Hip-hop artist Ngoya Vice, known by his rapper name Booda Cess, uses his music to tell stories, ranging from personal trials and tribulations to social commentary. The lead single for his debut solo album, “SMH” (meaning Shakin’ My Head), is a song about the pitfalls of the streets, he told the Charleston City Paper.
“The message is for the young people out here caught up in the streets and falling into that trap,” he said. “I tried to take a tone in ‘SMH’ where I’m having a conversation with the youth. It’s like I’m sitting on the porch, seeing what’s happening in front of me, and I’m explaining it to a younger person, like, ‘This is what can happen.’”
Booda Cess is a Charleston native who grew up in the Orleans Gardens neighborhood of West Ashley. He named his rap label Gardenbred as a nod to his neighborhood, where he got his start rapping in the early 2000s with a group called the Mob Family. The group’s self-titled albums Da Mobb Family Vol. 1 and Da Mobb Family Vol. 2, are considered classics in the Charleston music scene, Booda Cess said.
When the group disbanded, Booda Cess moved to Atlanta. But in 2019, he returned and reconnected with friends and producers who pushed him back to the studio.
“I was always doing music, but I started taking it more seriously then, as I was finding stability in my life,” he said. “Music is my first love. It’s a passion for me.” And at the end of 2021, he started selecting beats and writing lyrics for his debut solo project, Cessionz, which was released in October 2023.
Writing lyrics on personal themes
The sonic landscape of the project ranges from harder songs with faster rapping to songs that are slower and lyrically focused, like “SMH.”
“The song ‘Animal Like’ is more West Coast, while other songs feel a lot more like Charleston,” Booda Cess said. “I’m very detailed in my beats selection process. But this album was less about sound; it was more about the subject matter and that feeling cohesive.”
He spends most of his creative process on writing lyrics that are impactful and poetic. When he was diagnosed with cancer in 2023, the lyrics and the process became all the more important, Booda Cess said. (Now, he’s nearly a year cancer-free.)
“[When I was diagnosed], that changed the tone of the album, and it became more of a therapeutic process. … The album definitely evolved from there. ‘There For You’ is the song where I really talk about that.”
Since the solo album release in fall 2023, Booda Cess is already working on mastering his next project.
“The music is picking up, and I’m trying to follow it up and just keep making better music. … I’m always trying to be greater as an artist.”
Booda Cess said, ultimately, his hope as an artist is that the messages in his lyrics come through impactfully to his listener.
“I want to just deliver the message. I don’t have the grandiose, ‘I want to be big-time’ type of deal. I just want to make great music and people appreciate it,” he said.
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