The notion of ‘keepin’ it real’ is a well-known trope in hip hop and is usually linked to self-expression and individual experience. In this paper, I examine how this trope plays out in an extremely violent context where hip hop artists compose tracks for others. Specifically I draw from empirical research in Mexico to analyse the emotion work involved in creating commissioned hip hop tracks for drug traffickers (in the subgenre known as narco rap). Commissioned narco rap composers must appear to be someone else; they must assume another’s subjectivity, another’s ontology. The most common songs commissioned are dedications and ‘rest in peace’ songs; the subjective position of both the living and the recently dead must be assumed. Potential notoriety and financial reward attracts rappers to writing narco rap, yet many rappers describe this output as irrelevant to their own self-expression, to their ‘real’ work. I explore how narco rappers deal with the ethical issues they face, and consider how we might analyse their involvement in promoting, representing and critiquing violence often contemporaneously.