For a generation of listeners redefining what original Pilipino music can be, Buddahbeads’ work exists at the intersection of the street-level storytelling that has long anchored local rap and the cross-genre accessibility that turns underground voices into household names, a tension that shapes every line of I Like Dat, his pop-inflected sound that distills the raw, unfiltered perspective he has spent years honing across the Filipino music landscape. As a rising force in the Filipino hip-hop scene, his approach to crafting music rejects the rigid lines that once separated pop’s broad appeal from the gritty specificity of street rap, pulling from both worlds to create work that feels equally at home blaring from community speakers across small provincial towns and filling the sold-out crowds of live stages that draw fans from every corner of the archipelago and far beyond its borders.