Ray Ryda walks into Oakland’s Souley Vegan restaurant–six foot two and lanky, a plush forest green jacket, bright jewelry, and glasses adorned in gold. He carries with him and a presence that’s felt.
He gives a hug to the restaurant owner, award-winning chef Tamearra Dyson, and then shakes the hand of a guy sitting at the table in the very back of the establishment.
As Ryda pulls out a chair to sit across the table from me, Chuckii Booker’s 1992 R&B hit “Games” plays on the restaurant’s speakers overhead. Background music, but the track stands out in the moment as it was sampled for the classic 1995 track “Playa Hata” by East Oakland rap duo, Luniz.
His mother, a musician and activist. His father, a songwriter and guitarist. Ryda says music was “genetically embedded” in him.
Ryda, a musician himself, has a story that starts not far from where that group was raised, just a few blocks further into the “jungle” of Deep East Oakland.
His life has also been full of players, haters, and “game” in the form of wisdom gleaned from tragic experiences. A lot of people know him as a survivor of gun violence, and the older brother of the late Elliott “El’Nenyo” Noble, who was murdered in the fall of 2005.
But there’s much more to his tale.
Ryda is an artist who’s well-versed in the ways in which creativity can be used as a survival mechanism, and how community connections can bring about a heightened level of spirituality. Beyond everything else, he tells me over a basket of vegan oysters, “I consider myself the hood minister, bruh.”
He traces his own musical experience back to the church, specifically one event at East Oakland’s legendary Acts Full Gospel during Christmas of 1989.
During the course of our meal, he explains how his work goes beyond the confines of organized religion. Although he was raised in the church, instead of thumping religious texts he’s out there with people. “I service my community in real time, no internet posts,” he attests. “I feed my community… I do whatever I can do to help my people.”
Ryda grew up with his parents and siblings in East Oakland, first residing in the 90s before moving to the Brookfield neighborhood. A working-class community on the furthest edge of Oakland’s easternmost boundary, it was there that he found culture, creativity, and ways to navigate conflict.
“Growing up in Brookfield, it was wild,” Ryda reflects, adding that people, in many ways, were either predators or prey. “That first year, that summer really was rough,” he recalls. “I got into several fights with the people around here.”
His first altercation, a fight with another kid in the neighborhood, wasn’t a clear win nor a loss. But it allowed him to prove that he wasn’t a punk, and it garnered mutual respect. Another neighborhood friend who’d observed the fight started calling him “Ray Ryda,” and the nickname stuck.
“The first time that I ever performed, it was me and my little brother–rest his soul,” Ryda says, recalling that the duo performed a song called “Reason for the Season” which was written by their mother. “And since then,” Ryda says, “I fell in love with this art form.”
At 11 years-old, the oldest of his parents’ four children, early on he recognized that he had to find a way to make money. He soon jumped off the porch and landed on a block that was “a million dollar spot,” full of young hustlers who came from a background similar to his. “Back then,” he says, “I was young and impressionable, so I [was] looking up to monetary things, and I didn’t really know no better.”
Unaware of the concept of “big risks and little rewards,” his time selling banned substances landed him in juvenile hall at the age of 14; he was subsequently in and out of California’s youth authority throughout his teens. But it was his time behind bars that started the process of him watering an artistic seed that had been planted by his family before he was even born.
“My parents, they met at Laney College in music class,” Ryda opens up. His mother, a musician and activist. His father, a songwriter and guitarist. Ryda says music was “genetically embedded” in him.
He traces his own musical experience back to the church, specifically one event at East Oakland’s legendary Acts Full Gospel during Christmas of 1989.
“The first time that I ever performed, it was me and my little brother–rest his soul,” Ryda says, recalling that the duo performed a song called “Reason for the Season” which was written by their mother. “And since then,” Ryda says, “I fell in love with this art form.”
a visit from a friend brought about an acronym that “God had put in his heart,” and serves as a mantra that Ryda leans on to this day.
Influenced by artists like Michael Jackson and Oakland’s MC Hammer, as well as the Bay Area’s hip-hop culture, a young Ray Ryda was on a musical mission. He first got into the studio in the late 90s, and by the turn of the millennium he found his path–or rather, his path found him.
Similar to how his nickname was handed to him by way of a community interaction, Ryda says the name of his rap group, “Dirty Mack’n Boyz” was bestowed upon him.
One day, while walking to the liquor store on the corner of 98th Avenue and Edes Avenue he crossed paths with a friend. Taking note of Ryda’s dapper clothing, she asked him where he was going? He responded that he was simply en route to the store, nowhere special.
“She looked me up and down,” he recalls, “and said, ‘well, you dirty mackin.’”
Ryda’s first time hearing the term, he not only took it as a complement, Ryda took it back to his brother, letting him know that he’d found a name for their collective. They’d just started putting their music together and were on the verge of releasing their first project, The Jungle Book Chapter One: It’s a Jungle Out There.
“Dirty Mack’n,” Ryda explains, stands for “divine inspiration resurrected through youth. Masters of art, communication, knowledge, and networking.”
The project dropped in 2003, and was met with underground fanfare. The duo spread their gospel by pressing up CDs, selling merchandise, and rocking stages during hip-hop shows all around Northern California.
“I was 20 years old in ‘03,” says Ryda. His brother, two and a half years his junior, wasn’t old enough to get into the clubs. But they found a way. “We were the new kids on the block,” Ryda exclaims, channeling the energy of the time period. “It’s going down!”
As I eat, Ryda pauses to clarify a note about that era: this was just before the watering down of the culture, he says, prior to national claims of a “hyphy movement” happening in the Bay.
It wasn’t as goofy as “the hyphy movement” was depicted. Instead, Ryda describes it as a fun time, where clubs like On Broadway and Mingles showcased local artists; event let-outs and sideshow activities created an aurora of spontaneous elation.
But at the time, “hyphy” had a negative connotation. It described an untrustworthy person, or even a loose pit bull. “Hyphy,” he says in reference to how the term has since been popularized, “was nowhere in the vocabulary of that period.” Instead, Ryda explains that the jovial free-spirit energy of the early 2000s in Oakland was simply a way of life. “It just was the culture of what we do out here,” says Ryda.
Sadly, five years into the new millennium, for Ray Ryda, that uplifting energy drastically shifted. As national news and entertainment outlets started recognizing the Bay Area’s resurgent hip-hop culture, Ryda’s name would unfortunately land in the newspaper for one of the most tragic experiences one can fathom.
In the fall of 2005, a driver on the Richmond Parkway opened fire on a vehicle Ryda was driving. The artist and community advocate was shot twice in the head; his brother was killed. Ryda’s life was forever changed.
“On November 19th, 2005, that morning I woke up, I was in the hood,” Ryda recalls. “My mother was supposed to be moving that day.”
Before helping her move he planned on attending a protest at San Quentin State Prison, where people were gathering in effort to push California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant clemency to renowned Crip gang co-founder and author, Stanley “Tookie” Williams.
En route to Marin, Ryda picked up his little brother El’Nenyo from a friend’s house in Concord, and then took a path he’d never taken along Highway 4 through Contra Coast County. Just before connecting to the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge in order to get to the notorious prison, the duo were driving on the Richmond Parkway when a car pulled up alongside them.
“It was like an explosion,” Ryda says, explaining being shot in the head with a .45 caliber bullet. “Like a bomb hit me–boom! And then it hit again.” The sensation was followed by lights and noise, mass confusion, and then a stark relaxation: he looked to the passenger seat to see his brother sitting there, lifeless.
“The next thing I know,” Ryda recalls, “the fire department got to me, pulled me out of the car, and asked me questions.” The severity of his own injuries didn’t become clear until he took a break from talking to the first responders and looked in the mirror, where he saw his own eye hanging out of his head.
The medical team announced that his brother was D.O.A., and shortly after Ryda was airlifted from the scene on the Richmond Parkway to John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek. He woke up three weeks later with more questions than answers.
“What happened?” He asked himself. The assailants must’ve had a case of mistaken identity, as Ryda and his brother had never been on this road and didn’t have any dealings with people in Richmond.
Aware that the surrounding neighborhoods were beefing with each other, Ryda assumed they must’ve gone through “the no fly zone.” Although he was angry, he was convinced by friends not to retaliate. But his body was in shambles.His brother was dead; due to being comatose, he’d missed the funeral.
“I blamed myself for a long time for that happening to us,” Ryda admits. As “the brother who was in hella shit,” Ryda says his younger sibling was the opposite. “Out of us two, he was just a good guy.”
Looking at his brother’s transition as his own rebirth, Ryda was well-aware that the chances of him surviving an assault like the one he experienced was a rare feat.
“If you look at me,” he says with one eye pupil-less to this day, “you can tell that I done been through some shit, but you wouldn’t think that’s what I went through.”
He initially awoke from his coma and entered a nightmare–his jaw wired shut, titanium holding it in place. He was blind in his left eye and had to relearn how to walk, but didn’t receive extensive physical therapy.
He credits a few factors for his recovery. In addition to his own resilience and spirituality, he says family and community members showed an amazing amount of support.
While in the hospital, a visit from a friend brought about an acronym that “God had put in his heart,” and serves as a mantra that Ryda leans on to this day.
“Dirty Mack’n,” Ryda explains, stands for “divine inspiration resurrected through youth. Masters of art, communication, knowledge, and networking.”
Ryda also still makes music. His latest project, In This Moment 3, dropped in 2024. He’s on the verge of releasing new music this year, as well as new merchandise. That’s in addition to putting together his own foundation to better serve the community through an empowering arts program for young people. His organization will be called “Teach,” which derives from a moniker he uses when making music. The acronym behind the term breaks down to “thrive everyday and climb higher.”
It’s also a nod to his true service, that of a neighborhood minister.
Additionally, the musical foundation Ryda and his brother created through the group aided the artist as he recovered. Their names were already buzzing in the streets off their first album, and they were on the verge of dropping a second one when tragedy struck.
Unfortunately, in hip-hop culture, when an instance like this occurs it only further popularizes your work. “They’re gonna be on you when you get killed, or go to jail more than they’re gonna celebrate your birthday or when you graduate,” Ryda laments. The shooting made him a big topic. But what he and El’Nenyo had started carried him through some of his hardest times, and down a new path.
Adding to the weight of that period, Ryda was on the verge of becoming a father. His first child was born January 29th, 2006–almost exactly two months after his uncle’s murder, and his father nearly losing his life.
The next year Ryda had a second child and his third came in 2009. “My children,” he says, “they saved my life, bruh, and helped me get a better sense of balance.”
The year after the shooting, Ryda was introduced to Urban Peace Movement, an Oakland based nonprofit whose focus on quelling violence in the community spoke to his mission in life. He began working as a volunteer and attending conferences, speaking at community events and doing performances at neighborhood gatherings.
To this day, he works with the organization. “Whatever they have going on,” he says, “I’ll always be a special invited guest.”
Ryda also still makes music. His latest project, In This Moment 3, dropped in 2024. He’s on the verge of releasing new music this year, as well as new merchandise. That’s in addition to putting together his own foundation to better serve the community through an empowering arts program for young people. His organization will be called “Teach,” which derives from a moniker he uses when making music. The acronym behind the term breaks down to “thrive everyday and climb higher.”
It’s also a nod to his true service, that of a neighborhood minister.
“I’m not religious, bro, but I’m very spiritual,” he says as we conclude our meal. After surviving the shooting 20 years ago, his sense of spirituality really started kicking in. Now, he says, he can hear the voices of ancestors when he’s working in the community.
Taking note of how his life has been entrenched with tragedy after tragedy, before excusing myself from the table I ask him, “How do you deal with death?”
He takes a long pause, allowing the 1979 song “Lady” by The Whispers to play more audibly in the background. The legendary R&B/ Soul collective from Watts, CA earned its popularity in the 60s and 70s by playing gigs in the Bay Area, specifically in The Battle of the Bands series. The group’s co-founder Walter Scott passed just six months prior to the conversation between Ryda and me.
“Best way I can tell you this, dog,” says Ryda, breaking his long silence and responding to my question about navigating mortality, “is just to embrace the fact that death is a part of life.”
He takes another breath and continues, “Every single day that we live, it’s another day towards the day we die. So in-between time, the best way to handle death is to live, you feel me, bruh?”
