From the magazine: ISSUE 90, Feb/March 2014

Couples sip wine on the balcony of Oakland’s The New Parish as Iamsu! lumbers in. Standing six-foot three, with a bonsai-sprout afro, the rapper/producer poses for photos with fans and childhood friends. The DJ plays one of his songs, “100 Grand,” and a silver-haired guy near the stage resolutely jerks around to it, dancing like a hippie at Burning Man. Pulled from one of his three 2013 mixtapes, “100 Grand” is a ’90s Cash Money-indebted, steadily thwacking track dotted with guest of honor Juvenile’s guttural wooooaahhs. The song’s a carefree brag, with Su acting out but aiming to inspire: Mad pussy, young niggas getting money now, he raps, just after praising himself for being genuine enough to attract authentic friends.

Su, born Sudan Ahmeer Williams and now 24, has made the half-hour drive down from Richmond, the North Bay suburb where he was born, for a performance by his cousin, Mani Draper. In many ways, Su’s journey to here really kicked off nine years ago, when Draper was the captain of Pinole Valley High’s varsity basketball team and introduced him to two fellow players, both also producers: Chief, who got his nickname from dancing at American Indian powwows, and P-Lo, a Filipino kid who wore flashy hand-me-down Polo to school. Later, the three would join with P-Lo’s older brother, Kuya Beats, to form a production crew called The Invasion, and around it, a collective of savvy misfits known as HBK Gang, the acronym short for Heart Break Kids.

At the club in Oakland, Draper’s sisters swarm him as he finishes a hard-spit set, and Su slips around the corner to join Chief and another HBK member at a teenage girl’s birthday party, where P-Lo has agreed to perform. Su sparks a joint, pleased with himself as the act goes unnoticed by two cops lingering nearby. Jumpstarted by the influx of tech money in nearby San Francisco, downtown Oakland is developing quickly; a few doors down, the historic Fox Theater has reopened after a 39-year closure, and the party is being held at a new gallery space across the street from a bar with shuffleboard. The owner stands outside, anxiously eying underaged attendants in Tumblr-approved fashions—white fur and cropped denim, dreadlocks and septum piercings—as one partygoer remembers aloud that someone was shot dead on this corner after a Gucci Mane concert a couple years ago.

Inside, P-Lo performs in the thick of a mob of wobbling girls, a cup in his hand and his tongue flopping out as he raps, Three white hoes/ I’m a giant in my city like fee fi foe. After he finishes his song, the apply-yourself anthem “Going to Work,” he scrambles onto the sidewalk where Su and the crew have been waiting. They’re without coats on a pretty cold night in the Bay, energized by chugged beers and some weed a guy delivered to another HBK rapper’s mom’s house in a Starbucks pastry bag earlier that day. Mostly in their early 20s, but buzzing with adolescent energy, they take turns running in tiny circles, picking up the speed to jump high enough to smack a street sign.