Chicago has never been a city that allows its artists to fake the experience. The music either carries the weight of where you come from, or it doesn’t. East Side Chicago’s own Cella Blanco has built The Struggle Continues around that very idea—turning survival, loyalty, pressure and neighborhood reality into an expanding body of work that feels less like a collection of projects and more like chapters from the same unfinished story.
Across The Struggle Continues Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 2.5 and Vol. 3, Cella Blanco has continued to carve out his own corner of Chicago street music without sanding down its edges. The series moves with the unpredictability of the environment that inspired it: raw records, different voices, changing production and a revolving cast of collaborators, all tied together by Blanco’s perspective.
And the title says everything.
The struggle continues.
Not ended. Not conquered. Not dressed up for consumption. Continues.
That mentality runs through the music.
The series brings together a host of artists, including ESC Deez and members of the Filthy Gwuap Cartel, giving the records the chemistry of a crew rather than a collection of disconnected features. Instead of guests simply dropping verses and disappearing, the collaborations help build a larger world around Cella Blanco and the sound coming from his section of the city.
Behind the boards, the series has developed an equally varied production identity, with music from Uncle JoNH III, Proof On Da Track, Montana Da Great and others. That rotation gives The Struggle Continues room to breathe. One record can feel grimy and claustrophobic; another can knock with the urgency of Chicago pavement underneath it. There isn’t one polished formula holding everything together—the consistency comes from the atmosphere.
“Spin Back” Brings Vol. 2 to the Screen
One of the records pushing that world beyond the audio is “Spin Back,” featuring ESC Deez, taken from The Struggle Continues Vol. 2.
The collaboration puts Cella Blanco and ESC Deez together for a record that fits naturally inside the DNA of the series. “Spin Back” isn’t disconnected from the larger story surrounding The Struggle Continues; it feels like another scene from it.
Now accompanied by a music video, the record gives listeners a visual entry point into the movement surrounding Cella Blanco and his collaborators.
But the bigger story is the catalog being assembled around it.
In an era where artists are constantly encouraged to abandon one idea for the next trend, Cella Blanco has done the opposite. He keeps returning to The Struggle Continues, adding new volumes, new collaborators, new production and new pieces of the story.
That repetition isn’t stagnation. Most of the visuals shot by the legendary Suave of MidwestSlang Chicago .
It’s documentation.
Each installment becomes another timestamp—another look at the circumstances, relationships, ambition and mentality surrounding an East Side Chicago artist determined to keep recording the story while he’s still living it.
From the chemistry with ESC Deez and the Filthy Gwuap Cartel to production supplied by Uncle JoNH III, Proof On Da Track, Montana Da Great and more, The Struggle Continues is steadily becoming bigger than any individual song.
It’s a series built around a simple reality that Chicago understands better than most:
You survive one chapter.
Then the next one starts.
Cella Blanco’s story is still being written.
Follow @cellablanco for new music, videos and the next chapter of The Struggle Continues.
