The title Bloods & Crips anchors a pop sound originating from the Philippines, a work that exists within a decades-long continuum of Philippine creative practice that weaves global cultural references into the framework of popular music that travels far beyond the country’s borders. Pop as a genre has always been defined by its capacity to absorb, recontextualize, and reimagine signals from across the world, turning symbols that originate in specific regional contexts elsewhere into material that carries new meaning for audiences that engage with those symbols through their own distinct cultural lenses. For creators based in the Philippines, the act of drawing from global cultural touchstones is not a passing trend, nor is it limited to any single era of the country’s expansive music history.