East Tampa rapper Taleban Dooda releases his unfiltered new single “Major Pain.” Powerful and diaristic, the rising star’s new offering explores the challenges of putting on a brave face when the going gets tough. To mark the occasion, Dooda also drops the track’s accompanying video, which highlights his emotional delivery and magnetism. Watch it above.
Grounded by a driving beat and melodic guitar arrangement, “Major Pain” finds Dooda at his most vulnerable. “As a child I feel major pain, trying to hide my feelings behind a smile but I don’t feel the same,” the 20-year-old spits. “I know how you feel my friend, it hurt like hell I know.” The track culminates with the melancholy, brutally honest outro: “I can’t give out no love no more, no love no more, it’s all gone.”
The “Major Pain” video finds Dooda in a number of different locations, delivering the new track with poise and grace. Many of them — a backyard by a fence, leaning out of a backseat — amplify the song’s disarming, confessional quality. Although “Major Pain” hits where it hurts, it also demands to be played, again and again.
The new single arrives shortly after Dooda’s boisterous “Come After Me” and Step Wit A Passion mixtape, which dropped in late 2022 and boasted the hit single “If It Happen It Happen.” That project followed Dooda’s other 2022 release White Chalk & Yellow Tape, which is disarmingly cohesive from front to back. Prior to that, he dropped a series of singles including “Foreigns & Trackhawks,” “Sunset,” and “Call 100 Times.”
ABOUT TALEBAN DOODA:
Taleban Dooda has the type of voice you remember. The Tampa rapper’s piercing delivery on singles like “Spin” has always caught listeners by surprise. With a knack for delirious melodies and an unshakeable bravado, he’s used that sound to become a rising star with chaotic charm, penning spirited stories that shine thanks to his uniquely high-pitched vocals. Last year, the 20-year-old released his debut album, Fallen Angel. That record, as well as a string of solemn singles that includes 2021’s “Call 100 Times,” became a safe space for the grief he has nowhere else to put. Dooda’s journey to the top of Florida rap has had its twists and turns. In high school, he tried his hand at football until he realized his voice would probably take him further than sports could. He eventually dropped out and got to work, releasing the early hit “Dreams & Reality” in 2019. Fallen Angel, which followed in 2021, was crafted as a testimony to the course his life could’ve taken without music. It is a remembrance to the lives of lost loved ones, and a promise that their stories will be inspirations as he continues on his journey. Now with new music on the horizon and a record deal with Warner, fans can expect the rapper to experiment with sounds beyond the gritty beats that have become his signature. As his first viral song foreshadowed, Dooda’s reality is finally catching up to his dreams. “I just want everybody to see I ain’t here for a little bit,” he says. “I’m here for a long time. I ain’t done yet.”
