Black Truth News: Can You Tell the People what you got going on up here?
T-Mann: We got a barbershop. I love hip hop, so basically using my hip hop ties, my people plug me in with Jack Daniels. They doing a promotional contest; $5,000 dollars for the hottest sixteen bars, they been going all around Chicago, video recording, taping people in their mobile studio. They been going around taping the hottest 16 bars in Chicago; they were looking for a spot on the west side of the city. They knew about the barbershop. I was throwing an open mic every Wednesday. They came through and then came back again. I appreciate Jack Daniels and WGCI for coming through and showing love to the barbershop on Wednesday night. They are going to continue it for the next six weeks and its all love.
Black Truth News: You talk about your love for hip hop. Talk about how you are combining your entrepreneurship skills, along with your love for the music?
T-Mann: Well to me that is hip hop. Hip hop is just not rap. Everybody think hip hop is just rap. Hip hop is the kid who took the one turntable and made it 2 turntables. It’s the kid with the spray can. It’s the way we wear our clothes. The way we wear our hair; it’s everything. People in hip hop were trendsetters; we were always known to be trendsetters, now hip hop is so commercialized. Now it ain’t hip hop; its rap. In the original days of hip hop; we owned our own. We were the Karl Kani’s the Fubu’s; we were the originators. We took their style and made it better.
Now it ain’t authentic no more, now it’s all about something else. We were taught to be original; and that and ownership has gone together. We were taught by Russell Simmons. We were coming from the hood, owning our own thing; nobody was messing with Hip Hop, so we had to own our own thing. All the way to Master P; so that’s what we trying to teach the kids. Don’t grow up trying to be a worker. Grow up to be a boss; especially when you dealing with hip hop. Because we occupy, that’s one thing they can’t take from us; is that we occupy.
To me, that is hip hop, Coming from my era, being an entrepreneur and hip hop went hand to hand. You in hip hop, all that ties in, the way you rock your headband, you sell it, you might rock a shirt with one sleeve off and people start biting your style. That’s hip hop. So be your own boss.