TOP NINJA and Hell Rell Take the Long Way to Birds Eye From Terrace Avenue
The Hempstead Rapper’s Second Single with Hell Rell Looks Down From the Top
TOP NINJA wrote Birds Eye from two places at once. One is the heights and Terrace Avenue in Hempstead, where the Long Island rapper grew up. The other is the top of the world, where the song says they stand now. Released on 29 August 2026, the 2:46 single features Hell Rell, the New York hip-hop veteran who first came up on The Diplomats’ records in the mid-2000s.
TOP NINJA has Birds Eye in the NewMusic.News playlist below, next to other hip-hop picks, and every feature so far sits on the TOP NINJA artist profile. The single came to this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news sites. Hit play, then keep reading for the story behind the view.
Why A Hempstead Independent And A Diplomats Veteran Keep Returning To The Booth Together
The moment around this record is a working relationship, not a single favour. TOP NINJA and Hell Rell first shared a track on the #WEDIFFERENT remix, released on 23 December 2025. Birds Eye followed eight months later. Then Im Sorry, a third song credited to both of them, arrived on 25 September 2026. Three releases in under ten months is a pattern, and it changes how Birds Eye reads.
In addition, Hell Rell brings a long history to that pattern. The rapper first appeared on the Freestyle Friday segment of BET’s 106 & Park around 2001. Between 2004 and 2006, Hell Rell featured on records by The Diplomats, the Harlem crew around Cam’ron and Jim Jones. Then, in 2007, the debut album For the Hell of It reached No. 5 on both the Billboard Top Independent Albums and Top Rap Albums charts. So a rapper with that background does not return to the same independent artist three times by accident.
The TOP NINJA Catalogue and the Long Island Map
TOP NINJA, meanwhile, has been building a catalogue for some time. Block Colder came out in April 2024, Momma in July 2025 and 1970 in December 2025. The artist’s own site sells a hat named after Momma, and in October 2026 it announced a remix of 1970 with Benny the Butcher. The same site is also home to Ninjas Worldwide, a boxing and wrestling club.
At the same time, Long Island gives all of this a deeper frame. Public Enemy came together there in the 1980s, Rakim grew up in Wyandanch, De La Soul came out of Amityville and EPMD out of Brentwood. Hempstead is part of that map. So when a Hempstead rapper builds a run of songs with a Diplomats veteran, it continues a long conversation between Long Island and the city.
What Birds Eye Answers About Terrace Avenue, The Heights And The View From The Top
The Single Itself
Birds Eye is short and direct. It runs 2:46, carries an explicit tag and keeps the focus on hard-hitting bars over a cinematic beat. In that short space, the song spends its time on the story it came to tell.
Specifically, that story moves between two heights. The first is the street: growing up on the heights and on Terrace Avenue, with the grit of survival that comes with it. The second, by contrast, is the view from above, which gives the song its title. The writing keeps the two side by side, so the listener hears where TOP NINJA started and where they stand in the same breath.
Hell Rell’s presence matters to that contrast. Hell Rell’s own records come from the Dipset era of New York street rap, and that voice on the track adds the weight of someone who has already made the climb once. As a result, the feature reads as a link between two generations of East Coast rap rather than a guest spot.
What the Song Answers for TOP NINJA
Every song built on a “then and now” story has to answer one question: how far is the top from where you started? Birds Eye answers it with distance and clarity. From above, Terrace Avenue looks smaller, but it also looks clearer. The song does not pretend the start was easy, and it does not pretend the view erases it.
Therefore, it fits listeners who like East Coast hip-hop with real places in the lyrics. It suits fans of gritty storytelling, followers of Hell Rell’s catalogue and anyone who tracks independent rap from Long Island. For new listeners, it is also the right way in, because it sits in the middle of the three Hell Rell collaborations and points both backwards and forwards.
From the NewMusic.News curator team: “Three songs together in under ten months is the detail to hold onto. One feature is a favour. A run like this is a working partnership, and Birds Eye is its middle chapter, which is why it is the best place to start.”
You can stream Birds Eye in the Spotify player above or on Apple Music. To follow the artist, TOP NINJA is on Spotify and Apple Music, with videos on the YouTube channel.
For updates between releases, TOP NINJA posts on Instagram, Facebook and X. The official site carries the music, the merch and the news.
