“It was over – I was dead,” declared rapper Kane Mayfield. He was speaking from his home in what he calls “diet Florida” (in Georgia, just across the border). “You see the date?” he asked me, showing me a Vice article from 2015. “I was dead.”

At the time, Mayfield had just put out his debut record The Return of Rap, which “deftly [mixes] uproarious punchlines and storytelling verses with social commentary inspired by imprisoned civil rights activist H. Rap Brown,” as the article attests. And he was making good money – eight grand a night, he told me. 

Still, he walked away from music – and he stayed away for six years. The former financial advisor went to sell timeshares in Florida, and then he moved to Mexico. When DJ J-Scrilla – better known in web3 circles as the digital artist Rare Scrilla – called him and told him about Bitcoin, he and his wife had just lost a child, and he was at his nadir. 

“Why don't you try this,” Mayfield remembers Scrilla saying, “and I was like, you know what – what the fuck is the worst that can happen? I'm already in the worst part of my life.” 

Fast forward a few years and now Mayfield’s helping drive innovation in Bitcoin ordinals – unique assets inscribed onto tiny Bitcoin pieces called satoshis. In January, using ordinals, he released The Ides of March, a multi-artist, multidimensional experience that blends Bitcoin with hip hop, ancient Rome, the metaverse and a new on-chain sampler. It’s the latest proof that Mayfield is many things, and dead is not one of them.

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Back in 2015, Mayfield had just capped off a decade in Baltimore. The Long Island-native had become one of the most-established performers in the city’s hip-hop scene. He was playing festivals like SXSW and CMJ. He was touring with Scrilla and opening for rappers like Slick Rick.

“Why would you leave?” he remembers people asking. “And I go, because my parents are dead. And I don't want to do this anymore. And I miss having stuff. I like things. I was a stockbroker.”

“They're like, “nah, man, you love the people,” he continued. “And The Return of Rap was revolutionary – it's named after a Black Panther” (H. Rap Brown). “You wouldn't think that guy who thinks those thoughts is also this [guy who sells timeshares].

“But rap was the only place that I could tell the truth, which is funny because people go there to lie,” he added. “And NFTs was the place that I came to for justice, which is interesting because it's a bunch of rugs and scams.” 

In 2020, Mayfield called Scrilla to ask him where he could find their track, “On the Reels.” It was no longer on SoundCloud. “He goes, ‘oh yeah, I put it in a picture.’ That's how I understood what he said,” Mayfield recalls. “And I was like, ‘you put my song in a painting?’ And he's like, ‘yeah, kinda.’ You know the birthday cards that when you open them, they play music? That's what I thought he did.”

Scrilla, in fact, had made “On the Reels” a perk for the 21 people who purchased his painting, "Head Honey Badger In Charge," which he’d minted on the NFT marketplace Rarible. Anyone who held the token could unlock access.

Mayfield began to see the bigger picture and eventually dove headlong into Bitcoin. In 2023, he released his album Dust, which blended “the foundational elements of BTC with the rhythm and soul of hip hop.” 

He meant that literally. His partner RAD (aka Bitcoin Audio) – “who is technically the brains behind everything” – created a way to turn Bitcoin transaction hashes into audible signals. They took the raw sounds of the first 50 blocks sent from Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto to Hal Finney, transcribed them into “snares and high hats” and laced them throughout the record.

Around that time they also created Inscribed Audio, and built Samplerr, an interactive player that turns an ordinal into a 16-button sampler. ”I think unlockable content is dope. And it really didn’t exist for ordinals – not for real,” Mayfield said. “So we did unlockable content.”

It's reflective of Mayfield's belief in doing "something great for believers" rather than trying to convert everyone. On Mayfield’s SoundCloud profile, for instance, there’s only one track – “Dream Killers,” the one embedded in the 2015 Vice article – and his bio reads: “A lot of the songs that are / were here are for a limited time only. The new game is finding them. Some are rare.. and others have been sunk to the bottom of the ocean. You can always find them if you need them.”

Alas, I couldn’t – not until Mayfield sent me a secret link. And that’s by design. “Our vision is to skip DSPs [digital service providers, like Spotify] entirely and focus 100 percent of our efforts on the Bitcoin native community.”

The Ides of March extends that vision. It’s “your personal music creation station, disguised as a vinyl.” It’s a key to an ancient Rome-inspired Bitcoin world. And it’s unlocked via a collection of 2,100 ordinals – many of which include secret tracks and exclusive content.

Mayfield shared his screen to walk me through the project. “The super rare ones are Ghostface,” he said, referencing Wu-Tang rapper Ghostface Killah.

“I helped a little bit with promotion when he did his ordinal in 2024,” Mayfield said. Last March, Ghostface released new music and made it exclusive to holders of 10,000 ordinals. Notably, all the music was released CC0, or creative commons zero – the most liberal creative commons license, enabling creators to waive copyright and place creations in the public domain.

Mayfield showed me how the Samplerr worked, sampling a few tracks on the record – which features Scrilla, Shower Shoes, DJ Booman and Trash Lights as producers. And, in keeping with the Ghostface spirit, everything is CC0. “ I think copyrights are dumb,” Mayfield said. “Put it in a Heinz ketchup commercial, we don't care.”

There were other hip hop heavy hitters involved, too: Money B (Digital Underground), Ras Kass, Numskull (The Luniz) and Homeboy Sandman – as well as Metavoxels, who built the “Rome-inspired Bitcoin world.”

Mayfield walked me through their metaverse. In a forum-style layout, there are burning sconces, Corinthian columns, classical Roman porticos – the works. “This is actually ancient Roman graffiti,” Mayfield said, turning his character toward a wall. “We put a Pepe head on it because we're dickheads, but we lifted this off of historical sites.”

I couldn’t believe the depth of the experience: a multitude of historical references alongside irreverent memes, a few easter eggs – an entire mini-world that branched from the music. 

The potential sacrifice of this approach, though, is breadth – those uninitiated trying to listen and giving up because there’s only one track on SoundCloud. You can’t reach the depths if you can’t find the door. As of this writing, about three weeks after the project’s January 15 launch, just 205 of the 2,100 Ordinals have been sold. 

That said, we’ve never lived in a noisier digital environment. The world “gets real OnlyFans on you real quick,” as Mayfield put it. “You understand just how hard it is to fight in the attention economy when you ain't that entertaining,” he added. “You got a chick shooting flaming ping-pong balls out of her hoo-ha. And you're over here with your fucking poem! You better have some ravishing metaphors.” 

To his credit, Mayfield does. He continues to “deftly [mix] uproarious punchlines and storytelling verses with social commentary” – this time with a nod to the tech that’s enabling this “new game” of “finding [the songs].”

At the end of his song “2 Million,” Mayfield samples some podcast audio, highlighting a few choice comments from the speakers. “You put this out, we’ll give you $100 to fuck with your shit,” says one. “It ain’t for everybody, but there’s gonna be enough people that love your shit that will pay whatever you put the ticket at.” 

Another adds: “And I’m probably gonna make more money than if I put it on the DSP!”

Read more: Reo Cragun’s ‘More Intimate Arrangement’ With Web3 Music

And at .0015 BTC ($146.73 as of this writing) a pop, 205 sales is nothing to scoff it – it’s about $30,000, or the equivalent of about 2.7 million streams on Spotify. That’s an enticing proposition for dedicated artists who struggle to break through – and the web3 community has been particularly accommodating to those people, even rooting out bandwagon celebrities who peek in for a cash grab without investing in the surrounding culture.

“ For artists who come through the regular people door – the pleb door – we're better equipped than people who come through the VIP entrance,” Mayfield said. “[In web3] it’s flipped – the very important people are the plebs,” he emphasized, still showing me features of the metaverse. “Here’s a Julius Caesar Pepe with his hand out like he's proclamating. And then you got an ape and a Shiba dog dressed like Roman senators about to stab him in his back.” 

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The Ides of March, or Idus, is roughly the midpoint of March. It has roots in religious observances, but it’s most recognized as the day Julius Caesar was assassinated.

History points to 'three last straws' that led to his downfall. The second came in 44 BC, when Caesar dismissed two tribunes who removed a diadem from his statue. The plebs – who elected the tributes as their representation – saw it as an affront to their rights.

As some version of tribune, Mayfield feels the weight of responsibility to protect those rights. 

“Between you and I – I don't care, print it, it's true – I'm fucking devastated,” Mayfield said, frustrated that only nine percent of the ordinals have sold. “I feel terrible. I feel ashamed. I feel like I reached for something that wasn't my business or place to touch.

“And everyone around me is like, you have no right to feel that way,” he continued. “No one's doing those numbers. You want 200 pieces at a buck fifty? For music NFTs? In the middle of a Trump coin? On Bitcoin? On ordinals? Yeah, we're okay. Yeah, I aim for the stars, and when we just make it out of the atmosphere, I feel like a big loser. But that's my job. That's how my mind has to work.”

Mayfield may like “things” and “stuff” but he’s after something bigger here – to mold an alternative to the corporate greed and enshittification that beleaguers the DSPs. In the words of his muse, H. Rap Brown: "Revolution comes when human beings set out to correct decadent institutions." Mayfield knows that better than most.

“This is the most egotistical shit that I think I've ever said, but it takes guys like me,” he said. “You can't really hurt my feelings. I'm a failed struggle rapper. There's 10,000 guys like me and for us to eventually break through the atmosphere, we have to take a lot of arrows. You're going to die a thousand deaths.

“ Making a way is deeper than sales – making a way is about helping to preserve a side of this culture,” he continued. “Music is closer to fine art and should give the end user something a little bit more. It's not about flippers. Whoever gets [the art] last isn't a chump who should have bought low and sold high. Whoever gets it last is the person that should be the most rewarded. 

“So build something for that guy, keep walking forward – and don't die.”

lead image: Kane Mayfield