July 08, 2025
Provided image/Med/Mayers Consulting
Raheem Jarbo, who raps as Mega Ran, poses with his adoptive son Zion on a playground. The musician recently released his second children's album, 'Buddy's Magic Tree House.'
Mega Ran normally raps about video game characters like Splash Woman, the trident-wielding robot from "Mega Man 9." But on his last two albums, the Philly native has taken on new topics like eating fruit and teeth brushing.
Fatherhood inspired the pivot. Mega Ran, 47, whose real name is Raheem Jarbo, released his first children's album "Buddy's Magic Toy Box" in 2023, soon after he and his wife adopted their foster son Zion, nicknamed Buddy. The album went to No. 2 on Billboard's kids' music chart.
The 2025 follow-up, "Buddy's Magic Treehouse," climbed to No. 1 on Apple's children's music chart after its June 27 debut. The 14-track compilation includes collaborations with Grammy nominees and winners in the kids' music scene like Aaron Nigel Smith, Uncle Jumbo, Justin Roberts and Alphabet Rockers. Though Jarbo now lives in Phoenix, he also nods to his Philly roots through "The Library Jawn" and "The Alphabet Jawn."
The former middle school teacher said he was compelled to write children's tunes after listening to kids' music. The stuff he heard was missing something, he felt, or maybe just missing the kids.
"I just didn't think it was particularly well thought out, or had its audience in mind when it was being created," Jarbo said. "As a musician, I'm just like, who did they write this for?
"I've always learned that, why complain about something unless you're really gonna set out to try to try to make it better, or at least try? So I decided to write my own children's songs."
Zion was the intended audience. He unexpectedly joined the family after Jarbo and his wife decided to try fostering in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. They heard the same thing over and over again in their virtual classes: Foster-to-adoption situations are exceedingly rare. Family unification, instructors told them, was the ultimate goal.
The couple remained clear-eyed as they went through the certification process. But they were surprised by how quickly they received a foster placement. Multiple family members came forward while they fostered Zion, yet none of them could ultimately provide the boy a home. Increasingly, the foster-to-adoption path they'd learned was a "fairytale ending" seemed possible.
"It just turned into this situation where as every domino fell, it was just leading right back to us," Jarbo said.
After the adoption was official, Mega Ran made his foray into children's music. "Buddy's Magic Toy Box" was written with an almost 2-year-old in mind, as reflected in songs like "That's a Bully!" and "Gimme That Fruit!" Jarbo sees the sequel, "Buddy's Magic Tree House," as a continuing conversation with his growing son.
"Now that he's almost 4, there are different things that he's going through," he said. "There's different conversations that I need to have with him. ... I actually want the songs to grow up with him. I want to get into a situation where these records become like time capsules for him to be like, OK, well this is a song where I learned how to be a good friend, and this is a song where I learned how to brush my teeth, and this is the song where I learned about eating properly."
While Jarbo plans to keep building these time capsules, his next record may be for his peers. The rapper said he's aiming to take a break from children's music to make an album about his experiences as a foster parent, being "an elder statesman" in hip-hop and aging gracefully — topics he believes mainstream hits don't explore enough. But he couldn't have gone there without making about two dozen songs for toddlers first.
"I found it overall a lot more freeing," Jarbo said. "It's made me experiment a lot more. I've been doing more singer-songwriter stuff. I've been doing more collaborations with great singers and writers. So I think it's just opened my palette as far as what I can create. I think it just took me trying something different and getting a different result to let me know, oh, this can work."
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