THE COMEBACK KID
There’s something about being locked in a room, a microphone, and nowhere to hide.
Ernesto Cortez knows this better than most. After nearly two years away from the Ultimate Rap League stage, the Brooklyn lyricist stepped back into the “lion’s den” not tentatively, not cautiously, but with the quiet confidence of a man who never really left.
“I never stopped writing,” Cortez tells me, settled into our conversation with the ease of someone who’s done this a thousand times. “It just always has to fit for the time being. If I’m not battling, then I’m making music or I’m doing something. My pen is always moving.”
That’s the thing about Cortez that casual fans might miss. While battle rap has evolved into a spectacle of angles and performances, he’s remained rooted in something more fundamental: the craft itself. His return battle against Fans at URL’s Redemption event wasn’t just a comeback, it was a statement.
“The outside event, small room, locked in, lyricism, flows, showcasing high-level rapping,” he describes, and you can hear the hunger still in his voice. “People always know me for that.”
June 30th Cortez returns to URL against Hansel.
THE RICO METHOD
When I ask about his preparation process, Cortez doesn’t talk about memorization techniques or breathing exercises. He talks about federal indictments.
“Like how when the feds are building a RICO case and they got a picture and then they got everything around it,” he explains. “I’ll put ‘Fans’ and then I’ll put everything related to him and everything going on in the world, and I’ll start trying to make a story or build an angle like that.”
It’s this forensic approach that separates the journeymen from the artists. Cortez isn’t just writing rounds; he’s constructing cases. And he’s keeping evidence in his back pocket for the cross-examination.
“Definitely,” he says when I ask if he keeps loose rebuttals tucked away. “I’ll have my three rounds written and then four-bar setups, random stuff. If I think he might say something, I’ll have those in a tuck. Some things can’t look planned—they’ve got to look effortless.”
That’s wisdom earned through experience. Cortez has been doing this long enough to understand that battle rap isn’t just about what you say. It’s about when you say it, how you say it, and making the audience believe you thought of it right there.
BEYOND THE BATTLE
What’s often lost in the highlight-reel culture of battle rap is that many of its biggest names can’t actually make good music. Cortez is the exception, not the rule.
During his hiatus from battling, he wasn’t idle. Projects like Filthy Karma and the Resolutions series earned him respect beyond the culture, features from Method Man, Inspectah Deck, 38 Spesh, and love from the entire Griselda camp.
“Those last three projects really excelled me to where musically as an artist I was respected,” he says. “Now it’s more of a game plan. People know: okay, Cortez got the drug talk, the punchlines, the flows, the street shit. But now I’m doing battles with a purpose: to release new music.”
This synergy isn’t accidental. Cortez has been building relationships for nearly two decades, treating every connection as something to nurture rather than use.
“I’ve always maintained good relationships,” he explains. “Look at you and I, we might be ten years plus. I battled in Denver in 2014, 2015. But why did I stay out there? I did three features that weekend after my battle. I was never just going to be a battle rapper.”
SANDRA’S SON
The upcoming album Sandra’s Son represents something deeper—a pivot toward vulnerability that fans haven’t seen before.
“This is much more personable,” Cortez says, his tone shifting. “I’m talking about real life stuff more than the braggadocious dope-selling New York boom bap shit. I’m getting into mature topics: fatherhood, taking care of family, loyalty, losing friends, losing family members, people being sick, and how do you balance it through it all.”
The title is an ode to his mother, Sandra, a cancer survivor who gave him more than life, she gave him his blueprint for resilience.
“Your whole career, you’re climbing, and then you get to the top of the hill. Some people look at that as decline. I look at it like, no, now you’re past the storms. The skies are clearing up. Things could have went different for me. I could have been in the streets, in jail, all that. But I’m becoming more of a man now.”
The production is entirely in-house, handled by Mike G, Dr. Bloom, and Neil—musicians Cortez trusts to push him beyond his comfort zone. No boom bap nostalgia here. No sampled loops. Just chords, notes, and a rapper finding new pockets.
“It’s new territory,” he admits. “People are going to say, ‘I never heard Cortez rap on this type of production before.’ And at the same time, they’ve never had somebody of my caliber rapping this way. It’s a great marriage.”
ON THE STATE OF THINGS
Naturally, our conversation drifts to the broader ecosystem. Jay-Z’s controversial comments about battle rap? Cortez has thoughts; but not the ones you might expect.
“I didn’t think it was a big thing,” he says flatly. “I think people tried to take it as if he was talking about battle rap the actual sport. No. He was talking about his experience with Nas, and then Drake and Kendrick, where it spilled out to lawsuits, exposure, family members, street shit. He was reflecting. He said he doesn’t want to be that guy anymore because he understands that back then he had a different mentality.”
It’s a measured take from someone who’s lived through hip-hop’s ugliest moments. Cortez remembers the Biggie-Pac era not as nostalgia but as warning.
“A lot of people don’t know a lot of lives were lost,” he says quietly. “There were gang wars in Cali behind those deaths.”
As for the oversaturation of both battle rappers and musicians in general? He doesn’t mince words.
“Everybody buys a mic and a version of ProTools and records in their crib, but they don’t understand what a mix and master is, what layers are, ad-libs. Nothing. They all think they’re Jay-Z where they could just rap off the top. Bro, you’re bugging. You gotta take this shit way more serious.”
WHAT’S NEXT
Cortez isn’t slowing down. A battle against RX at Geechi Gotti’s charity event in California is on the horizon—”just us coming together as a community”—and Sandra’s Son is aiming for a summer release, ideally on his mother’s birthday July 26th.
When I ask him to describe one of his favorite joints on the album, he mentions “Myrtle and Broadway” and “Burn Forever.”
“It’s me just being very, very high-level rapping, but also touching topics people haven’t heard from me. I don’t want to give too much away because I really want this thing to be a surprise. But when you hear it, you’ll understand: this is a different Cortez. He’s been through some shit, and he’s venting on these records.”
After nearly twenty years in the game, through battles, albums, features, and all the noise in between, Cortez is still here, still writing, still spitting and somewhere in Brooklyn, his mother Sandra is watching her son clear the storms.
The skies, indeed, are clearing up.
Sandra’s Son drops summer 2026 on all streaming platforms. Catch Cortez’s return battle against Fans on the URL app.
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