Worth Hearing This Week: Momma by TOP NINJA, a Solo Hip-Hop Story Between Two Busy Years
Worth Hearing This Week: Momma by TOP NINJA, a Solo Hip-Hop Story Between Two Busy Years
A 2025 Hip-Hop Single About Childhood Poverty Sits at the Turn of TOP NINJA’s Catalogue
Clearwater, Florida rapper TOP NINJA released Momma on 12 July 2025. It is a hip-hop single about growing up poor, with a mother who hustled in the streets to provide. It earns a first listen this week because of how it arrived: alone. No other TOP NINJA release came out for about half a year on either side.
TOP NINJA’s music is in the playlist below, Momma included. Every article about the rapper is gathered on TOP NINJA’s artist profile. Momma came to this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news titles. Listen while you read the rest.
Before Momma, a Catalogue That Often Arrived Several Singles at a Time
TOP NINJA usually moves fast, which is why that gap stands out. First came A1, in March 2019. Four more followed in 2022, from Dolla Fo’ Dolla Challenge (Remix) in April to Heavyweight in December. War, with BELLY FONZARELLI, then arrived in June 2023.
Then 2024 became the busiest year yet, with nine singles. Forbes List with King Connector and Taco Bell opened January a week apart. Block Colder followed in April, and the rest came in bursts. ForeignDream and AssassinsCreed landed together on 12 November. On 4 December came four at once: Trauma, Grind Freestyle, Stories of the Drip and Wats the Matter Girl Freestyle.
Inspire, made with Spthegz, opened 2025 on 9 January. After that TOP NINJA went quiet for six months, until Momma.
In Momma, TOP NINJA Puts Their Mother at the Centre of a Hip-Hop Story About Empty Bowls and Ambition
The chorus opens on the question the whole song turns on. If the mother was bringing money in, why was there so little at home? The answer starts with what was on the table, “potato, corn and cabbage,” in the song’s own words. Cheap coats also let in the cold, and siblings fight.
The first verse stays with the details. There is heat from the stove, empty bowls and dirty clothes. The mother is rarely home. A stolen coat sits in there too, the kind of choice poverty forces early. So does one slice of bread split between several people.
What lifts the song is the second verse. The mother becomes a leader who came from nothing. Her survival turns into TOP NINJA’s own plan: keep the lessons, leave the mistakes behind. By the close the talk is of building an empire, counting blessings and rising from the ashes.
The credits keep the circle small. TOP NINJA wrote Momma under their own name, Leon Bodden. Spotify lists that name as composer, lyricist, MC and voice. KAREGI produced the track and is credited on drum machine. So the song is the work of two people: the rapper telling the story and the producer behind the beat.
Where Momma Sits Among Hip-Hop Songs Written to a Mother
Hip-hop has a long shelf of songs written to a mother, and Momma belongs on it. Ghostface Killah set the poverty version of that story in 1996 with All That I Got Is You. It was his first solo single and the lead single from Ironman. RZA produced it, with Mary J. Blige on the hook. Kanye West, meanwhile, wrote Hey Mama in 2000. He released it on Late Registration in 2005 as a tribute to his mother, Donda West.
Momma sits closer to Ghostface than to Kanye. It is gritty about the hunger first and grateful second, and it never pretends the hard years were simple.
After Momma, TOP NINJA Brought in Hell Rell, MARCUS and Other Guests Across Late 2025 and 2026
The quiet ended in December. On 23 December 2025 TOP NINJA put out a Hell Rell remix of #WEDIFFERENT. 1970 followed three days later.
Then, in 2026, the bursts returned. Scared 2 Fail, with Otaeo321, arrived on 30 January. Next, 13 February brought four singles on one day. They were #Saveme with MARCUS, Kingdom of Heaven with Sainz on 5th, Desperado and Maybe. Later in the year Hell Rell came back, on Birds eye in August and Im Sorry in September.
That makes eight singles so far in 2026, and five of them are shared with other artists. Of all those guests, Hell Rell is the one who keeps returning, with three TOP NINJA releases since Momma. As a result, the solo story of 2025 now reads as a turning point. One voice told it alone, and a run of shared records followed.
For new listeners, the order is simple. Start with Momma for the story, then play Birds eye to hear the Hell Rell pairing that came after it.
Who Momma by TOP NINJA Is For
This single is for listeners who want hip-hop that tells a whole story in one song. It covers the hunger, the absence and the plan that came out of both. It also suits anyone with a playlist of songs written to a mother, next to the Ghostface and Kanye records above.
MusicDrops.News’s curator team: “Momma never turns the mother into a villain or a saint. It gives her the empty bowls and the leadership in the same three minutes. That balance is what makes it worth your first listen.”
Stream Momma in the player above. Then follow TOP NINJA on Spotify, Apple Music, Instagram, Facebook, X and the YouTube channel.
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