New project 'Feed The Family' highlights growth of Boston street music

They say the family is the most basic unit on which society is built. With this idea in mind, Boston’s BoriRock, Dun Dealy, Shaykh Hanif, Top Hooter and producer Tremendiss have all come together to form the new project “Feed The Family.” It is a melting pot of stories from these artists with street tales that intersect each other seamlessly over production completely done by Tremendiss.

In the intro song titled “Feed The Family,” Shaykh Hanif kicks things off with his street Saudi prince persona while BoriRock is in the background hyping the eerie Tremdiss production that gives these murky flows a home. Top Hooter’s a confident rapper that comes after with bars like, “Was stepping on squares way before a crate challenge. Shaky n----- falling off, but I got great balance.” BoriRock continues the opening ceremony with his verse, bringing the energy everyone aware of his movement has come to love. I believe BoriRock is an MVP across this whole project and Dun Dealy is a finisher. That was his assignment on this song. Dealy’s adlibs arguably are some of the best I’ve heard in the city – it was the first I ever heard “I’m on my way Jimbo!” to support a bar. This is an example of how the project expands what each of these artists and producer are doing individually. It’s really well put together.

What makes “Feed The Family” so great is it fights the “crab in a barrel” narrative that has plagued Boston hip-hop overall but specifically artists with street music. The streets love to divide people. Each artist within “Feed The Family” has had their own time pushing their music individually. Additionally, I’ve seen each of them have a great reception for their respective music. So to see these strong artists come together to give what feels like a mix of more known acts like Dipset and Griselda in Boston form was exactly what the street music community needed to start off 2022. And I, for one, hope they keep the collaboration going.

“It’s like we all came out the womb together! Like we all got the same mom,” says BoriRock about the group’s cohesiveness. They move as a unit and are organized in a way that hasn’t been seen for a while in Boston street music. The greatest example of this in Boston hip-hop history was The Almighty RSO in the late 1980s and 1990s. The movement was heavily felt because they had group members who represented different sides of the city. The artists of Feed The Family may not be from different sides of the city but they each have their own fan bases and no one is stepping on each other’s toes. Shaykh Hanif mentions in a voice note, “Feed The Family is deeper than us four people that you see on the album cover…it’s really a family. That’s how we treat it. So everybody’s projects — whether it’s clothing, whether it’s music, whether it’s whatever you got going on in your family — we all play a part in that.”

Together, these artists have the ability to create curiosity around whatever they make, but the music for certain has to back it up. These street tales couldn’t connect the way they did without Tremendiss’ solid beats to set the scene. BoriRock masterminded “Feed The Family” for the group, and from top to bottom, this project represents Boston in a beautiful way.