SwizZz

Justin Ritter, performing as SwizZz, emerged as a rapper raised in California’s San Fernando Valley. His raw, honest, and confident delivery channels personal struggles and conflicts into aggressive, high-energy tracks, while his nasal vocal tone and solid-black contact lenses supply a striking visual trademark. Public awareness first arrived through his high-school connection to fellow rapper Hopsin. After leaving college to focus on music full-time, SwizZz joined Funk Volume, the imprint Hopsin and his brother Damien Ritter had established together. In 2009 the pair issued the collaborative mixtape Haywire, followed by joint touring in 2011. Ritter’s own debut solo project, the mixtape Good Morning SwizZzle, surfaced shortly afterward. Throughout 2012 he shared stages with labelmates including DJ Hoppa, Jarren Benton, and Dizzy Wright, after which a tour documentary appeared. He issued the solo single “Zoom In” in 2013 before stepping away the next year. Guest spots on additional Funk Volume projects marked 2015, yet the label folded in early 2016 amid disagreements among its founders. Ritter resumed independent single releases, among them 2016’s “Automatic,” written in reply to Hopsin’s “Ill Mind of Hopsin 8,” the track in which Hopsin recounted the label’s dissolution.