Seiji Oda Keeps the Bay Area Close
By
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October 22, 2025
“Community” is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot without people taking the time to actually reflect on what it means. But for rapper and producer Seiji Oda, the people he makes music with and for are just as important as the process of making music itself. Born and raised in Oakland, California, Seiji was recently on the receiving end of a lot of recognition after a series of videos he created went viral. But instead of thinking about how he can use that momentum to benefit himself, he’s mapping out ways to give back to the Bay Area music community that poured so much into him over the years. Or as he puts it, “I want more people to hear the music—but what is that music to the people who are hearing it?”
A child of the hyphy movement, Seiji Oda’s music captures an essence that will be deeply familiar to anyone raised in the Bay during that crucial musical renaissance. From his use of the same energetic beats that defined the style to the tenderly devastating lyrics on “time is a spiral, i think,” Seiji Oda’s music is a love letter to Oakland, and the Bay Area more broadly.
His latest album, HUMAN + NATURE, is the perfect distillation of the lo-fi hyphy sound for which he has become known. It opens with a tranquil soundscape which immediately gives way to “no fillins²” a flip of a track that will be familiar to anyone who has ever attended an Oakland house party, “Cupcake No Fillin” by Trunk Boiz. Throughout, the sound of HUMAN + NATURE perfectly encapsulates what it feels like to be raised in the Bay Area, with all of it contradictions—a place where the tech industry booms alongside the largest housing crisis in America.
We caught up with Seiji to discuss the evolution of his work.
When I first started listening to HUMAN + NATURE, that initial intro—it really felt like you were bringing people into this meditative state in order to prepare them to listen to the album.
That intro was probably one of, like, the last songs [that came together]. I was just working with a bunch of homies. There was a period where I worked by myself for almost everything—I produced my own stuff and mixed and mastered it on my own. It was easy for me to just get hella insular with my process. When I started to collaborate with people, I wanted to be intentional about it. So I would ask, ‘What is your favorite place to be? What’s your favorite nature environment?’ And we would just start with that—grabbing one of those ‘ten hours in the forest sounds,’ or a bunch of bird sounds. And once I started having a bunch of work, that started becoming the project. That intro was just one of those free writes—I woke up in the morning with some keyboard melody ideas. You can hear how the intro is hella similar to the chords that are on the ‘No Fillins’ remix with the Trunk Boiz. They just kind of flowed to each other.
That contrast is actually one of the things that I found really striking, so it’s really interesting to hear that ‘No Fillins’ came first, and then what became the intro. It might seem like a contradiction, but it actually isn’t—it’s very reflective of culture and sound in the Bay. It felt very textural—like if you were starting off at Dimond Park, where the music video for ‘No Fillins’ was filmed, and continued down Fruitvale. Speaking of which: A lot of people, myself included, were introduced to your music through those viral clips of you gigging in nature, which caught the attention of a lot of different people, like SZA. But you’ve been in this since, like, 2018 or 2019.
It’s a lot to adjust to, for sure. It’s always been my dream to be able to make music, so to be able to live off it is a blessing. Music already gives so much to me that sometimes I feel like I need to give back to it more. I feel like I’m at that point now, where I want to be able to not just eat off of it and do shows and do cool shit. When I moved back here and I got to see the impact that what I’m doing has on people, when people come up to me and talk to me about the music, how much it means to them—I want to be able to tap into that more and give that to people more. I feel like I’m still in the process of figuring out what that looks like. It’s always been a dream of mine to have a studio in the Bay and do beat workshops and work with youth. When I wasn’t doing music, I was tutoring and working with kids after school, and I want to be able to bring that together and be able to teach music. I’m trying to redirect a little bit, and be like, ‘Okay, what else can I do? How can I give back to those people and give them something that matters, that makes them feel like they’re part of something?’
What do you mean by that? How do you imagine making people feel like they’re a part of something?
Modern music is so interesting, because now that we can record and stamp it and make it, it’s not a live thing. It used to be that music was only in community. Like, you are here playing the music, and people are listening to it. People are dancing to it. We’re all playing the music together. That was the only way it existed. And now you’re in your room, and you make it by yourself, and other people hear it. And I love that you can spread music that much. But I feel like it kind of takes away from the communal aspect of music a little bit. And the only time that we really get that is sometimes at shows or performing live. I want to be able to create that community for people who are into the same kind of music.
For a lot of us who grew up here in the Bay, the way that ‘making it’ gets defined is all about leaving the Bay and establishing yourself somewhere else. So it’s curious to me that, kind of early in your career, you’re wanting to make it right here. Could you talk a little more about that?
When I was starting out and really wanting to do music I thought ‘I have to move to L.A.’ So, I was out there for a good chunk of time. But I think once my music started to actually reach people, when the videos were kind of going viral and people were starting to actually listen, most of the people that would come up to me and talk to me and tell me, ‘What you’re doing is really cool and it means a lot to me’—that was almost all back here. It just made me want to move back, because these are people who care about what I’m doing, you know? And it makes sense the music means something to them—because I’m from here and they’re from here, so we have that connection.
I think the people who I look up to the most in the scene out here are people who have stayed and become Hometown Heroes. It’s cool to see people really develop that, and not be afraid of someone saying ‘Oh, you, you get stuck in the Bay.’ Because there are people that are so important to us, but nobody outside knows them. Like if you play like The Jacka to a lot of people outside of the Bay, they’re not gonna know who that is. But for almost everybody here that’s like someone who they see as a legend. I think that we look at that as a bad thing, and I’m like—I think that’s a great thing. I feel like that’s how music was. It’s supposed to be a service for your community. You’re making music for the people that are right in and around you, and they’re supporting you and actually invested in what you have going on, rather than just like someone random who’s just passively listening to your shit in a playlist and being like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s cool,’ and they don’t even really understand the music in the same way.
That’s interesting, because I think a lot of the time artists get really individualized and removed from their context, and removed from all of the people that poured into them initially. You shared about how much home and community in the Bay shape you, and I would love to hear about what the Bay and Oakland specifically mean to you.
After I moved away, when I came back home [to visit], I was supposed to stay for a couple of days, and I’d end up staying weeks, you know? All my family are here, all of my really close friends from back in the day are here. So I just feel like I have roots out here, and people understand me. I think that there’s something special about the Bay, where I think people are always trying to share knowledge with you, which is something that is hella central to the way that Bay people are. They’re always trying to put you on something. And sometimes it’s a little bit like, ‘Okay, bruh, calm down,’ you know? I feel like there is just hella radical shit that’s come from the Bay. I’m just a lot more alive here than anywhere else. I get stimulated in that way from being around people, and that was something that I missed a lot when I was away. So I was like ‘Yeah, I need to come back, man.’ I love it here.
What specifically were you trying to communicate with this album?
I’m always just trying to be as honest as I can with where I’m at. A lot of the album was made when I was living in L.A. and then spending most of my time here, and then moving back. So most of the project was finished and made here. So I’m here, realizing how much the Bay means to me—and a lot of the music came from that, too. I think it was me realizing that this is a really important place for me and my identity. So it’s just me being like, ‘Hey, this is where I’m at, guys. How is it landing?’
One of my favorite tracks is ‘time is a spiral, i think.’ That title really caught my attention. And then the actual song is hella beautiful. I would love to hear a little bit about how you go about titling things? And how do you decide if the title is uppercase or lowercase?
The uppercase/lowercase thing is a feeling thing for me. Like, ‘Does it feel like a lowercase song?’ Some people have an album, and everything’s lowercase, or everything’s uppercase, but I feel like it’s just not true for me. The songs have to feel how they feel. I’m glad that that title caught you, because I had a couple different ideas for the title for that one. I’m pretty sure when I submitted it the first time, it was going to be something totally different, and then I was like, ‘Nah, it has to be named this.’ And I think that a lot of this album was about asking questions. Because I could just be like, ‘Time is a spiral.’ But in the process of the song, I’m thinking about it and figuring it out. So it felt more honest to have it as an open question for people.
What does the hyphy movement mean for you? Because you’re kind of a child of that movement.
That’s a great way to put it. Because I was a child during that time, I was not outside doing shit in the early ‘00s. I was a kid, I wasn’t really a participant. It was the music that I grew up listening to. I think that that energy is still alive in the Bay. When we were younger, the word was used, like, ‘Somebody’s hyphy so you don’t want to be around them. You need to move away from that situation.’ You feel me? But I also think about Mac Dre when he said, ‘I’m amped, feeling good, I’m hyphy.’ You know? The way that he always made hyphy feel was like it’s fun—it was a positive thing. It was feeling good. It was like freedom, you know? And I feel like that is a little bit ‘woo woo,’ but whatever. And for people that were alive during that time, it was crazy and not always fun and free. It came from somewhere real for them. It was also a dangerous time in the Bay, so a lot of people were dying. And I feel like hyphy—like going to those parties, doing hella drugs—was an escape from that for a lot of people.
Something I think about is how the people that were criminalized and targeted during that era especially, were mostly Black, right? There’s a way in which hyphy gets credited as Bay culture, but it’s also Black culture, you know? I’ve been thinking about this because of the resurgence of interest in the hyphy movement, like with Kendrick Lamar’s GNX. You’re collaborating with legends from that era, like the Trunk Boiz. So I’m curious how you have navigated this as a non-Black person who is part of this new hyphy revival.
Firstly, when I’m in that situation, I’m always deferring to them when it comes to what ideas they have about shit. I’m like, ‘Hey, this is your shit at the end of the day. What I’m doing comes from what you do. So I can’t really tell you how you want to do it.’ But I think it’s also cool to be able to be that for them. Working with the Trunk Boiz, or working with [Mistah] F.A.B.—during that time, they were a lot wilder and crazy. And they’re legends now, but they also are a lot older.
One of the Trunk Boiz, B*Janky, was just telling me he has a certification for mindfulness. It’s something he helps teach. You know, it’s like Lil Jon now does meditation. Like, how does that happen? So for me being able to make music with them now and see where they’re at is very special. They’re still raw—my favorite thing about working with them is I feel like they’re not washed up in any way. They still have continued to hone their craft. It’s just recognizing that this is their shit at the end of the day. They created it. So I’m just like, ‘What can I do to be part of this?’ And as someone who has been able to gain a lot of visibility and eat off of music, that’s also coming from them. So how can I give back to them and make their career more alive? Not just pay homage. Let me actually just do it, and do it with you. And that’s been hella fun.