Rule 2: Keep It Official: MG's Shakeback Album
Inside Skip Fury's studio, Miles Gordon opens up about recovery, authenticity, Richmond, and the making of Rule 2: Keep It Official, the first full studio album he believes captures exactly who he is.
by The Richmond Seen
Friday, June 26 2026 | 6:00 PM
There are moments when you're interviewing an artist and moments when you're simply watching them work.
When The Richmond Seen arrived at producer Skip Fury's studio to discuss Rule 2: Keep It Official, MG's first full studio album, we quickly realized we were getting a little bit of both. The room was alive with music. Half-finished ideas floated through the speakers. Lyrics were rewritten in real time. Beats stopped and started. Conversations wandered from recovery to Richmond to Oakland to addiction to artistry before circling back to the music again.
"MG... the Mad Genius." Fitting.
While most listeners will experience Rule 2: Keep It Official as an album, how MG describes it is something closer to a man actively trying to translate his thoughts into music before they disappear. For Miles Gordon, that's become part of the process. And that's what Keep It Official is really about. Not perfection. Truth.
Keep It Official
"There are three rules in The Program," MG explains. "Rule One: Nobody's Bigger Than The Program. Rule Two: Always Keep That Shit Official. Rule Three...you gotta wait for that one." For MG, "keeping it official" isn't just the title of an album. It's a philosophy. "I think we had a crossing point in society where there's a lot of inauthenticity being met with authenticity and the real niggas is coming back in style," he says. "The real is back."
He continues:
"Keep it official is like be yourself because you really can't be nobody else. You could be the best version of yourself or you could be a weak-ass plagiarized version of somebody else's." That mindset serves as the backbone of his first full studio album. While projects like Summer Kamp introduced listeners to MG's world, Rule 2: Keep It Official feels different. More intentional. More focused. More complete. It's also the first project MG considers a true studio album.
"I decided to call it an album maybe a couple weeks ago," he says with a laugh. "Then I said, no, it's a studio album." The distinction matters to him. Recorded entirely inside Skip Fury's studio, the project was created as a singular body of work from start to finish. Every beat except one was produced in-house by Fury, who also handled recording and mixing duties. Longtime collaborator Alex E mastered the project. For MG, it represents another step in his growth as an artist.
"This shit ain't going nowhere," he says. "Get prepared to see me for a long time. Get prepared to grow old with me and my music."
The Real Shakeback
But underneath the bars, the player-isms, and the sharp observations about life, Keep It Official is also something else. It's a recovery album. Not in the traditional sense. Not the polished, inspirational version. The real version. The version where healing looks boring. "The road towards recovery," he explains, "looks like going to work every day."
He recently took a job working in a kitchen, something he says helped restore a sense of self-worth that had been slipping away during a difficult season marked by depression, substance use, and uncertainty. "I lost my way before. Through the drugs. Through the depression. Through all the bullshit."
He pauses. "This is a real shakeback album."
Recovery, for MG, isn't about pretending the struggles never happened. It's about acknowledging them and choosing to move anyway. "Recovery looks like a strict schedule. Recovery looks like getting back in the house after work. But recovery also looks like giving yourself grace."
It's a perspective that shows up throughout the album. Not because MG is trying to preach. Because he's documenting. His music often exists somewhere between memoir, philosophy, and street gospel. The stories are personal. The observations are lived. "They're not secondhand stories," he says. "These are stories that I've witnessed or lived. It's easy to recount the truth in an artful manner when it's the truth."
That authenticity is something his close friend Georgie says extends far beyond the booth. Joining our conversation later in the evening, Georgie described MG as someone whose intelligence often gets overshadowed by the player-isms. Behind the charisma, he says, is someone who is constantly reading, questioning, analyzing, and searching for a deeper understanding of the world around him. It's that curiosity, Georgie believes, that allows MG to tell stories the way he does. Watching him obsess over a single word in a verse he'd written the night before, it was hard to disagree.
That honesty has become one of his greatest strengths as a writer. Whether he's discussing addiction, family, identity, or success, MG rarely sounds like someone trying to manufacture an image. If anything, he's more interested in dismantling one. That commitment to authenticity extends beyond the music.
Finding Home Through the Music
When discussing Richmond, the city he now calls home, MG sees parallels to Oakland, California, where he was raised. "Richmond is like Oakland," he says. "That's why I'm at home here." He points to the history, the culture, the resilience, and the creativity that seem embedded in both places. "Every person you meet here is an artist. Every person you meet here is a creator." It's that creative energy that helped shape Keep It Official.
Inside Skip Fury's studio, ideas become songs. Conversations become concepts. Passing thoughts become records. Sometimes in real time. Sometimes while journalists sit quietly in the corner watching the process unfold over a shared bottle of Hennessy. The chemistry between MG and Fury is obvious. The trust allows ideas to move quickly. Beats are built. Hooks appear. Concepts evolve. And occasionally, a half-finished song written the night before suddenly becomes the soundtrack to the room.
As our conversation wound down, discussion shifted toward the future. Specifically, a three-month trip to Colombia. MG describes it as something of a spiritual sabbatical. Part reset. Part preparation. Part mystery. When asked whether the trip has anything to do with Rule Three, he smiles. Rule Three, apparently, is staying classified.
For now.
But if Rule 2: Keep It Official proves anything, it's that MG is no longer interested in running from himself.
He's documenting the process instead. The wins. The losses. The setbacks. The recovery. The growth. And if his first full studio album serves as any indication, listeners won't just be watching an artist find his voice. They'll be watching a man continue to find himself.
Player-ism: "Keep it official is like be yourself because you really can't be nobody else."
You can stream Rule 2: Keep It Official on all major platforms.
And follow MG here.
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