Album Cover via Shoreline Mafia/Instagram
Diego Tapia is feeling lovely.
If you went to high school in the San Fernando Valley during the back half of the 2010s, your weekend likely started with a flyer posted to @818valleyparties. The page was run by a rotating crew of DJs and amateur promoters who turned suburban backyards into rites of passage. By 10 p.m;, these parties would be at capacity–kids from Sylmar to the West Valley showing up half-lit off whatever their older sibling picked up, just hoping their parents wouldn’t find out where they really were.
The air reeked of weed and cheap perfume. Everyone was filming for their Snapchat story, trying to prove they were there before it shut down. The speakers were stacked on plastic tables, half-working, held together by power strips and hope. Just when it felt like the sound might cut out, the DJ would drop a Shoreline Mafia track and everything would snap into focus. Cups flew, people screamed, and the lawn turned into a mosh pit. It was loud, lawless, and beautiful. The kind of chaos that only works when you’re 17 and invincible.
Shoreline Mafia’s rise was a defining moment that shifted the sound and energy of West Coast party music. But before the major labels and festival stages, they were local legends–two East Hollywood kids whose songs spread throughout high school hallways and backyards via aux chords.
Fenix Flexin and Ohgeesy met as teenagers at the height of the Fairfax era, sharing a love for graffitti, loud packs, and louder outfits. Their early work wasn’t engineered for radio; it was built for nights that ended with your head spinning and your phone at 2%. With Master Kato and Rob Vicious in the fold, and RonRon locked in behind the boards, Shoreline found the formula that would carry them to cult stardom.
The group’s first brush with mainstream exposure came in early 2017, when a Fox News segment on the codeine epidemic spotlighted the group’s “Codeine Bryant” music video, unintentionally catapulting Shoreline from underground notoriety to statewide recognition. Alongside the Stinc Team, they turned sipping lean and popping percs into a lifestyle brand. That hazy, hedonistic energy seeped directly into their breakout singles “Musty” and “Nun Major.” The latter even opens with audio from the catalyzing Fox News report.
It didn’t take long for the two singles to flood every house party, car speaker, and high school Snapchat story in the city. “We’re sippin juice for life” was the bat signal. From the first note, the crowd was locked in. Every word shouted back in perfect unison, like the whole backyard party had rehearsed. The ground shook, the videos were a blur of motion, and for two and half minutes, nothing else existed.
By the time their debut ShorelineDoThatShit released in October of 2017, the group had nothing left to prove. The sound was eerie and infectious, a hypnotic blend of West Coast bounce and horror movie haze, heavily indebted to Three 6 Mafia. Geesy brought the player charm while Fenix came in snarling with the kind of delivery that made even sober kids feel reckless. The result? Something more addictive than anyone could have imagined. The project captured everything that made the group special: dark, drug-laced, chaotic, but still fun as hell. If the singles lit the fuse, it was the deep cuts like “Spaceship” and “Bottle Service” that shaped their sound and solidified their identity. They weren’t making basic party music, they were making regional anthems.
From 2017 to 2020, Shoreline went on an unprecedented run, leveling up with every mixtape and EP. OTXmas sounded like winter break with no curfew; Party Pack 2 was a pregame essential, the kind of tape you blasted pulling into the school parking lot half-awake and already scheming. Then came “Bands,” a purple-tinted contagion with no off switch. Suddenly they were everywhere. It was the moment Shoreline stopped being local legends and became the face of a new generation of West Coast rap. But what made their rise more impactful was what it meant beyond the music.
For a new generation of Latino youth, seeing Geesy and Fenix blow up meant everything. LA hadn’t had a real Latino rap superstar since B-Real (arguably), and the void never felt more visible until they filled it. Their shows drew in crowds of brown teens from across LA–kids who finally saw themselves on stage at a time when Trump-era politics painted a negative light on their communities. For so many, they weren’t just stars, they were proof that someone like them could finally hold the spotlight and own it.
What made it even more powerful was how naturally they carried the torch. Geesy and Fenix didn’t code switch or sand down the edges–they just existed, loudly and on their own terms. That alone felt radical. In a city where Latino kids are usually background characters in someone else’s story, Shoreline stood front and center. And in doing so, they gave kids from overlooked neighborhoods a mirror they’d never had before. Not a perfect reflection, but one that said you don’t have to dilute yourself to win.
In 2020, Shoreline made their leap to the majors with Mafia Bidness. It was a major label debut in every sense–packed with A-list features from Wiz Khalifa, Future, and Kodak Black. The sound was more polished, built on a contemporary West Coast trap palette designed for broader appeal. Even with Atlantic’s muscle behind it, the album fell short. Packed with features and stripped of the grit that defined their rise, it felt more like a product than a moment. Behind the scenes, it was clear something had changed. The album marked the end of an era, not the start of a new one.
Not long after the release of Mafia Bidness, Shoreline unraveled, fractured by rumored personal tensions and substance abuse issues that had been bubbling beneath the surface for years. After they broke up, the scene that once felt unstoppable began to collapse. Drakeo was murdered, Greedo faced 25 to life on a trafficking charge, and the momentum of LA’s underground came to a sudden halt. A wave of imitators followed, echoing the sound but not the spirit–and for a while the city felt stuck in a tragic loop.
In the aftermath, each member went their separate ways. Ohgeesy carved a lane for himself in the mainstream, scoring radio staples like “Geek A Leek” and “Get Fly.” Fenix refused to stray away from the blueprint, releasing a trilogy of solo tapes that kept the same raw bounce that defined Shoreline’s best work. Meanwhile, Rob Vicious and Master Kato quietly faded from the spotlight. On their own, none could capture the same energy they had together.
For years I clung to the old tracks like they were relics. In college, I’d play “Gangstas & Sippas” on loop, trying to relive the rush of that first listen through a half broken bluetooth speaker. I rewatched blurry iPhone clips of shows I’d been to in high school. Maybe it was a form of denial, a way to convince myself the moment was gone for good. I told myself the group was done, that nothing would hit the same again. And just when I’d finally accepted it was over, they came back.
In May of last year Shoreline returned with “Heat Stick”–their first single together in four years. The bounce was still there, the charisma intact, but the edges were cleaner and more controlled, like they’d aged just enough to know better but still chose not to care. The track went Gold not long after, a quiet flex that confirmed what the fans already knew: the city had been waiting.
That momentum carried into 2025’s Back In Bidness, a comeback album that is both a return to form and a cautious step forward. For their comeback, they took it back to what made them the kings of LA party music in the first place: bounce-heavy production, built for backyard mosh pits and dimly lit strip clubs where the carpet smells like freshly counted hundreds and spilled Casamigos. It sounds concentrated, like they trimmed the fat and doubled down on what works. The beats knock, but never crowd the room, leaving enough space for Geesy and Fenix to talk cash, money, women, and wild nights with the clarity of two veterans who’ve lived it twice.
Songs like “Tusi” and “Set The Record Straight” sound like bad decisions in good weather, the kind that will have you indulging in mystery substances with scores of women. “Back 2 Back” and “Too Often” flit like midnight in a lifted coupe, moving slow, smooth, yet loud enough to shake the storefronts on Hollywood Blvd.
Back In Bidness taps into both sides of LA: the backyard and the boulevard. That duality is what made Shoreline matter in the first place. Fenix and Ohgeesy still orbit each other like it’s muscle memory. Together they soundtrack the city’s reckless highs and the hazy mornings after. It’s a reminder that LA rap belongs to the kids who smoke too much, party too hard, and feel every single consequence at once.
Their performance at Coachella 2025 felt like a prophecy fulfilled. In the desert, under corporate banners and LED screens, the ghost’s of LA’s golden run flickered back to life. Once skater kids running around East Hollywood in Supreme Hoodies, now stood on one of the world’s biggest stages. Even after the heartbreak of Drakeo’s death and the group’s long, silent breakup, Shoreline made it. Not just with their name still intact, but with something louder to say.
For the kids, who watched them rise in real time, this wasn’t just a comeback, it was the scene getting its flowers. A full circle victory lap, years in the making. From Hollywood Blvd to the Coachella stage, the spirit remained the same. Even in the land of influencer wristbands and $30 drinks, Shoreline brought it back to the heart of the party where it can still get ratchet and wild.
Plenty have borrowed the bounce, tried to mimic the lingo, the flex, the too-cool-to-care cadence, but they always missed the soul. They never passed the torch because no one else was worthy of carrying it. If this is the start of something new, it’s loud and alive. If it’s the last chapter, it’s the best kind: the kind written on their own terms.
Long live Mac P Dawg. Long Live Drakeo. The wave lives on.
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