Truth303 Writes Through Lo-Fi and Feels 2, Eleven Tracks Opened by Kevin Bessey on Floating Away
A Hip Hop Writer with Denver and Las Vegas Roots Returns to His Lo-Fi Series
Illusion runs three minutes and seven seconds over a beat by Pieper Beats. It is also the only song on Truth303‘s new album that was not out as a single first. Lo-Fi and Feels 2 arrived on 6 October 2026, with 11 tracks in just over 36 minutes, and it is the volume he set out to make more melodic.
Truth303 is in the playlist below, with Illusion in the running order. The album reached this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news titles. Listen to it there first, then read on.
The Beat Comes First, Then the Writing
The writing starts with the beat. Truth303 keeps a curated stack of instrumentals. When an idea lands, he pulls the one that fits, boom bap or a lo-fi groove. Then he moves fast. He writes, makes a rough mix and comes back to it. Only after that does he refine the song, record it for real and send it to the master.
After that, the credits show who carries each song. Owen Pieper, who produces as Pieper Beats, made the beat for Illusion. Meanwhile, Raias Beats produced the opener, Floating Away. Nik “Ink Well” Hotchkiss engineered both. The writing credit on each goes to Anthony Chavez. Three days after release, the video for Illusion went up on the Truth303 YouTube channel. It signs off with his motto: Love Life.
The Writing Behind Lo-Fi and Feels 2 and the Influences Truth303 Brings to Every Verse
Truth303 has been at this for more than a decade. He came up in Denver, a city without much of a hip hop scene at the time. So he looked for listeners further afield. A move to Las Vegas gave him traction. His own site puts his roots in the Southern California and Las Vegas scenes, and he now releases through Free Agent Music, a sublabel of Warner ADA.
In fact, the writing habit started before the rap did. As a child he kept journals and wrote poetry. The songs still do that job: they are how he works through what happens to him. His influences, too, read like a rap education, from Eminem and Redman to Biggie and Nas. The one he credits most, though, is Slug of Atmosphere.
That choice explains a lot. Slug built the group’s records on first-person confession, with Ant making the beats. He also co-founded Rhymesayers Entertainment in Minneapolis to put that music out on its own terms. Truth303 took the same lesson: hip hop as personal writing, not a chase for a trend. The titles on this album carry that inward turn, from The Hours Getting Late and Drowning to Take Me Back and A Song About Us.
Kevin Bessey and the Melodic Turn on Floating Away and Nice To Meet You
This volume is also where the series leans toward melody. Truth303 planned it around melody, harmonies and wider subjects than the first one. To help, he brought in Kevin Bessey. Bessey appears twice: on the opener, Floating Away, and on Nice To Meet You, tenth in the running order. His site describes his craft in the same terms. Lyricism, live instruments, harmonies. A sound he does not want boxed in.
Eleven Short Tracks in 36 Minutes and the Running Order Truth303 Gave Lo-Fi and Feels 2
First, the structure has a history. Ten of the eleven titles came out as singles first. Take Me Back arrived in October 2023 and One Day in March 2024. A Song About Us, Nice To Meet You and Bring The Warmth followed that summer. Then 2026 brought a run of them: The Hours Getting Late in March, Off A Cliff in May, Floating Away in June, Drowning in July and What Are You Waiting For? in August. In other words, the album gathers three years of singles into one sequence. Illusion is the only title that waited for it.
Second, the running order keeps everything short. Floating Away is the longest track, at four minutes and twenty seconds. What Are You Waiting For? closes the album at two minutes and forty, the shortest of the set. Nothing outstays its idea. That brevity belongs to the lo-fi tradition. J Dilla released Donuts in February 2006, three days before he died. Its run of short pieces became a template for a generation of lo-fi producers. This record is a hip hop album, not a beat tape, but it keeps the same economy.
Truth303 also works in paired series. Bars, his album built on bars, followed the first Lo-Fi and Feels by two months in 2022. BARS II arrived in June 2025. One series is for the bars, the other for the feels. Listeners who know him from the first will find a different side of the same writer here.
RapStar.News’s curator team: “Start with Illusion, the one song that waited for the album, then go back to Take Me Back from 2023. Three years separate them, and together they show how long this album was in the making.”
Watch the video for Illusion above, and stream the album on Spotify or Apple Music. Follow Truth303 on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and SoundCloud, and on Instagram.
About Author
