Tag: Boston

  • ‘Father’d A Child’ by Fields Corner rapper serves as a bridge between three generations

    By Nathan Metcalf

    When rapper MaceyOMaze from Fields Corner released “Father’d A Child” this spring, the song carried the weight of three generations.

    He conceived it as a tribute to his father, who had been raised without a dad, but he also crafted it to a beat by Boston legend Edo.G, whose 1991 rallying cry for men to step up as parents, “Be a Father to Your Child,” helped put the Boston rap scene on the map.

    “For me, it was about bridging a gap between the old and the young within the Black Boston community,” said the 22-year-old MaceyOMaze, speaking in the basement of the Boston Public Library’s Copley branch, clad in orange 3M Peltor headphones and a gray JNCO hoodie. “My pops grew up listening to Edo.G, and now I get to work with him. That’s a full-circle moment.”

    If not for a chance meeting, the collaboration might not have happened. In 2021, MaceyOMaze and his manager, who goes by the name Ty, attended a community event where KRS-One, a pioneer of socially conscious hip-hop, was performing.

    “They were some of the only young guys in the place, and that stood out to me,” Edo.G said. “I respect what the younger generation is doing — that’s their thing. But it’s not the music I listen to. What caught my attention with Macey was that he’s making real hip-hop.”

    Born in Boston, MaceyOMaze spent parts of his childhood in foster care and homeless shelters before his family found stability in Fields Corner, “the first place my parents had in Boston as a family,” he said. “So, when people ask me where in Boston I’m from, that’s my neighborhood.”

    It was there that his dad, who grew up fatherless in the ’80s, would play him Edo.G’s “Be a Father to Your Child.” Hearing that song and watching his father live by its message showed MaceyOMaze that hip-hop could both come from his own backyard and carry a message powerful enough to change lives.

    As MaceyOMaze and Ty made their presence felt in Boston’s underground scene, he and Edo.G reconnected and decided to collaborate on an album. “To see their progression, from when I first met them to now, that’s beautiful,” Edo.G said. “That’s what made me want to produce the record and do the project.”

    The result was “See You in Boston,” a project that combines the “boom bap” sound and socially conscious themes of hip-hop’s golden age with crisp, modern production and fresh rhymes. Among its tracks, “Father’d A Child” has stood out as MaceyOMaze’s most successful release, drawing more than 1,500 views on YouTube in less than two months.

    Both songs — Edo.G’s in 1991 and MaceyOMaze’s more than three decades later — are rooted in the same idea: challenging stereotypes about absent Black fathers and celebrating the men who step up.

    “It’s very important to have father figures in the Black community, especially with how the media makes us out to be deadbeats or animals,” MaceyOMaze said. “Truth is, we’re human beings like everyone else. We have kids, we raise them. It’s important to show, ‘No, that’s not the only thing that goes down in this life.’”

    For him, that message goes hand in hand with hip-hop’s very essence. “Hip-hop has always been the voice of the oppressed,” he said. “And joy is a form of resistance. Us being happy is us showing that no matter what you throw at us, we’re going to figure out a way to be happy and still be us.”

    That belief carries into his day job with Beat the Odds, a Dorchester nonprofit where he teaches young people audio engineering, music production, and mental health skills. The group also shot the “Father’d A Child” music video, which featured local fathers and their children. 

    “It just shows within hip-hop, young and old school can coexist and bring value to each other,” said Ty, clad in green and black Celtics gear. “Every generation, there’s a new young face that’s going to take over. I truly believe MaceyOMaze is going to be that one.”

    The rapper is already looking ahead. He performed outside Massachusetts for the first time in Burlington, Vermont, last month, and hopes to tour internationally within two years. But for all his ambition, MaceyOMaze insists his goals remain simple.

    “My motivation is to inspire more people to speak out for themselves, whatever form of expression they choose,” he said. “That’s what hip-hop has done for me. If I can do that for even one person, I’ll be happy.”

    This story is part of a partnership between the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

    This article was originally published on September 26, 2025.

  • Domingos DaRosa eschews funds in his long-shot mayoral challenge

    Domingos DaRosa stands on the corner of Dudley and Burrell streets, and it seems as if everybody in Roxbury knows him. Friends, family, and strangers yell to him on the sidewalk, across the street and even from their cars. “They love you, Domingos,” said a passerby standing outside Ideal Sub Shop.

    DaRosa is hoping to convert that goodwill into votes for his first bid for mayor of Boston. 

    A near-lifelong Boston resident, the 47-year-old DaRosa moved from Cape Verde to Boston with his family when he was 10 months old and grew up with part of his home in Dorchester and the other in Roxbury. 

    “Growing up here, we had nothing,” he said, “so we built a community with the community. Being Cape Verdean in a community, we were so diverse. Spanish, Black, Cape Verdeans, you name it…all the kids in the neighborhood, we all hung out together.”

    DaRosa, the father of four, owns a landscaping business and volunteers as a coach with the Boston Bengals Pop Warner football program. He launched his campaign on Feb. 2 of this year with a simple post to his Facebook account: “I’ll be running for the mayor seat in Boston.”

    This is not his first city campaign. He ran unsuccessfully for City Council at-large seats in 2017, 2019 and 2021.

    His campaign manager, Sharon Hinton, said she was surprised with DaRosa’s decision to run for mayor.

    “I’m not going to lie. When I first thought about it, I was like, ‘Seriously, mayor?’” said Hinton, who campaigned for DaRosa during his 2021 venture. “I was thinking about who he was coming up against.”

    DaRosa is one of three challengers who made the ballot to challenge Mayor Wu, with Josh Kraft, son of Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and East Boston resident Robert Capucci being the other two. The four will face off in the preliminary municipal election Sept. 9 to determine which two candidates appear on the Nov. 4 ballot.

    Hinton was initially deterred by the lack of funding for DaRosa’s campaign, noting his disadvantage in that respect compared to some of the other candidates. But, that helped to inspire his campaign slogan, “For the people — not the money.”

    Said DaRosa: “I have no money, and I don’t want it, I don’t need it, I don’t care for it, and I don’t think I need it to be able to achieve my goal.”

    While he is raising small dollar donations, he mainly depends on volunteer labor. Hinton isn’t paid for her efforts; one of the students he coaches in the Pop Warner program designed his campaign website; and friends and family members helped to gather the 3,000 signatures necessary to get his name on on the ballot. 

    Natalya Bethel, a DaRosa supporter, used to pick up needles with DaRosa at Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, an area with a history of rampant substance abuse.

    “You have to get a mayor that really cares about the city for the city to improve,” Bethel said, “to clean up that mess, to clean up the violence.”

    For DaRosa, substance abuse in the Mass. and Cass area has long been a problem for him and his Pop Warner program. “I had 300 kids on my football program, and the last season I had, I was barely able to get 30 kids on the field,” he said, citing parents’ concerns with substance abuse on the Clifford Park field in Roxbury. 

    He noted that a 9-year-old player from the Pop Warner program was pricked by a hypodermic needle while running laps in 2022.

    For 15 years, DaRosa has tried in his own way to alleviate the issue by picking up needles throughout Clifford Park and in and around Mass. and Cass.

    In 2020, he moved to raise awareness about the issue by dumping used hypodermic needles outside former Gov. Charlie Baker’s home in Swampscott, which resulted in a court order forbidding him to be within 100 yards of Baker’s residence thereafter.

    As mayor, DaRosa says he’d reopen Long Island, a city-owned facility that housed homeless people and offered addiction treatments until 2014, when the bridge to the harbor island was deemed unsafe. A prolonged and ongoing legal battle between Quincy and Boston has been one major reason that the island — which is owned by Boston— has not been re-used.

    DaRosa says he doesn’t want to rebuild the bridge. He wants to use boats to ferry people and supplies to the island. “Once someone is on the island,” he said, “there’s no way for them to go get the drugs or the paraphernalia they need.”

    He is also against consumption sites in Boston — except for those on Long Island. 

    Some of his other priorities, DaRosa says, include affordable housing, after-school programs and resources for students, public safety initiatives that address illegal substance distribution and gun violence, and direct communication with Immigration Customs and Enforcement. 

    “Wu has no input on how ICE comes into the city,” he said. “They just do what they want to do, and who suffers? Everybody.”

    DaRosa said he wants a more humane detention process for undocumented immigrants. At the same time, he said he believes in prioritizing legal residents and undocumented individuals who are making an effort to obtain legal status.

    “For those who come illegally, we will aid you in finding a way of becoming legal,” he said, “but we’re not going to harbor you, to say, ‘We’re going to hide you among the rest of the people,’ while the rest of the people are the ones taking the collateral damage. That’s not fair to the greater good.”  

    He also offered another point: “I’m the only one on stage that’s an immigrant, remember that. I’m the only one that’s a survivor of BPS. I’m the only one that’s a survivor of gun violence, I’m the only one that has been fighting Mass. and Cass without a political view, just to help the human who’s struggling.”