Think of hip-hop meccas and Phoenix is probably not the city that comes to mind. New York, LA, Atlanta — Phoenix is likely not at the top of that list.
Coby Montoya says that doesn’t mean there isn’t a thriving hip-hop scene in the Valley — and a whole lot of talent.
Montoya is the founder of the social media collective PHX Hip-Hop. He calls it a fan-first front page to the Phoenix hip-hop world. And now, he’s out with a list of the top 75 rappers in Arizona. It's a painstaking and somewhat controversial project that’s gotten a lot of attention from all sides.
Montoya came into KJZZ's studios recently to talk more about it all. He said he has always been into hip-hop, ever since he was a kid.
Full conversation
COBY MONTOYA: I just really connected with the lyricism part of it. Hip-hop is, and rap from a genre perspective, it has the most words per song, you know?
LAUREN GILGER: I can guess that would be true, yeah.
COBY MONTOYA: But by the nature of the speed of it, and so because I’m just very into lyricism, I gravitated towards it.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so a hip-hop guy from a young age. You came to Phoenix, did you realize, try to find a hip-hop scene here quickly?
COBY MONTOYA: I really didn’t. It took a while, but eventually I found this store called Trill, which is in downtown Phoenix. Trill is a very unique place. It’s a hip-hop shop, it’s almost like a museum. It has a lot of memorabilia, and they have a lot of shows and performances, where it’s artists that I grew up listening to in the early 2000s. And living in Florida, I had no access to see them live, and so that sort of was my connection to the broader hip-hop and rap scene here.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so Trill, you go there, you start seeing people perform. Did you learn that there were local rappers, local hip-hop artists here quickly? When did you kind of discover the local scene?
COBY MONTOYA: Yeah, so that was — really, it’s fairly recent, actually. 2023, I went to something called the Arizona Hip-Hop Festival. So I was at First Friday, and someone was just giving away free tickets. So I was like, “OK, I’ll check this out.” And I went, and it was like over a a hundred local rappers. I was like, “How is this possible?”
LAUREN GILGER: A hundred?
COBY MONTOYA: Yeah. And so I’m a very, I’m a naturally curious person. I want to understand the context of everything. And so from that day, I was like, “OK, I want to better understand this local community.” And so I started prioritizing going to local shows and documenting them.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so you started documenting them, you make this kind of social media account, PHX Hip-Hop. But it has evolved into something much more than an Instagram account, right? Like, this is a collective really now. What’s it like?
COBY MONTOYA: Yeah, I look at it as a portal to the artistic community when it comes to hip-hop and rap. So if someone wants to understand what the community looks like, it’s kind of like the front page of the community.
LAUREN GILGER: Who’s involved with you? I mean, this has grown for sure.
COBY MONTOYA: Yeah, so actually I have a team that’s, most of them are also artists. I’m not someone that likes to be front and center of things, right? I’m more of a behind-the-scenes type of person. And so I wanted to enable artists to gain more exposure, so I have artists that interview other artists. So it’s almost like if you think about the old-school MTV VJs and stuff like that, they had these personalities. That’s been sort of my goal, is to help them develop their own brand and that way they can also connect to their music.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so 100 Phoenix rappers at this hip-hop festival you go to, right? You’re like, “What is this?” How big is the hip-hop scene in Phoenix? Like, it’s not one we hear about all the time.
COBY MONTOYA: Yeah, no, that’s a great point. I mean, it’s practically invisible unless you’re looking for it. But, you know, First Friday has evolved as of recently, but First Friday was a great place to see local artists, and there’s a number of open mics as well. There’s like a whole open mic circuit.
[CLIP OF J. GALLANT RAPPNG AT AN OPEN MIC IN SCOTTSDALE]
It’s really something where you have to kind of look for it, but once you realize, you know, what’s in your backyard, you quickly realize how big it is.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, OK. So every year now, it seems, you’re going to be and are making this list, right? This is 75 — which is a massive number really if you think about it — of the top hip-hop artists in Phoenix. You rank the top five. It sounds like you started this last year as sort of a whim, right?
COBY MONTOYA: Yeah, I sat down one day and just, I wanted to acknowledge artists that I appreciate and that I saw that year. And so I started with a top 25, and I’m like, “Yeah, but what about this person? What about that person?” I’m like, “All right, I’ll make this a top 40.”
I got to 40, I’m like, “This person’s not going to like that I left them out.” And eventually I got to 75, and I still could think of more. I was like, “I have to cut this off because it’s going to be too long,” yeah.
LAUREN GILGER: Seventy-five! OK, so what was the reaction when you dropped that first list?
COBY MONTOYA: The reaction was very significant, yeah. So a lot of people were upset because so-and-so was not on this list, or “I’ve never heard of this artist.” But really the list was not to say these artists are better than you, it’s really just to acknowledge the artistry of these specific artists. And so because of the response I got the first time around, the second time around I approached it a little bit more objectively, did a little bit more professionally.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so people took it seriously, so you took it seriously.
COBY MONTOYA: Exactly, yeah, yeah.
LAUREN GILGER: And you, it sounds like, brought in other voices to help you make this list this time?
COBY MONTOYA: I did, yeah. So I’m definitely not naive to the fact that hip-hop is Black culture, and being a white person, I think it’s important to include persons of color. And so this time around, I had five other people contribute to it. And they selected kind of their picks, I selected my picks, and we kind of combined it all.
The barrier to entry to be an artist is very low, but because of that, there are so many artists, right? I mean, you’re like, “100 rappers?” And so there’s, at this time, there’s kind of oversaturation when it comes to art because of the low barrier, yeah. And so there are many artists that, they may be amazing, but they don’t have financial resources, or they don’t know so-and-so.
And so this list is not to acknowledge who has the most money to invest in marketing, who has a connection, although some of them do. It’s to acknowledge kind of raw talent.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, OK. So let’s talk about at least the first couple on this very long list. Who’s No. 1?
COBY MONTOYA: Yeah, No. 1 is an artist called Murkemz, and he’s been in Phoenix for quite some time now.
[“PHX” BY MURKEMZ BEGINS]
LAUREN GILGER: He’s got some celebrity connections, it sounds like?
COBY MONTOYA: Yeah, yeah. So he did a song with a member of the Wu-Tang Clan, Inspectah Deck. He has a co-sign from Ice-T, who lives in Chandler, I don’t know if you knew that.
LAUREN GILGER: I did, actually!
COBY MONTOYA: He did a song called “PHX” recently, which is like a West Coast style. He’s from the East Coast, so he kind of has like an East Coast background as well. So he does multiple styles, but his talent, he’s very good at like braggadocio rhymes and very complex wordplay and things like that.
[MURKEMZ CLIP FADES OUT]
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. OK, who’s number two? We’ve got Maze Overlay. Tell us about him.
[“COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS” BY MAZE OVERLY BEGINS]
COBY MONTOYA: Yeah, Maze Overlay is a Phoenix native, and he’s been an artist for a number of years, and he’s put out, I think, like over the past three years something like six albums a year.
LAUREN GILGER: Wow, a year?
COBY MONTOYA: Yeah, and yeah, he’s also just a very top-tier lyricist. So I mean, he can rap about mindfulness and, you know, things like that, or he could rap about more like experiences he’s had. And so, yeah, he’s a very top-tier artist.
LAUREN GILGER: I mean, he’s wearing a Suns jersey in one of these videos. I mean, it sounds like, and, you know, you mentioned Murkemz has a song called “PHX,” like how much are many of these rappers talking about Phoenix?
COBY MONTOYA: I think a lot of the artists are very proud, you know, to be a part of the Phoenix community. And, you know, they’re trying to, there’s this idea that, hey, when people talk about hip-hop, they don’t talk about Phoenix. And so there’s a drive in many of these artists to kind of put Phoenix on the map.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, absolutely. So is there a Phoenix sound? You mentioned a West Coast hip-hop sound, the East Coast hip-hop sound, there’s Atlanta obviously, like what about Phoenix?
COBY MONTOYA: Yeah, it’s interesting. Everyone has a different opinion. If you ask some of the old-school folks that have been around for a long time, they’ll say it’s a more West Coast sound. My personal opinion, because it’s a melting pot, I don’t think there necessarily is a regional sound just because there’s lack of regional culture here collectively, because half of the people that live here aren’t from here, you know, it’s very much a melting pot.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, I think that makes sense. So let's talk about the scene in general and what you would like to do for it or where you would like to see it go, right? Like, I think the Arizona music scene more broadly, has been an interesting one to watch over the years because it's always kind of an underdog kind of mentality. We're not LA, we're not New York, we're not Chicago, we're not Atlanta. Where do you think in its evolution the Phoenix hip-hop scene is right now? Do you think it has a long way to go?
[MAZE OVERLAY CLIP FADES OUT]
COBY MONTOYA: Yeah, I mean, I'm just spitballing with you, but it seems like it's kind of in a midpoint. It's been very fragmented in the past where you have these different pockets and kind of segments of artists and they don't really communicate. And so I've tried to be a bridge to connect those different pockets and segments, because I really do believe there's power in unity. And collectively, I think if folks were less competitive and kind of more collaborative, it will mature to a state where Phoenix will be more well-known for hip-hop.
[“PHX” BY MURKEMZ PLAYS]
LAUREN GILGER: OK. Coby Montoya, founder of Phoenix Hip-Hop, joining us. Coby, thank you so much for coming in. Appreciate it very much.
COBY MONTOYA: Thanks for having me.
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