Rino Ibanez, known professionally as Ack Ibanez, is a UK-based hip hop artist/producer from Dipolog City, Philippines. His style of low fidelity hip hop and night-time nods hypnotizes listeners. In 2007, he co-founded the collective/independent record label Rebel Doggs Records and signed a distribution deal with Warner Music Philippines in 2020.
Musical Career
In 2007, he released his first mixtape “Dead is ill” with the first single Ganjah, a collaborative track with Nopetsallowed which began the formation of the Rebel Doggs collective. Shortly a year after his first mixtape, Ack released “The Push”.
Throughout the years after his second mixtape, Ack stayed behind the scenes and mainly focused on music production, gathering influences on different genres like Lo-Fi, Vaporwave and different subgenres of Hip-Hop.
In April 2019, after a long hiatus, Ack released the lo-fi boombap instrumental single “Weekend Warrior”. The track gained the attention of its peers and playlist curators alike. Weekend Warrior currently sits in the Top 50 of 4.5k playlists worldwide.
In June 2019, he released the lo-fi hip-hop, retrowave inspired 9 track LP, Vintage Soul Eternal Tsunami.
Shortly after his first LP and a few other singles, In November 2019, he released Blap Season, a collaborative EP with fellow labelmate and Rebel Doggs co-founder Hero Tunguia. The EP has features from artists such as Raz, Dave De La Cruz to name a few.
In December 2019, he released the nostalgia sounding instrumental LP “Sleeping with the Fishes”. The album automatically became a favorite to lo-fi producers and artists alike with the tracks being used as background music for documentaries and vlogs.
In July 2020, Ack released the lo-fi hip-hop album, Chillthaf*kout, as a collaborative LP with Raz.
On November 2020, as part of the Rebel Doggs roster, Ack Ibanez signed a deal with Warner Music Philippines.