I Still Managed To Rap in 2024

And so did many of my friends, who inspire the shit out of me

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For all the f*ckshit that happened last year, 2024 was a renaissance for auntie and uncle rappers. Legends came out of nowhere and dropped decent records. Some say it was the whole Hip-hop turns 50 thing from 2023 that catalyzed it. Or, it was the big emotional rap beef between two not-so-young-anymore titans in the rap game. Maybe it’s the feeling that capitalism isn’t doing art any favors and we’re increasingly resolved to doing it simply for the love of the culture before civilization collapses.

Whatever the case, I got caught up in it too. I started the year off focused on putting in work as a DJ, which I did, but somehow ended the year sitting on a handful of new rap-songs-in-progress alongside unreleased material that suddenly doesn’t sound as wack as I initially thought it did. And I got by with a little help from my friends.

Recent Songs I Rapped On

As long as I’ve known Rocky Rivera, from rocking shows on the same bill, to being long-time members of the Beatrock Music roster, we’ve never collaborated on a song together (although we’ve both been featured on others’ tracks). So when she reached out to have me feature on a song on her latest album, Long Kiss Goodnight (with producer Otayo Dubb), it felt past due, but the timing couldn’t have been better since we’re now both on this whole elder-in-training protect-your-energy listen-to-your-auntie-and-uncle vibe.

I knocked the verse out in a couple days but sat on it and wanted to redo the whole thing because of the “tried to medicate it, tried to meditate it” line. Just a week or so after I laid my verse, I heard the artist formerly known as Kanye say the same line almost verbatim on a new joint he featured on with Ghostface. Ultimately, I decided that Ye doesn’t deserve the power to make me change my shit, so I didn’t give it to him.

Marco Kane is newest artist to the BRM roster. Bambu first introduced me to his work on a car ride some years ago, and I remember being drawn in immediately to the noir, the rawness. Reminded me of the dark cinematic mood of, say, Roc Marciano or Ka (RIP), evinced in his 2021 album Marco From the P, and followed up with even more depth and urgency with Brown Boy, which dropped in December, and which I’m proud to have contributed a verse to on the track Brown Boys.

Inspired by hearing Marco’s rapping and finding out his family background, I ended up writing a verse that became the first and, currently, only verse in my lyrical oeuvre where I’ve spit multiple bars in Ilocano, the language of my upbringing before 1980s American public school educators convinced my parents to stop encouraging me to speak it. A handful of those bars were lowkey co-written by my grandmoms (both of em). Like “mangabak-ak manen” (I win again), which stuck from memories of from playing cards with them.

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Dope Shit From My Peoples

Bambu dropped a surprise album in mid-November that, without question, is the best album title of 2024: If You See Someone Stealing Food… No, You Didn’t. No lie, this album probably captured how 2024 felt more than any other record I heard last year.

He ended up using a Fatgums beat that I had already started writing to, but his song was hella doper than mine would’ve been so I wasn’t mad at it. I should’ve suspected that a whole album would materialize when I asked him just a couple months earlier in September when we did a The Bar show together at FPAC and he responded “I got one or two songs I’m working on.”

Bam and I rapping together again as The Bar in Seattle for the first time in years this Saturday, January 18 at Khingz’ Midnight In the Garden album release at Clock-Out Lounge. And hopefully recording a new cut real quick.

Congrats to Ruby Ibarra, who dropped an incredible new song and self-directed video in September, booked Bam and I to perform at FPAC, headlined an incredible all-woman lineup in Los Angeles in October, and became a new mother in November.

Here’s a cut she had me featured on 12 (!!!) years ago:

My bro Gabriel Teodros, who has a dope Substack newsletter, Worldwide Underground, that I hope you’re already subscribing to, produced a bunch of remixes of select 2024 rap songs and compiled them all for free to download and stream right here. The platform it’s on is untitled.stream, which is incredibly dope and, trust me, you’ll want to download it because 1. it’s free af, 2. no algos, 3. I’ll be uploading things to it very soon.