Strangers Rap on His Beats in New York's Washington Square Park

Hunna G already had the title of music producer, selling beats and producing tracks for friend and fellow artist Johnny 2 Phones, but he’s since taken on another role: content creator.

Hunna has nearly eight million likes across his TikTok videos and nearly 800,000 followers on Instagram. The majority of his content is his “Take a Seat Rap on the Beat” series. It’s exactly what it sounds like: People sit at his table and rap to one of his beats.

The series was a collective idea between Hunna, Johnny and Project FreeFall, an audience development company that helps artists make content. 

Hunna films the “Take a Seat” series in New York's Washington Square Park, but he plans to bring it to Los Angeles in late February.

While Project FreeFall helped Hunna get the series off the ground, it’s mainly been a one-man operation, although he does bring a friend to the park to help facilitate things. Everything is recorded with two iPhones and a mic.

Anyone can take a seat, but not everyone makes it online. 

“I only post 10 to 20% of the videos I record,” Hunna says. “I get a lot of people who sit down who aren’t really artists, who just want to try it. But of course I’m always down to see what happens, because you never know.”

When the series started last summer, Hunna would have to find someone good enough to post. 

“Some days I wouldn't have anything to post and I would go to the park, get a video and then go home and edit it and post it the same day,” Hunna says.

The first video of the series didn’t necessarily blow up, but it did outperform his other content. On Instagram, it was the eighth video from the series that hit nearly 10 million views, Hunna says.

Hunna continued to post a video a day for 60 days. Now, he has enough content to last a few weeks. 

“As people started to catch on, people knew I was there,” Hunna says. “On a good day in the park, I could get six people.” 

Record labels caught on, too. They want their talent to get exposure online. And while Hunna will accept requests, he makes sure the performances are still captured live in the park. 

“The audio is never from a studio,” Hunna says. “If they really screw up something I’ll allow [them] to start from the beginning, but the take is a complete take — it’s not multiple takes spliced together.”

With less people in the park due to the cold weather, Hunna is open to more pre-arranged recordings with artists, he says.

“I've met a ton of artists through this,” Hunna says. And he keeps in touch with them, too.

“I actually just recorded a cypher where I brought people back that have already been on and had them all freestyle over the same beat,” Hunna says. (A cypher is when multiple people take turns rapping or freestyling over the beat.)

Creating a community of artists is one byproduct of the series. 

“I definitely want to develop the people that do well on the page. I think it would be cool to make a community out of it,” Hunna says. “Behind the scenes, there is a little community going on, but I want to make it more apparent.” 

Another byproduct? A slight increase in the number of beats sold online, Hunna says. He sells the beats used in the series on BeatStars. His other music (he also makes EDM and pop) is available to stream across all platforms. 

When asked which artists he wants to work with, he names Drake and Sleepy Hallow, a New York drill rapper. 

With his growing following across social media, they’ll be hearing of Hunna soon enough — if they haven’t already.