Bronx drill has something to say, and TG Crippy might just be the genre’s most powerful speaker. With a penchant for blistering flows and menacing bars, Crippy spits with a concussive force that creates a blood-stained portrait of survival in his native borough. He packages that atmosphere in hammering beats designed to soundtrack block parties and late nights on the streets of the city. Those vibes swirl together on his new single “Still Be Here,” a drill anthem that mixes delicate romance and intense gunplay in a way that feels inventive and new.
Bouncing across subdued strings and slippery percussion, Crippy oscillates between images of late-night love, casual threats, and proclamations of his rap ascendance. “Niggas know how I’m coming for mines,” he raps. “I’m in Cali, with my 9, if I spot me a opp then that nigga gon’ die.” That track reps casual force, but he channels outright violence as well, as he recently proved on the unrepentant “OOTAZ,” a single with his brother Kenzo Balla and Jay Da Chaser. Decisive and raw, blunt yet irresistible, Crippy’s steadily carving a space as one of the BX’s best. Having only started rapping seriously around two years ago, he knows he’s in a good position. “I was one of them niggas that I never thought this shit happen,” Crippy admits. “It’s a blessing.”
Growing up in the Bronx, there were plenty of reasons to think rap dreams were far off. Raised alongside his brother Kenzo, Crippy was exposed to all the trauma that permeated the borough. “You saw niggas going to jail, people dying — you saw everything,” he recalls. Against that backdrop, it didn’t take long for him to gravitate toward the sounds of Chicago drill. “They was rapping about shit that was happening everywhere, so everybody could relate to it,” he explains.
While Crippy didn’t shy from danger, older heads from his neighborhood told him the importance of doing something constructive so he could take care of priorities when he was older. For him, the answer was rap. Although he’d seen countless local artists fail to create sustainable careers, Crippy’s friends and fellow Bronx rappers Kay Flock and B-Lovee told him he had potential. By 2018, he turned random freestyle sessions into songs with Kenzo. After those tunes racked up thousands of SoundCloud and YouTube streams between 2019 and 2020, Crippy released “No Cap,” a raucous debut solo track that earned over 500,000 YouTube views shortly after its November 2021 release. “‘No Cap’ made me wanna keep rapping,” Crippy says.
To date, that’s exactly what he’s been doing, and it’s resulted in a record deal with 10K Projects — signed alongside Kenzo. As he puts together his debut solo project, Crippy looks to even bigger goals. “I make music to show niggas that they can be they self,” he affirms.
With new music on the horizon and an expanding fan base, Crippy understands the gravity of his moment — and the opportunity to create on his own terms. “I'm not gonna say I’m there, but I'm definitely getting there,” he shares. “They gon’ know TG is TG. They gon’ know who I am.”