Rexx Life Raj Emerges from Grief and Finds a New Rhythm

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or over a decade, Rexx Life Raj’s music has been a beacon of refreshing lyricism and intricate musicianship. His expansive catalog includes collaborations with Goapele, Mozzy, Russ, Wale, Terrace Martin, ALLBLACK, Larry June, Kehlani, Dame Lillard and Fireboy DML.

And while guest appearances are impressive, what sets Raj apart is his ability to create music about the universe within himself, in all its forms.

He drops comical bars about psilocybin one minute, and makes astute observations from his perspective as a Black man in the U.S. the next. He raps and sings over melodic bass-heavy tracks, while penning personal stories that invite his listeners to connect more deeply.

Now, the artist behind the Father Figure and California Poppy series of EPs is at a critical career juncture. Raj’s new album In Rhythm, released by San Francisco label EMPIRE and celebrated at a listening party this Sunday in Oakland, shows the Berkeley-raised artist stepping out from under a heavy cloud of blue to enter a whole new chapter.

Out of The Blue

In 2023, after touring for The Blue Hour, an album Raj made after losing both his parents, he sat in their house, cleaning it out.

He came across family photo albums, his father’s record collection and his mother’s Bible, with her notes in the margins. Raj, a clever lyricist known for exercising his poetic isms, wrote a few bars in the simplest language he could muster: “I miss my mom, I miss my dad, I miss my nigga Greg / ‘I love you brother’ was the last thing you ever said.”

The resulting song, “Somewhere” (feat. Joy Oladokun), is a centerpiece of In Rhythm. On a recent phone call, Raj says, “I literally wrote that in my parents house, right before I came to Los Angeles.”

But after standing in grief, his new album finds him emerging from the blues. At 35 years old, Raj is finding a new healthy cadence. He lives in L.A. now. He even has a fresh new haircut.

“I’d been wanting to cut my hair for a while,” he says. He first considered it after his parents passed, but was too attached to his locs, which he’d grown since 2009. “My hair was just such a big part of me, such a part of my identity.”

Then the treatment for a music video of “Narrated By Me,” the first single off In Rhythm, called for a scene of him cutting his long locs. And Raj wasn’t about to fake it for the camera. “If I do a video that’s around the idea of me cutting my hair,” he says, “we’re actually going to cut my hair.”

It exemplified his transitionary phase, of stepping into the new person he’s becoming and letting go of the past, he says — a maturation that’s echoed in his music.

Faraji’s Evolution

While there’s always room for party songs, Raj says, at this age, establishing a sincere relationship with his audience and making music to help others heal are his top priorities.

“I think it’s super important for my fans and listeners to connect with me on that level,” he says. At his shows, he sees crowds of adults “dealing with real-life shit in that moment.”

In turn, his new album is steeped in ideas of resilience, like the songs “Dim My Light” and “Already Mine,” the latter of which is a soundtrack for stuntin’ on haters whilst reciting your daily affirmations.

The responsibility Raj feels to his fans extends to other artists, who may be watching how he handles his career. While he still experiments with his music, freestyles during shows and even cats off from time to time on Twitch, he knows there are limits.

“I could go viral at any moment if I wanted to just be an idiot,” Raj says, reflecting on his livestream content. Instead, he strives for showing his comedic side without “looking like a goofy.”

“I’m getting to the space where I feel I’m starting to become an O.G. at this shit,” he says, with a certain heft.

That self-assured mindset of an elder statesman shows up throughout the album, notably in the song “That’s Not Your Path” (with Babyface Ray and Sango) — and even more explicitly in “I’m Not An Apprentice.”

Breaking down the origins of the track, Raj explains how a studio session with another artist and their manager had gone awry, “and it just rubbed me the wrong way,” he says.

So he hit the studio, thinking about the sweat equity he’s put into his craft over the past decade-plus, and wrote: “Send a budget, I mean, business is business / I put in 10,000 hours, bruh I’m not an apprentice.”

That concept transcends music; it applies to anyone who’s put in the necessary amount of time and focus, says Raj. It’s not about a sense of entitlement, he adds, but a sense of “bro, stop playing with me; I’ve put in the hours and deserve a certain level of respect.”

RexxGod Versus Himself

Another song on In Rhythm, “Better Man,” contains what are arguably the hardest bars on the album:

I keep my momma’s Bible by the bed, I look at what she wrote
When this life start taking a toll, that shit gives me hope
RexxGod, I got superpowers, I should wear a cloak
I done kept it solid so long, that it’s set in stone

The final double-entendre causes Raj to respond to his own words — in the background, he can be heard whistling an ad-lib, as if to say, whew, that’s real.

It’s something he does throughout the album when heavier bars, or “gems,” are dropped. Raj can’t explain where the whistling came from; it just happens after something he finds profound or prolific. A whistle — not meant as hubris, or cockiness — just “locks it in.”

Surpassing his apprentice years. Still growing while grieving. Raj admits he’s far from having it all figured out. But that whistle is his sign that he’s headed in the right direction.

11,000 Silent Steps

A cerebral person who often pulls ideas from conversations with friends, Raj says as of late he’s been focused on long walks alone. “I’m trying to do like 11,000 steps a day,” he says.

By turning off his headphones and walking around downtown Los Angeles for an hour in the morning, he diminishes the mental noise, and ideas come to him. He keeps them in a running journal on his phone called “Life Notes.”

The ensuing clarity informs In Rhythm, which in addition to its themes of moving forward and finding the right pace, is also about not allowing one’s life to be dictated by others’ thoughts.

Too often, Raj laments, opinions of family members, teachers and coaches steer our decisions, and influence how we move through the world. And distinguishing your true voice from the influence of others is a task within itself.

Digging through the minutiae isn’t easy, but it starts with a realization similar to the one Raj has on the song, “Narrated By Me“: “I’m the author, I’m the writer, huh? / I’m the poet, I’m the rhymer, huh? / I can build a castle out of dust.”

That last point, Raj says, is about clearing all distractions so you can “paint your own story through life.”

“At the end of the day, bro,” he says, “the voice in your head is the only voice that matters.”

Rexx Life Raj’s ‘In Rhythm’ listening party takes place Sunday, Aug. 17, at ArtHaus Works (2744 E. 11th St., Oakland) from 4–6 p.m. Details here.