Post Malone: His Father's Pride, Jack Osbourne's Praise, and the Road That Led to Country Stardom

Post Malone has spent the better part of a decade becoming one of the most streamed and most decorated artists of his generation. But ask his father what it feels like to watch it all happen, and you won't get an answer about awards or chart records. You'll get a T-ball story.

“Papa Post” on Pride, Parenting, and a T-Ball Game

Rich Post — affectionately known to fans as Papa Post — recently found himself back in the spotlight after a fan page reposted a clip from his appearance on Jeremy G. Barker's 90 Proof Wisdom podcast. The timing was meaningful: the repost came in honor of Rich's recent kidney surgery, which appears to have gone well.

In the clip, Rich is asked what it feels like to watch his son become a global star. His answer cuts through the noise.

“I get asked a lot of the time what does it feel like,” he said. “It doesn't feel any different than watching your 4-year-old son get his first hit off at T-ball. The pride is the same. You can't manufacture that. You can't make it up. You can't fake it. You can't pretend.”

That sentiment says everything about how the Post family views success. For Rich, the person his son became matters far more than the career he built.

“I'm not a super dad because my son's a world-known musician,” he continued. “I'm a super dad because I'm Austin Post's dad. And everybody can be a super dad; everybody can be a super mom or a super parent.”

The Advice That Preceded the Fame

Rich also recalled the moment his son decided to leave college to pursue music — a decision that could have gone sideways in any number of ways. Rather than pushing him toward a conventional path, Rich offered something simpler and, in hindsight, more powerful.

“I just said, I don't really care what you do with your life, as long as what you choose to do with it, you're the best at it that you can be,” he remembered.

He even joked that the same advice would apply if his son chose to pick up dog poop for a living. The point wasn't what his son did for work, but how much care he put into doing it. Rich ended by praising Posty and his other son, Mitchell, for staying true to themselves: “Be genuine. And Austin's very genuine, Mitchell's very genuine.”

The background here is well documented. Austin Richard Post was born on July 4, 1995, in Syracuse, New York, and was raised by his father — a former DJ who introduced him to hip-hop, country, and rock — before the family moved to Grapevine, Texas. That genre-blurring upbringing would eventually inform everything from his cloud-rap breakout “White Iverson” in 2015 to his country pivot a decade later.

Jack Osbourne Reflects on a Grammy Night to Remember

Meanwhile, Post Malone's recent musical reach extended far beyond his own catalog. Earlier this year, he took the Grammy stage to honor Ozzy Osbourne with a performance of Black Sabbath's “War Pigs,” backed by an all-star band featuring Slash, Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, and guitarist Andrew Watt. The tribute came six months after Ozzy Osbourne's death at the age of 76.

This past weekend, Ozzy's son Jack Osbourne — attending the FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention in Utah, the state Malone calls home — had high praise for the performance during a Friday afternoon panel.

“I thought that tribute was amazing. Post did such a fantastic job and he crushed it,” Osbourne told the Deseret News. “It was a mix of emotions, right? It was like, 'Oh man, I wish my dad could see this,' or 'That should be my dad up there,' and also, 'Post is doing such a great job,' and 'what an honor.'”

He added, “It was a mixed bag. But ultimately, at the end of the day, just over the moon with what the guys did with that tribute.”

The performance also resonated in Utah, where Malone sported a camouflaged Spanish Fork Fiesta Days Rodeo hat on the Grammy stage. The singer had made a surprise appearance at that rodeo last July, signing autographs and interacting with fans. Spanish Fork sits roughly 50 miles from Malone's home in Cottonwood Heights.

From Salt Flats to a Utah Home Base

Malone's connection to Utah runs deeper than a hat or a rodeo cameo. Reflecting on his move to the state at the start of his 2024 “F-1 Trillion” tour, he called it one of the best decisions of his life.

“Moving here to this amazing state was one of the best things I've done in my life, besides have a baby girl,” Malone said, per a video shared by Salt Lake-based country radio station The Bull on TikTok. “I moved to LA when I was a kid, and I was like, 'Hey this is not kind of where I want to be.' So I did a show here right on the Salt Flats, and I was like, 'This place rocks.' ... Like a week later we bought a house here. I gotta say, Utah is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and I'm so grateful and so honored to be a resident here, ladies and gentlemen.”

Ozzy Osbourne himself had history in the state: his last Utah performance came during his “No More Tours 2” show at Utah First Credit Union Amphitheatre in 2018. Ahead of that show, his longtime guitarist Zakk Wylde told the Deseret News, “Here he is now, he's going to be 70 in December and he's still killing it every night onstage. That's why he's my hero; there's no quitting. He's like the Winston Churchill of rock.”

A Career Built on Reinvention

What makes both stories land is the context behind them. Malone's run since “White Iverson” has been anything but predictable. Stoney (2016) established him as a streaming force. beerbongs & bentleys (2018) topped the Billboard 200 and produced Hot 100 No. 1 singles “rockstar” (featuring 21 Savage) and “Psycho” (featuring Ty Dolla Sign). “Sunflower,” his duet with Swae Lee, became the highest-certified song in RIAA history. Hollywood's Bleeding (2019) delivered “Circles,” which spent 61 weeks on the Hot 100. Then came Twelve Carat Toothache (2022) and Austin (2023), both of which peaked at No. 2.

In 2024, he topped the Hot 100 twice more — first alongside Taylor Swift on “Fortnight,” then with his debut country single “I Had Some Help” featuring Morgan Wallen. That song anchored F-1 Trillion, his country debut and third No. 1 album. Along the way, he has collected eleven Billboard Music Awards, five American Music Awards, six MTV VMAs, and eighteen Grammy nominations, with nine diamond-certified songs to his name.

The Person Behind the Numbers

All of that would be easy to reduce to stats. But the resurfaced clip of Rich Post and the emotional reflection from Jack Osbourne point to something more human. Whether he's honoring a hero on the Grammy stage or keeping his family grounded in Utah, Post Malone's story keeps circling back to the same idea his father articulated years ago: be genuine, and do whatever you do as well as you possibly can.

For fans, that's the throughline — from a T-ball field in Texas to arenas around the world.