Oakland rapper Philip Bank$ knows every corner of Oakland, and seemingly everyone. “We sat there and chopped it up, and in between each track, I would give him my thoughts or whatever questions it evoked for each song,” Harshaw said. It was like seeing your own mortality,” Bank$ said“Like many other Oakland kids, I lost my first friend to gun violence when I was about 15. “It has been freeing and healing.”‘Being from Oakland, I own some of these stories’Underneath the high-energy music and style of the Hyphy era, Oakland was plagued by violence and police brutality. “Being from Oakland, I own some of these stories people don’t know about but can relate to through my lyrics,” Bank$ said.