Damaged Thoughts

Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2025

Bay Swag

Bay Swag has tangentially been related to the rap game since he was a young boy, but his career took off in earnest in 2024 when he was featured on Cash Cobain’s New York City takeover hit, “Fisherrr.” Hip-hop devotees will also know Bay from another source: His father is Lloyd “Bay Lloyd” McKenzie, a legendary New York rap figure who has been incarcerated since 2017. It was about this time that his son began rapping, and on Bay Swag’s 2025 LP, Damaged Thoughts, he goes about forging his own identity while still paying homage to the person he most wishes was by his side. On the Meek Mill-assisted “Seventeen,” Swag quickly establishes the way he operates in the game, spitting, “I don’t just think for self, I put on the whole damn team.” Elsewhere, the Queens native continues to help pioneer the sexy drill subgenre he helped galvanize, like on “Billie Jean,” which features a link-up with fellow New York mainstay Sheff G.