Underground Voices: The Rise of Magic City Mafia

Mason Quest, also known as MCM Malice, and Takoda Guzman are the driving forces behind the rising rap group Magic City Mafia, hailing from Billings, Montana. Their raw and unfiltered music draws heavily from the challenging experiences they’ve faced growing up in the rough parts of the city. With songs like “Poppa Jigga,” “Asesino,” and “Am I a Good Person,” they provide listeners with an inside look at gang life, personal struggles, and the harsh realities of their environment. Their latest album, My Bittersweet Gospel, dives deeper into the emotional side of their journey, as they strive to leave a lasting impact on the rap scene and beyond.

How has life in Billings shaped your music and who you are today?  

Billings is definitely the roughest part of the 406 it has made us grow up quickly and learn how to put what we experience into our music.

Your lyrics are very real and raw. Do you ever hold back, or do you always say exactly what’s on your mind? 

No, we don’t hold back we want what is real and raw but we also want the shock value to be there as well.

Do you ever disagree with creative decisions? How do you handle those moments? 

We have had some creative disagreements, but we have always kept true to each other and been able to sort out our differences in those situations by coming together and talking about them.

What does “Poppa Jigga” represent to you personally and as artists? 

“Poppa Jigga” represents our biggest drop and our best work I’d say. At first, we were just messing around with the song, but then we turned it into something that actually sounded good and we wanted to kind of show the world what we could do with it.

You describe “Asesino” as an unfiltered look at life on the South Side. What was the writing process like for this track, and how important was it to keep the story raw and real? 

We kind of separated each other for a minute and wrote what we wanted on the track on our parts and then we ended up coming back together at a later date and saying this is our part. This is your part and we just put a beat on and just started recording and it sounded pretty good. We wanted to keep it as real as we could from what we experienced And it sounded good.

“Am I a Good Person” has a deeply emotional tone compared to your other songs. What made you want to open up about depression and the struggles of gang life in this way? 

Mental health is a big overlooked subject in gang life and I think us being dudes. It’s also really overlooked so I think putting it out there and showing how it is can really influence people in the saying hey this is actually a pretty big deal in that it should be looked at more.

Each of these songs highlights different sides of your experiences. How do you decide which stories to tell through music? 

Basically what we’re feeling on that day what we feel sounds good a lot of the music is true. All of it actually is true and we want to be able to show our experiences to people

What’s one goal you both share for the future of Magic City Mafia? 

We wanna make it out. We wanna be the next Gray 59 or the next NWA or the next Wu-Tang Clan.

What’s next for Magic City Mafia? Any new projects or goals you’re excited about? 

We actually just put our new album called ‘My Bittersweet Gospel.’ We hope to get more traction on that one. It’s a really good one that talks more emotion-based there is one song that is very much gang-related, but the majority of the album is emotion-based.