Azizi Gibson You Reap What You Sew Songs: find out now

If you typed this into Google, I already know what happened. You heard one Azizi Gibson track somewhere — maybe a SoundCloud rabbit hole, maybe a friend’s playlist — and now you’re trying to figure out what album it’s from, what else is worth hearing, and whether this guy is even still making music. Fair questions. I’ve spent a lot of hours in his catalog, and honestly, it’s messier and more interesting than most “rising rapper” pages make it sound.

Azizi Gibson isn’t a household name, and that’s kind of the point. He’s an independent artist who’s been putting out music since 2013, and his back catalog is scattered across mixtapes, EPs, and full albums that don’t always show up neatly on streaming. So instead of giving you a generic bio, I’m going to walk you through the real releases — starting with the 2022 album You Reap What You Sew, then going back through a few older tracks people keep searching for by name: “Do What I Want,” “The Irony,” and “Baka.” All of it is real, all of it is checkable, and none of it is filler.

You Reap What You Sew Azizi Gibson

Let’s get the basics straight first, because a lot of pages online blur this. You Reap What You Sew is a full studio album, not a single song. It dropped at midnight on August 19, 2022, and it’s 17 tracks long, running about 46 minutes total.

The guest list is stacked for an independent release: Issa Gold shows up on two songs (“Serenade” and “Within”), Freddie Gibbs features on “Hate To Say It,” AKTHESAVIOR is on “Black & Proud,” and the closer “Timeless” brings in ferg.JP and Akeem Mimiko. Here’s the full tracklist, in order:

1. Scrape Em
2. Hate Less
3. Crooks & Castles
4. Serenade (feat. Issa Gold)
5. Hate to Say It (feat. Freddie Gibbs)
6. M Word
7. Love Jones
8. Within (feat. Issa Gold)
9. Lick on Your Butt (Skit)
10. Phoenix
11. Stoopid
12. Brown Skin
13. Mobster
14. That Ain’t Nice
15. Black & Proud (feat. AKTHESAVIOR)
16. Zelda’s Lullaby
17. Timeless (feat. ferg.JP & Akeem Mimiko)

The album was preceded by a run of standalone singles — “Crooks & Castles,” “Hate To Say It,” “Within,” “Stoopid,” and “Zelda’s Lullaby” — which is a pretty aggressive rollout for someone doing this without major-label backing. When Gibson announced it on Instagram, he made a point of thanking the people who worked on it with him, noting it had been two years since his last full project. That checks out: his previous release was This is not an Album. This is a Killer Playlist Vol. 1 in 2021, which followed Reaping The Benefits in 2020.

Azizi Gibson You Reap What You Sew

Now for the part people actually want to know: is it good, and which songs hit?

Based on early listener reaction after release, two tracks pulled ahead of the pack fast — “M Word” and “Zelda’s Lullaby” — both of which got singled out by fans in the comments as favorites within days of the drop. The “Hate To Say It” collab with Freddie Gibbs also got a lot of love, which isn’t surprising since Gibbs brings a completely different, harder energy that plays well against Gibson’s usual melodic, laid-back delivery.

If you’re new to the album and don’t want to sit through all 17 tracks cold, here’s the honest way to approach it: start with “Hate To Say It” for the Freddie Gibbs feature, then jump to “Zelda’s Lullaby” and “M Word” since those are the tracks that seem to have stuck with listeners the most, then work backward through the rest if the vibe is landing for you. “Zelda’s Lullaby” runs the longest on the album at over four minutes, which already tells you it’s doing something different from the shorter, punchier cuts around it like “Scrape Em” (under two minutes) or “Crooks & Castles” (just over two minutes).

The album title itself is doing some heavy lifting thematically — “you reap what you sew” (the more common spelling is actually “reap what you sow,” from the old idea that your actions come back around to you) fits a running theme in Gibson’s music generally: consequences, growth, and looking back at where you’ve been. You’ll see that same idea pop up again if you go further back in his catalog, which brings me to the next three songs.

Do What I Want Azizi Gibson

Before You Reap What You Sew, there’s “Do What I Want,” a single Gibson put out around 2017, produced by YG! Beats. It’s a different era entirely — this was during the stretch when he was actively touring behind his Reaping the Benefits project and running his “Follow the Leader” tour.

This track doesn’t get the same spotlight as his bigger album cuts, but it’s a good example of the more defiant, independent-artist energy that runs through a lot of his early catalog — the whole “I built this myself, so I’ll do it my way” attitude that a lot of underground rap fans connect with. If you’re the type of listener who’s into artists who stayed independent instead of chasing a label deal, this is a worthwhile one to track down on SoundCloud or YouTube, where it’s still up.

Azizi Gibson Irony

“The Irony” is an older cut, from 2016, produced by Scoop Deville and pulled from Gibson’s The Last EP. It’s quietly one of his more streamed songs — it’s sitting well past a million plays on Spotify, which is a real number for an independent artist working without a major label push.

The track leans into a harder, more confrontational tone than a lot of his other work — it’s Gibson calling out people who doubted him or tried to hold him back, wrapped in that same “prehistoric” branding he’s used across a few different projects (his own label is even called preHISTORIC Records). If “You Reap What You Sew” is about consequences catching up with other people, “The Irony” is basically the older, angrier sibling of that same idea — someone talking their way through betrayal and coming out the other side unbothered.

Azizi Gibson Baka

“Baka (Wise Words)” came out around the same period, in late 2016, produced by his frequent collaborator Millz Douglas, and tied to his Memoirs of the Reaper era. If you’re wondering about the title: “baka” is a Japanese word that basically means “idiot” or “fool,” and Gibson has been open about being into anime for years — Hunter x Hunter is a favorite of his — so the reference isn’t random. It fits a pattern where his music picks up little pieces of Japanese pop culture, gaming references, and anime language throughout his lyrics.

A contemporary review at the time described it as a groovy, synthy trap track, and noted Gibson sounded confident and loose on it, promising early on that people would eventually know his name. It’s not one of his most-streamed songs today, but it’s a good snapshot of where his sound was heading in 2016 — before the fuller, more guest-heavy sound of You Reap What You Sew six years later.

The Real Story Behind The Name Azizi Gibson

Since a lot of people search his songs without knowing much about the guy, here’s the short version, because it actually explains a lot about his music.

Azizi Gibson was born October 5, 1990, in Frankfurt, Germany, into a military family originally from Zaire. As a kid he moved constantly — Bangkok, Singapore, back to Bangkok, then finally settling in Maryland around age 11, which is where he first got into hip-hop. He dropped out of college in 2010 and moved to Los Angeles with, by his own account, a low-budget mixtape and not much else. A chance meeting with producer Flying Lotus led to a deal with Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder label, and Gibson released his debut mixtape, Ghost in the Shell, in 2013.

From there the releases came steadily: Backward Books EP in 2014, his debut full album PreHISTORIC Till Death in 2015 (which included a feature from Waka Flocka Flame), A New Life in 2016, Memoirs of the Reaper in 2017, Xenophile in 2018, Chimera Act in 2019, Reaping the Benefits in 2020, and This is not an Album. This is a Killer Playlist Vol. 1 in 2021, before landing at You Reap What You Sew in 2022. That’s a genuinely rare pace for someone doing this without a major label machine behind them.

How To Actually Get Into His Catalog Without Getting Lost

Gibson’s discography is big and it’s spread out across a lot of different eras and moods, so here’s a practical way to approach it instead of just hitting shuffle:

• If you want the newest, most polished sound: Start with You Reap What You Sew (2022), specifically “Hate To Say It,” “Zelda’s Lullaby,” and “M Word.”
• If you want the rawer, more defiant early stuff: Go find “Do What I Want” and “The Irony” — both are still on SoundCloud and YouTube even though they’re not always easy to find on the bigger streaming apps.
• If you’re into the anime and gaming references people mention about him: “Baka (Wise Words)” is the clearest example, and it’s worth checking his Memoirs of the Reaper project as a whole.
• If you just want the most popular entry point: “The Irony” has the highest verified stream count of the songs covered here, so it’s a safe first listen if you want to gauge whether his style is for you before diving deeper.

One practical note: because Gibson has stayed independent, not everything is neatly organized on Spotify or Apple Music the way a major-label artist’s catalog would be. Some of his older singles only really live on SoundCloud or YouTube now, so if a track isn’t showing up on your usual app, that’s normal — it doesn’t mean it’s fake or unofficial.

FAQ: What People Actually Ask About Azizi Gibson

Final Verdict

If you came here just trying to figure out what “You Reap What You Sew” actually is — it’s Azizi Gibson’s 2022 album, 17 tracks, with Freddie Gibbs and Issa Gold showing up as the standout features. If you’re now curious about the rest of his catalog, “The Irony,” “Do What I Want,” and “Baka (Wise Words)” are the honest starting points from his earlier years, and they’ll show you a different, rawer side of him than the newer album does.

He’s not a huge name, and I think that’s part of why people who find him tend to stick around — there’s no algorithm pushing him on everyone, so if you like it, it feels like something you found yourself. Start with “The Irony” if you want proof he can hold an audience, then work your way to “You Reap What You Sew” once you’re hooked.

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