One of Northern California’s best up and coming MC’s is MBNel. The Stockton native has had a fairly quick come-up in the hip-hop game. On Friday, the rapper released his 6-track EP titled ‘Child of the Trenches’. Up until this point, MBNel has been very active when it came to releasing music in 2020. Prior to this release, he has put out 4 singles, and a joint project with fellow asian rapper & Long Beach native, $tupid Young. This is MBNel’s first solo project since his 2019 debut studio album, Born To Win.
‘Child of the Trenches’ is 6-tracks long, and it features two singles. The Ralph-produced “Game Time” which features a verse from North Inglewood’s Rucci, was released back on May 8th. A music video was also released on the same day. The second single is “Heroic” featuring Blxst, and is produced by Keanu Beats and Mike Crook. The track was released on June 26, as well as the music video to go along with the single. On “Sacrifice” produced by 2 Step, the Stockton MC raps about reflecting on his life prior to hip-hop, and his journey to get her as well as his drive to keep exceeding. The Jay Ballin produced “Proud” we hear MBNel use a nice balance of both melody and rapping. “Dividends” produced by fellow Stockton native, Poodah, is a definite highlight from this project. The instrumental samples Childish Gambino’s Grammy Award winning single “Redbone”. Sampling big name pop songs is something MBNel has worked with before, and will continue doing for future projects to come. The track was first previewed on MBNel’s Instagram, when he posted a video with the track in the background. The comments were flooded with people requesting the song’s release date.
To go along with the release of the EP, MBNel released the music video for the Kid Adil produced “Humble”. The music video was co-directed by MBNel himself alongside Snipe Films. Directing more of his own music videos has been a task MBNel himself wanted to perfect independently.
Child of the Trenches is the first part of two EPs. The release date for that is yet to be announced. Both projects are leading up to the studio album, that will hopefully be here before the year ends. Child of the Trenches is out now on all streaming platforms, and the music videos for “Game Time”, “Heroic”, and “Humble” are out now on YouTube.
