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Posted by Robert
Rap News Network
2/8/2004 9:00:22 AM
Tags and topics realted to this article include Young Buck.
Hank Williams drove a Cadillac, but not like this one.
North Nashville's own David Brown drives a Cadillac, a black Escalade with tinted windows and spinning chrome rims. He wears a quarter-million dollars of jewelry around his neck and wrist — and inside his mouth. He sports a medallion the size of a small Frisbee, a look that says ''drug dealer.'' Except Brown doesn't resort to pushing drugs . . . anymore.
These days his hometown boys as well as rap fans throughout the land know him as Young Buck of G-Unit, one of the hottest rap music acts in the country.
The group, tied to mega-rapper 50 Cent, has sold 2 million copies of its first album, has been on the cover of Vibe magazine and tonight will be at the Grammys with 50 Cent.
Brown is the first Nashville rapper to achieve such widespread success. And from the looks of it, he is poised to bring national attention to his hometown, a city known far more for an entirely different kind of music.
''We're bringing New York to 'Cash'ville because of this man,'' says Emmett Harvell, president of Nashville's Style Camp Entertainment and a childhood friend of Brown's.
An indomitable will has helped Brown beat the odds and make the journey from north Nashville's gritty Buchanan Street area to the Grammys at Los Angeles' Staples Center. Brown is a pioneer. Pioneers have to be fearless. His fearlessness is what's helping him make a fool out of those who scoff at the idea of this country music town producing a bona fide rap star.
Brown was born March 15, 1981. He lived in a house on Seifried Street with his mother and two siblings. His father wasn't too involved with his life, so, in some sense David Brown assumed the vacated role of man of the house.
By the time he entered Dalewood Elementary School, he was a hyper child, one who preferred to teach rather than be taught.
''He used to talk about sex in class,'' recalls childhood friend David Kleary, who knew Brown since third grade. ''He taught me how to curse.''
At 10, Brown moved with his family to south Nashville, not far from Third Avenue South. Soon the drug-infested streets would meet him at his front door. The action, the enterprise, what went on out there was more alluring than anything in a classroom.
''School wasn't for me,'' Brown says.
With few opportunities, he saw dealing drugs as not so much a crime but a way to survive, maybe even get ahead in life.
One of his hangouts became north Nashville's old Tiffany's Car Wash. That's where he would sell crack.
But as Brown saw more and more friends and ''associates'' end up either dead or in jail, he began to realize music offered his best opportunity to escape his troubles and get the wealth and comfort he desired.
Brown saw rapping as his salvation. Rappers such as Kool Daddy Fresh and The Blow Pop crew were the local heavyweights at the time. And even though they never quite achieved overwhelming success, they were at least living, breathing examples of rappers in Nashville.
Rappers Pistol and Boogie were among the first in the city to sign major-label deals. Brown was able to hook up with Boogie and his friends as a teenager, and in no time became the young cat in the crew.
Boogie says Brown would begin free-styling, a form of verbal improvisation where the aim was to rhyme words from off the top of your head.
''He starting writing and getting better and better,'' says Boogie, whose real name is Daniel Jenkins.
Then, one day during the winter of 1997, Boogie and Brown got a phone call from a friend who worked in a Nashville studio where a big-time New Orleans rap crew was recording. Brown, Boogie and the friend went over to meet the members of a crew called the Cash Money Millionaires.
Brown's first test was to battle two young rappers from CMM, by himself. Battling is an old rite in which rappers verbally joust in rhyme to determine who has the better skills. Boogie remembers his young friend's moment in the sun against a 13-year-old rapper named Lil Wayne.
''They battled for 10 or 15 minutes,'' Boogie says.
''No sooner did Wayne stop when Buck came right back on top of him.''
Brown passed that initiation and a CMM member later sent word to Brown, a high school freshman at the time. They wanted to work with the young man.
At 16 years old, Brown had to make a career decision. He dropped out of school and began a rap ''internship'' in New Orleans.
In 1998, Brown flew to New Orleans to start his rap career. To him, it seemed like a good move. Cash Money Millionaires soon would become household names in the rap community. They sold millions of records. But Brown didn't see any of that success.
''I found myself, for over a year, not even on a song and nothing's happening,'' he says.
His dream was halted, so he came home, back to his unofficial classroom: the south Nashville streets.
But Brown continued to rap. He signed with a Nashville independent label, Next Level Records. In 2000, he put out an album with a childhood friend. That album sold 8,000 copies.
''I just wanted to get heard,'' Brown says. ''I was young, trying to make anything happen.''
Brown left Next Level after releasing the album. Discouraged, he went back to dealing drugs. He just wanted to make enough money to get to a studio. When he finally got inside one, he didn't waste any time. If he had only four hours of studio time, he'd come out with four or five songs. Two days? He'd have enough material for an album.
Brown pressed 350 CDs of his own product and sold it hand-to-hand for $10 a pop all by himself, no distributor, no label.
''I figured I had enough hustle to sell these drugs, I had enough hustle to sell these CDs,'' he says. His base was a Citgo gas station near Tennessee State University.
Opportunity knocked again when Brown got a call from his New Orleans rap friends. That call led to another trip to New Orleans to hook up with the Cash Money Millionaires. Though it took some time, Brown hooked up with CMM-affiliated rapper Juvenile, who invited Brown to be a part of a record label and a new rap group he started.
Brown recalls there were no promises, other than a chance to be heard.
As a member of this new group, Brown got a chance to tour. During their first stop, in New York City, he met an underground rapper named 50 Cent.
Brown and the New York rapper clicked. They ended up recording songs in the back of Brown's tour bus.
The two met up at another tour stop in Los Angeles, where Brown told 50 Cent his New Orleans gig didn't pan out. 50 Cent vowed to work with him. They kept in contact.
But by 2002, Brown found himself back in Nashville, living in a small apartment. He was 20 years old and the father of a baby girl named Jayla.
''I was out here by myself,'' Brown says.
But as he watched an Eminem music video on the television in front of him — the video for the song Lose Yourself, a manifesto for that urban American dream of the aspiring rapper — Brown says he had a premonition.
''Something told me, he'll be right here around you,'' he says.
And in two to three weeks, it happened.
50 Cent had inked a deal with Eminem and producer Dr. Dre and Brown was given the chance to hook up with 50 Cent in a venture called the G-Unit, which has become a mega-rap group and launching pad for solo rap artists. In no time, Brown transformed into Young Buck.
In January 2003, 50 Cent had a song called In Da Club. It became a dance-club staple. Along the way, the G-Unit signed a deal to release Beg for Mercy, which it did on Nov. 14. The album sold an impressive 377,000 copies in its first week.
Just last month, Young Buck and three of his friends sauntered into an Antioch-area Logan's Roadhouse. They drew stares with their every step. His collection of jewelry, a spinning platinum-and-diamond medallion and cross, is a far cry from the slim, gold herringbone chain he sported in a publicity photo taken four years earlier.
''I know there's a God somewhere,'' says Buck, whose meditative, soft-spoken words are in sharp contrast to his abrasive on-record raps. ''I went from nothing to something.''
He'd just gotten back home after shooting two music videos in Miami. He soon would be off to New York on business and then Houston, to perform at a Super Bowl party.
Buck is comfortable. He bought his mother a house. His videos play on MTV and BET. He is a local celebrity. And as one employee at Tower Records on West End recently gushed, ''He lets me spin his chain, he's such a nice guy!''
Some aren't so sure. A few Nashville rappers have ripped into him, questioning his loyalty to his hometown, among other things.
The lanky, 22-year-old simply smiles and sips his Sprite — diamonds on his teeth shining.
''Sometimes people hurt themselves, they think they helpin' themselves, but they're hurtin' themselves,'' he says. ''I might have an artist in mind that I want to work with in the future, but by them going at me, I can't work with them.''
Buck has his career to think about. As of now, he knows that his success is due in large part to his association with 50 Cent.
The one sure shot toward solidifying his career may come this May, when he'll release his first major-label solo album. He says he feels some pressure, maybe because the success of Nashville's hip-hop scene is in some way dependent upon his success.
He's in a position to bring new attention to his city, bringing the rap world to Nashville, back to Seifried Street and Third Avenue South. In 10 years, he sees himself running a label to ensure he's not the only Nashville rap star.
''I was one of the first artists to make it for now,'' he says. ''There's a lot more to come.''
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