MaLLy

MaLLy is an independent Hip Hop artist, educator, and entrepreneur born and raised in south Minneapolis. As a rising star out of the Midwest, he’s released four critically acclaimed albums, received the McKnight Foundation Fellowship, and has toured nationally and internationally with legendary acts like Atmosphere and Brother Ali.

Over the last decade, MaLLy’s highly personal content, artistic duality, bravado, and lyricism have resulted in him being voted Twin Cities’ best Hip Hop artist by the City Pages and recognized by national press outlets, including the Star Tribune, 2DopeBoyz, Uproxx, HipHopDX, and Complex Magazine. Furthermore, his impressive studio recordings and stellar live performances gained the attention of prominent industry figures such as Monie Love, Sway Calloway, Smif-N-Wessun, and Chuck D, who’ve all lauded his work.

A storyteller exploring themes of love, social justice, and spirituality, MaLLy treats every song as a letter of reflection, or rhythmic prayer on his quest toward truth and wellness in a challenging world. In addition to writing and recording, MaLLy serves as an artist consultant with Springboard for the Arts guiding creatives interested in professional development and enhancing their careers.

As he continues to evolve in his craft on the stage and beyond his main desire is to uplift and transform the lives of people of all backgrounds and advocate for community-oriented organizations dedicated to the arts.

The Sweetest of It All (2024), MaLLy’s latest full-length offering and collaboration produced entirely by Last Word is a 14 track opus of personal and breezy expressions over a lush, colorful, and futuristic-soul soundscape from the '70s and '80s with a light touch of boom bap nostalgia. Throughout the album, MaLLy calmly explores and identifies the layers of his humanity through the lens of joy, resilience, and equanimity. The south Minneapolis rapper confidently champions true liberation, his Blackness, and sobriety as some of the Sweetest elements that the Creator has gifted him in this life.

Miraculously, the album was birthed and completed worlds apart with MaLLy recording in Minneapolis while Last Word tirelessly sampled and chopped an array of audio textures from his new home in New Zealand. Although on opposite sides of the earth, both artists remained creative, reconnected on The Travelers Tour with Brother Ali in 2022 and collectively vowed to create an album that had its own sound, followed no trends, and embodied the essence of wholeness like so many Hip-Hop classics that shaped their lives.

From start to finish, the duo fearlessly tap into new territory and design a space that is much lighter, expansive, and uplifting than their gritty and experimental collection from 2014, The Colors of Black. Fast forward 10 years later, and it is clear both MaLLy and Last Word’s energy is in sync, refined, and more mature.

MaLLy’s wisdom of years past, smooth flows, subtle wordplay and succinct content meld naturally with Last Word's alluring production on the space age sonics of "New Year, New Wave" or funky-organ laced "Dreaming" and the moody and misty "100 Heartbreaks." Whether the emcee is opening his heart or attempting to put it back together, in solidarity or comfortable in solitude, it might be safe to say that MaLLy is reinvigorated and focused with his most purposeful content and body of work to date.

The Sweetest of It All is rap, it’s soulful, it’s rich, it’s blue and it’s Black. A complete manifestation of balance, inner peace and growth.