Codefendants

Born from the meeting of rapper and songwriter Ceschi Ramos, singer Sam King (active with California punk band Get Dead), and Fat Mike, NOFX’s bassist and founder of Fat Wreck Chords, Codefendants developed in the early 2020s as a hybrid project at the intersection of punk, alternative hip hop, and dark pop. Drawing on roots in both the California punk scene and the American independent rap world, the trio describes its music as “crime wave” — a blend of taut guitars, rap-adjacent rhythms, spoken passages, and often melancholic vocal melodies. Early tracks circulated online prior to the release of the album “This Is Crime Wave” in 2023, which established Codefendants in a format of structured songs that remain open to features and narrative bridges: from slow ballads and ska- or alternative-rock-tinged numbers to tracks that lean more directly toward rap. In studio and on stage, Codefendants plays on the complementary voices of Ceschi Ramos and Sam King, while Fat Mike’s punk grounding informs the overall aesthetic, connecting the project to independent punk rock networks as well as to DIY hip hop communities across North America.