Marcel Allen has been played on NTS in shows including You'll Soon Know w/ Tim Parker, featured first on 12 May 2022. Songs played include 4evastackin.

Marcel Allen has been creating music since he was seven years old. Originally from Freeport — a village in the town of Hempstead, Long Island — the 25-year-old rapper has fond memories of growing up as an only child less than two hours away from Manhattan.

Allen, who is 6’4’’, was an athlete and he played sports like football and baseball during his adolescent years. But his main focus was basketball, getting invited to camps and even going to basketball camp with Kyrie Irving. By the time Allen stopped playing basketball at Freeport High School he began tapping more into his creative side. He started exploring his passion for streetwear, art, photographer, sneakers, and, of course, music.

His earliest memories with music consisted of attending studio sessions with his father who was an aspiring rapper when Allen was a kid. Since his father was also a driver for G-Unit, he recalls listening to mixtapes early. These early brushes with the industry left an indelible mark on him.

As he grew older the blog era led him to discover internet darlings like Wiz Khalifa, Big Sean, and Wale. During our conversation, he mentions he was largely inspired by this era of hip-hop due to the quality of the mixtapes and loosies rappers released back then. The distinct sound that led to the mainstream success of the aforementioned artists inspires the lyrically driven cuts he’s been releasing independently since 2018.

In the earliest stages of his career he realized he enjoyed recording music in Soho. The creative community there pushed him to continue exploring his sound. Through his traveling back and forth from Freeport, he was able to meet and cultivate relationships with multihyphenates including filmmaker Christian Jones and multimedia artist Ant Blue Jr.

After a period of releasing singles, his debut album Ebony Goddess was released on April 6, 2022 via Bandcamp (and April 13 on other digital platforms), and was entirely produced by Thelonious Martin and Jacob Rochester.