What Nef the Pharaoh's Post-Haircut Nisus Reveals About the State of Contemporary Bay Area Rap
The Vallejo overlord is back and inconspicuously better than ever as perhaps the most underrated Bay Area rapper of his generation
The moment I knew Nef the Pharaoh was a Bay Area icon-in-the-making: On a balmy Frisco evening along the industrial outskirts of Bayview during a tribute show for San Jose mega-producer, Traxamillion, who sadly passed away in 2022 from a rare form of cancer, Northern California had gathered to mourn a fallen brethren with a pantheon of local rap legends in attendance — a wheelchair-bound Keak Da Sneak, Husalah, P-Lo, Big Rich and Erk tha Jerk, to name a few within eyesight. Then, out of nowhere, Nef appeared as if conjured by the rap gods.
The psychedelic-ingesting Vallejo spitter slid through a side door to surprise the shoulder-to-shoulder, chest-to-back crowd with an impromptu set. Someone handed him a mic. He waded through the sweaty drip of bodies to the front stage, a vicious cloud of weed smoke hovering above him and his entourage like an inescapable coastal fog. He talked his shit, his bleached-tipped dreads (at the time) dangling from beneath a Miami Marlins baseball cap. After a song or two, he parted with some heartfelt words, bouncing in the opposite direction he came from as the entire room split open to grant him passage while chanting for more like a holy figure after blessing his followers. Everyone else you can think of took the stage that night to pay their respects. But Nef’s presence was perhaps the most memorable for me, somehow supercharging an already overhyped room with his Mac Dre-infused energy.
In pulling up extemporaneously to show love for Trax — a beloved Bay Area spirit whose sonic imprints laid the blueprint for the hyphy movement and helped to reshape the direction of the region’s bass-knocking soundscape — Nef coincidentally cemented his own status as a Bay Area rap titan of his generation. That much has been evident since he first popped up on the scene.
Rewind to 2016, when Neffy first kicked down the proverbial rap door with his debut hit, “Big Tymin’. The Southern-laced single, which later featured a YG and Ty Dolla $ign remix, was both a runaway Bay Area summer anthem and an homage to Big Tymers, the New Orleans duo of Mannie Fresh and Birdman, who alchemized Cash Money Records into a late-90s music empire by signing then-burgeoning stars like Juvenile, B.G. and an 11-year-old Lil Wayne.
The visuals for “Big Tymin’” introduced Nef’s reinvigorated brand of Bay Area street rap (think Andre Nickatina’s weirdness sprinkled with some of E-40’s funk and topped off with Spice 1’s macabre storytelling of deceit, beefs and headshots) with a Southernized twang. From a non-descript trap house that resembled the depths of Louisiana, Nef foretold his own self-fulfilling prophecy with one of the simplest, most compulsively addictive verses in Bay Area rap history: “Bitch I’m big tymin’, bitch I’m, bitch I’m, bitch I’m big tymin’”.
Big Chang — a moniker he received from the late Richmond rapper, Johnny Ca$h — would go on to become a fixture in the West Coast circuit, firing off an array of darkly-clouded, smoothly understated bangers like “Old School Hyphy,” “Beat That Chest Up,” “Bling Blaow,” and “Get High.” Collabs with 03 Greedo, Cardo Got Wangs, and LaRussell soon piled up. Having already signed to E-40’s independent label Sick Wid It in 2015, he emerged from the sacred temple his forefathers built as the next of kin in a consecrated lineage of Bay Area rap greatness. A revivalist of sorts, he simultaneously embraced the moment’s trends and upheld the past, his lyricism a syrupy dose of drug culture and slick-talking wordplay poured into a purple cup and handed to you at a block party you may or may not have been invited to.
It’s hard to define what will become of a rap star the moment their shine first gleams under the spotlight. In my lifetime as a Bay Area rap listener, I’ve seen them come and go as surely as the morning tide that cuts against the shores of San Pablo Bay. There are too many rappers here; maybe the most per capita on the planet. Rare is the artist who is able to swim against the current and remain. Rarer is the one who can do it while building themselves a sustainable boat in which longevity, improvement and creative maturation can comfortably occur.
Nearly a full decade into his career, Nef is reaching further into his bottomless bag of game. He shaved off his dreads, revealing his Michael Jordan-circa-1996 dome while summoning one of his biggest musical influences, Birdman. He has moved past the Bay Area angles he had already mastered and is exploring the trigonometry of West Coast music writ-large, best evidenced in “Hot Boyz,” a recent track with Watts’ Greedo, Compton’s Wallie The Sensei and Sacramento’s ShooterGang Kony. The mafioso soundtrack kicks off with a saucy Nef verse, in which the South Vallejo representative playfully interchanges disparate subject matter, from bounty hunting his opps to watching Disney Channel re-runs: “I do a crime by myself, I’m like Zack without Cody/ Nef with no dough? That’s like Ack with no codeine.”
“Hot Boyz” is the lead single off of Vallejo Playa, Nef’s standout album from 2024 that offers a more reflective, if not triumphant side of the 29-year-old. Having experienced the violent loss of family members, including his sister and best friend, the rapper delves into moments of motivation (“Don’t Stop”), meditation (“Meant 2 Be”) and straight mobbery (“Mobbin 2”). The young OG retains enough of his former sound throughout the project, in which references to murder scenes abound, but the tone and frequency have seemingly mellowed — his full-throttle antagonism of the past overtaken with a playerish calm that only comes after having distanced oneself from a chaotic starting point to reflect on one’s purpose with a deeper conviction. Though it’s clear he hasn’t switched up on us (the album’s opener is titled “Live by the Code”), his artistry has undeniably regenerated like Wolverine inside the healing chamber (peep “Haven Court,” “Puppet Theater,” and “So Many Bars”). Plus, strong features from regional trendsetters like LaRussell, Seiji Oda, Lil Bean, Yhung T.O., and Nef’s biological brother, Scando The Darklord showcase the Bay’s multidimensional finesse and elasticity.
Along with my favorite album cover from the past 12 months — in which Neffy is posted up on the hood of a Fox Body Mustang 5.0 in front of a liquor shop with neon letters that spell out his name and Vallejo Playa — the 17-song, 47-minute effort is a worthwhile listen. (He followed that up with a beachy, acoustic love album in ChangSzn3). All in all, he might be the most slept-on Bay Area rapper with mainstream potential right now. But he remains largely unseen.
Earlier this year, I flew back to the Bay Area from Mexico City for the NBA All-Star Game in San Francisco — the first time the NBA’s annual “big ass commercial” has been in the Bay since 2000. While running around from spot to spot, I somehow missed a performance from Nef and The Team’s Clyde Carson. It’s proof that Nef has retained his simultaneously chameleonic status as an incognito street dude and Bay Area star over the past decade since his breakthrough. That is, he is everywhere and nowhere. You may seem him, but you more likely won’t. In many ways, he’s the quintessential Bay Area rapper: an artist who is unfraid to be weird themselves and able to cultivate a loyally insular listenership, but who is also too chill to pursue the Hollywood route, and in doing so, potentially goes unseen by the masses. But that’s what make Nef an expert at his craft: he seems to do it with intention and an unwavering self-purpose. Despite his artistic growth and fame, he doesn’t flaunt himself or parade around. Instead, he might just wiggle through the back door, and if you happen to be in the same room, you’ll delight in his evolving presence.