that can stand the test of time. [2024 album] DON was like a precursor to this. I don’t think I can compare too many of my other albums to this one because I feel like [this is] mostly one sound.”

His attempt at more grand production shines brightest on standout “HEIR.” A quick blitz of snares opens the 84-second cut before they segue into a pronounced, dramatic sample loop of strings nestled atop jazzy brass. “HEIR” plays like the quintessential Wiardon track – a pin in the ‘02, a sports reference, and a bar about his mom urging him to focus on rap – except this time you can almost picture an orchestra frantically motioning behind him when he says “Still open in that field, I caught a throw from Dak.” 

His personal favorite on the LP, “MARBLE FLOORS,” features guitar riffs courtesy of Parker Cupelli (Trent Turner & the Moontowers) over calming bass. It’s a scenic instrumental that successfully captures moments of vulnerability as the rapper visits the grave of a loved one and wrangles with an overall feeling of hopelessness. That type of blues rock-inflected production is a more recent development in his catalog. Lyrically, it demonstrates how much his life has changed since his days of cockily dapping Neiman Marcus managers to the tune of blissful boom bap.

Grief has increasingly trickled into Wiardon’s music since the passing of his close friend, Dino, in 2021. Unlike his memory of the timeline for some of the other events during our conversation, he easily remembers the exact date: June 14, 2021. He salutes his friend on 2024 track “EL PATRON,” rapping, “I say long live Dino every song, I swear to God I really miss my bro.” He’s mostly made good on that promise so far.

“Whenever [Dino] passed away, I just flipped the switch,” he says. “I stopped caring about every other thing besides music and trying to make it. All the other shit – little bullshit, little street shit – is just a distraction. All my homies always supported my music, but Dino actually listened to my songs.” 

The rapper is now also regularly shouting out his late uncle Ben on tracks following his death last October; another MAGNUM OPUS highlight, “BENTEN,” is named in his honor. According to Wiardon, Ben was one of the few members of his extended family who supported his music career rather than dismissing it. 

“It’s hard because I got a lot of names I could say rest in peace [for],” he says. “But them two right there, they’re very relevant in my musical journey. So any chance I get, I’m gonna say long live Dino, long live Ben.”

Though a solid chunk of his subject matter still touches on the streets – 2021’s Locked In was recorded in his closet during a house arrest stemming from firearm and marijuana charges – he asserts he stays “out the way” nowadays. 

“I definitely used to be getting into bullshit when I was younger,” he says, but now, “I be in the studio, trying to make these songs and beats. I don’t be in none of that bullshit no more.”

The Three Lions

Wiardon recently teamed up with London-based imprint Bad Futures Records to release 320 copies of MAGNUM OPUS on vinyl. It’s both his first vinyl release and Bad Futures’ maiden partnership. He proudly stares across the room at his freshly delivered copy: “I’ve had my name on physical music, but just having my whole album that I spent all that time [on], all [those] songs I made … just looking at it feels good. That cover is very important to me. I feel like that cover is my whole life damn near.” The cover in question collages pictures of Wiardon with several key inspirations: A young Dino, his grandmother and Uncle Ben, Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in The Godfather, and Val Kilmer as Chris Shiherlis in Heat.

After first conceptualizing the idea for Bad Futures Records some 20 years ago, Adrian Gluckman and former NTS Radio host Ethan Saunders recently acquired enough resources to launch their vinyl-only label. They insist their “personal passion project” isn’t a traditional record label, but rather an investment to issue LPs for projects the business owners enjoyed that weren’t available on vinyl. Their partnership – or as Gluckman highlights, friendship – with Wiardon started organically: Gluckman discovered his music around the time Murs dropped speak n spell, while Saunders struck up an online friendship when the young MC posted a picture in London in 2024. The Austinite met up with the pair during that vacation, and even taped an episode of Saunders’ NTS Radio program, The Pentagon Faceslap.  

“For someone who’s so young, his ear for music is just incredible,” Gluckman says. “[His] sample choices and just the ability to make a beat. In the beginning, his raps [were] kind of different to what we would normally listen to because it was more like that Southern drawl type accent, and for us, it’s a bit difficult to understand at times. But I really like the way that it blended with his style of beats. Southern rap doesn’t normally sound like that.”

“You could play Wiardon in between Madlib and DJ Screw,” Saunders says. “He’ll connect all of those people from that side and that side, and it will converge because stylistically he’s covering that gulf.”

Wiardon performing at South by Southwest 2026 Credit: Quentin Williams (@qntm.tx) “Chasing my dreams, it’s making my legs ache” 

As of this writing, a short performance on Mohawk’s outdoor stage during South by Southwest 2026 is Wiardon’s only live show this year. He admits he was “rusty” during his set – that was his first show since last year’s SXSW – but aims to perform more going forward. Remarkably, he says he’s never had his own 30-minute set. He states on “BENTEN” that he feels blackballed at times, but in conversation, he points to another lyric from the song: “I gotta work harder, I know I’m probably in my head trippin’.” 

“Genuinely, I don’t know what it is,” he says. “I don’t get booked for shit. I don’t have anyone hit me up. Maybe I need to do a little better.” Of course, local promoters’ aversion to booking street-minded rappers isn’t new. Still, when I question how bookers can’t at least know of him by now, he provides an understandable retort: “If you’re in Austin and you’re a promoter, you can’t be even really trying to listen to shit if you haven’t heard my name – or at least one of my songs. That’s just kind of absurd.”

In addition to his passionate live show aspirations, the ardent anime (his number-one is Cowboy Bebop) and movie aficionado aims to one day direct a film. A lot of his work, like MAGNUM OPUS intro “10 DAYS,” features samples pulled from flicks and shows. On the music side, he’s casually holding hundreds of songs in the vault and already planning five-plus albums, too. But before releasing that stream of projects, the full-length lover intends to go on an uncharacteristic singles run. 

Given his lack of prior interviews, Wiardon’s willingness to directly answer every question during our lengthy sit-down is surprising. His lack of bitterness toward music tastemakers is equally surprising – he says coverage will “[come] and go” – and aligns with lyrics on recent projects about focusing on the music grind. When I ask him what motivates him to record on a near-daily basis, he provides a straightforward, almost cliche response for those unfamiliar with his decade of consistency: “Wanting better,” he says. “That’s really it. Also, love [of the game]. I don’t know where I’d be without making music.”

“Music has always been my main hobby. If I’m gonna be in the studio every day, all day, I gotta make some way to make a profit off this shit. That keeps me going – and wanting to travel.” 

 

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