Pat Ron is a 23-year-old, self-made rapper from Texas, managing to create a solid following by putting the work in himself. Pat Ron isn’t signed to a label and he doesn’t have a manager, but still gets his art out to the masses while moving on his own. He is originally from New Orleans which he described as “very traditional and musically cultured”. At age 10, he was forced to move because of Hurricane Katrina, and transitioned to Dallas where he has been ever since. There wasn’t much of a musical background in his family besides his mother, who writes poems.
He views himself as a definite writer, always writing his lyrics before recording and sticking to the solid traditional roots of rap. He spoke a little about his writing process.
“Sometimes people being around helps more than being alone. And then sometimes I think the complete opposite… I think I’m 50/50 on that one. It’s like people being around helps new energy and ideas to flow. But being alone I got to be in a productive mood.”
He also said that writing verses comes a lot easier and more natural to him, which he prefers over writing hooks.
On April 20th we got his latest release, the $egaRon EP, which was produced by @AALLGODDD and consists of him and Lil $ega trading verses and delivering bars with several different flows. The duo makes sense, considering the fact that he said he hangs out with $ega basically every day and that the two have a lot of mutual friends. The EP has only three songs but all of them are high quality tracks with some pretty heavy lyricism. The beats on $egaRon have a very dark underground sound and some heavy distorted bass, with “Twilight Zone” and “PassPuffPuff” being his favorite tracks off the project.
Seeing him perform now, you would never guess that he had any problems getting on stage. However, when asked about his first performance he ever did he said, “I was nervous as shit and my stage presence was probably trash.” It didn’t take him long to get over that anxiety and get better at working the stage. Recently he performed in front of large audiences while opening up for bigger acts such as Young Dolph and Ugly God.
“Nowadays I don’t really get nervous. I just get anxiety on choosing my setlist properly. I always try to feel the crowd out now or see where other performers lacked before I go on.” The song “Pack”is a go-to of his, as he can always count on it to get the crowd going.
Pat Ron’s style of rap is somewhat of a rarity in today’s generation. He doesn’t rely heavily on beats that mask the lyricism. This can be seen in songs like “Backpack Boy 2”, where there isn’t much emphasis on the instrumental. A lot of Pat Ron’s tracks sample classic records such as the Project Pat- “Out There” sample on “Typa Shit”. You might have heard Drake use lyrics from this same song on his “Look Alive” verse. These qualities might be due to the other rappers he looks up to. He spoke about how he was influenced by legendary artists like Curren$y, Kid Cudi, Lil Wayne, and Andre 3000. You can see these influences in songs like “MK Ultra”, his most popular song thus far.
Pat Ron also has established a lot of connections in the Dallas scene, and one in particular that everyone might be familiar with; Tay-K. “That’s lil bro. Ea$e introduced me to him back in 2014 or 2015”. He acknowledged that the buzz around Tay-K has done a lot for Dallas in many different ways.
His 2017 album “This Time Last Year” features some bangers like “Von Miller” and “Psilocybin”. The album can be found on the bigger streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify, but he also sells physical copies of the album. He spoke about this making this decision in spite of the current climate where hard copies are rare,“Cause that streaming shit is really a bullshit way for labels to eat off the top. And streaming is another cheap way labels don’t have to spend time or money with artist development”, once again showing how much he values independence and creative control.
Moving forward, he plans to continue the momentum and feed his fan base. “I aim to drop at least 2 or 3 more tapes by year end. I won’t announce any collaborations yet, but I wanna drop a tape with Ea$e by winter.” This hustler’s mentality of wanting to push more and more product shows a lot of desire and passion toward the art. If you’re a fan of punchlines, metaphors, and just all around great music then you will definitely be a fan of Pat Ron. Follow Pat Ron on Twitter @RapGodPatRon and check out his collection of work below.