B-Side Guys

The origin story of Codefendants reads like a setup to a joke that turns out to be completely true: Get Dead vocalist Sam King’s graffiti crew was giving tattoos to raise money for rapper Ceschi Ramos while he was in prison, they met months later at the Gilman Street Project in Berkeley over a bottle of Jameson, and somewhere in that conversation about hip-hop and punk rock they accidentally started a band. That backstory matters for “Rivals” because the whole song is about exactly that kind of unlikely convergence, people and sounds that shouldn’t fit together finding out they do.

Bringing The D.O.C. back for a second collaboration after their 2023 single “Fast Ones” is a statement of intent. The D.O.C., whose songwriting fingerprints are on N.W.A., Snoop Dogg, and Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, opens the track, and his verse reframes everything that follows. This isn’t punk absorbing hip-hop as an aesthetic move or hip-hop lending credibility to a rock project. The D.O.C. is here because he belongs here, and the track earns that claim from the first bar.

Fat Mike’s production, honed across decades with NOFX, keeps the energy ferocious without letting either half of the equation swallow the other. The punk infrastructure is intact; the urgency, the forward momentum, the refusal to give the listener anywhere comfortable to stand. The D.O.C. doesn’t soften against it. He sharpens.

“Rivals” is the second single from the upcoming sophomore album LIFERS, due April 3, and if it’s any indication, Codefendants have figured out exactly what they are.