The 2020s File Feature
Wasting Angels
Wasting Angels — Post Malone and The Kid LAROI Meet in the RainThere's a specific emotional frequency that occupied popular music in the early 2020s: a genre…
01 The Story
Wasting Angels — Post Malone and The Kid LAROI Meet in the Rain
There's a specific emotional frequency that occupied popular music in the early 2020s: a genre-blurring space where pop's melodic ambitions and hip-hop's rhythmic confidence converged around themes of isolation, longing, and time running out. Post Malone practically invented that frequency for a generation of listeners. When he connected with The Kid LAROI on "Wasting Angels," two of the decade's most emotionally articulate artists met at exactly that frequency.
Post Malone at the Height of His Catalog
By 2022, Post Malone had built one of the most distinctive catalogs in contemporary pop. His ability to move between genres without losing a core emotional consistency had turned him into a streaming phenomenon whose albums reliably occupied the top of the charts. Twelve Carat Toothache, the 2022 album on which "Wasting Angels" appeared, arrived during a period when Post was openly exploring vulnerability in his music more directly than ever before. The record was quieter and more introspective than its predecessors, a deliberate step back from the blockbuster energy of Hollywood's Bleeding. "Wasting Angels" fit that mood precisely.
The Kid LAROI's Trajectory
The Kid LAROI, the Australian artist born Charlton Howard, had risen with remarkable speed after his early association with the late Juice WRLD. By 2022 he had scored one of the year's biggest global hits with "Stay" (with Justin Bieber) and established himself as one of pop-rap's most emotionally resonant voices. His pairing with Post Malone on this track felt less like a strategic feature and more like a meeting of genuine artistic kindred spirits. Both artists shared a vocal vulnerability and a tendency to make heartbreak sound both specific and universal.
A Moment on the Chart
"Wasting Angels" debuted at number 56 on the Billboard Hot 100 on June 18, 2022, charting for one week. That single-chart-week appearance was characteristic of album deep cuts in the streaming era, where fan enthusiasm drives an initial surge of plays that registers on the chart before attention redistributes across a project's broader tracklist. Twelve Carat Toothache had multiple entries charting simultaneously around its release; the competition was, in the most literal sense, Post Malone himself. The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, confirming that his audience arrived in force regardless of which individual track they chose to stream.
Sound and Emotional Register
The production on "Wasting Angels" favors a hushed, rain-soaked quality: reverb-heavy guitars, sparse percussion, and a textural softness that keeps the focus on the vocals. Both Post Malone and LAROI operate in a middle register where singing and rapping blur into something more like confessional speaking. The dynamic between the two voices is complementary rather than competitive; they occupy the same emotional territory and pass the thread between them without one overshadowing the other. For a listener who follows either artist closely, the collaboration feels earned.
The Emotional Landscape of 2022
The year 2022 occupied a strange emotional register in popular culture. The worst of the pandemic had technically passed, but the residue of isolation, disrupted relationships, and suspended plans still colored everything. Music that sat in that in-between feeling, neither fully collapsed nor fully recovered, found a receptive audience. Twelve Carat Toothache arrived precisely at that moment, and its more introspective tracks, including "Wasting Angels," gave form to a specific kind of exhaustion that many people were carrying. Genre-wise, the album demonstrated that the lines between hip-hop, pop, and rock-inflected alternative had become largely meaningless in practice; listeners simply moved between feelings without checking at the border.
The Legacy of a Quiet Song
Not every great song needs a breakout chart run to lodge in a listener's memory. "Wasting Angels" is the kind of track that gets discovered gradually, passed between friends with a specific mood in mind, replayed during long drives after midnight. Its chart moment was modest, but its emotional life is ongoing. Cue it up and find out where it takes you.
“Wasting Angels” — Post Malone Featuring The Kid LAROI's singular moment on the 2020s charts.
02 Song Meaning
The Meaning Behind "Wasting Angels" by Post Malone Featuring The Kid LAROI
The title does a lot of work before the song even starts. "Wasting Angels" implies something precious being squandered, grace left unreceived, or perhaps people who deserved better being let down by someone who couldn't hold himself together. The track unpacks that image across a shared emotional confession from two artists known for wearing their pain publicly.
Self-Sabotage and Its Costs
The central theme running through the lyrics is the destructive pattern of someone who can't stay present in a relationship, who drifts, retreats, or self-medicates in ways that push away the people who care most. The "angels" of the title read as those people: the patient partners, the concerned friends, the ones who showed up and got left behind. Naming them "angels" doesn't sentimentalize them; it acknowledges the quality of what was offered and the weight of having failed to receive it.
Substance Use and Emotional Avoidance
Both Post Malone and The Kid LAROI have addressed substance use in their music with unusual directness. "Wasting Angels" fits into that tradition, touching on the ways chemical escape intersects with emotional unavailability. The song doesn't moralize; it describes. There's no tidy resolution or lesson-learned arc, just the acknowledgment that this is how things went and this is what it cost. That honesty, without redemptive framing, is part of why the track resonates with listeners who've lived adjacent to similar patterns.
Regret Without Resolution
One of the track's most emotionally sophisticated qualities is its refusal to promise growth. Many songs about regret earn a kind of emotional reprieve by their final verse: the narrator changes, or at least commits to trying. "Wasting Angels" stays in the feeling rather than escaping it. The regret is present-tense and unresolved, which mirrors the actual experience of living with the consequences of your choices more honestly than a redemptive arc would allow.
The Collaboration's Emotional Logic
Having two voices share this material amplifies its effect. When Post Malone describes his failures and LAROI responds from the same emotional place, the song stops being one person's confession and becomes a conversation between people who recognize something in each other. For the listener, that recognition is the point: you're not alone in this particular damage. That's the fundamental transaction of music about hurt, and this track executes it with real skill.
Youth, Fame, and the Cost of Getting There Fast
Both Post Malone and The Kid LAROI achieved fame at unusually young ages, which means they were also navigating the pressures of public life before most people have their emotional vocabulary fully developed. Songs like "Wasting Angels" can be understood partly as that generation's attempt to work through in public what they didn't have the space to work through privately. Their audience, many of whom grew up alongside their music, hears that processing as shared rather than performed. That intimacy, of an artist thinking out loud at the same pace you're thinking, is what distinguishes the best music of this generation from what came before.
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