MoneySign Suede

An industrious west coast rapper of Mexican heritage, MoneySign Suede (sometimes stylized as $uede, or Money$ign Suede) is a product of Huntington Park, east L.A.
He was born a little further east in Montebello and spent the early part of his life in South Central L.A. with five sisters and many nieces and nephews. His parents were originally from Guerrero, Mexico, but they split when $uede was seven, when his father moved to the Bay Area. At the age of ten, $uede moved to Huntington Park and, by this point, he was involved in sports. Soccer was his first love, but he ultimately also got heavily involved in skateboarding and boxing. Ambitious in nature, he chased professional status in each, but pushed those goals aside after becoming involved in music.
When $uede was 16 — shortly after his father moved back to L.A. — he attended his first-ever rap show, MadeinTYO at The Novo, which inspired him to rap with schoolfriends and, the following year, he uploaded his first track online, which soon garnered 30,000 streams. “Poppin’” was another key self-released track and this arrived in mid-2000. Another from that period, “Back to the Bag,” caught the attention of Atlantic Records, which soon signed him up. September’s “Came a Long Way — a collaboration with Asapz and Kid Adil on Eternal Wave — coincided with $uede beginning a ten-month prison sentence. That was also the month in which Atlantic gave their full backing to “Back to the Bag.” As a result, the track hit one million streams in early 2021 and three million within its first two years of release. When $uede emerged from prison in the middle of the year, there was a sizable audience waiting to consume the appropriately titled “I’m Back,” as well as “Veteran,” featuring hometown compatriots Baby Stone Gorillas. Early 2022 was spent issuing a backlog of material — no fewer than six singles — each of which ultimately appeared on his debut EP, March 2022′s MoneySign Suede. The following month, OTR issued a three-way EP, Grimey Park, featuring $uede with Swifty Blue and Peysoh. Within a couple more months, he released numerous one-off collaborations with the likes of Young Demon, $peedyyy, Fenix Flexin, Cypress Moreno, DCG Brothers, Lil Weirdo, and Lil Maru.
September 2022 saw the release of his first album, Parkside Baby, a sprawling, inventive, well-produced record which featured the singles “Can’t Change” and “Millions.” Further collaborations appeared — including “Shooterz on Go” with BME Diego, and “MCM Belt” with Justin Credible — before the release of Parkside Santa, a companion mixtape to his debut project, in December. ~ James Wilkinson