LA Rap
The West Adams rapper and producer sits with Mz Free for an exclusive first interview.
Earlier this month, I drove to Rbaron Recording Studios in Hollywood, California, for my first interview with 25-year-old Los Angeles rapper, WhiteBoyCellz. He greeted me at the door with positive vibes and good energy. He reminded me of a nice guy, someone who you may see deliver your newspaper. I never would have thought he grew up in LA’s gang environment.
WhiteBoyCellz, a native Angeleno, was born and raised in West Adams in a Belizean household. He grew up on 27th Street, home to the West Side Rollin 20 Bloods. Although he grew up in the gang life, he always had a hustler’s ambition to make it out the hood.
At a very young age, WhiteBoyCellz started to pursue music. “I started doing music around 13, 14, and started making beats around 15, 16,” he explains. He started off rapping, but started producing after he took a keyboarding class in school. WhiteBoyCellz says he was influenced by his heritage and environment. “You be at the reggae festivals and stuff, but then you be in the streets. I started seeing that I mess with the culture, but I’m seeing other stuff, too,” he says. “I tried to do the music, but [at age] 13, 14, troubled up in the youth and shit, just coming up in LA. You know, bouncing city to city, you know.”
It was his cousins that encouraged him to get out the streets and start taking the craft more seriously. At first, he was hesitant because he felt his music wasn’t good. “At first, I was weak and shit, in my opinion. It took time to progress and get better with everything,” he says. It wasn’t until about a year or two ago he really began to pursue music. “I was still in the streets wilding, doing other shit, everywhere hustling, tryna get to the money,” he says. He always had music connections, but wasn’t really worried about the music. “Someone told me, ‘Bro, you wanna keep doing this street shit and go to jail, or you wanna get serious and get to the money with the business?’” he says.
WhiteBoyzCellz used his industry connections within his Rollin 20s set and was able to soak up knowledge. “When I went on tour with my boy, Ty Dolla $ign, he took me on tour for, like, four or five days,” he says. Ty Dolla $ign is a mainstream LA rapper that grew up in his neighborhood. “That’s what really opened my mind to shit.” A lot of LA rappers are a part of well-known gangs and have still found the tools to bridge the gap between street life and the music industry. We have seen examples of this with the late Nipsey Hussle, who was a member of the Rollin 60s Crips. Before his passing he was very influential in the city and was a big inspiration to both Bloods and Crips.
Despite where he grew up or what he grew up in, WhiteBoyCellz has a mutual respect for certain people from opposite hoods. He feels that politics are politics, but that shouldn’t limit you from making money. “I’m a Damu, I’m a Blood, imma always rock with my side, but it comes a time where I went to school with a lot of Crips and they know me, too, off being a Damu. They respected me because of who I was; they coulda ran me. I treat a person like he a man before a street nigga,” he says. He expresses that if you’re really what you say in the streets, you won’t need to prove it.
His hit single, “Loose Skrew,” which was released on the Rbaron Moneycorps’ “Feed The Streets” VOL 7 compilation mixtape, has already hit 103K views on YouTube. The inspiration for the video comes from the movie Malibu’s Most Wanted, and stars a white boy as the main character. “People know it’s me, but then they don’t know it’s me, so we throw the white boy in the mix of it. Shout out Thomas, that’s my boy from high school, throw them off,” he says. He talks about wanting to give his supporters something different, but still base it around his name — WhiteBoyCellz.
Even though he started off hesitant, WhiteBoyCellz has learned to take the good and the bad that comes with the industry. “Just stay consistent. I did music for, like, 10 years — but I wasn’t consistent. Then I started channeling in on my network,” he says.“ It all took time. I wouldn’t want to cheat the grind or none of that. Every step I took and everything I went through with the music was for a purpose,” he says.
LA rap music is largely inspired by gang culture and politics, and WhiteBoyCellz has been able to find a professional balance between the two. “If you’re already in the game and you doing something, you shouldn’t have to bring yourself back to the streets, especially if you know what comes with it,” he says. He says he tries to speak positivity and knowledge into the youth — and get to the money. “But that’s what the politics is and the street shit is. You just got to play it by what it is, really.”
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