Talilo Marfil is a Filipino American hip-hop artist and cultural practitioner whose work moves between ancestral memory and contemporary struggle, between islands and cities, between survival and collective belonging.

Born in the Philippines and raised in the United States, Talilo found hip-hop not simply as music, but as a language for understanding displacement, identity, and history. For him, hip-hop became a way to remember what migration tried to erase and to transform personal struggle into shared story.

His creative practice bridges Indigenous Filipino heritage and diasporic experience through music, film, and community-based projects. Talilo has collaborated with Apo Whang-od, the national living treasure of the Philippines, in the music video Waves; worked with hip-hop icon Tech N9ne through Outside the Frame and Strange Music; and developed cultural collaborations with artists such as Moro Beats and Ruby Ibarra. Across these projects, he explores hip-hop as both artistic expression and living archive.

Beyond music, Talilo builds spaces where youth are not just participants in culture, but co-authors of it. As co-founder of Ascending Flow and founder of Peer Tribe Foundation, he develops programs that support justice-impacted youth through creative practice. His initiatives—including Keys Beats Bars and the mobile Hip-Hop School Bus—bring recording tools, mentorship, and performance opportunities directly into communities often excluded from artistic resources.

For Talilo, hip-hop is not only sound, but survival, memory, and responsibility.

“Hip-hop helped me survive—but Kapwa taught me I was never surviving alone.”