If you are an avid follower of Los Angles’ emerging rap scene, then surely you’ve heard of T.F. The Angeleno rapper’s affiliations run from ScHoolboy Q and G Perico to Detroit’s Danny Brown. His most notable collaboration is “Tookie Knows II” from Q’s Blank Face LP in July.
Having dropped his “September 7” single off the No Hooks EP, T.F accompanied the track with a cinematic montage of South Central captured in a span of 10 months. The visuals and cameos are as hard as the song itself, featuring ScHoolboy Q, G Perico, Danny Brown, Traffic and a busload full of baby thugs.
T.F sat down with Soren Baker to chat about “September 7,” No Hooks EP, and his deep affiliations with some of rap’s most notable black list influencers.
In an industry flooded with talent and material, it can be difficult for projects to stand apart from the crowd. T.F explains why he chose to make an EP free from hooks.
“There’s nobody doing it out here,” he reveals. “Plus my boy Shea [Wooten, producer] had a bunch of beats that you can’t so nothing but rap on. I met Shea through Jay, and he said some cat from Oregon sent him a beat. I’m like, ‘A cat from Oregon? Put it on. Play it.’ It was weird, but I’m like, ‘Alright, let’s do it.’ We sent it back to him. He was feeling it. He sent another one [beat]. Same thing until we had six, seven, eight songs. Then, we were like, ‘Let’s just do a whole project and call it No Hooks.”
T.F details that “September 7″ was the fifth track Shea sent him. Fit with its own title, the rapper explains that once he figured out how he was going to start the track off, he felt like he should stick with the given name.
“When I wrote the song, Im just sitting there looking at my phone like, ‘How am I going to open up with this?’ I just started off, ‘September 7th, I’ma be in the future.'”
With a lot of rappers seeking to make conceptual projects tailored to a specific topic, the Los Angeles rapper wants to remain open with the theme of his EP. Rather focusing on the features of his album, he is striving to keep the format as organic as “September 7.”
“Some of the beats have weird placements for breakdowns and drops,” T.F reveals. “So, I might just let the drop ride out and then fall back in. Most of the tracks are just like ‘September 7’ or similar to it. Most of them are just straight through. The beat will change like four or five times, making you challenge yourself, making you rap. It was a challenge, and nobody was doing it.”
Having no major projects of his own under his belt, but plenty of collaborations with notable artists, T.F explains what it means to have key cameos on No Hooks.
“As an artist, that’s dope because the fan base will say, ‘Oh, I see Danny Brown, Jay 305, and ScHoolboy.’ Of course, that’s what the people want to see, your affiliation. But, I already knew them. Not as a rapper, but in the streets. So, that was dope for them to help me out.”