“It’s f*cking dope”: Codefendants unveil their second collab with The D.O.C.

Codefendants have joined forces with hip-hop icon The D.O.C. for a new single.

Entitled Rivals, the track follows their previous 2023 collab Fast Ones (taken from that year’s killer debut album This Is Crimewave).

“I was hanging with D.O.C. and he was telling me stories of gang life in Compton,” explains Fat Mike. “I told him that there were punk gangs too. He didn’t believe me. Then I told him about FFF and LADS and Suicidals… Then he wrote his verses to Rivals. It’s pretty fucking awesome that the fuckin’ D.O.C. and I got to work on another song together.”

“Being a Codefendant is one of the best parts of making music today,” enthuses The D.O.C. “They don’t give a shit what my voice sounds like as long as it’s on beat.”

“Our second track with the legendary D.O.C stems from conversations about how punk and hip-hop are overlapping counter-cultural movements that came out of a similar time period with similar ideals,” continues Ceschi. “The D.O.C. even directly mentions the correlations and similarities in his verse while Sam and I mostly talking shit about rappers and punk / tastemaker snobbery.

“Since we started Codefendants we’ve been confronted by gatekeepers not understanding that we genuinely grew up in both of these worlds of punk and hip-hop. When Fat Mike wrote the music for this track he was directly inspired by some of the slower, sludgier punk tracks of the early ’80s.”

Meanwhile, Sam King simply states: “The fuck you want me to say, the other guys already said it all, it’s fucking Codefendants with The D.O.C., it’s fucking dope.”

Rivals is taken from Codefendants’ forthcoming second album LIFERS, which is due out on April 3. Check out the video below:

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