With a whack from his father’s hand, his mother fell to her knees. Talilo Marfil’s first memory was one of abuse.
Talilo was born in 1989 in the Philippines to a Filipino mother and an American soldier from the San Francisco Bay Area. Just two years later, following a shotgun marriage on the part of his parents that was more legal than romantic, he was separated from his older half-brother and migrated to the United States.
Brought to America with no English ability, Talilo’s mother was kept away from the local Filipino community – the only people who could communicate with her. After being confined in a house with rampant racism for five years, barely enough food to survive on, and no medical attention when it was needed, Talilo and his mother left, opting instead to live in a car for two years.
With the miserable marriage behind her, Talilo’s mother regained her footing. In Antioch, California, across the Bay from San Francisco, she found work and a new partner. But Talilo felt alienated from his Filipino roots. His mother, due to her own trauma of not understanding people and eager for her son to assimilate, pushed him to speak only English. For him, there was no Ilonggo, Tagalog, Visayan, or any tongue of the homeland, only relentless adaptation.
Without a culture nor a community he could relate to, Talilo searched for belonging in more dangerous places. Starting at the young age of seven, Talilo got into fights at school, drinking, stealing, engaging in sexual activities, and developing a deep infatuation with gang culture. Violence, rebellion, and gangs became his substitutes for family structure and cultural heritage. His new lifestyle offered a way to gain attention, even if it was negative. Hip hop, though, was the first to offer Talilo a true sense of identity. From Tupac to NWA to Bay Area rap, the language of struggle resonated with his own life experience.
Eventually, his mother’s boyfriend uprooted them to Albany, Oregon, for a job offer. This life quickly became unstable. The boyfriend cheated with the babysitter and became abusive to his mother. Talilo was beaten up for attempting to defend her. The mother-son pair left Albany, and moved to Klamath Falls.
For the three years that he lived in Klamath, from age 12 to 15, Talilo began to steal cars, smoke, and do drugs. His life fell into patterns of instability: constant movement between cities, abuse from father figures, and brief moments of structure followed by collapse. His mother fell in and out of unhealthy relationships while Talilo went from stealing cars to being expelled from school.
Christianity offered a temporary sense of community and discipline for Talilo. His mother met a man whose brother was a preacher in Beaverton, Oregon. At 15, Talilo was sent to live under his wing, as a last hope that he might change. Sure enough, he converted to Christianity and quit his vices. He became a young preacher and joined a support group for reformed individuals. However, this was a short-lived experience.
As a newly-integrated youth, Talilo made a serious mistake. He taught the other children he was living with about sex and was subsequently kicked out to the street. Angry and homeless, he gave up on religion and relapsed into his old habits of stealing and violence. In this position of desperation, Talilo turned to hip hop and poetry as a form of expression.
“God I pray for a better day, a better way
A way to release the pain inside my brain
A way to clean the chains and leave these stains”
With his pregnant girlfriend at the time, Talilo started rapping for change on the street. His songs, combined with the support of Portland’s Outside In youth homeless program, and the help of artists like Blacque Butterfly (Darlene Solomon Rogers) at the weekly guerilla theater in Portland, allowed Talilo to plant the seeds for his future career as a hip hop artist.
As he engaged in his poetry, Talilo fell in with different gangs, “Getting kicked out, I returned to my old ways. This time I had friends that were Crips and friends that were Sureños. And first I threw up Sureños and then I was throwing up Crip signs with the friends I made on the streets. So now I’m selling drugs and I’m robbing houses in Portland. And I’m doing this after changing my life with God, so it’s like a 180 to 180, a 360. In less than a year.”
With a child on the way, 16-year-old Talilo and his girlfriend received priority support from the youth shelter to find long-term stable housing. But even in their own apartment, life was not healthy. “The hard thing about being a homeless youth and being in the culture, is you wanna help people that helped you when you were on the streets so we got housing but I started bringing people, having them stay at the apartment, and it just didn’t become a good living situation. All the stress, all the instability, not having proper nutrition, our baby ended up passing away seven months along .” In other words, the child was stillborn.
As Talilo explained, “You can help a homeless youth or help someone that’s addicted to drugs get into housing, but they can still mess it up because they are still addicted or they still bring the culture with them. So in my apartment I brought my friends with me to live with us. And it messed the housing up more. On top of that, me and my girl were abusive to each other. I put hands on her in this relationship. I put holes in walls. I broke things all the time. I was very angry and a very depressed person at this time.”
The in-utero death of their baby only made their bad situation worse. “I remember after losing our son, things went downhill,” he said. “We lost our apartment…and then I remember going back to Klamath with my girlfriend at the time, and I ended up cheating on her, and I gave her an STD…From there, I went to California, started selling drugs out there. That’s when I got hooked on meth.”
From that point on, Talilo fell deeper into gang culture and paranoia from drugs. He had a momentary burst of motivation to reconnect with his roots and left for the Philippines for three months, but quickly fell in with the gangs there instead. He may have reconnected with the family he left behind, but arguments and fistfights quickly rose up between them.
Stuck in this cycle of self-destruction, Talilo made his way back to Portland years later. He reconnected with his gang connections and began to rob people and homes again. However, instead of being careful with his robberies, he no longer cared if he was caught or shot. After a long streak of robberies, assaults and thefts, Talilo was arrested and sent to Snake River Prison and the OSCI Prison for two years.
Prison brought some stability. Food was provided, shelter was guaranteed, and there was a genuine opportunity for Talilo to reform once again. There was, however, the prison structure itself. Prisons are demographically separated by race and gang affiliation, and prisoners must pick sides for protection. Talilo, as a Filipino, chose to be with the Asian Islanders.
Then Talilo’s mother visited him in prison and told him she had cancer. That was the motivation Talilo needed to push for reform. He swore to himself that he must fix his life and take care of his mother. As a gang member, Talilo had to communicate with his leader that if anything violent were to happen, he would not involve himself, as it would risk incurring additional charges and prison time. Separated from his gang obligations, he focused on self-help and education. He obtained certifications, took classes that improved his financial literacy, and practically eradicated drug and alcohol consumption.
Prison was also where Talilo’s hip hop career really took off. Through performance and persistence, the seeds he planted all those years ago sprang back up. The combination of stability, shelter, motivation, and expression allowed Talilo to move toward reform and a life away from gangs, crime, and violence. Of course, the movement was gradual.
Dedicated and ready to set his life straight, Talilo got his GED soon after his release, followed by enrollment in Portland Community College’s music program. He obtained transitional housing from Outside In, then secured a three-year studio apartment with the RISE Partnership. He bought a laptop, and learned GarageBand as well as digital music production. From Outside the Frame, a youth homeless program focused on film, he secured a camera and produced his first music video at age 21.
Since then, Talilo’s mother survived cancer twice and also reconnected with her Filipino roots after years abroad. Talilo started a new career as a youth mentor, a position offered by New Avenues For Youth. In the years since, he has been completely exonerated and his criminal record has been expunged.
He has also learned the true history of the Philippines and the impact of colonialism on the development of his identity and culture. As an international hip hop artist, Talilo has embraced his Filipino heritage in his lyrics, and seeks to eventually make music full-time. Talilo, now 36, is married with two children. He and his wife, Thy Tran, started a nonprofit called the Peer Tribe Foundation, that provides funding for transitional youth programs and peer support for teenagers.
Talilo’s journey was paved with detours and obstacles. By rediscovering his community and building a solid foundation for personal development, Talilo transformed survival into sustainability. His life demonstrates that reform is not a moment, but a process that requires structure, belonging, cultural grounding, and long-term support systems.
Through morally questionable and outright objectionable actions, his story highlights the difficulty of true change and the willpower it takes to dig oneself up from rock bottom and break out of the cycle of despair. Talilo’s story shows that relapse is not necessarily failure, but rather, a symptom of disconnection – and that healing is not perfect, but something that takes years to achieve. Talilo Marfil rebuilt what displacement and trauma had broken, turning a life shaped by instability, abuse, and violence into one rooted in community, leadership, and legacy.