Rappers Confirm LIVE!'s Street Cred

A wave of feedback, some positive, some negative, has followed the release of a new music video dubbed “San Angelo LIVE!”, written and produced by two young rappers known together as 32Fly who partially slander and partially promote the news organization that is the song’s namesake.

With opening lines purporting lies in the agency’s reporting and a contrasting theme of repeatedly checking online for updates, the message of the song is muddled. But lyricists Brandon Dehoyos, aka EyezLow, and Steven Rubio, aka RubioRaps, were happy to explain what has become one of their most successful musical efforts since they started out in Ozona four years ago.

“Whenever we decided to pursue music was back in high school,” EyezLow said, estimating the starting point as the year 2011 in Ozona.

At the time, RubioRaps had gained some notoriety around campus for a video he’d made that had gone Ozona High School’s version of viral. Both driven by a desire to make music, their paths crossed and they begin writing and recording songs together. The first effort was a remix of Justin Bieber’s “All That Matters”, which was recorded on an iPhone 4.

“He would sing and he had a little viral video going around the high school and I was the back of the bus rapper,” EyezLow explained. “I was always in the back-of-the-bus after the track meets, football games…whenever I knew he could sing and I could rap, we just, you know, messed around.”

Originally a singer, Rubio started rapping after he moved to Dallas.

“I lived, like, straight ghetto,” he said. “Like, in the ghetto. Like, a bunch of my friends there, like, rapped, and they were like, ‘You should rap. You should rap!’ So I already knew how to sing and write, like, music, so I just started writing raps. They said I was good at it, so I kept singing and rapping.”

Having worked together for years, RubioRaps and EyezLow said they got serious about the music in August 2014, after filming a music video about a broken relationship (the lyrics and song title are explicit) that quickly became a “hometown favorite”. After seeing the response from that video, the two began focusing their energy on the 32Fly project and started looking for inspiration that would make their names known. That inspiration was San Angelo LIVE!

“Angelo LIVE! is just like—everybody be reading what y’all post,” RubioRaps said. “It’s relevant in my life, like, living in San Angelo. Like, you see Angelo LIVE! all over the place.”

“You guys are growing,” EyezLow agreed. “[You’re] all over Facebook already. Naturally, we thought what’s going to catch…everybody’s eyes around here that hasn’t already? Something they can relate to, as well.”

Referring to the lyrics, in particular a portion that says, “shots goin’ off on the 1-6”, RubioRaps explained that the motivation behind writing the song was the vocalists’ close proximity to many of the incidents reported by San Angelo LIVE!

“[That was] a certain situation where guns were involved. Another one of my friends ended up on San Angelo LIVE! It wasn’t about him, but there was footage of him. The whole altercation was completely unnecessary. We’ve all personally been on San Angelo LIVE!, our faces,” EyezLow said, noting the exception being 21-year-old RubioRaps. “I had it last year, I think, from Midnight Rodeo.”

Eyezlow, also known as 20-year-old Brandon Dehoyos, hasn’t actually been pictured on LIVE! in the past, but the two could name several instances in which their good friends were not so lucky.

“Basically it was a situation that finally pushed it over the edge, like, ‘Yo, all of our homies are ending up on Angelo LIVE!’ Like, everybody knows about it.”

RubioRaps said that some time between seeing friend A and Z’s names and mugshots online, he came across a beat that he’d previously heard and began experimenting with lyrics for the hook.

“…pray for your life, or you might end up on San Angelo LIVE!, San Angelo LIVE!. Checking online, just to find out that my boy caught a body, check it again ‘cause some [chick] tried to rob me, only end up when you acting sloppy,” the hook reads.

Once he’d written the chorus, RubioRaps went to EyezLow and each wrote their own verses to the song, pulling parts of real stories to fill in the lines. Initially, EyezLow said, the song wasn’t that popular, but when they had their first concert at a girlfriend’s 21^st birthday party, the song caught traction.

“Just hearing the word ‘San Angelo’ in a song was intriguing to a lot of people,” EyezLow said.

“’Cause not a lot of people can do it right,” RubioRaps added.

“Or have done it at all, or have even attempted to,” EyezLow concluded.

So far, the duo has only performed two gigs, the first being the birthday bash and the second at The Beauregard, where the video was also filmed. It was at that show that the song picked up in popularity with the live audience.

The reviews of the song have been both positive and negative with regard to the subject matter, the artists said, and despite RubioRaps’ blatant attacks at LIVE!’s credibility in his opening lines, they both admit that the lyrics aren’t meant to be taken too literally.

“San Angelo LIVE!, San Angelo LIVE!, they blastin’, harassing, and never be asking for facts, so listen real close when I rap on these tracks,” RubioRaps reads back a portion of his lyrics. “Basically, I’m trying to prove my realness. I’m boosting y’all’s name, but I’m using y’all to get my realness out. Basically saying, like, I’m so real.”

The implied meaning behind RubioRaps’ explanation of the lyrics was provided by example as the interview continued: he’s building street cred by calling LIVE! out as liars, thus implying he knows the whole story. The reason he knows those stories is because those close to him are oftentimes directly involved as perpetrators.

“Basically, where this song came from was after we read the report on our good friend, Breezy,” EyezLow said, explaining how his friend burglarized the Bellagio Apartment complex. “Before Breezy[‘s] situation happened, we had a large squad, and they were all wanting rap, us two being the front of it. Eventually, now, it’s just us two. We’ve all fallen out by then. That was a long list of [mess] ups by everybody. It started with Breezy and just escalated to where we are now.”

The other side of the story—or the facts, in terms of the lyrics—as pertains to Breezy’s case, was that he was going through a difficult time when he and another individual broke into an apartment and stole the items that night in December.

“What he did was what he did,” EyezLow said. “But that was not his nature. He let life get to him and decided he was going to get somebody else for that, or whatever was going to happen at the moment.”

Despite specific wording in the song that states, “who told you (LIVE!) that…tired of all the bull[crap] in the stories and lies…”, both vocalists maintained that they weren’t attacking the website or reporters for printing incredible stories, both noting that they read the news on LIVE! daily.

“It’s more saying of, everybody knows San Angelo LIVE!, particularly, we know when things happen before they happen sometimes even,” EyezLow explained. “We’re well associated with people ending up on San Angelo LIVE! That’s what it is.”

Asked if they deem San Angelo LIVE! as a credible news source—and given the option to say “no” and explain why not, both vocalists responded with a resounding “yes, definitely”.

“I wouldn’t have a song named after y’all if I didn’t respect y’all,” RubioRaps said.

“I would go so far as to say I’m proud to sit here with you right now,” EyezLow said.

Having had so many friends appear on San Angelo LIVE! at one point or another, the rappers say the exposure has, occasionally, impacted individual’s behavior, although it’s largely hit-and-miss.

“In general, everybody—it gets the point across,” EyezLow said. “I know from one instance, my cousin y’all blasted and he took his mugshot and he was ugly, drunk, just mad looking. Like, I personally took it and put it online and made fun of him as well, and sure enough, he did not go out. He was not drinking, he was not having it.

“What I’m trying to say is the hook right there, ‘hey, watch yourself. You could end up on San Angelo LIVE!” EyezLow said.

The rappers were apprehensive about tagging San Angelo LIVE! when they posted the song online, but were excited to see it had been shared, which shot up their views by 1,500 in a single day.

The duo has 17 songs on SoundCloud and roughly 1,700 views, an average of 1,000 per song. “San Angelo LIVE!” is the exception, with 1,500 views acquired in one day when the song was shared in the LIVE! daily email.

This summer, the rappers are working on putting together a mix tape of 10 different songs in 10 different styles they plan to release by the time school starts. The ultimate goal, they said, is “infinity and beyond”.

“We want to be the leaders of our generation,” RubioRaps said.

“Being from San Angelo, everybody’s waiting for us to be really good, or they aren’t going to give us any support,” EyezLow said. “Like, until we completely wow them to the point where they can’t deny us, they’re not going to support [us] fully. Every song we’ve made has gotten us new fans and, like, further.”

To keep up with 32Fly (a play on the the area code 325), visit their Facebook page here. All of their music can be heard on the group's SoundCloud site. Warning, several of the songs and their titles do contain explicit content.