On a recent Friday evening outside of D.C., musicians, videographers, managers, and invited guests mill around a brick house on a wooded lane in an otherwise quiet residential neighborhood. Drinks are flowing and blunts exchange hands.

Without an introduction, Noochie opens his front door in basketball shorts and a T-shirt, giving the impression that he just rolled out of bed but somehow managed to throw on glistening necklaces and dream up the perfect lyrics in time for his four-minute spot.

He proceeds to record a video with The Thunderboyz, a Maryland group that plays just about every genre. For nearly two hours, they run through takes of Noochie’s single, “Paradox,” a drum-heavy track with no hook — just line after line about the struggles of trying to stay focused while surrounded by bad influences. “Bars around me keep the bars from ‘round me,” he opens.

Noochie, born Antwon Vincent, started recording his “Front Porch Freestyles” in 2017 as a way to connect with fans. Back then, he admittedly didn’t put much thought into the iPhone-recorded videos. “I just went on my porch, put a speaker beside me, and rapped my ass off,” Noochie says.

But within the past six months, the series has taken on a new energy.

In March, the 28-year-old rapper dropped his first “Live from the Front Porch” video with Backyard Band, one of the city’s most recognizable go-go groups. (The video has racked up more than 400,000 views across platforms.)

The project, now produced by a professional film crew, has blossomed into a showcase of some of the best talent in the D.C. region while also elevating Noochie’s brand. He’s booked an impressive lineup of guest performers, including D.C. music luminaries Raheem DeVaughn, Fat Trel, Ms. Kim, Supa Trippa, Reesa Renee, and New Impressionz.

People are starting to take notice. Fans have likened the videos to NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, but with a raw appeal that feels edgier and more street-friendly. Noochie says he’s received messages from listeners in New York, Australia, and Germany. Even Snoop Dogg offered his stamp of approval: The OG recently reposted one of Noochie’s freestyles to his Instagram page with the caption, “Death Row wants you” — as in the legendary Death Row Records, which Snoop revived last year, wants to sign him.

After a decade of starts and stops, during which Noochie patiently waded through the turbulent waters of the rap industry, he’s finally caught his wave — and he’s got the city’s support.

“If you want the world behind you, you’ve gotta get your area behind you,” Noochie explains to DCist/WAMU during a phone interview before the Thunderboyz taping. “So, I just thought about, what’s the most D.C. shit I can do ever?”

Growing up in the studio

Part of Noochie’s confidence comes from the fact that he was raised around bonafide street rappers. His father, Roger “Boobe” Vincent Jr., was something of a D.C. rap pioneer. He founded OneWay Records in 2002 and put the area on the proverbial map with his group, Boobe and the Young Farmers, named after Barry Farms, the Southeast neighborhood where the supporting members were based. They released the 2003 record One Way Up, and Boobe made a name for himself as an independent artist who helped other regional talents get recognized. He reached the pinnacle of his career with the single “My Way,” featuring Raheem DeVaughn.

Boobe eventually shortened OneWay to OY Music Group. Noochie, the oldest of his five children, still proudly wears an “Oy Boyz” chain wherever he goes.

Noochie was born in Northern Virginia, but was raised between the family’s homes in Southeast D.C. and around the D.C. area. “I grew up in the studio,” Noochie says. “Wherever the studio was at, that’s where I was at.”

He learned his business acumen from watching his father be a “leader among leaders” and sat in on recording sessions where rappers turned real-life experiences into gritty verses about surviving the violent environment of D.C. in the 1980s and ’90s.

“He was just the little kid in the room that was soaking up everything,” says Ryan Adams, a producer and audio engineer who’s worked with Noochie and his dad for years. When Noochie turned 17, Boobe called Adams and told him his son was ready to step up to the mic.

“I was like, ‘Nooch raps?’” Adams says. At the ensuing recording sessions at Adams’ home studio, he was impressed by the high school senior’s poise and clear vision for what he wanted to accomplish in the booth.

But growing up the oldest of five — with a father who was chasing his dreams and a mother who worked long hours — forced Noochie to become “the third parent” and grow up fast, he says.

“I don’t feel like I got in this position by accident,” says Noochie. “There’s been a lot of choices I done had to make. A lot of sacrifices I had to make.”

He’s been faced with some of those tough choices within the past few years. In 2019, Boobe was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in a narcotics operation that distributed cocaine and heroin throughout the D.C. region, according to court documents.

Noochie doesn’t share much on the details of his father’s legal situation, other than to say, “It’s a dirty game, and I’m not a fan of it.” Specifically, he’s not in favor of mandatory minimum sentencing.

When Noochie speaks with his father on the phone, he shares career updates and news that will take his mind off being locked up. It’s clear the young rapper feels the weight of his dad’s legacy on his shoulders — or, in his own words: “That shit fucks with me. But I know what I’m doing this for.”

He adds plainly: “I’m where I’m at right now because of family, music, and street shit.”

A roundabout path to internet fame

Noochie’s also here because of hard work. In his teens and early 20s, he took a number of odd jobs — first at a “depressing” warehouse in Capitol Heights with older men who chain-smoked cigarettes, bought lottery tickets during lunch breaks, and watched life pass them by, as he tells it.

All the while, he worked nights as an audio engineer at his dad’s studio and boosted his skills with an audio mixing course at Cue Recording Studios in Falls Church. He’d record other rappers until around midnight and then record his own music until sunrise.

By 2016, Noochie had quit the warehouse job without much of a plan, but he soon got a call from Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs, the producer behind TLC’s No.1 hit “No Scrubs.” Noochie signed a production deal with Briggs and moved to Atlanta, where he learned the ins and outs of the industry. He’d record tracks with artists like Ludacris and Jazze Pha before hitting the famous Atlanta strip club Magic City, where they’d play the records loudly to get a sense of the clientele’s reactions — all this before Noochie was even old enough to drink, he says.

But before the year was through, he’d become disillusioned by the dirty side of the music business, the “manipulation” and “backdoor relationships,” he recalls. He got out of that deal and moved back home.

That disappointment didn’t stop him from releasing his debut album, 2016’s Product of the DMV, showcasing his lyrical abilities and production chops. He signed to Atlantic Records and drove cross-country with some of his crew to Los Angeles, where he recorded singles, attended the Grammy Awards, and had recording sessions with established producers like Dr. Dre. But he still wasn’t hitting his stride, career-wise, and ended the relationship with Atlantic amicably in 2019.

That’s right around the time Boobe got locked up. Someone needed to take over his nascent transportation business — the elder Vincent had contracts with companies like Amazon to deliver packages in the D.C. area, his lawyers told the judge in his case. So Noochie started driving his dad’s 26-foot box truck from Baltimore to D.C. to deliver packages.

“D.C. is the most stressful place to drive a 26-foot box truck in the middle of the night,” Noochie says. But he penned verses while driving the truck, “which is very fucking dangerous,” he adds. “I write the best when I’m driving.”

But the job was grueling — he lost more than 50 pounds from the stress and hard labor alone. When a friend called offering him the opportunity to work on the location team for major TV productions in D.C., Noochie quit driving the truck and opted for 4 a.m. call times instead, assisting on sets of the Kevin Durant-produced Apple TV series Swagger; Denzel Washington-directed film A Journal for Jordan; and HBO’s White House Plumbers.

Noochie says he’s soaked up a ton of info on film production, which has been useful for his Front Porch recordings.

“I just feel like I was bred for this. Like, this is what I’m supposed to do,” says Noochie. “So whatever comes with it, I just have to accept. This is the life I chose.”

Putting his house back on the map 

At Noochie’s recording with The Thunderboyz, the street lights come on as night falls and the evening turns into a jam session complete with Drake covers and freestyles. The neighbors don’t complain, one videographer explains, because the Vincents have owned their house longer than anybody on the block.

“My house has been popular my whole life. I’m not really surprised it’s back on the map,” Noochie says.

When Boobe went to prison, he wanted to sell the house to support the family, but Noochie pushed against that and they kept it. Noochie has since renovated the interior to be more welcoming for guest performers. There’s even a recording booth with a whiteboard featuring a long list of artists he plans to invite to the porch. (In case you’re wondering, these sessions aren’t open to the public — the rapper doesn’t want just anybody showing up to his front lawn.)

“He’s constantly upgrading equipment and his home,” the Thunderboyz’ bassist, who goes by Zay, tells DCist/WAMU via text messages. “I’ve had the opportunity to play locally with a lot of different people and artists, but it’s nothing like what’s going on over on that front porch.”

“He’s been overlooked, it seems, for a nice little minute,” Adams, the longtime producer with OY Music Group, says on a phone call. “It’s just full circle for the Front Porch to be happening organically. All he did was stick to the course.”

Noochie says he’s recorded hundreds of songs that are ready to be released — he’s just been waiting for this exact moment, when everyone’s paying attention, to release a collection of his favorites. (He can’t share many details, but says an album or mixtape is on the way.)

One such song is “Too Grown,” a sexy R&B collaboration he released with fellow D.C.-area native Alex Vaughn (whom DCist profiled last spring); hip-hop blog The Source named it the Track of the Week in August.

After traveling the country in pursuit of a dream, Noochie seems to be making the biggest impact from home, working with a hand-picked team as an independent artist. He knows all of this waiting and back and forth will pay off. He may be in the red on the Front Porch series as he tries to attract a major company to buy the rights or sponsor a nationwide tour, but he’s been in this position before, he says.

“That’s how I look at it,” he says. “This shit could always be worse. I could be driving that fucking truck.”