How ICE Raids Have Impacted Texas Rapper HOODLUM's Hometown

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16 hours ago

HOODLUM in 'Just Left Walgreens,' directed by DGreenFilmz. Graphic by Chris Panicker.
One of the best Texas rap songs of the year isn't as easy to find as it should be. There are two ways to listen to HOODLUM's 'Better Dayz (Freestyle)': directly on his Instagram page or hidden on the second half of another video called 'Just Left Walgreens.' 'As soon as I posted the song, YouTube banned it right away,' claims HOODLUM, on FaceTime from the front porch of his crib in Houston, where he's moved from his hometown of San Antonio. 'They said I was interfering with votes or some shit, and it was the second time, so they took it down.'
'Better Dayz (Freestyle)' rolls in at the 1:50 mark of 'Just Left Walgreens' with a news clip from earlier this year: 'The president, in his first week in office, is already enforcing an immigration crackdown that has instilled fear in some major cities.' (The video also features him flexing a Cybertruck.) Then, backdropped by a woozy instrumental moving at half-speed, HOODLUM, in his cracked voice that sounds like he just got done ripping an entire carton of cigarettes, vents about the terror and community division that has been caused by the surging presence of ICE—the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency conducting mass raids across the country—in San Antonio, where a sizable portion of the population, including HOODLUM, is Mexican. 'My dawg kid got no papers, she might die 'cause a fever/They could run in the church, so don't be trustin' the preacher/They could run in the school, so don't be trustin' the teacher,' he raps with a heavy heart.
It's a really good song, not only because of the strong message, but also because HOODLUM's mumbly, leaned-out rap-sing sounds naturally chopped and screwed and gives his memories the feel of a melancholic dream sequence. On his standout tapes, such as 2023's Southside Story and last year's Brown in America, with the simmering, sample-heavy Texas funk of his go-to producer, bigtexjohnny, as the backbone, HOODLUM uses his flow—which, on occasion, is nearly inaudible—to dig into nostalgic, hardened scenes of hustling, getting high, and hanging with friends and family amid fears of death and going broke.
And 'Better Dayz (Freestyle),' isn't the first or last time HOODLUM has tackled political turmoil head on. A few years ago, after the end of the the first Trump administration, he wrote 'B.I.A (Brown in Amerikka),' where, in a groove that recalls the heyday of G-funk, he sang, 'And it was all good 'til ICE started rolling through the hood,' alongside stories of drug deals and crooked cops. The song's video apparently got him his first YouTube strike. Then, this week, following the protests against ICE in Los Angeles that led to President Trump sending in the National Guard, and ICE's ongoing sweeps at court hearings and on college campuses in San Antonio, he dropped a snippet of new song 'Burn It Down' on his Instagram account. 'Say they coming for us, they can't take us all,' he says, fired up, over a gloomy piano riff. It's not a protest anthem, just a moment of rage and confusion that comes from watching your hometown get torn apart.
One evening, earlier this week, I had a FaceTime conversation with HOODLUM. He smoked and spoke candidly while kids played in the background. We chatted about Texas rap, the effect ICE has had on San Antonio, and his role as a marquee rapper from a city that doesn't have too many, especially in a social media climate where information is buried by algorithms looking to push and normalize the ultra-conservative political agendas of Silicon Valley and the Trump administration.
HOODLUM: Houston is more mixed. In my neighborhood, there's only, like, one other Mexican family. Everyone else is white, Black, Arab, or Asian. Where I'm from on the southwest side of San Antonio, it was either Black or Mexican. It's small and big at the same time, and everyone is really together.
Not really, but there was some. There was this guy named J.Randle. There was King Kyle Lee and Liveola. Sometimes Chamillionaire would come down from Houston and go to the flea markets on the southside, sign people, and throw them on CDs. But it was never a big scene; it was always on the backs of Houston.
Some, but my first CDs were probably OutKast's Southernplayalistic and that one AZ album [Doe or Die]. I always wanted to go to New York. I liked 2Pac. Wayne. Bankroll Fresh. A lot of Latin music, too. I liked stuff with a lot of samples. I always wanted to sample stuff like Curtis Mayfield, the Isley Brothers, and Sunny Ozuna.
Probably Frank Sinatra, 'Jesus Is a Rock.' There's this one part that I feel like me and John [aka producer bigtexjohnny] could make really dark, turn it into some 'I Feel Like Dying' type shit.
Z-Ro, because of the melodies and beat choices. He would rap on fuckin' Sade or whatever. Devin the Dude, I'd always listen to his Greatest Hits (Screwed). He's the one person I really want on my next album.
At first, it kind of just happened and I started just pushing it even further. But I was really into Wayne and I just started trying to drag my voice out as long as possible over all these Curtis Mayfield samples or whatever.
One of my favorite Waynes is when he rapped on 'Dear Summer,' or the era when he was really into New York. That's part of why I liked New York so much.
It's just all I knew. I didn't know anything outside of San Antonio until my music started blowing up and, all of a sudden, I was in, like, Europe and shit, Norwegian kids rapping my lyrics, tripping me the fuck out. I'm just documenting my life, and people don't always pick everything up because I'm rapping so slow, but, if you catch it, I'll be saying some shit. Like 'Brown in Amerikka,' I wrote that years ago just because they [ICE] would just be in the neighborhood everyday from the morning 'til 4 o'clock. We would know not to answer the door.
At first, not really, because it was never something I did intentionally. I would just be writing what's going on in my head. Like, I remember we couldn't even have holidays—Thanksgiving, Christmas, July 4th—because those are the days they would come gather up your whole family. It was just fucked up.
I liked how Wayne did it when Katrina hit. Like 'Georgia… Bush' isn't just rapping your ear off about it the whole time. It's still a Wayne song. So now whenever I do get into politics, I make sure that it still sounds like my songs.
It's always felt like everyone has looked at us Chicanos as less than, and we never cared, but it's weird now. You feel it now. It could be a white person, a Chinese person, a Black person, even though in San Antonio the Black people and Mexicans have always been together. It's the internet and this Trump shit. Everyone is feeling bolder about it. Like, bro, what are we doing? They're hunting kids.
Yeah, they're getting money to capture kids. It's kinda been this way since the beginning, though. My dad is 73; I heard the stories of when it was cool for the Navy men to come and take girls and cut their hair and rape your girlfriend. In high school, I would get paid to help bring kids to their families, and they would be so grateful to make it. All of this gets swept under the rug, like when I rapped, 'Kids askin' mom, like, 'Is Trump gon' take you?'' that shit is really happening.
Yeah, they're taking good people, bro. Like, the part at the beginning of 'Brown in Amerikka,' that happened in San Antonio. A bunch of people in a 18-wheeler just tryna come here for a better life and the cartel left them there and they all suffocated and died. And they're going harder at certain people.
It's fucked up, man. And they're really tryin' to divide us. Online, they're accounts telling Black people to not stand with us, but this is about all of us. Like, when those protests happened a few years ago, the Mexicans that knew it was the right thing to do were there.
I think it's good. I don't know if the government would try all that military shit in San Antonio; we're really the majority. They would have to take everybody. But you never fucking know; they're close to the majority in L.A., too. Right now, they still try to keep it under the radar; they're real sneaky about it.
It could 'cause people are finally tired of it. I'll see an old Mexican man and he'll never ever tell you everything he's done in his life. But I just know he's worked his ass off. All these families worked their ass off. No one ever told them thank you for helping keep this country alive. They never asked for any credit and this is what they get. Speaking out more is good.
I don't know; I would share it even if I wasn't a rapper. I don't even know if people really even want to hear that shit from us.
Nobody wants to hear disturbing shit all the time. Life's really hard, bro. But sometimes you need it to fuel the fire.
Honestly, what they're doing in L.A. Every person actually standing up and saying something. There's no other way. Because no one is going to see you if you don't make yourself seen.
Originally Appeared on Pitchfork