Mistah F.A.B.

Mistah F.A.B. stands out as one of the Bay Area’s most vivid personalities within the hyphy movement, where some observers have labeled him its “crown prince.” The North Oakland rapper fuses street credibility, social awareness, introspective depth, and unrestrained humor in a manner few peers match. Born Stanley P. Cox in 1982 and raised by his mother and grandmother, he promotes the constructive side of hyphy’s exuberant, irreverent “go dumb” ethos while maintaining a focus on inner-city concerns; at the same time he accepts certain materialistic trappings typical of mainstream rap. His moniker reportedly expands to “Money Is Something to Always Have -- FaEva After Bread.”

Also known as Fabby Davis, Jr., he chose the title Son of a Pimp for his second album in straightforward tribute to his father, a pimp imprisoned for most of the rapper’s early life who died of AIDS-related illness when F.A.B. was 12—the same period he began composing rhymes. The project became his first release on Mac Dre’s Thizz label after the 2003 debut Nig-Latin and contained appearances by Dre, E-40, Turf Talk, G-Stack of the Delinquents, and Kanye West, along with the scene-defining hit “Super Sic wit’ It.”

A steady succession of mixtapes, compilations, and guest verses kept him central to Bay Area hip-hop during 2005 and 2006, prompting KYLD-FM to give him his own local program, Yellow Bus Radio, whose weekly book reports echoed hyphy’s scholastic imagery. National interest in the region’s sound sparked a major-label bidding war in 2006; he signed with Atlantic Records in September, yet momentum stalled when KMEL-FM, the market’s leading urban outlet, quietly banned his music and features over personal disputes and resentment toward his rival-station show.

Further complications arose when the breakout track “Ghost Ride It” drew fire both for depicting the dangerous hyphy stunt of ghost riding—placing a vehicle in neutral and exiting while it rolls—and for its video’s use of the Ghostbusters logo, prompting Columbia Pictures to threaten legal action after the song sampled the film’s theme. The clip was first heavily edited, then removed from air entirely.

Originally slated for spring 2007, Da Yellow Bus Rydah, his Atlantic debut, was postponed more than two years and retitled The Bus Ride for a planned 2009 release. An unusually permissive contract allowed continued activity on independent imprints, yielding the May 2007 Thizz album Da Baydestrian plus ongoing mixtapes and joint projects with G-Stack, Turf Talk, the Alchemist, and Glasses Malone through 2011, among them the Turf Talk collaboration Hyphy Ain’t Dead. That same year he issued his fourth studio album, I Found My Backpack 2: The Lost Notebook. Da Yellow Bus Rydah finally appeared in 2012.

F.A.B. then turned toward production work with B.o.B and Chris Brown and composed an anthem for the Oakland Raiders. He kept releasing mixtapes and competing on the underground circuit before returning with his sixth album, 2016’s Son of a Pimp, Pt. 2, which entered the Billboard Heatseekers chart at number three. Additional mixtapes arrived in 2017 with Stan Pablo - 4506 and in 2018 with It’s Y’all Fault I’m Rich, accompanied by the official albums Thug Tears and Thug Tears 2.