Minnesota-based rapper BandUpSick sat down with Hyanken and ESSO to talk about the making of his biggest song to date, "Cap Life," which reached 170k views on YouTube, rebranding himself, attempting to go mainstream, and more.
For the uninitiated, BandUpSick was born in Chicago, but moved to Minnesota at a young age and has since relocated to Los Angeles, where he currently resides, in pursuit of his rap career.
"I just felt like Minnesota just wasn’t the place for me no more. I wasn’t able to really see my kid the way I wanted to. So I was like I don't want to look back at my life and wish I chased a dream," BandUpSick said of his decision to move.
During the podcast interview, the artist on his grind spoke about the challenges he faced in L.A. and the mentality out there, revealing when he first moved he was working for PostMates and InstaCart, delivering food all over the map.
Speaking on his single, BandUpSick detailed, "'Cap Life' is a crazy record how it came about. It was basically supposed to be a record that tells about the industry and how a lot of people be cappin in they raps. You know everybody got the money, everybody got the cars, everybody got the jewelry and the b******. But when you see them in real life, you see all the things they doing its a lot of cap in they rap."
BandUpSick also revealed that he initially rapping under the alias Sick Punchline, and "pushed the Chicago wave," rapping with artists like King Louie, FBG, Billionaire Black, and Tay 600. However after the murder of ZackTV, BandUp decided to rebrand himself.
"It’s time to rebrand," he said, recalling his change in mentality. "It’s time to get out of this era that ain’t got nothing but death, jail, or just a bunch of negative energy around it. All this is just for clout. Something that’s not even money. We ain’t making no money from it, we just losing each other. And we battling each other, we ain’t even doing it to battle a supposed enemy. So when I came to terms with that, I was like it’s time to really rebrand, then the come-up came all at the same time. So I was like you know what “BandUpSick”. Not only monetary but with my knowledge. I enriched my knowledge, so I banded up in a bunch of different aspects."
When Esso asked if BandUp wanted to go mainstream, he replied, "I am actually trying to go mainstream. Me and my PR talk about that a lot. We don’t want to force it, while we got it all set up to do that, we really want to break a record on that, lower portion and then once it shoots up past the millions we think at that point, we might have one. We might go into that record to see if it’ll take to the mainstream audience."
Watch the full episode of BagFuel below.