GQ Magazine took Lana Del Rey and her boat enthusiast father, Rob Grant, sailing up the Hudson River in a classic leisure yacht to celebrate the upcoming release of Rob’s debut album, ‘Lost at Sea,’ out June 9. The pair were photographed by Caroline Tompkins and interviewed by Gabriella Paiella.

Photoshoots > 2023 > For GQ Magazine by Caroline Tompkins
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At 69 years old, Grant is in the midst of promoting his debut album, Lost at Sea, which is out on June 9th. Whenever Grant would crash at his eldest daughter’s house in LA, he’d often find himself playing her old, out-of-tune piano. He wasn’t classically trained or anything, choosing instead to hit whatever notes instinctively flowed out of him. If his daughter heard a chord progression that clicked, she’d join him. Soon enough, they had a couple of songs between them.

“She’ll start singing and the songs will come together magically, but in a very beautiful, organic, intuitive way,” Grant tells me. “There’s no planning.”

“It’s so cool to create music with my daughter,” he adds. “Because we really are very simpatico.”

“Oh yeah,” his daughter chimes in, an ethereal sparkle in her voice. “I like what I like.”

His daughter, I should mention, happens to be Lana Del Rey. As in: internationally famous singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey.

Yes: Lana. She’s next to her father, both of them sipping sugar free Red Bulls. In her white Los Angeles 1984 sweatshirt, black skirt, and white sneakers, the high priestess of mystery and melancholy appears disorientingly normal. On this four-hour boat tour, she could be any millennial daughter good-naturedly spending the afternoon with her boomer dad, were she not, you know, Lana Del Rey.

Her presence is a slight surprise. A few days beforehand, Grant mentioned that his daughter might want to join. By the time we set sail, Lana, who flew in from LA to support her dad, is blasting Kodak Black on the speakers to set the mood. Later, she’ll step in to help stage daughter her father during the photo shoot, advising him on how to best angle his face. (“Maybe don’t smile, Dad.”)

With all the cultural discussion around the prevalence of nepo babies—children of celebrities who have a leg up, especially in the arts—Grant occupies a unique, singular role. He may be the world’s first, and perhaps only, nepo daddy. Papa Del Rey. And, hey, he’ll take it.

“The nepo daddy thing I love,” he says, having first encountered the concept in his Instagram comments. “I thought, My God, this would make really cool merch.”

“I mean, at that point, he was on his own, obviously,” Lana says with a laugh.

“I’m happy to be the first nepo daddy,” Grant says.

Click here to read the full interview at GQ.com

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