Most people know Reading, Pennsylvania from a square on a Monopoly board, and few would name it as a place where trap music is being made with real intent. Emmanuel Pineda, who raps as $tunny, has other plans. His new release, Make It Major, wears its ambition right in the title, and there’s something disarming about that kind of bluntness. Rap has always run on self-belief, and the best of it sounds like a pep talk an artist gave himself in the mirror before facing a crowd that didn’t know his name yet.
$tunny works squarely inside modern trap, a lane crowded with rappers drawing from the same well of rolling hi-hats and heavy low end. Standing out there comes down to presence, and he has it. His delivery carries the conviction the title promises, and the record moves with the hunger of someone who knows exactly where he wants to go. What I’d love to hear more of going forward is Reading itself, a working-class city with a big Latino community and Philadelphia’s long shadow just down the road. Artists from smaller markets often break through by leaning hard into the details of home, and $tunny has a story that few others in the genre can tell.
Make It Major is a statement of intent from an artist still building, and that’s one of the most exciting places a rapper can be. The confidence is there, the drive is there, and the foundation is solid. If $tunny keeps pushing his own voice and his own city further into the music, that title could end up reading as a prediction.