“It wasn’t my brilliant idea or nothing like a master plan,” Baltimore rapper Travis “Bossman” Holifield said last week of the events that led to his signature song, 2004′s “Oh,” also known as “Land of the O.” “It was just, like, a vibe.”

Bossman had already been taking his music career seriously for a couple years at the time, making mixtapes with his Northeast Baltimore crew N.E.K. (North East Kings) and going on tour opening for the New York duo Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz.

But it was Rod Lee, a veteran DJ/producer in the Baltimore club scene, who made Bossman’s voice ubiquitous on local radio when the duo united to make “Oh.” The song kicked off Bossman’s reign as one of the city’s most popular rappers, with his 2004 independent album “Law & Order” selling over 10,000 copies and Bossman subsequently signing a major label deal with Virgin Records.

“Oh,” a hometown pride anthem that name-checks the Orioles, Ravens and numerous Charm City celebrities, has become so commonplace at Baltimore sporting events that in honor of the song’s 20th summer, the Orioles invited Bossman to throw out the first pitch at Camden Yards when the team faces the Toronto Blue Jays on Wednesday night.

According to the rapper’s Instagram, Mayor Brandon Scott has also presented Bossman with a certificate of recognition for his “20 years of contributing to Baltimore’s music culture.” The emcee is using his social media to promote tickets for the event, a portion of the proceeds from which will be used to raise funds for the Media Rhythm Institute, a local education program giving Baltimore youth opportunities to develop skills in music and other creative fields.

Ironically, Bossman is receiving all this hometown love shortly after moving to Los Angeles last year. “I relocated, trying to take the career to a new level, meet some new people, get some new connections,” he said over the phone from California. “I’m managing a bunch of producers, trying to get this Baltimore patented over here.”

Still, he’s excited to return home and savor this moment while the Orioles are enjoying a historically great season. “It’s like perfect timing,” he said. He’ll join a string of local heroes who have thrown out the first pitch at O’s games this summer, including Turnstile guitarist Pat McRory and college basketball star Angel Reese.

Bossman credits Adam Jones, a center fielder for the Orioles from 2008 to 2018, for bringing “Oh” to Camden Yards more than a decade ago as his walk-up music. “He hit me up, he was like, ‘Yo, can you do something for me?’” the rapper remembers. “Every time he went up to bat, he had his own ‘Land of the O’ intro.” The song has also gone through different iterations since: Bossman released a sequel in 2013 to celebrate the Ravens’ Super Bowl run, and this week, he and Rod Lee are releasing a “Land of the O” remix on Bossman’s new album “23 Summers,” which commemorates his career dating all the way back to the N.E.K. days.

Rod Lee had begun adapting the Baltimore club sound into different genres with great success in the early 2000s, producing local hits for rappers such as Tim Trees and Nature’s Problem, and R&B singers like Davon and Paula Campbell. In fact, Rod Lee first developed the “Oh” beat for the latter’s live show. “I actually heard that beat in the intro for Paula Campbell, and I would say, “Yo, gimme the beat that you played for the intro at that show,” Bossman says.

Bossman had already fused hip-hop with Baltimore club once before, with N.E.K.’s Blaqstarr-produced uptempo track “Face Down,” but “Oh” had a more distinct sound. The song featured the famous drum loop from the 1972 Lyn Collins hit “Think (About It)” that has driven countless Baltimore club tracks at 130 beats per minute, but “Oh” slowed the rattling tambourines and snare drum crack all the way down to a leisurely 90 BPM, resulting in a distinct new feel that matched Bossman’s punchline-heavy verses perfectly: “In the land of the ‘Oh’ and the home of the Ravens/ Bodies in Dru Hill ain’t got nothin’ to do with singin’.”

“At heart, I’m a lyricist, but Rod’s type of thing, the two-step, it needs to be a combination,” Bossman said. The song quickly spread like wildfire among local DJs, including the late “Club Queen,” DJ K-Swift. “She was a big supporter; Jay Claxton was a big supporter, he’s from Northeast Baltimore as well. We kinda made it easy [to embrace], because the song was reppin’ everybody from Baltimore.”

“Oh” was the first in a string of regional radio hits from Bossman that included “Off the Record” and “Ayo,” which appeared in a 2008 episode of HBO’s “The Wire” as well as the acclaimed Baltimore-set series’ official soundtrack album. However, the rapper laments that the album he recorded for Virgin Records never came out. Veteran Atlanta producer Jermaine Dupri signed him shortly after becoming president of Virgin’s urban music division in 2005, but when Dupri left the label less than two years later, Bossman’s album was a casualty of music industry gridlock.

“One of my biggest regrets is when I signed with Jermaine Dupri, we would clash, just because he’s from Atlanta, I’m not from Atlanta, that’s not my culture,” he said. “Imagine if me, Rod Lee, and Jermaine Dupri worked together, we’d have probably had something dope.” One Rod Lee-produced track recorded for the album, “Let’s Go,” was slated to appear in a “Madden NFL” video game until it was held up by sample clearance issues.

But Bossman has never stopped recording, with a voluminous catalog of albums and mixtapes, and he plans to launch his own app where longtime fans can listen to the out-of-print “Law & Order” project.

His impact on Baltimore is still felt, even though he was a sometimes divisive figure in the city’s hip-hop underground scene after branding himself as “Charm City’s King.” One of his contemporaries, Mullyman, traded diss tracks with him in 2005, although they eventually squashed the beef and performed together in 2010.

Now in his 40s, Bossman is able to watch with pride as younger Baltimore rappers he’s collaborated with continue powering the local music scene. “It’s a lot of dope artists that took it to another level, like Young Moose and YG Teck,” he said. “So it’s only right to keep spreadin’ the love.”

Al Shipley is a Maryland-based music and culture writer.