Sometime in late November, Emoney got a strange message from a mother representing two fans. The woman couldn’t find any artist merch from him for her children anywhere on the internet and needed help.
“At first I thought it was fake,” Emoney said from his home in North Hollywood. I know I have fans, but this is insane. “She asked if there was anything they could send me. Me and her talked ASAP. I talked to their mom on the phone that night and told her I wanted to make Christmas for her kids special, one of the kids has autism and one was a high school girl.”
Emoney was initially going to send them signed clothes he wore in a few of his music videos. But he decided to go the extra mile.
“They were like six hours away from where I was going to be in the Bay Area and I make trips between Bay Area and Los Angeles all the time,” he explained. “So, me and my videographer got together and thought to surprise these people. We did it some days before Christmas and we made it their best ever.”
A self-proclaimed “normal guy who loves to rap,” Emoney (real name Ethan Cohen) has made a name for himself through several impressive freestyles and cyphers on underground Hip Hop platform TeamBackpack since around the turn of the decade.
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“The way I got with them was that at one time, they were nobodies to a lot of people,” he said. “They were just looking for people to come through and spit. Now, everybody wants to be on TeamBackpack. When I was getting on, they were like we need a white boy. Me being white really helped me get on TeamBackpack. Armani had heard of me through Yung Mar and he checked out my music and page and gave me a shot.”
Since then, most of the videos he’s featured in have racked up millions of views. Moreover, those bars have at times redirected viewers to Emoney’s music. In his eyes, the winner of a TeamBackpack cypher is the one who gets their music checked out afterwards.
“These cypher verses that came along where I kill it and do my best are great but my number one goal is to have people bumping my song and not my cypher,” he said. “I feel like I can do both and a lot of people listen to my music. The cyphers are so big that people want to put me in that box of being a cypher rapper. But, you gotta check out my music because it’s crazy.”
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Releasing a few projects here and there, he has an EP set for release in February and full-length album for the summer. Both will see production from Max Van Soest, who is better known for his work alongside underground mainstays Alien Family and Catalysts.
Emoney has come a long way from his days of not believing in himself and working jobs ranging from waiter to working as a production assistant on television series including The Coroner: I Speak for the Dead and Born This Way.
“For a while, I was succumbing to societal pressures with working my way up the corporate ladder and TV ladder,” he said. “Now, I’m just realizing that the only thing that makes me happy as a human being is making music all the time. I’m living to make music whether I make it or not, I’m doing what makes me happy.”
