Meet Cochise, Platinum-Selling Rapper And Champion Of Rocket League’s Neon Nights Event

Music is an integral part to the Rocket League experience, with its evolving soundtrack of electronic beats accompanying players as they flip, drift, and boost their battlecars across the arena.

Never is this relationship more exciting than during Neon Nights, an in-game event that celebrates Rocket League’s music with an artist takeover. Last year, synth-pop artist Grimes launched Rocket League into the space age with dreamy, neon-soaked cosmetics, a limited-time game mode, and two player anthems featuring Grimes’ music.

Cochise, Rocket League’s 2023 Neon Nights artist.

Jesse Koch

This year’s featured artist is energetic rapper Cochise, whose passion for music and gaming make him a perfect fit for Neon Nights. The up-and-coming rapper had a stellar 2022, making the coveted XXL Freshman List and completing a sold-out international tour to support his latest album, The Inspection.

Neon Nights launches on January 25, and with it comes Cochise’s brand new, Rocket League-inspired track Long Way, Cochise cosmetics and player anthems, and the return of the Spike Rush and Speed Demon game modes.

I sat down with Cochise to discuss his passion for music and video games, and how the Rocket League Neon Nights event combines his love for both.

Max Thielmeyer: How does your love for video games influence your music?

Cochise: With my music I like to be very realistic and talk about realistic things. I like to be as transparent as I can and tell people about stuff that I like and do. And I play games eighteen hours out of the day. It doesn’t matter if it’s League of Legends, Rocket League, Civilization V, it doesn’t matter. I play it, and I’m gonna talk about it because it’s what I do in real life. So I might as well say something that I do, which is me being real.

MT: What are your favorite games?

Cochise: I’ve been playing Terraria for years, it’s just such an adorable game that I always go back like twice a year. So I might pick up on that heavy again. I’ve been playing FIFA – just to dabble a little with Ultimate Team. Other than that I play some MMOs and RPGs here and there. I might replay Elden Ring, which was such a great game. So that’s pretty much my agenda at the moment.

MT: And along the same lines, what are your favorite video game soundtracks?

Cochise: When it comes to soundtracks, SSX Tricky was a really good one. Jet Set Radio was great, and the Gran Turismo soundtracks are always just sublime.

MT: So many of those games have really well-curated playlists as their soundtracks – even FIFA has songs that become iconic just because they’re the title song.

Cochise: Yeah, you know I’m a music head — but if you care about music, certain details make a game even better. Even all the Grand Theft Auto games, they had so many different radio stations with anything you wanted to listen to, just like in real life… it’s just amazing what games can do expressly through music…

Hopefully one of these days days I can do something like the [GTA radio station] DJs, but this step right here is a blessing, and a wonderful first step into working with video games and music, so I’m very blessed to be in this position.

MT: How were you first approached about the event? What was your initial impression?

I knew about the event to an extent because they did it with Grimes last year, which was their first time doing it. So when they brought it up to me, I thought it was a joke. Not a joke, but I thought they were just going to put a song in there, and I was already happy about that. But they were like ‘No, no, no, bro, it’s going to be something that has you related to it.’ And I thought ‘There’s no way!’

I play Rocket League… So for me to sit here and hear somebody say ‘Yo, we’re going to put you in it,’ I was just shocked. And it was a ‘I don’t want to believe it until I see it’ type of moment. So I was in denial for a long time.

The INSPECTION Decal for Octane features a suit and tie

Courtesy of Psyonix

MT: Do you see any similarities between how Grimes’ music fits in the game and how yours fits into the game?

It’s just something that gets the people going, it’s like a Need for Speed soundtrack, you know, both have energetic types of music… I drive my ‘09 Nissan Murano and I hear my music, especially this new song that I made just for the whole Rocket League experience, it made me want to just floor it and spring another oil leak like I always have with this old car.

MT: What do you hope players get out of your Neon Nights event?

Really and truly, as cliché as it sounds, just to have fun and to know that this could happen to anybody. Even when I played Rocket League back in 2017, I had my SoundCloud link as my username… So to be able to go from that to this, it’s a perfect story of saying ‘Never give up on what you do, always enjoy life for what it is. And you never know what life will throw at you.’

MT: What would you like to see for next year’s Neon Nights event?

There’s a new genre that’s going on, kind of like an Afro-beat EDM type of thing, and I feel like it’s very energetic. It’s somewhere along the genre of Garage and UK music, but African, so like Afro-beat but a whole branch off.

I think that would be a good step because they’ve covered hip-hop so they could cover a whole different genre next year, which shows that they pay attention to music and that they have that eye for music, and the right songs to play with Rocket League in the background.

Thanks again to Cochise for chatting with me about his love for gaming and about Rocket League’s Neon Nights event. The event begins January 25, and runs through February 7 — for all the details, check out the official blog post here.