Underground Hip Hop EP ------ Meta Forage ------ Out Now!
ABOUT
Betarock
Betarock is a rapper based out of Northern California. He has been writing hip hop lyrics for close to 25 years. He has been self-recording and self-releasing singles for about 20 years. Betarock is mainly a lyricist but has been known to produce beats and write music as well. His style in hip hop has evolved to be liquid lyricism enveloped by old school, underground, soulful and jazzy feeling beats. Betarock's rhymes are at times very self-reflective, insightful, and ruminate on different philosophies. He is known to heavily implement the use of metaphor in his verses. Other times his lyrics are purely playful. Betarock strongly believes that good music, and good art in general, should and can capture the full spectrum of the human condition.
Betarock's latest EP release, Meta Forage, is available on all major streaming platforms. Betarock can be found as @betarock or @betarockmuisc on most major social media platforms.
Meta Forage
The idea for Meta Forage has been kicking around for a long time. First, Beta got very interested in expressing himself using metaphors. Next came the realization that a lot of his content was really self referential and speaking about his own life, or reminding himself of who he is. (Very "meta.") So he decided to go on a quest to stretch his own thoughts about who he is and what that means. He decided to "forage for the meta" in his art. Since he had also become obsessed with the use of metaphor in his writings, it only seemed right to do that by using metaphors. And so the idea of Meta Forage was born. Admittedly, the lyrics on this project are pretty dense with meaning. If you care to read along and have the metaphors translated for you, the lyrics and their translations can be found here: https://genius.com/albums/Betarock/Meta-forage
Milestones
Growing up listening to The Beastie Boys, Tupac, Dilated Peoples, J5, Del, Tribe, and pretty much any other influential hip hop artist you could possibly list (and many other types of music as well), and growing up with a very musical family, it was only a matter of time before Betarock started his own journey.
Beta started rapping in high school, but really found a group of like-minded friends that encouraged his rhyming in college. Starting in the early 2000s, Beta hit stages rapping around the Bay Area. His moniker at that time was Frank Wit. During his earlier days, he was part of a musical collective called The Writerz Guild. He was once flown with The Writerz Guild to play in New Delhi, India, for a 3 day festival. (One day he will get the volumes of music they made online...)
After his Writerz Guild period, he continued to make hip hop, but also played bass for a band called Timmy Mezzy in the late 2000s and 2010s. (https://soundcloud.com/timmy-mezzy)
In 2012 he won the emcee "battle of the bands" at the How the Grouch Stole Christmas show in downtown San Francisco. While making more solo hip hop with producers from all over the world, via Soundcloud, he then also founded a band called The Junk Show. In The Junk Show he played guitar, rapped and sang. The Junk Show released an album in 2018 called "Welcome to the Junk Show." (https://welcometothejunkshow.com/album/)
The same year, he released the electronica album "Luigi Airlines" with another friend as a duo called Tarantula Serpent. That album is an eclectic mashup of styles folk, hip hop, funk, soul, rock and electronic music. (Sound interesting? Take a Listen! https://tarantulaserpent.com/) Both The Junk Show and Tarantula Serpent are still creating together and expect to have more coming in the future.
In the mid twenty-teens, Betarock formed a collective with 2 other emcess that became known as The Versifiers. The Versifiers played all over the Bay Area with many other influential artists. They released their first album in 2016. https://theversifiers.com/
Although Betarock has not released any full length hip hop albums throughout the years, he has released over 100 singles on various platforms online that have reached thousands of people around the world.
Links to his hip hop music are found on the "Listen" page. Meta Forage, his latest EP release came out on 8/12/2022 and is available on all major streaming platforms.
Moving Forward
Lately, many songs have been stacking up. At first, they were all going to be one album (Meta Forage). But with the short attention span of todays audience, and the constant struggle to get big projects done in his busy home and work life, Beta decided to release multiple EPs with the Meta Forage theme. Beyond that, there's even another EP practically written and ready to record when the Meta Forage series of EPs are finished. (Or maybe there will be 5 Meta Forage EPs?) Lots to coming in the near future...