The story of NeuThrone is the story of outsiders building their own kingdom.
The NeuThrone Creator Spotlight Series celebrates the bold voices of the “New Guard”—a generation of visionaries redefining creativity in a world increasingly dominated by big technology companies and cultural conformity. These are creators who have thrown out the old playbooks for success.
In the most recent episode, NeuThrone spotlights Ramon Cardenas, aka Lil Bams: Bams is A prolific young rapper whose collaborations span industry veterans like Bone Thugs n Harmony, Nate Dogg, and Kurupt as well as red-hot up-and-comers like Bravo The Bagchaser, King Lil G, and Rowdy Racks. With a keen eye for talent, versatility, and a dedication to his craft, he’s poised to make an indelible mark on the hip-hop scene, putting Santa Barbara firmly on the map. For Lil Bams, the journey is far from over—there’s still plenty of room to grow, and he’s ready to seize every opportunity that comes his way.
In this conversation, Bams talks about his mentorship with renowned producer Damion “Damizza” Young, his late nights grinding up and down the 101 freeway between Santa Barbara and Pharmacy Studio in LA, and how he’s breaking into the music industry with one viral album at a time.
NeuThrone: It was cool having you in the photo studio. I appreciate you guys driving down from Santa Barbara. Are you guys posted up there? How often are you guys coming down here to LA?
Bams: Yeah, we came all the way from Santa Barbara. I’m back and forth between Santa Barbara and LA almost every day the last couple months.
NeuThrone: You guys never crash down here and make it easy on yourselves? As opposed to doing that drive back up the 101 freeway?
Bams: Well, I got three dogs. So I got to go back home every night to make sure I take my dogs out.
NeuThrone: That’s a heroic amount of driving. So tell me about what you’re working on right now.
Bams: So right now we’re working on a couple of things. I’m working on probably three albums for myself, and then we’re also working on building a “Damizza Presents” project with like, basically everybody. We’ve been locked in NRG Studios for 2 months almost every day, from noon to 1 in the morning, and then we drive back to Santa Barbara.
NeuThrone: So how did that all come together?
Bams: I mean, shout out to my boy Damizza, you know, he’s pretty tapped in with a lot of those people. We’re trying to really make that our home base, you know?
NeuThrone: And you just recently finished another album, right?
Bams: Yeah, I just dropped a quick project, a mixtape called Ghetto Angels, and I’m working on some of the visuals right now. I was a little bit behind just because we’ve been so busy in the studio.
And then I’m recording three other projects. I have one with Zayce Hundo. I’m working on one with Damizza. I’m working on one with Skips.
And also, actually, four projects! I’m working on another one with a bunch of my little homies from my neighborhood and a couple of other guys from LA, from Compton, a young artist named P Face. We just started working with him. He’s buzzing right now in the streets.
NeuThrone: Skip and Damizza, who were with us in the photo studio today?
Bams: Yeah, so they’re my brothers. We’re all from Santa Barbara. Damizza mentored me and Skips. Kind of took us off the streets and gave us a place to record and stay at his grandma’s house, just recording in the living room, on the dining room table. Skip would be cooking beats. I’m recording.
At one point, there were about 10 to 15 of us there every day, working on music, all together, sleeping on the floor. When you come out in the morning, everybody would be lined up all over the floors, just wherever you could find a spot, and crash out.
But yeah, Damizza and his grandma were generous enough to take a bunch of kids off the streets and just basically, like, if you guys can find something else to do productively, like stay here and do it.
NeuThrone: So you did this mixtape, you’re commuting up and down the 101 freeway to record every night, and you’ve got all these new projects on the horizon. It seems like you’re in the middle of a creative surge right now.
Bams: Yeah, basically.
When we go into the studio, we don’t really have much of a plan. We might not even know who’s coming that day. But it’s pretty much we go in there, we freestyle it, just like, “Okay, you’re here, you’re here, all three of you guys are going to write to this beat that all three of these producers just cooked up together.” So it’s more like a big collaboration.
Some songs might go to Damizza’s project. Some songs might go to my project.
We just create it and then figure it out.
NeuThrone: Are you calling people in? Like, people that, you know?
Bams: A lot of people tell me, “oh, you always get a song with somebody right before they blow up.”
It’s like that with a lot of artists I’ve worked with. They might only have 10,000 views, but I could tell what’s good and what’s not. A lot of the young artists that have come up, like, the ones that are really popping in the last 5 or 10 years, like, I did a song with them right before they blew up.
So I’m pretty much the one in charge of bringing the young artists because I’m tapped in with what’s going on with young artists, the streets, all that shit, you know? That’s more my lane. I have a good ear. I kind of know like “Okay, this artist and this artist will sound good on it.”
NeuThrone: Talk to me about Santa Barbara and what’s going on in the 805. Most people associate hip-hop with places like LA, New York, Chicago, or Atlanta. People usually associate Santa Barbara with Isla Vista and frat parties. Is the hip-hop scene up there an underground thing, or are the frat parties a part of it?
Bams: When I was growing up in middle school, people from my neighborhood were rapping and were already buzzing in the streets. It was mostly like gangbang music that was buzzing in Santa Barbara.
And now, Santa Barbara has a new hip-hop venue that holds over a thousand people.
So they’ve been doing some pretty good shows right there.
But yeah, we love the frat parties! We grew up going to Isla Vista since we were kids. So it’s sick. There’s endless potential for content over there. Every Wednesday through Saturday night, you just go down there, and damn, you might be one of those dudes that get a “Hawk Tuah” video.
NeuThrone: So, talk to me about coming down to LA and to Hollywood. How do you navigate that? How do you know who to trust down here?
Bams: I’ve been in and out of LA since I was about 14. When I first started hitting my first big studio sessions, we were at Chalice Recording Studio, and I was probably 16. We only got that room because Chris Brown canceled. So I was there tripping out. What the hell is this?
I actually got in trouble because I was up in the lounge in the massage chair for like an hour and people were like “Where the hell is Bam’s? He is supposed to be over here writing!”
Eventually I moved out to Burbank, and that’s when I first started being in the studio every day. That’s how I worked with Bizzy Bone and Kurupt. Kurupt was actually my first feature, we just ran into him on my birthday in the parking lot at Problem Studio. And me and the homie saw him and were like “Kurupt, what’s up?”
And because he and Damizza used to be hella cool back in the day, it was like a family reunion.
NeuThrone: They talk a lot nowadays about the music industry not being very friendly to new artists, as if it’s only about Disney kids and pop stars.
Bam: Well, if you think about it, how many artists are there? A hundred thousand? A million? It’s almost easier to make it to the NFL than it is to be an artist.
Anybody can record something off their phone and put it out. Back then, it was like nobody had a studio. I was the first person I knew with a home studio and that was only because I knew Damizza.
People told me what to put together. Shout out my homie Rokks. “Free Rokks”, you know? But he was actually the first one to put me on a mic when I was like 12 years old.
But now you got, like, TikTok. And if you can break on TikTok, you’ll break anywhere else. You can build your own audience. You find your own fans.
NeuThrone: When you’re writing or recording, what is your process like? Are you coming in with a couple of ideas in the back of your head, or are you coming up with ideas on the spot and collaborating in the studio? What does that look like?
Bams: Usually, my recording process is that Skips and I are in our studio. Every night we’ll meet up, he’ll start making a beat. By the time he makes that beat, usually, I’ll have something written by the time the beat’s done. Maybe in 20 minutes, we’ll cut it.
Usually if I don’t have something written by the time the beats done, he moves on to the next beat and, and so on.
Sometimes it will be the first beat that I record on, and sometimes it’s the third, sometimes, it’s the fifth. I just don’t like to force anything.
I feel like if I don’t have something written by the time the beat is done, then we’ll just keep pushing and we’ll find something. Most of the time we do three to five songs a night. Like, literally, I’m sitting on hundreds of songs right now!
NeuThrone: So, is that the plan for 2025?
Bams: Like, stay committed. Grind mode. All gas, you know, no brakes.
NeuThrone: Anything you can tell us about the new album?
Bams: I did the last one with no features. I wanted to do something just strictly me, to just showcase me.
But I think this next one’s gonna be a lot of big features. I want to put some of my homies on too, you know, like hometown, the home team.
