Rapper Blood Raw is the very embodiment of his stage moniker. His heartwrenching tale of tragedy to triumph, where he catapulted himself from a tumultuous and parentless childhood to being recruited by superstar rap moguls, could actually be made into a motion picture.
At his peak in 2010, Raw’s skill set was on such a level that he was being openly courted by the legends in the game such as Jeezy, T.I., Trick Daddy, Jazze Pha, and others. This was a long way from his Panama City haunts where his mother died when he was just 10-years-old, and Raw was left to mostly fend for himself in the dead-end streets of this Florida panhandle city.
Raw had been signed to Jeezy’s CTE (Corporate Thugs Entertainment) at one point, and his debut album, My Life: The True Testimony, peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard R&B/hip-hop albums chart and climbed up to No. 29 on the Billboard 200.
“I was winning,” Raw exclaimed during his interview with rolling out.
But just as his career was about to blast off into orbit, his turbulent past and crippling industry shenanigans caused his career to implode.
After a six-year hiatus from the music game, Blood Raw, aka B. Rawsteen, is storming back with a gang of new material. Raw dropped a series of mixtapes in rapid succession called Matter of Time. Volumes 1 and 2 have already dropped between June and July, respectively, with Volume 3 set for a Labor Day 2021 release.
All of this is in preparation of the highly-anticipated album H.U.S.H, which is an acronym for “Hustling Until Something Happens.”
“Man, you could expect the best of Blood Raw. I’m going to be picking up on the things I’ve been going through the past last six years, and the topics of what happened between me and Young Jeezy,” Blood Raw told rolling out. “I’m going to discuss all my life’s trials and tribulations, and everything that I went through over these past years.”
Raw’s life story is definitely true to his name. It includes the fact that Blood Raw, whose real name, Bruce Falson, was born into dire circumstances. His mother was in the streets from the time he could crawl. After she served two prison stints before he could reach double figures in age, Raw’s mother died from a heroin overdose. And since he had not met his father at that time, Raw was effectively parentless by the age of 10.
Devastated and directionless, a vulnerable young Raw was soon lured in by the temptations of the streets. Raw could have easily landed the same fate as his mother, but he says one thing saved his life.
“I mean, only one word: God,” Blood Raw revealed. “To be honest, bro, that’s all I’ve ever had my whole life. That’s been my protection mechanism in terms of just having Him and trusting in Him and having faith in Him.”
And with his longtime fans still backing him up, Raw is ready to tell his fans to H.U.S.H.
