It’s been a couple of years since we last heard from LA to the Bay emcee Bambu, who took some time off since releasing Prey For The Devil in 2016. He used that time to focus on his family, who welcomed a new child, and to work locally on business ventures and local activism. Now he makes his return with a slightly different project called Exrcising A Demon | Article I | A Few Left.

While Bambu has given us proper albums, singles, EPs, and mixtapes in the past, he’s chosen a slightly different approach for his latest project. A Few Left is the first in a five part series of audio essays that will be collectively titled Exrcising A Demon. Working with longtime collaborator OJ The Producer, they’ve put together a collection of hip hop songs and spoken word essays that are meant to document the ugly history of Pilipino immigration in the US, namely the part that Bambu lived through, examining how gang life pervaded the culture, how many got locked up, and how it took learning about their past and learning how to organize as a population to demand respect and rights for Pilipino Americans. This is done by Bambu leading the way with his raps, what we are used to hearing from him, as he drops his rhymes about his own background as a former gang member who found himself on the other side of things, and how he’s learned about this heritage and the systems in place that put him in a no-win situation, and how he had to unlearn a lot behavior from his past. This is then balanced by a bunch of guest artists including his mom and friends such as Hopper and Jigs, who give you some explicit stories about how life was in the ‘80 and ‘90s, and how the gang culture shouldn’t be glorified, but actually examined on multiple levels so that we can learn from it and not let it pit everyone against each other so that everyone either gets locked up or killed, and rich white men stay in power.

A Few Left is a powerful document of how minority populations get manipulated, and how hard it is to rise up and overcome if we don’t have access to education and community spaces to come together. It’s also a really moving personal tale from those who lived through it, presented in a unique format from Bambu and OJ. I’m very interested to see how the project unfolds from here.