Shoreline Mafia is a Los Angeles rap group that emerged in the mid-2010s and quickly became one of the defining sounds of modern West Coast street rap. The crew began when OhGeesy and Fenix Flexin met through writing graffiti and East Hollywood’s skate-and-street culture.Their music touches on the realities of hustling, fast money, navigating dangerous environments, wealth, brotherhood and Los Angeles culture. After a breakup in 2020, founding members OhGeesy and Fenix Flexin reunited in 2023, bringing the Shoreline Mafia name back to life as a duo and garnering mass attention with their return.
Issue 12 features OhGeesy and Fenix Flexin in conversation with REBOE LNE.
Photographs by Ian Buosi
REBOE: So you guys met through graffiti, right? What’s the deal with that? You guys always wrote just as kids, just naturally?
OHGEESY: Yeah, I was doing graffiti. I was writing since third grade, second grade.
FENIX FLEXIN: Bro cold with it too. Already at the time when we first met, his handstyles and shit was bonkers.
REBOE: I’ve seen handstyles on album artwork.
OHGEESY: I take pride in my handstyles.
REBOE: I’m New York through and through, but I do fuck with the West Coast handstyle. Those boxy capital E’s.
OHGEESY: I fuck with New York handstyles and Philly handstyles.
FENIX FLEXIN: I was a couple years younger, but at the time everybody was doing bombs. This fool made me appreciate handstyles more than throw-ups and bombs. That shit just looked fun and fresh.
REBOE: I was telling Geesy right before we started — this one time, I was 17, I came out here on a skate trip. We went out one night and these dudes had a generator in the car to light up a spot. Nobody does that in New York. Anyway, long story short, they’re putting gas in the generator, I’m catching a whiteout tag on an icebox behind the gas station—
FENIX FLEXIN: Somebody came and banged on you?
REBOE: Dude in a minivan spins around, pulls in, hops out like, “You bang, homie?” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” Then I see he has “Los Angeles” tattooed where his eyebrows should’ve been. All my homies were inside the gas station. I thought I was about to get left for dead back there.
OHGEESY: Sounds about right.
REBOE: I told him, “It’s just a tag, I’m from New York.” He peeped it, dapped me up, and drove off like nothing happened.
OHGEESY: It’s crazy out here.
FENIX FLEXIN: Craziest thing I seen graffiti-wise — the homie REZO. There was this viral video of him. Bro climbed a wall, dropped like 15 feet onto a fence with steel spikes. One of the spikes went through the back of his thigh.
OHGEESY: He was just hanging off the top of the fence.
FENIX FLEXIN: Stuck with the shit through his leg. Looked like a horror movie.
REBOE: Was he good?
FENIX FLEXIN: He was straight. Grace of God.
OHGEESY: He still be coming to the shows.
REBOE: You guys have anything crazy go down with graffiti?
OHGEESY: All types of crazy shit. Stabbings.
REBOE: I feel like the beef out here gets crazy. Pause.
FENIX FLEXIN: Yeah, for sure.
OHGEESY: It’s gang-bang culture.
REBOE: It’s wild. But it seems like it’s not like in New York, where the whole city’s smashed. Out here it’s like one building is crushed, the rest is clean.
OHGEESY: When I was younger, I’d walk around with my skateboard all day. Penny board.
FENIX FLEXIN: That’s why we’d get into so much bullshit.
REBOE: And no car.
OHGEESY: Exactly.
FENIX FLEXIN: Foot patrol.
OHGEESY: Now that I’m older, I’d never walk. Back then we’d walk three miles like nothing.
REBOE: You guys both grew up skateboarding?
OHGEESY: Yeah, yeah. I grew up wanting to skateboard. He know how to skate for real.
REBOE: I already know Fenix is mad good.
OHGEESY: I never got my tricks down.
FENIX FLEXIN: I thought I was gonna be a pro skater at one point.
REBOE: For real? You skated for anyone?
FENIX FLEXIN: Yeah. Transport Skate Shop. And the homie Liam was riding for Vans. I’d be filming with them in like 10th, 11th grade. Started getting free Half Cabs. (laughs)
REBOE: You ever film a part?
FENIX FLEXIN: I got old footage. Back 180 down Hollywood 12. Switch front pop over the rail at Eagle Rock 9. I could’ve went somewhere with it for sure.
REBOE: You still skate?
FENIX FLEXIN: Just ’cause I could still do all my flat ground. Give me a week and I could still do everything.
REBOE: What videos did you grow up watching?
FENIX FLEXIN: Mike Mo, Fully Flared.
REBOE: Baker 3 was my era.
FENIX FLEXIN: Baker 3 for sure. But I had a different style — I liked Omar Salazar.
REBOE: Yep. Nike, Alien Workshop.
FENIX FLEXIN: Yeah.
REBOE: So what about graff-wise — who inspired you?
OHGEESY: All the MSKs, the MTAs.
FENIX FLEXIN: Bruh right here. And I liked the 15M dudes back then. They style was cool.
REBOE: Who’s the king of L.A. graffiti?
OHGEESY: Me. (laughs)
FENIX FLEXIN: OTX boys.
OHGEESY: OTX boys, no cap. Not even for graff, but we graffers. Trophied up.
REBOE: Back to music — what artists influenced you? Sound, style, any of that.
FENIX FLEXIN: More so people our age coming up. Seeing them make it made me want to.
OHGEESY: I didn’t start making music till 18, 19. But we wasn’t inspired to rap until it started seeming possible when people was doing YouTube. Chief Keef, Raider Klan. We seen all that and was like, oh, we gotta take this serious.
FENIX FLEXIN: Chief Keef was only a couple years older than us.
OHGEESY: Younger than us.
FENIX FLEXIN: Oh, he was?
OHGEESY: He might be. How old are you?
FENIX FLEXIN: 29.
OHGEESY: He like just turned 30. I’ve been to his house and everything.
REBOE: That’s one of my favorites. He’s up there.
FENIX FLEXIN: I remember going to bro crib — tripping out like, this is dope.
REBOE: Yeah. I feel like he put a battery in a new wave of music.
FENIX FLEXIN: 30 sticks and Gucci belts.
REBOE: So when you both met, what was the first time making music together?
FENIX FLEXIN: Love at first sight. (laughs)
OHGEESY: Yeah. We made a remix. I was dropping music and he told me he raps too. I was like, what the fuck? So I recorded him. I engineered everything low-key.
FENIX FLEXIN: He made it sound good.
OHGEESY: I would just mess with the butters until it sounded right — EQs, everything. And our shit really sounded good.
FENIX FLEXIN: It sounded good.
OHGEESY: If it wasn’t for that, we probably wouldn’t be doing this.
REBOE: Can you remember the first studio session?
OHGEESY: Hell yeah. The song was called “Friday.”
FENIX FLEXIN: If somebody got that, they goated. Free shows for life.
OHGEESY: We recorded that and just sounded good together. Never stopped.
FENIX FLEXIN: Instant chemistry. We were already like brothers.
REBOE: So what was the first moment when you realized there’s more to this than just for fun?
Read the full interview in Living Proof Magazine Issue 12. Available on the Living Proof Patreon and Online Shop.
