Hayward Isn’t Known For Hip-Hop — But This Samoan Rapper Is Changing That

It was at a house party near the Dumbarton Bridge in Newark where I first met AdamBeen. On what should’ve been a restful Sunday afternoon, the large Samoan brought a bottle of mezcal and began to whip up cocktails in my cousin’s kitchen, which, in a houseful of Mexicans, is a welcome gesture.

Standing over 6 feet tall with the build of a defensive tackle, Adam stooped over the counter evincing the gentle touch of a seasoned bartender — salting the glass rims, and mixing generous pours of the Oaxacan spirit with splashes of fresh juice.

At the time, I didn’t know he made music and co-founded HellaTech, an underground streetwear brand I’d seen some of my younger cousins wearing around the East Bay. Soon after taking a shot together and connecting over a simple mention of hip-hop, we mused on Gang Starr, Curren$y, Griselda, The Jacka, 1100 Himself and Rappin’ 4-Tay.

Covering a range of rap styles, regions and eras, he impressed me for a Bay Area dude nearly 10 years younger than me. Turns out that AdamBeen knows his hip-hop lore — a student of the game who, as a DJ in his spare time, is on his way to becoming a parochial tastemaker.

What separates AdamBeen from his generational Bay Area contemporaries isn’t just his old-school rap erudition, though. As I later found out by diving into his music catalog, it’s his carefully tuned, Griselda-esque verbal artillery. And as a Pacific Islander born in American Samoa who was raised by an adopted family in a Mexican, Hawaiian and Samoan household in Hayward, AdamBeen’s got plenty of unique perspective to spit.

His development as an emcee can be traced to his 2021 debut, Under The Beenfluence, Vol. 1. The LP opens with an audio clip of Spice 1 talking about Hayward, establishing a hometown lineage that the young emcee embraces in the video for “Go On N Cry.” The album served to calibrate his sonic identity within the Bay Area ecosystem, with a prominent feature from rising Filipino American rapper Darrell Medellin and local friends Benny Mak and Esancho. Entirely produced by Union City’s Pay$ean, the project carries overtones of mobb music, which Been would soon veer away from in favor of lo-fi minimalism.

In 2022, the big uce dropped Bag of Bars, a collaboration with Bay Area soundmaker Steelo Fury. On songs like “Heaven’s Tears,” “Prism,” “Tech Kwon Do,” and “Beached Thoughts,” the album allows for a quieter, wandering — if not euphonious — lyricism. Meditative and unforced, the album is free from remnants of mobb or hyphy energy to which many rappers in the region can be zealously bound.

Now, with Selected Works — released in the spring of 2024 — the emcee proves he’s stayed active in the lyrical dojo, delivering seven tracks on his best project to date. With a third collaborator at the helm, THEALLSEEINGEYE — an East Bay factotum who produces, raps, paints and even designed the album cover — AdamBeen’s artistry continues to grow into jazzier permutations while retaining a gritty, industrial texture reflective of Hayward’s backstreets.

A blue-collar suburb just south of Oakland, and the third largest city in Alameda County, Hayward first garnered shine in the Bay Area hip-hop cosmos in 1991, when Spice 1 released his anthemic track, “187 Proof.” The city has had only intermittent regional stars, like 187 Fac or Darkroom Familia, since.

Even back then, Spice 1 — the rapid-spitting gangster rapper known for his collaborations with 2Pac, the Luniz, E-40 and other California heavyweights — didn’t really rep Hayward with the same fervor his peers reserved for Oakland, Frisco, Vallejo and Richmond. Though a similar city in demographics and vibe — predominantly blue collar, dotted with warehouses and junkyards, close to the shoreline — Hayward, or the Stack, never reached the same level of rap eminence.

AdamBeen might be in the best position to change that. His artistic merit surpasses any online algorithm or follower count. For any true rap lover, particularly those with an allegiance to the boom-bap era, Been has a promising allure, particularly as one of Hayward’s sole representatives.

As he establishes on “Stop & Listen,” the introductory track to Selected Works, he’s doing things his own way and doesn’t plan on switching up: “I ain’t no S.O.S [Sons Of Samoa], I ain’t on no same old shit / Had to make changes without changing / …you gotta hate yourself before you hate this.”