Messy Marv

Since the mid-1990s, Bay Area rapper and label founder Messy Marv has maintained a high output. Marvin Watson entered the world and spent his childhood inside the Eddy Street housing projects located in San Francisco’s Fillmore District. His first commercially issued full-length, Messy Situationz, appeared in 1996. Two years afterward came the West Coast underground classic Explosive Mode, a 1998 joint effort with cousin and fellow rapper San Quinn that included appearances by E-40, Rappin' 4-Tay, and Celly Cel plus production from Mike Mosley and Tone Capone.

A series of further albums arrived in quick succession—Death on a Bitch (1999), Still Explosive (2001), Turf Politics (2002), Turf Thuggin' (2002), and Bonnie & Clyde (2003)—yet none matched the earlier release in either sales or critical notice. Personal setbacks also marked those years; after falling from a fourth-floor window in 2001, Messy Marv spent six months in a wheelchair.

Disobayish (2004) marked his initial appearance on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, a project that showcased E-40, Keak da Sneak, Too $hort, and Nate Dogg. The next effort, Bandannas, Tattoos & Tongue Rings (2005), proved comparably successful and yielded the regional hit “Get on My Hype.” A subsequent term of incarceration barely slowed his recorded activity. Into the later 2010s he kept issuing multiple solo albums, collaborations, and mixtapes annually. Among the titles that reached the charts were the 2007 Mitchy Slick partnership Messy Slick, the four volumes of the Draped Up and Chipped Out series spanning 2006–2009, two 2010 Berner collaborations, and Millionaire Gangsta, also from 2010.