Ray Gibbz was born in Los Angeles and moved to San Diego chasing a football career that never materialized. What followed was a decade of depression and alcoholism, until music found him in his late twenties and gave him something to hold onto. He’s entirely self-taught – no formal schooling, no music background to speak of – and produces everything himself out of his apartment. That’s the context behind “If I Ruled,” which dropped on April 6th, 2026, and it matters, because the song is a direct conversation with Nas’s “If I Ruled the World” – one of hip-hop’s most enduring statements about possibility, hope, and what you’d do with the power to change things. Invoking that song isn’t a small gesture. It’s a declaration about where you stand and what you think you’re capable of. For an artist whose entire creative life was built from scratch out of necessity, it turns out to be exactly the right reference point.
If a hip-hop artist lists Nas as one of their influences, you know you’ll be in for some great lyricism. The lyricism here would make Nas proud. The tradition of hip-hop being the bed for candid storytelling is being upheld – it’s poetry over a beat, and the beat’s purpose is to create enough momentum for you to ingest the lyrics. You will definitely need to spend some time doing that, because the lyrics say a lot, and there is a lot between the lines to get. In the spirit of great hip-hop, it rewards active and repeated listening.
Gibbz isn’t trying to remake the Nas track or ride its coattails – he’s using it as a foundation to say something of his own, and the production reflects that. The beat carries a classic sensibility without being stuck in nostalgia, assembled with enough care that every element feels placed rather than defaulted to. For a one-man operation running entirely out of a San Diego apartment, the control on display here is significant. The backstory of this artist – the late start, the hard years, the decision to build something from nothing – gives the song’s central question a weight it might not carry coming from someone with an easier path. What would you do if you ruled? Coming from Ray Gibbz, it sounds less like a hypothetical and more like something he’s already been working out the answer to.