The Trajectory of Maddness - Eugene Hip Hop artist/Producer Cmadd

How Eugene Hip Hop Artist and Producer Cmadd is building momentum by staying in motion.

Images and Words by Nick Johnson

Eugene isn’t the kind of city people point to when they talk about hip-hop. It doesn’t have a defining sound, a national co-sign, or a built-in narrative the way places like the Bay, Atlanta, or New York do. But maybe that’s exactly why Cmadd stands out. His music feels like someone creating their own oxygen in a room no one else remembered to ventilate.

Born Caleb Madden in New Jersey and raised in Oregon, Eugene hip hop artist and producer Cmadd started like most kids who fell in love with rap without knowing how to break into it: recording songs straight through a phone speaker and throwing them on SoundCloud. No studio, no equipment, no plan. Just instinct. By the time he met future collaborator RooX in a college music theory class, Cmadd already had the fire lit; being surrounded by the right peers just turned it into something larger.

RooX had moved to Oregon from Arizona, where his collective Dirtsquad originated. When the two linked up, it made sense for Cmadd to join the team, a move that gave both sides new creative momentum. The group’s early records still carry Cmadd’s fingerprints: his production, his writing, his approach to making something raw feel polished without losing the edge.

Building in Public

Part of what makes Cmadd compelling is that he never hid the grind. His catalog reads like a timeline of someone teaching himself in real time. From early SoundCloud uploads and collaborative projects, to his first solo statement Different Waves, all the way to the lean, refined 2025 release Maddness - each one shows the same evolution: better engineering, sharper writing, more confidence, and a willingness to be painfully honest about the things most artists try to keep off the record.

Where some local artists drop one EP and vanish into the ether, Cmadd kept releasing, refining, and expanding. You get the sense he’s building a world brick by brick - one he doesn’t want to leave, even if it means doing the heavy lifting alone.

The Sound of a Mind Trying to Outrun Itself

On paper, Cmadd is a hip-hop artist. But the emotion that lives inside his records leans into something closer to melodic introspection: crisp drums, layered vocals, hooks that feel like internal monologues said out loud. His tracks often sound like someone pacing around a room at 3 A.M., replaying every decision that got him here.

Albums like Therapy blur the line between confessional storytelling and the kind of rap that knocks in a car with the windows down. He can talk his talk about ambition, pressure, loyalty and betrayal but he’s just as comfortable exploring the fear beneath the bravado. Even the titles tell you what he’s working through: “Righteous,” “Chaos,” “Runaway,” “Break Down Walls.

A Quiet City, A Loud Vision

Eugene isn’t known for rap, but Cmadd doesn’t seem bothered by that. If anything, the lack of a blueprint gives him more room to carve out a lane.

For a stretch, he operated out of 4th Quarter Studios, one of Eugene’s independent hubs for artists building without traditional label support. Those sessions helped shape a long run of releases and collaborations. The studio may be gone now, but the work done there still echoes in his catalog.

These days, Cmadd keeps things more focused and intentional. He’s built a home studio, works primarily with a tight circle of artists and producers he genuinely connects with, and takes on side projects only when they creatively make sense. It’s less about running a business and more about protecting the energy that keeps the music honest. Local pressure and regional limitations haven’t slowed him down. The opposite seems true: the smaller the scene, the more he feels compelled to become his own movement

A Real Artist in a No-Shortcut Era

What I find striking about CMADD is his durability. He releases like someone who knows the algorithm isn’t going to save him. Like someone who understands that the only long-term strategy that works is consistency. He grows his audience the hard way: singles, albums, collaborations, live performances, constant output.

On Spotify, his numbers shift like everyone else’s in the independent space: trending up when he releases heavy, plateauing between drops. But the more important metric is trajectory. Cmadd has built a catalog deep enough to form its own ecosystem, and a fan base loyal enough to follow him project after project.

The Future Sounds Like Work

Cmadd is in that rare lane where confidence and vulnerability don’t cancel each other out. He talks openly about mental health, pressure, and the weight of expectation, but he also moves like someone who expects to outwork everyone in his radius.

He’s stepped into podcast conversations, collaborations outside his circle, and a more forward-facing version of himself: less anonymous, more intentional. You can feel the groundwork being laid for whatever comes next: bigger shows, bigger features, bigger records.

He’s not trying to be the “biggest rapper in Eugene.” He’s trying to be one of the artists Eugene points to when the question comes up: “Who came out of here and really built something real?”

And right now, CMADD is making a strong case.

Cmadd - photographed by Nick Johnson

Check out Cmadd's latest release "Jerry Jones" on youtube:

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Cmadd on Spotify:

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