In the heart of East New York, Brooklyn, Bizzy Banks is carefully probing through a corner store fridge with the meticulousness of a kid in an arcade trying to pick their prize in the claw machine. “When I was really trappin’, every morning I would be in this deli early for some pancakes,” says Bizzy as he selects a small carton of Tropicana orange juice. He moves through the cramped space with confidence, familiar with all the ins and outs. “But really, the reason I would come here is ’cause I’m cool with the Ahk,” he adds, using the slang for a corner store owner of Middle Eastern descent. “If you’re really outside in the neighborhood, you have to be cool with the Ahk.”
As if on cue, the deli owner’s son Wuu storms in, and Bizzy’s eyes light up as if Kevin Durant just walked through the door. Wuu instantly causes a commotion—cracking jokes at the expense of customers patiently waiting for their sandwiches and disrupting his cook to order Bizzy some french fries with special sauce. At the same time, Wuu is on speakerphone with a girlfriend who seems to be fed up with his antics. “I’m in the store, why do you always think I’m up to something?!” he exclaims into the phone, as the teenager working the cash register subtly shakes his head, exasperated. Bizzy, on the other hand, can’t get enough. As he takes in the one-man sitcom that is Wuu, the typically self-contained 22-year-old starts laughing in big gulps. It’s the most animated he gets during a recent day spent cruising through his home borough.
The mood quickly changes as soon as Bizzy steps outside of the store. He tosses the hood of his powder blue Dior puffer coat over his head, fixes his mask—the type you might see an NFL player wear during an especially cold game—and quickly shuffles to a waiting Altima. Though East New York is where Bizzy came of age, he only comes back occasionally to see family now. Otherwise, he’s usually tucked away in New Jersey. “You have to be on your Ps and Qs,” he says, talking about how he has to carry himself in the neighborhood. “Shit is always real.”
Since drill music was lifted from Chicago and adopted by New York a few years ago, it’s become the de facto sound of the city. Meanwhile, the NYPD and a few local news mouthpieces have done their best to blame the subgenre for violence in certain Brooklyn neighborhoods, going as far as barring local stars like the late Pop Smoke and Sheff G from performing in their hometown. But the music is really more of a reflection of the gang culture intertwined into everyday life here. New York drill comes from Black and Brown neighborhoods that have been historically starved of resources; as money pours into surrounding gentrifying areas, these underserved enclaves are left with nothing but rising rents and more policing.
“Our music always gets labeled as negativity, but I think the reality is all visible rappers have a target,” says Bizzy. “Sometimes it’s from someone you don’t even have beef with, and sometimes it’s from the police—they’re who really worry me, but I try not to bring those thoughts into my atmosphere.”
Brooklyn drill has undergone a stark transition since the tragic murder of Pop Smoke last year. He was the scene’s flagbearer, the one who took the music from the earbuds of local teenagers to the entire world. He was melodic, he could rap, and he was so charismatic that he could share a track with world’s biggest stars and not lose any of himself. Pop also helped to shift the perception of Brooklyn drill, which was often belittled as an expression of violence centered around diss tracks and threats. His music included those elements, but it offered more than that, too. It captured the borough’s lifestyle and culture in all its boldness and flash. His loss was an emotional gut punch for an entire city, and it also halted drill’s momentum. The scene has struggled to find a direction ever since.
As he was becoming a star, Pop took Bizzy under his wing. Reflecting on their relationship, Bizzy says, “He was a happy person, and every time I saw him he was full of energy, which is really different from me, because I’m more laid-back.” Bizzy reps New York as hard as Pop did, but his music is driven less by his personality and more by his fascination with the city’s rap tradition—heavy on slick wordplay, dramatic slice-of-life stories, and a competitive spirit that’s focused on coming up with the coolest way to say a thought. Wiping away a smudge on his Gucci sneakers, he talks about growing up listening to New York punchline rappers like Fabolous and Juelz Santana as well as battle MCs, including Tsu Surf and Charlie Clips. “I’m obsessed with different rhyme schemes,” he says. He then looks around for an item until his eyes lock onto a ginger ale bottle, and he raps with a short freestyle about it.
You can hear this skill on his 2019 breakout single, “Don’t Start.” The brooding drill production sets the tone, as Bizzy builds tension with pauses and breaths, then comes through with rapid-fire machismo. “Tell my niggas get money, they go and get it/Got some demons and goblins that always with it/Why these niggas be talkin’ like they won’t get it?/Feelin’ invincible/Until I send them monsters to make you invisible,” he raps, before the drums even drop. It’s strikingly different from much of the more popular, label-made New York drill currently being peddled by the likes of CJ and Fivio Foreign. Bizzy is a rapper’s rapper. It doesn’t get more New York than that.
Raised Majesty Moses, Bizzy lived in a number of Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods before settling in East New York. When he was in elementary school, his family was torn apart. His father was deported to Trinidad, and his older brother was sent to jail. It left him and his two sisters with his mother, a devout Rastafarian who spent most of her time working to provide for the family. Meanwhile, Bizzy would stay at his grandmother’s, where he began to get in trouble. “You know grandparents, they let you get away with anything,” he says with a shrug.
Around the house, his mother listened to reggae, and his older brother let him in on Lil Wayne’s iconic mixtape run in the 2000s. At George Gershwin Junior High School in East New York, Bizzy began to freestyle. “During lunch I would battle rap,” he says outside of the school, in the middle of a foot tour through his old neighborhood, where he points out the park where he would spend summer days, the McDonald’s he would hit after class, and the Dominican barbershop that once pushed back his hairline. “The school also had a program where we could rap, but we couldn’t curse.”
In his high school years, Chicago drill music quickly became the soundtrack to the lives of kids in New York. It would begin a gradual shift in the sound of popular Brooklyn rap: From the hectic, dance-infused singles of Bobby Shmurda and Rowdy Rebel in 2014, to the battle rapper-type approach of Bam Bino after that, and then to 22Gz’s 2016 single “Suburban” and Sheff G’s 2017 response “No Suburban,” both of which laid the foundation for modern Brooklyn drill.
While the subgenre was taking off, though, Bizzy got caught up with the law. He had begun to build a small following, but a 2019 jail stint forced him to sit on the sidelines as the subgenre started to spread beyond city limits. After beating his case, Bizzy began to take rap more seriously than before, solidifying a style that laid the cutthroat punchline rap he grew up with over beats influenced by the UK drill production and popularized in New York by Pop Smoke. It would ultimately lead to a major label deal with Atlantic and debut mixtape, last year’s GMTO, Vol. 1, which is one of the subgenre’s stronger projects to date. It’s filled with songs that show off his storytelling (“Top 5”), freestyling (“Quarantine Freestyle”), and ability to bend between the two (“Extra Sturdy”).
As the day draws to a close, we end up in a studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. When we arrive, the burgeoning Uptown rapper Stunna Gambino immediately asks Bizzy for feedback on his latest recordings. As Bizzy nods along, Gambino seems excited, and it’s clear that Bizzy’s approval means a lot. Bizzy then kicks back on a couch—it’s the only other time all day when he seems as comfortable as he was at the deli. He plays me some new songs that could potentially land on an upcoming tape. One sounds like setting foot into an ominous Roman cathedral, another is a questionable play for radio, and the last catches my attention most, with classical-sounding strings that are bound to be remixed again and again. Throughout every track, he almost never stops rapping relentlessly.
Bizzy Banks: It was really strict. I never ate meat. I sometimes compare it to being Muslim, even though it’s not the same thing at all. Every Saturday we have Sabbath. So from about six in the morning until night we had to fast. We would just be praying and drinking water all day. When I was younger, I didn’t really care for it, but it trained me to be a better person. Like today, all I ate is those french fries, and it’s not like I’m starving. I just don’t have an appetite. Some days I’m good with just water. I feel like it prepared me for a lot.
You know, I never really knew the difference between vegetarian and… what’s that other thing?
Yeah. Vegetarian is the one where they can still eat some eggs and stuff, right?
That’s what I was then. I never really thought about it, ’cause I just ate whatever my mom made. But I eat meat sometimes now. I just started liking crab legs.
Yeah, a lot of reggae. I still listen to a lot of it, but now I mostly listen to the drill reggae-type stuff, like K Lion. I don’t really want to call it reggae, but I guess that’s what it is. They really just talk about crime and killing, but it’s the type of music I’m used to.
Probably Lil Durk. I really listen to this deluxe [version of 2020’s The Voice] everyday. I probably know all the words. It’s crazy how long he’s been in the game and just now getting all of this recognition.
To this day, I have never been to Chicago, but around 2012 or 2013, when all that was getting hot, it really felt like I knew them. I used to watch it so closely beyond the music. You would see a video with Lil Reese and Lil Durk and be like, “Oh they cool?!” I think it’s just how kids watch our scene right now.
I love that feeling when you know so much about a person you never met. That’s how it was with Pop [Smoke] before I met him. I was just bumping his music, and I felt like I already knew him. That’s part of what helped him take over.
I like rapping about me. I can’t rap about nobody else. I just love telling my little stories to make sure people get to know who I am. I want people to feel what I’m going through, even if they aren’t experiencing the same shit. Like I’m growing up in my music, I’m still learning a lot, still understanding what death really means. I want everyone who listens to me to get that.
That’s why sometimes I have to write instead of freestyle. I really have to sit down, zone in, and process my thoughts. I feel like I’m just now learning how to speak about my own life.
That was my dog. It meant a lot that he showed love to me, because I was really a fan before I even met him. He took the time to give me some of his energy and teach me a little about the things he was doing.
Of course, I was upset. But it doesn’t really feel like anything has changed, because everywhere you go you hear his voice and his music. He really changed the game. That’s what he wanted to do, and it makes me mad that he won’t get to see it. He was always telling me it’s cool making drill for the streets, but once you start seeing the world it makes you want to be bigger than the streets. He even introduced me to jewelry and shit. I never used to pay it no mind—us drill rappers never really have jewelry or anything like that. But Pop was always like, “Nah, this is a trophy.” He made me want things that we never had.
