Image via Robb Bank$/Instagram
The Bay Area doesn’t sleep, and neither does Yousef Srour.
“Hi, its me. Robb. Just want to fill you guys in a little bit….Tragedy struck. I sent my laptop to apple to be serviced because i watch a lot of bootleg… and it came back everything erased. i think i might be happy pt 2 gone. this was bad. On top of that I had to have a surgery which put me out for a minute. I wasnt in a good mood and I decided to fire my entire team and remake the whole project. So all within a week I produced, engineered, mixed and mastered i think i might be happy pt 2. I even shot my own dam videos”
– Robb Bank$, “Do The Most,” May 3, 2024
It’s ironic that a project named i think i might be happy pt 2 accidentally got wiped off the face of the earth. When Bank$ and I spoke on February 24th, the release date for i think i might be happy, pt. 1’s release was less than two days away. i think i might be happy, pt. 2 had already been recorded, with eight extra songs tucked away on his laptop’s internal hard drive. Then the worst possible thing occurred.
It’s currently September. The original version of i think i might be happy, pt. 2 is long gone, a new version of the mixtape has been released, and Robb Bank$ is already teasing his next project, Tha Leak Vol. 3.
Robb Bank$ doesn’t quit in the face of adversity. The son of Shaggy, the Jamaican-American mastermind behind “Boombastic” and “It Wasn’t Me,” Richard O’Neil Burrell knew he wanted to be a rapper by the age of six. By 17, he dropped his debut mixtape, Calendars. A decade later, he released, FALCONIA, a not-quite magnum opus five years in the making. His impressive discography exhibits how easily his baritone boom can cut through even the hardest 808s, but nonetheless, his career never really took off like many of his peers.
In Broward County, being a nepo baby means nothing. Robb Bank$ was an outcast, banished to Tumblr in the early stages of his career. It wasn’t until he met SpaceGhostPurrp and became affiliated with RaiderKlan that his career experienced its first wave of success. In line with the two Libra scales tattooed into his eyelids, he’s constantly shifting and perhaps at times been too malleable. He almost signed to Rich Gang, yet the only collective he ever joined was Members Only, and even that quickly disbanded after XXXTentacion’s untimely death. He’s spent the majority of his life adjacent to star power and business moguls, but Robb Bank$ remains a lone wolf. He’s not antisocial per se, however most introverts can probably relate to the title of his 2022 mixtape: I Dnt txt back, I Dnt call.
Robb Bank$ life is insular; it is built around his immediate family and a spare number of close friends. He’s not the same person he was at 16. Peace of mind is far more appealing than a fresh pint of Actevis. At 29, Robb Bank$ creates art for art’s sake, and now, his music reflects the scribblings of a genre-bending chameleon committed to weaving together trap, sample drill, R&B, dancehall, dub, and Miami bass.
i think i might be happy is a manifestation, a mixtape series, a producer tag, and a paradox. If i think i might be happy, am I truly happy? The six word statement may have inaugurated his first mixtape, but for the first time in his life, Robb Bank$ truly knows that he’s found happiness. For now.