When Tommy Richman moved to Los Angeles in 2022 — moved back here, that is, after an unsuccessful earlier attempt led to a retreat to his mom’s basement in Woodbridge, Va. — he lived in a grubby hostel in Little Tokyo that cost him $26 a night. “Bro, it was bad,” the singer says now.
“There was a guy a few rooms down from me who had a hammer, and when you’d walk by, he’d hammer the door just to scare people.” He recalls the time a friend picked him up and asked if he could use the shared bathroom. “I was like, ‘Nah, you don’t want to — just piss outside.
’” In spite of the bleak conditions, Richman — whose mutant R&B song “Million Dollar Baby” was one of this past summer’s biggest hits — seems almost warmly nostalgic as he wanders into the building’s lobby on a recent afternoon. “I remember this smell,” he says, plopping down on a ratty sofa beneath a faded oil painting. Dressed in baggy leather pants, his greasy hair tucked under a knit cap, the 24-year-old looks around the place like it’s the scene of some previous life — which is more or less the case, given how much has happened in the 18 months since he was sleeping here.
In early May, “Million Dollar Baby,” which took off on TikTok as soon as Richman released it, rocketed onto Billboard’s Hot 100 at No. 2, just behind Taylor Swift’s “Fortnight”; 21 weeks later, the song is still inside the chart’s top 15 thanks to streams and digital sales that brought in mo.