Swagger Dagger: Valley Stream's Own Is Pouring Everything Into His Third Album and He Means That Literally

Valley Stream, New York produced a lot of things. Swagger Dagger is one of the more interesting ones.

He is 29 years old, has been rapping since high school, did not drop his first record until 2020 and is now sitting at the doorstep of his third album with the kind of gratitude and hunger that only comes from someone who genuinely understands how long the road has been and how much further it still goes.

But before any of that. Before the albums, the collaborations, the journey. There was a music teacher in elementary school who changed everything.

The woman who started it all

Swagger Dagger does not credit his inspiration to a famous rapper or a defining moment in pop culture. He credits his elementary school music teacher. A woman who took a wide-eyed kid and taught him everything. Writing. Recording. Rhythm. The foundational building blocks of an artist that most people spend years and thousands of dollars trying to learn later in life.

He was her apprentice without the title. Absorbing everything she had to give and carrying it forward into a career she probably had more to do with than she ever knew.

"After God, she is the reason I am here," he says.

That kind of specific, personal gratitude says everything about who Swagger Dagger is as a person and why the music he makes tends to hit the way it does. He does not take any of this for granted. Not for a single second.

Because It Was Nothing and what that title actually carries

His third album is called "Because It Was Nothing" and the name deserves more than a passing mention.

He put blood, sweat, tears, heart and soul into this project. That is not a press release phrase. That is a description of what the recording process actually looked like for him. A project that truly means something to the person making it always sounds different from one that was assembled to meet a deadline or satisfy a rollout schedule. "Because It Was Nothing" falls firmly in the first category.

The title itself carries a weight that listeners will feel before they even press play. And the music behind it is built to deliver on whatever that title promises.

"I put nothing but my blood, sweat, tears, heart and soul in this album. It truly means a lot to me."

Two collaborations and two completely different experiences

The process of making this album brought Swagger Dagger into the studio with two of his closest people and both experiences left a mark in very different ways.

The collaboration with Mute The Messiah on "Parkour In Roku City" was legendary in his own words. Mute is a genius. His artistry operates on another level consistently. Getting that combination of brotherhood and raw talent into a single record is the kind of thing that does not happen by accident.

Then there was Alex Davis and "Hell Yeah Damn Right," the collaboration that pushed him hardest. Alex is one of his best friends and one of the most talented people he works with and he challenged Swagger Dagger to take his pen somewhere it had not been before. That kind of creative pressure from someone you trust completely produces something different from any other kind of session. The discomfort shows up in the music as growth and that growth is audible.

Since high school to here

He was rapping in high school. He did not put music out until 2020. The gap between those two things is not a gap at all. It is preparation. Years of developing a voice, a point of view and a reason to make music that goes beyond wanting to be famous.

Two albums in and a third on the way. The gratitude is real. The hunger is real. And the belief that the best is still coming is not wishful thinking from someone who just started. It is a conviction from an artist who has been building this since a music teacher in Valley Stream, New York first handed him a pen and told him what to do with it.

"Because It Was Nothing" is coming. And everything after it is coming too.

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